Before The Summer Passes Away

Haunted by bad luck, two friends learn to trust in the world again and take their destiny into their own hands.

Two detectives are tasked to investigate the murder of an old man, found bludgeoned to death in a Tokyo rail yard.

Fleeing heartbreak in the big city, Ichiko returns to Komori, her rural hometown. She battles summer's rain and humidity, bakes her own bread, grows hothouse tomatoes and tills the fields. During autumn, the time for pickling and preserving fish and sweet potatoes, Ichiko begins reaping rice and recalls her departure five years before.

At the strong insistence of his father, Ushimatsu Segawa conceals his origins from a “buraku” area of low-class “untouchables,” leaving his hometown to serve as an elementary school teacher where he excels and is loved by his students. But he constantly struggles with the secret of his low-birth status and is disturbed by all of the discrimination levelled upon his class. It prevents him from pursuing a romance with Shiho, whom he meets at the temple where he resides, but who descends from a samurai family.

In Part I we see the young would-be swordsman setting out to achieve greatness in war, achieving nothing because fighting on the losing side, & then beginning his long period of wandering & training, with the goal always in mind of his duel with Kojiro. Part II builds toward that great duel on Ganryu Island, with considerable focus on Musashi's planning & forethought as to how to gain an advantage.

Kon Ichikawa's retelling of the classic true story of Samurai honor. When a young clan lord is forced to commit seppuku (ritual suicide), his loyal followers (now Ronin, masterless Samurai) dedicate their lives to avenging his death.

One day, Shiro's all-time favorite idol Mami Mitsuya suddenly appears right in front of him! Even though this meeting left him excited, his partner Kenji ends up unhappy. Moreover, the appearance of a new partner and Shiro's work situation have led to the relationship between the two changing...

27-year-old Eto Kana lives in Tokyo and has never been out of the city before. She used to work as a designer and stay in a company dormitory but moved back to her family home after resigning due to the stress from interpersonal relationships. Meanwhile, Kana’s family gets a call about an elderly granduncle who got injured. She goes to Kyoto where he lives at the request of her worried mother and stays there for several days to take care of him.

After handing in a report on the treatment of Chinese colonial labor, Kaji is offered the post of labor chief at a large mining operation in Manchuria, which also grants him exemption from military service. He accepts, and moves to Manchuria with his newly-wed wife Michiko, but when he tries to put his ideas of more humane treatment into practice, he finds himself at odds with scheming officials, cruel foremen, and the military police.

In the city of Yokosuka, Kinta and his lover Haruko, both involved with yakuza, brave the post-occupation period with a goal to be together.

When Tadashi sees a girl from his school stood alone on the beach, he becomes determined to find out why.

Two middle aged German brothers - one New Age and recently divorced, the other uptight and sceptical - travel to a Zen monastery in Japan in search of enlightenment, or perhaps just in search of themselves.

Country bumpkin Haruko only ever wanted to become a maiko, an apprentice geisha. Initially rebuffed for lack of references, Haruko's strong accent intrigues a linguistics professor, who undertakes to coach her.

At Sakurada Gate in 1860, the shogun’s chief minister and his retinue of bodyguards are ambushed and annihilated. Bearing the responsibility and shame for this failure is Shimura Kingo, master swordsman and chief of the guard. Forbidden to take his own life in atonement, he is instead tasked with hunting down the remaining assassins; however, fate intervenes and now only one is left. Devoted to his late lord and his duty, he relentlessly pursues the sole remaining assassin for the next thirteen years. But times are changing in Japan and the way of the sword has become outlawed. What does this mean for Kingo?

In their last year of high school, two girls in the brass band club perform a song inspired by a fairy tale that parallels their friendship.

When George Tanner does business with high-ranking Yakuza Tono, Tono kidnaps his daughter, and George summons his old friend, private eye Harry Kilmer, to Japan to investigate.

Two young brothers become the leaders of a gang of kids in their neighborhood. Ozu's charming film is a social satire that draws from the antics of childhood as well as the tragedy of maturity.

A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of inter­generational relationships, Good Morning tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after their parents refuse to buy a television set. Ozu weaves a wealth of subtle gags through a family portrait as rich as those of his dramatic films, mocking the foibles of the adult world through the eyes of his child protagonists. Shot in stunning color and set in a suburb of Tokyo where housewives gossip about the neighbors’ new washing machine and unemployed husbands look for work as door-to-door salesmen, this charming comedy refashions Ozu’s own silent classic I Was Born, But . . . to gently satirize consumerism in postwar Japan.

A businessman with a disfigured face obtains a lifelike mask from his new doctor, but the mask starts altering his personality and causing him to question his identity.

Moon Child follows a group of childhood friends as they advance in a futuristic criminal underworld. Sho feels he is doomed to walk in his idol Kei's footsteps as a vampire with the gift of eternal life and the curse of blood thirst. Over time, their tight friendship becomes corrupted because of their rivalry and love for the same woman.