Movies: Akitake Kōno

The story of Sanshiro, a strong stubborn youth, who travels into the city in order to learn Jujutsu. However, upon his arrival he discovers a new form of self-defence: Judo. The main character is based on Shiro Saigo, a legendary judoka....

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...

In medieval Japan, a woman and her children journey to find the family's patriarch, who was exiled years before....

Over more than a decade, the daughter of a Kyoto Imperial University professor comes of age as she witnesses her father fired for opposing the rise of fascism in Japan and becomes involved with two of his students....

In this government-suggested sequel, Sugata again grows as a judo master, and demonstrates his (and by extension, all Japanese) superiority to the foreign warrior....

Yoshitsune Minamoto, disguised with his retinue as monks, must make do with a comical porter as their guide through hostile territory en route to safety....

The stories of several young women who work in a 'precision optical instruments' factory during the second World War. Despite illness, injury, and tremendous personal hardship, the women persevere in their tasks, devoted to their work and their count...

Three bank robbers, Eijima, Nojiri, and Takasugi, flee the police and escape into the mountains. At an inn high in the Japanese Alps, Eijima and Nojiri encounter a young woman and her father, as well as Honda, a mountaineer. The inn folk do not reali...

Saburo and Keiko fall in love with each other but the tide of war separates them....

Three closely associated gamblers have adventures in Yokohama, Hokkaido, and Macao. Gambling trio endure hardships to rescue Naojiro’s family....

An attempt is made to suppress a journalist's investigation of collusion between a rural police chief and the local gangster bosses....

Special Forces commander Captain Tadamori returns to Kyoto after successfully defeating the uprising of pirates in the western sea of Japan. But because the high courtiers dislike career soldiers gaining power and influence, they ignore the will of e...

Blind swordsman/masseuse Zatoichi befriends a young woman looking for her father, a village leader who has disappeared. As he helps her investigate the disappearance, Zatoichi also becomes involved with another young woman who is trying to help her b...

Saheji, a man-about-town, gets stuck at a high-class brothel when he can’t pay the bill. He makes the best of his situation by performing various tasks amidst the tumult of the end of the shogunate—but always by making sure to get a “commission” for ...

Dotanba - Last Minute...

A group of Okinawan high school girls are drafted as nurses during the American invasion of the island. As the enemy army advances further, the situation for the girls becomes increasingly desperate as food and shelter run out and the number of injur...

Based on Matsumoto Seicho's classic mystery novel of the same name, the story centers around a group of detectives who are determined to find the truth behind an apparent double suicide....

This is the second installment of the trilogy based on Japan’s greatest novel “The Great Bodhisattva Pass”, following the life and times of bloodthirsty samurai, Tsukue Ryunosuke. Blinded in an explosion and further injured from a fall, the master sw...

Young lord Saburo Nobuyasu struggles to find comfort in life. His arranged marriage to Tokuhime, daughter of one-time family enemy Oda Nobunaga, provides little happiness. His manipulative mother adds further complications through her constant interf...

1963 Japanese movie...