Movies: Michiyo Aratama

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...

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...

The family of an older man who runs a small sake brewery become concerned with his finances and his health after they discover him visiting an old mistress from his youth....

Ryunosuke, a gifted swordsman plying his trade during the turbulent final days of Shogunate rule, has no moral code and kills without remorse. It’s a way of life that leads to madness....

Following the detonation of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese military and the government clash over the demand from the Allies for unconditional surrender. Minister of the Army Anami leads the military officers who propose to ...

After the Japanese defeat to the Russians, Kaji leads the last remaining men through Manchuria. Intent on returning to his dear wife and his old life, Kaji faces great odds in a variety of different harrowing circumstances as he and his fellow men sn...

Kaji is sent to the Japanese army labeled Red and is mistreated by the vets. Along his assignment, Kaji witnesses cruelties in the army and revolts against the abusive treatment against the recruit Obara. He also sees his friend Shinjô Ittôhei defect...

After their lord is tricked into committing ritual suicide, forty-seven samurai warriors await the chance to avenge their master and reclaim their honor....

Japan, 1860. The men of the Mito clan, victims of the Ansei purge, anxiously prowl around the Sakurada Gate of Edo Castle with the intention of assassinating Naosuke Ii of Hikone, tairō of the Tokugawa shogunate and responsible for their misfortune....

Tashiro coincidentally meets his best friend Sugimoto in a bar very close to the apartment in which Sugimoto’s wayward wife is found dead. Although Tashiro is not a suspect in the police investigation, he is racked with guilt and confesses to his wif...

In this Japanese drama, a village girl goes to Tokyo and becomes a hooker to support her ailing mother. While there she meets an unmarried teacher (at least he says he's unmarried) and falls in love. When she learns that he lied and is married to a w...

A salaryman's drunken ravings in public attract the attention of journalists who coerce him into telling them his life's story....

In the dying months of the Meiji era, a sympathetic student befriends a married couple, but soon realizes they share a curiously strained relationship stemming from an unknown incident in their past....

A jobless young couple, Yoshigi and Tsutue, wind up at the outskirts of the Suzaki red-light district in Tokyo. Tsutue talks her way into a job pouring sake for male customers at a small bar run by a sympathetic older woman, while Yoshigi is shunted ...

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 ...

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...

U.S. Army Captain Clark Allen gains attention by walking back and forth, the length of Japan, gambling with U.S. servicemen in order to raise funds to rebuild an orphanage. Suspicious of Allen's motives, a Japanese newsman, Hiroshi Kitabayashi, trace...

Former playmates (Naito and Tamura), both long ago abandoned by their parents, recall their youth and fall in love....

Three stories revolve around independence, a man searching for his wife, and a poor craftsman trying to make money....

Learning of his family's collapse, acolyte Goichi, sent to study silently at the Temple of the Golden Pavilion, must endure acute psychological distress....