Osamu Takizawa

Haha no kyoku

Satsuo Yamamoto

Setsuko Hara, Joji Oka

The prewar film Haha no kyoku (Mother's Melody, 1937) is known for its place in Japanese film history as one of the top three melodramas as well as for its authorship: Yamamoto Satsuo is an auteur not usually associated with filming melodramas. Yamamoto made the film right after he moved, along with his mentor Naruse Mikio, to the Toho film company. A number of subsequent postwar mother's films adopted some of its essences, making it a genre-defining moment in Japanese cinema. This great melodrama is atypical of Yamamoto's output, much of which deals with political corruption and inequities within social institutions and offers a strong anti-establishment appeal.

死の街を脱れて

Eiichi Koishi

Mitsuko Mito, Katsuko Wakasugi

Group of women escape Chinese controlled area for Japanese occupied lands during Pacific War.

天保水滸伝 大原幽学

Satsuo Yamamoto

Mikijiro Hira, Ruriko Asaoka

青銅の基督

Minoru Shibuya

Eiji Okada, Kyōko Kagawa

Christ in Bronze is a 1955 black-and-white Japanese film directed by Minoru Shibuya. It was entered into the 1956 Cannes Film Festival.

Kwaidan

Masaki Kobayashi

Michiyo Aratama, Misako Watanabe

Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money with tragic results. A man stranded in a blizzard is saved by Yuki the Snow Maiden, but his rescue comes at a cost. Blind musician Hoichi is forced to perform for an audience of ghosts. An author relates the story of a samurai who sees another warrior's reflection in his teacup.

野火

Kon Ichikawa

Eiji Funakoshi, Osamu Takizawa

In the closing days of WWII, a Japanese soldier afflicted with tuberculosis is abandoned by his company and left to wander the Philippine island of Leyte.

キクとイサム

Tadashi Imai

Emiko Takahashi, George Okunoyama

Kiku and her brother Isamu are social outcasts, children of a prostitute mother and black GI father, in postwar Japan.

原爆の子

Kaneto Shindō

Nobuko Otowa, Osamu Takizawa

Shows the devastation caused by the atomic bomb, and by use of a fictional storyline, portrays the struggle of the ordinary Japanese people in dealing with the aftermath.

A Legend, or Was It?

Keisuke Kinoshita

Shima Iwashita, Mariko Kaga

A Tokyo family escaping the war relocates to a Hokkaido village; their daughter is set to marry the local leader's son, but her siblings disapprove.

白い巨塔

Satsuo Yamamoto

Jirō Tamiya, Eijirō Tōno

The story contrasts the life of two doctors, former classmates and now both assistant professors at Naniwa University Hospital in Osaka. The brilliant and ambitious surgeon Goro Zaizen stops at nothing to rise to a position of eminence and authority, while the friendly Shuji Satomi busies himself with his patients and research.

忠臣蔵

Kunio Watanabe

Kazuo Hasegawa, Yataro Kurokawa

Japan, 1701. A group of samurai become rônin after their lord is forced to commit seppuku for assaulting a court official, who will become the target of a merciless revenge.

The Inheritance

Masaki Kobayashi

Keiko Kishi, Tatsuya Nakadai

On his deathbed, a wealthy businessman announces that his fortune is to be split equally among his three illegitimate children, whose whereabouts are unknown to his family and colleagues. A bevy of lawyers and associates scheme to procure the money for themselves, enlisting the aid of impostors and blackmail.

That Guy and I

Kō Nakahira

Yûjirô Ishihara, Izumi Ashikawa

Asada Keiko and Kurokawa Saburo are two young college students. When Keiko visits Saburo's house, she meets his father Kokichi and his mother Motoko. Motoko is a famous hair dresser, who openly flaunts her lover. When Kokichi and Motoko fight, which they do a lot, he routinely threatens to leave but never quite does. A relationship develops between Saburo and Keiko, but Saburo is shaken when his mother tells Keiko the truth about Saburo's past and the secret of his birth.

自分の穴の中で

Tomu Uchida

Yumeji Tsukioka, Mie Kitahara

Nobuko is a widow who lives with her daughter-in-law Tamiko and her brother Junjiro. The family's gatekeeper, Komatsu, is attracted to Tamiko, but she is encouraged to marry a doctor and he is afraid to tell her his feelings.

A Trap

Yoji Yamada

Chieko Baisho, Osamu Takizawa

When her only relative, her elder brother is accused of robbing and murdering an old woman loan-shark, pretty, young Kiriko travels from her home in Kyushu to Tokyo to get Japan's top lawyer to defend her brother. Unfortunately her naive idealism is shattered when the lawyer refuses to take the case based on her insufficient funds. What follows is a long determined revenge plot that sees the heroine become a Tokyo bar hostess and worse to punish the lawyer. The plot thickens with another murder mystery and a sleuthing reporter.

安城家の舞踏会

Kōzaburō Yoshimura

Setsuko Hara, Yumeko Aizome

After Japan's loss in the war, the wealthy, cultured, liberal Anjo family have to give up their mansion and their way of life. They hold one last ball at the house before leaving. The seemingly cold, cynical son secretly grieves for his defeated father and the values that the war destroyed, while the daughter tries to prevent father from taking his life and to find her own place in the new Japan.