Movies: Toru Takemitsu

Down-on-his-luck veteran Tsugumo Hanshirō enters the courtyard of the prosperous House of Iyi. Unemployed, and with no family, he hopes to find a place to commit seppuku—and a worthy second to deliver the coup de grâce in his suicide ritual. The seni...

Shakespeare's King Lear is reimagined as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan where an ageing warlord divides his kingdom between his three sons....

A vacationing entomologist suffers extreme physical and psychological trauma after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village and made to live with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them....

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....

A mountain man beheads his many wives to prove his love to an alluring woman he meets in an enchanted forest....

When a prostitute is found dead in a Los Angeles skyscraper occupied by a large Japanese corporation, detectives John Connor and Web Smith are called in to investigate. Although Connor has previous experience working in Japan, cultural differences ma...

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 come...

A businessman with a disfigured face obtains a lifelike mask from his doctor, but the mask starts altering his personality....

The mother of a feudal lord's only heir is kidnapped away from her husband by the lord. The husband and his samurai father must decide whether to accept the unjust decision, or risk death to get her back....

Shigematsu Shizuma, who lives with his family in a village near Fukuyama, was in Hiroshima with his wife and niece just after the devastating atomic bombing, a tragedy that cruelly took the lives of thousands of people and forever marked the harsh ex...

This film follows the daily lives of a group of people barely scraping by in a slum on the outskirts of Tokyo. Yet as desperate as their circumstances are, each of them—the homeless father and son envisioning their dream house; the young woman abused...

One of the major documentaries on a specific chapter in modern Japanese history, this look at the trial of Japanese militarists accused of war crimes is excellently handled by director Masaki Kobayashi. Kobayashi and his assistants had to plough thro...

A gangster gets released from prison and has to cope with the recent shifts of power between the gangs, while taking care of a thrill-seeking young woman, who got in bad company while gambling....

A man wanders into a seemingly deserted town with his young son in search of work. But after a bit of bad luck, he joins the town's population of lost souls....

Two brothers compete for the amorous favors of a young woman during a seaside summer of gambling, boating, and drinking....

An intimate chronicle of the shooting of Ran (1985), a film directed by the legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa....

Successful and married with children, paper-mill owner Jihei knows better than to contradict the strict social and moral codes of 18th-century Japan. But when he meets the lovely courtesan Koharu, he becomes a man obsessed. Koharu returns his love, e...

The myth of the Sun Goddess who founded Japanese society is seen through the lens of a modern view of history....

A blind traveling musician is abused and oppressed wherever she goes, even as the modern world imposes change around her....

Seeking revenge against the guard who tormented him, a young man returns to the island where he was imprisoned in reform school. But his plans for vengeance are disturbed when he encounters a strange and beautiful young woman...