Soundtrack: Fumio Hayasaka

Direction Akira Kurosawa

Cast Toshirô Mifune · Takashi Shimura · Yoshio Inaba · Seiji Miyaguchi

Plot Set in 16th Century Japan, Akira Kurosawa's 'Seven Samurai' follows the plight of a defenseless farming village that lives in constant fear of marauding bandits. The farmers know that when...

Direction Kenji Mizoguchi

Cast Kinuyo Tanaka · Yoshiaki Hanayaki · Kyôko Kagawa · Eitarô Shindô

Plot 'Sansho Dayu' reaches back to a Japanese folk tale of the 12th century to depict the barbarism of a dark age, when people didn't know how to be human. When...

Direction Akira Kurosawa

Cast Takashi Shimura · Nobuo Kaneko · Kyôko Seki · Makoto Kobori

Plot Kanji Watanabe has served in a monotonous bureaucratic position in City Hall for 30 years, providing for a son who only seems to care about his money. He is seemingly...

Direction Kenji Mizoguchi

Cast Machiko Kyô · Mitsuko Mito · Kinuyo Tanaka · Masayuki Mori

Plot In the civil wars of 16th century Japan, two ambitious peasants want to make their fortunes. The potter Genjuro intends to sell his wares for vast profits in the local...

Direction Kenji Mizoguchi

Cast Kazuo Hasegawa · Kyôko Kagawa · Yôko Minamida · Eitarô Shindô

Plot Set in 17th century Kyoto, Osan is married to Ishun, a wealthy miserly scroll-maker. When Osan is falsely accused of having an affair with the Ishun’s most trusted servant, Mohei,...

Direction Akira Kurosawa

Cast Toshirô Mifune · Machiko Kyô · Masayuki Mori · Takashi Shimura

Plot In 12th century Japan, Masako (Machiko Kyo) and her husband Takehiro (Masayuki Mori) are attacked in the woods by armed bandit Tajomaru (Toshiro Mifune), who then murders her husband. After...

Direction Kenji Mizoguchi

Cast Kinuyo Tanaka · Nobuko Otowa · Yuji Hori · Kiyoko Hirai

Plot Shinnosuke is introduced to Shizu as a prospective marriage partner, but he falls in love with her widowed sister Oyu. Convention forbids Oyu to marry because she has to raise...

Direction Kenji Mizoguchi

Cast Machiko Kyô · Masayuki Mori · Sô Yamamura · Eitarô Shindô

Plot In eighth century China, the Emperor is grieving over the death of his wife. The Yang family wants to provide the Emperor with a consort so that they may consolidate...

Direction Akira Kurosawa

Cast Toshirô Mifune · Takashi Shimura · Keiko Awaji · Eiko Miyoshi

Plot Murukami, a young homicide detective, has his pocket picked on a bus and loses his pistol. Frantic and ashamed, he dashes about trying to recover the weapon without success until...

Direction Mikio Naruse

Cast Ken Uehara · Setsuko Hara · Yukiko Shimazaki · Yôko Sugi

Plot Set shortly after World War II, Repast is about a struggling marriage between salaryman Hatsunosuke and his wife Michiyo. It focuses on the emotional crisis of the bored housewife. The...

Direction Akira Kurosawa

Cast Takashi Shimura · Toshirô Mifune · Reisaburo Yamamoto · Chieko Nakakita

Plot A drunken doctor with a hot temper works in a village whose most prominent geographical feature is a disease-ridden sump. Businesses and social life are infected by the yakuza, or...

Direction Kenji Mizoguchi

Cast Michiyo Kogure · Yoshiko Kuga · Ken Uehara · Yuriko Hamada

Direction Kenji Mizoguchi

Cast Narutoshi Hayashi · Raizô Ichikawa · Tatsuya Ishiguro · Akitake Kôno

Plot Set in 12th Century Japan against a rich social and political background, TALES OF THE TAIRA CLAN is an epic tale of power struggles, family drama, and human frailty. Special...

Direction Kenji Mizoguchi

Cast Kinuyo Tanaka · Yukiko Todoroki · Masayuki Mori · Akihiko Katayama

Plot Near the end of the War, Michiko, a middle-aged woman of samurai blood, flees Tokyo for her ancestral home in Musashino, accompanied by her husband Akiyama, a university professor of...

Direction Akira Kurosawa

Cast Toshirô Mifune · Masayuki Mori · Setsuko Hara · Takashi Shimura

Plot Kameda, who has been in an asylum on Okinawa, travels to Hokkaido. There he becomes involved with two women, Taeko and Ayako. Taeko comes to love Kameda, but is loved...

Direction Akira Kurosawa

Cast Toshirô Mifune · Shirley Yamaguchi · Yôko Katsuragi · Noriko Sengoku

Plot On holiday in the snow-covered mountains, young painter Ichiro Aoye (Toshiro Mifune) has a chance meeting with the popular singer Miyako Saijo (Shirley Yamaguchi). After giving her a ride back...

Direction Mikio Naruse

Cast Kamatari Fujiwara · Kan Yanagiya · Minoru Takase · Shoji Kiyokawa

Plot Lovely comedy about two actors who play the front and back legs of a horse and feel their artistry is unappreciated. When the self important barber who funds their show...

Direction Keigo Kimura

Cast Michiyo Kogure · Sô Yamamura · Ryo Ikebe · Ichiro Sugai

Direction Yutaka Abe

Cast Den Obinata · Seizaburô Kawazu · Heihachiro Okawa · Ichirô Tsukida

Plot Dramatizes the life of Jiro Horikoshi as he designs modern fighter planes against the backdrop of Japan's national tragedies in the years between World War I and World War II.

Direction Yutaka Abe

Cast Ranko Hanai · Yukiko Todoroki · Hisako Yamane · Hideko Takamine