Movies: Kazuo Kitamura

In the midst of an attempt to take over his company, a powerhouse executive is hit with a huge ransom demand when his chauffeur's son is kidnapped by mistake....

In the summer of 1941, the United States and Japan seem on the brink of war after constant embargos and failed diplomacy come to no end. "Tora! Tora! Tora!", named after the code words use by the lead Japanese pilot to indicate they had surprised the...

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...

Even though Gennosuke and Oboro are from rival ninja villages, they are secretly in love. At an annual conference with the Lord, it is dictated that a competition--a fight to the death--will take place between the five best shinobi from each village....

A thief, a murderer, and a charming lady-killer, Iwao Enokizu is on the run from the police....

A down-and-out businessman travels to a seaside town, where he meets a woman with unusual sexual powers....

Tokyo engineer Kariya arrives on a primitive tropical island, where he interacts with the Futori clan, to drill a well to power a sugar mill....

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...

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...

The film depicts carnivalesque atmosphere summed up by the cry "Ei ja nai ka" ("Why not?") in Japan in 1867 and 1868 in the days leading to the Meiji Restoration. It examines the effects of the political and social upheaval of the time, and culminate...

A high-school girl inherits a declining yakuza organization, which seeks to repair its fortunes under her leadership....

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 ...

A woman, Tome, is born to a lower class family in Japan in 1918. The title refers to an insect, repeating its mistakes, as in an infinite circle. Imamura, with this metaphor, introduces the life of Tome, who keeps trying to change her poor life....

War widow Reiko rebuilds and runs the grocery shop in the house of her husband's family. Many years later, their business is threatened by a newly built supermarket and Reiko's in-laws plan to convert their small shop into a supermarket, to her detri...

In the aftermath of a major earthquake, scientists predict that Japan will sink into the sea. As further disasters follow, politicians plead with other countries to take refugees, while scientists struggle to save Japan itself....

Subu makes pornographic films. He sees nothing wrong with it. They are an aid to a repressed society, and he uses the money to support his landlady, Haru, and her family. From time to time, Haru shares her bed with Subu, though she believes her dead ...

Mayumi Ogawa stars in the tale of a Turkey miss—basically a prostitute who services men in Turkish baths—whose plans to get rich in the stock market, open a beauty salon, and marry her sweetie are turned upside down by the arrival of her boyfriend-st...

Patterned after Japanese art and silk screens, Taro, The Dragon Boy is an animated feature about Japanese mythology and cultures, focusing on Taro, a young boy who has to make a voyage to a distant lake to save his mother, who has been turned into a ...

Rin Jyoshima lost her father to death-by-gambling; years later, she's grown up in the Kosugi household and has fallen victim to gambling herself....

A woman and her daughter are in love with the same man, a chef at the restaurant that the mother manages. He is slightly crippled from frostbite in his years in Siberian labor camps and considers himself 'already dead'....