Movies: Chikage Awashima

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...

A delightful and moving coming-of-age story. One summer, three young boys take an increasing interest in an eccentric old man who lives alone in a house surrounded by an overgrown garden. The boys form a bond with the recluse and set about weeding an...

A young Tokyo salary man and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he has an extramarital affair....

The arranged marriage between a capricious woman from Tokyo high society and a quiet and rustic man is tested by a marital crisis....

A 28-year-old single woman is pressured to marry....

In the wake of the 1956 Prostitution Prevention Law, a young woman recently released from one of Japan's new rehabilitation centers struggles to build a new life....

A war widow with a young boy manages a farm with her bossy mother-in-law. When a reporter comes to interview her, the two begin an affair. He turns out to be married and won't leave his wife. Her older brother tries to marry off his children and hang...

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....

A Japanese woman writes down three stories she has witnessed or heard of in her diary, each about the difficult situation a young woman finds herself in....

A sensuous movie based on a literary work. Hitomi Kuroki stars as the film’s heroine....

A Christmas Eve power outage provides a collection of troubled Tokyo denizens the opportunity to come clean on the misdeeds of their past....

Nine maids serve the household of a writer and his wife. The couple treat their maids like daughters and marry them off to eligible men. So, they are forever looking for new maids. As the years go by maid servants become hired help and more bossy and...

Nakamura Yukinojo gains popularity in Edo's kabuki scene as a handsome onnagata (a male actor who plays female roles). But hidden behind the placid expression of his stage face is a deep grudge for the men responsible for dishonoring his parents' nam...

During the 1200's, legendary Buddhist monk Nichiren returns from his studies to lead Japan out of moral crisis and prepare to fight Mongol invaders by creating a new form of Buddhism. He runs afoul of the existing Buddhist sects and their government ...

Ichikawa's 1956 adaptation of Nihonbashi was the first to take the work of Kyoka Izumi— until then regarded as a writer of common tragic melodramas—and re-evaluate it as a tanbi-ha work of decadence, aestheticism, and intrigue. Ichikawa's film prese...

The story of a couple, a spoiled son and a down-to-earth girl, in Osaka in the early Showa era. The film won the prestigious Blue Ribbon awards for best director, best actor (Morishige) and best actress (Awashima), and the Mainichi Concours award for...

Strip dancer Carmen falls in love with Hajime, who is engaged to the daughter of a right-wing politician....

A young country boy leaves his village for Tokyo, where he begins to work as a stock trader. First part (of four) of the film adaptation of Bunroku Shishi's novel, Oban....

Set in the 1860s, the final years of the Tokugawa Shogunate, The Fireflies focuses on Tose (Awashima Chikage), the mistress of the Teradaya, a small inn in the Kyoto suburb of Fushimi. She does not have an easy life. Her husband, Isuke (Ban Junzaburo...

Stuck in a fishing village in Hokkaido, Tadao's grand-daughter Haru is desperate to visit Tokyo, a trip Tadao is reluctant to make....