Toho Eiga

A not-so-young "Young Guy" (Kayama) returns in this reunion feature, which takes Yuichi and Ishiyama to New York, where the former runs in the New York Marathon and romances TV producer Minagawa. A delightful throwback to Toho's '60s style filmmaking.

A hotheaded youth in 1880s Meiji Japan apprentices to judo master Shōgorō Yano, trading brute jujutsu bravado for discipline and humility. As Sanshirō matures, he proves judo’s spirit against old-guard challengers—including a deadly duel—while falling for his vanquished opponent’s daughter. Based on the novel by Tsuneo Tomita, son of Tomita Tsunejirō, the earliest disciple of judo.

The story is based on the serial novel by Tsunoda Kikuo.

Wartime propaganda filmed by the Japanese in occupied China, Shirley Yamaguchi portrays an orphan rescued from the streets by a kindly Japanese merchant marine officer. Part spy thriller and part Shanghai travelogue, it was part of a popular series known as "Chinese Continental Friendship" made by the occupying Japanese in China.

This epic depicts the battle between Uesugi Kenshin and Takeda Shingen. The focus of the story is the struggle by the unit leader in charge of the main supply wagons and the supply troops to transport materiel to the Uesugi army. To this are added episodes involving an itinerant woman.

Shot mostly in Tokyo, this comedy depicts two Chinese tourists who have travelled from their country to Japan in order to experience the latter country.

A 1943 film.

A Japanese army engineer (Hasegawa) on the mainland must put his personal feelings for a beautiful Chinese woman (Ri) aside if he is to succeed at building a highway through the "bandit"- (aka anti-Japanese militia-) infested hinterlands.

Ravana, while dancing with animals, kidnaps Sita from Rama, and returns to Lanka to hide as Lankapura burns.

A 1942 Jidaigeki by the veteran jidaigeki filmmaker Kunio Watanabe about the legendary warrior Musashibo Benkei with Hideko Takamine portraying Minamoto no Yoshitsune (who is, of course, a man). The film climaxes in the famous encounter/fight btw Benkei and Yoshitsune at the Gojo Bridge.

Set against the backdrop of an imperial victory in the civil war leading up to the Meiji Restoration, Fallen Blossoms tells the story of the sorrows of women in a geisha house in Kyoto by recounting the relationships of its inhabitants.

Following Flower Picking Diary (1939), Tamizo directed another film starring Hideko Takamine, based on a story by Nobuko Yoshiya. Takamine plays a poor young girl, trying to become a teacher on her quest to become independent to be able to look after her younger brother. But then tragedy strikes...

The film was produced during Second Sino-Japanese War, before the Pearl Harbor Attack in 1941. The film mainly concerns the training of newly-recruited pilots and their daily life, then their subsequent fighting experiences in China. Army supported the production, providing all the authentic airplanes, training and actual actions. They even provided the older biplanes disguised as Chinese fighter planes. Obinata plays the trainer-turned-combat-leader, who is passionate and cool at the same time. All his boys love him, of course. The film is not as intense, full of sugar-coated camaraderie, until young pilots are killed in action one by one. Last twenty minutes are fairly grim, as the message of self-sacrifice is heard loud and clear.

This is the story of a woman who enters the world of sales. She works at a company in Ginza as a typist. She determines that she needs money for her family and herself and asks her co-worker, who is a salesman, for guidance on sales. Armed with the information he provides, she begins in sales and is successful. Her original guide eventually begins to feel strange about her...

A self-absorbed young actor humiliates an elderly Noh performer, who then commits suicide. His act of cruelty compels his father to disown him, leading the once promising actor to a life on the streets. But his desire to win back the respect of his father and the affection of the dead actor's daughter pushes him toward a more noble existence. Naruse employed a delicately structured mise-en-scene in this family melodrama, which evokes the work of Josef von Sternberg.

At the beginning of the Meiji era, three brothers of a samurai family each stand up to the times.

Japanese movie

The film tells about the life of the former vassal of the Ako clan - Fuwa Katsuemon Masatane.

A typically modern take on the well-known Naniwabushi character (and real life 19th-century gangster) Mori no Ishimatsu, whose proverbial stupidity Enoken takes to farcical extremes.