When his mother's untimely death quickly follows his father's, a doctor begins to believe a killer may be targeting him and his amnesiac wife.
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.
Kenji, the eldest son of Masajiro, a wealthy moneylender, refuses to work in the family business and becomes obsessed with farming, jewelry and religion.
Documentary filmmaker Genya Tachibana has tracked down the legendary actress Chiyoko Fujiwara, who mysteriously vanished at the height of her career. When he presents her with a key she had lost and thought was gone forever, the filmmaker could not have imagined that it would not only unlock the long-held secrets of Chiyoko’s life... but also his own.
Tsugaru
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?
Lady Snowblood is caught by the police and sentenced to death for her crimes. As she is sent to the gallows she is rescued by the secret police who offer her a deal to assassinate some revolutionaries.
Yuki's family is nearly wiped out before she is born due to the machinations of a band of criminals. These criminals kidnap and brutalize her mother but leave her alive. Later her mother ends up in prison with only revenge to keep her alive. She creates an instrument for this revenge by purposefully getting pregnant. Yuki never knows the love of a family but only killing and revenge.
In a small Japanese village at the end of the 19th century, a rickshaw driver's wife takes on a much younger lover and the two conspire to murder him.
Depicts the bloody siege of the fortress of Port Arthur, one of the most strongly fortified positions in the world, during the Russo-Japanese War of (1904 - 1905). In the story dominated the character Lt Takeshi Kogyo (Teruhiko Aoi), teachers, and a reserve officer who became commander of the platoon and later company. At the same time monitors the conduct of the army commander general Nogi (Tatsuya Nakadai), which was commissioned of the emperor Matsuhito (Toshirô Mifune) to the conquest of the fort.
When the brutal Boshin War breaks out in Japan, a group of inmates on death row unite to defend a fortress against the Imperial army.
The film depicts carnivalesque atmosphere summed up by the cry "Ei ja nai ka" ("Why not?") in Japan in 1867 and 1868 in the days leading to the Meiji Restoration. It examines the effects of the political and social upheaval of the time, and culminates in a revelrous march on the Tokyo Imperial Palace, which turns into a massacre. Characteristically, Imamura focuses not on the leaders of the country, but on characters in the lower classes and on the fringes of society.
A genius and reckless poet and a hard working musician are asked by the CEO of a children literature magazine to write a war song to send children into the battlefield.
In the Meiji period, a schoolteacher tries to hide his lower-class upbringing as he supports a visiting liberal intellectual.
A young woman, who must support her father as a middle-aged man's mistress, finds herself falling in love with a student closer to her age.
A lifelong love of flight inspires Japanese aviation engineer Jiro Horikoshi, whose storied career includes the creation of the A-6M World War II fighter plane.
In 1907, a group of men climb an unconquered peak in the last unmapped region of Japan.
A widow and her two sons, Seitaro and Koji, live in the small town of Komori, where Buraku people are forced to reside. The two boys are continuously harassed by their teachers and classmates through their childhood as a result of their Buraku heritage. In the midst of the 1918 Great Rice Riots in Osaka, Seitaro meets with Asako, the daughter of a rice shop owner, and falls in love with her. She too is of Buraku descent. At the same period, Hideaki, an old friend of the brothers returns to Komori, and he along with Koji and the townspeople create "Zenkoku Suiheisha", the National Levelers Association, an organization pledged to build a bridge over the river of discrimination, making all people equal in every way.
A fishing village is terrorized by a giant whale, and the fishermen are determined to kill it.
Two infantry regiments of the Imperial Japanese Army—210 men overall—tackled Mt. Hakkoda in the winter of 1902 to prepare for war with Russia.