JAPANESE FILMS SEEN

A few days in the life of a quiet geisha, single mother of a smart young boy, in the lively Tokyo quarter of Ginza. A woman devoted to others' needs, she'll end by taking part herself in one of the many disguises of Ginza.

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

1952 film by Kenji Mizoguchi

A high-born woman named Okuni travels around the country with Gohei, a samurai retainer who is in service to her. They are in search of Tomonojo, who has killed the man who was Okuni’s husband and Gohei’s master, and they cannot return to their lord’s home until they have fulfilled their duty of hunting down and killing Tomonojo.

A teenaged girl witnesses her widowed mother's attempt to sustain her family.

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

The story of Kiyoko, a young woman who has successfully managed to make a break with her dysfunctional family who have been trying to arrange a marriage for her with a disagreeable man whom she has rejected.

Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.

Shows the devastation caused by the atomic bomb, and by use of a fictional storyline, portrays the struggle of the ordinary Japanese people in dealing with the aftermath.

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 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 injured climbs, leading to the film's tragic finale.

From June 1944, twelve Japanese seamen are stranded for seven years on an abandoned and forgotten island called Anatahan.

In 16th century Japan, peasants Genjuro and Tobei sell their earthenware pots to a group of soldiers in a nearby village, in defiance of a local sage's warning against seeking to profit from warfare. Genjuro's pursuit of both riches and the mysterious Lady Wakasa, as well as Tobei's desire to become a samurai, run the risk of destroying both themselves and their wives, Miyagi and Ohama.

Ten years into a marriage, the wife is disappointed by the husband's lack of financial success, meaning she has to work and can't treat herself and the husband finds the wife slovenly and mean-spirited: she neither cooks not cleans particularly well and is generally disagreeable. In turn, he alternately ignores her and treats her as a servant. Neither is particularly happy, not helped by their unsatisfactory lodgers. The husband is easily seduced by an ex-colleague, a widow with a small child who needs some security, and considers leaving his wife.

The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.

A young woman, who must support her father as a middle-aged man's mistress, finds herself falling in love with a student closer to her age.

Ginko, the daughter of a poor shoemaker Ginzo, a child was sold to a geisha. From a student she became a real geisha and made her debut under the name of “Peony”. Great anguish caused Ginko molestation host teahouse. In Ginko have a favorite person – doctor Kurisu, but she is forced to leave him and return home in Tokyo. But here, she had all the same poverty. Parents again sell Ginkgo, this time to the north. There she first landlord was going to marry her, but interferes with his mother, who has decided not to allow this marriage, shameful for the honor of the house. He eventually marries another girl. Caught in a quandary, Ginko returns to Tokyo and the third time it becomes a geisha. Hard work, constant bullying Ginko adjusted to the disease. Mistress of her first promises to break a contract in which she serves as Ginko, but when Ginko finally recovers, the owner easily abandons his promises and demands that Ginko continued to work on it.

1953 film by Teinosuke Kinugasa

Fleeing a distressing family situation, Eiko, a very young girl, becomes an apprentice to Miyoharu, a veteran geisha. Both, determined to preserve their professional integrity, must face the selfishness and ambition of several petty people.

A married couple looking for an apartment move in with the husband's co-worker, a widower. The husband becomes jealous of the widower and his wife.