Catalog Search Results
Language
日本語
Description
Interspersed with archival footage relating the origins of the political unrest of the 1960, the film introduces the young men and women who will ultimately go on to become militant activists seeking to overthrow the established world order. As two of the most radical student groups come together to form the United Red Army (URA) and head into the mountains to conduct a training camp, ideology devolves into despotism, and the URA's leaders begin to...
2) Ocean waves
Language
日本語
Description
As a young man returns home after his first year away at college he recalls his senior year of high school and the iron-willed, big city girl that turned his world upside down.
3) Departures
Language
日本語
Description
Daigo Kobayashi is a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved and finds himself without a job. He decides to move back to his old hometown with his wife to look for work and start over. He answers a classified ad entitled 'Departures' thinking it is an advertisement for a travel agency. He discovers that the job is actually for a 'Nokanshi' or 'encoffineer, ' a funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry...
4) Rashōmon
Series
Language
日本語
Appears on list
Formats
Description
A riveting psychological thriller that investigates the nature of truth and the meaning of justice, widely considered one of the greatest films ever made. Four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife. This eloquent masterwork and international sensation revolutionized film language and introduced Japanese cinema, and a commanding new star.
6) Ikiru
Series
Language
日本語
Formats
Description
Discovering that he is in the terminal stages of cancer, a clerk spends his last months in search of the meaning to life. After his pursuit of pleasure has failed, he finds self-realization in bringing about the building of a children's playground in the slums and dies quietly fulfilled.
Language
日本語
Description
When a young girl gets trapped in a strange new world of spirits, she must call upon the courage she never knew she had to free herself and rescue her parents. Chihiro and her parents accidentally wander into another world ruled by witches and monsters. When her parents are captured by the ruler of the world, she tricks the witch into hiring her so she can figure out how to free them.
8) Casshern
Language
日本語
Description
"It is the late 21st century. After 50 years of devasting war between Europa and the Eastern Federation, the latter has emerged victorious, and the new federation of Eurasia is formed. There can be no glorious peace, however, as the planet has been ravaged by chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons and the entire human race is dispirited and exhausted by half a century of war. The only hope for long term survival lies with geneticist Dr. Azuma...
9) Kumonosujō
Series
Criterion collection volume 190
Language
日本語
Description
A vivid, visceral Macbeth adaptation, directed by Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai), sets Shakespeare's definitive tale of ambition and duplicity in a ghostly, fog-enshrouded landscape in feudal Japan. The film fuses classical Western tragedy with formal elements taken from Noh Theater to create an unforgettable cinematic experience.
10) Sweet bean =: An
Language
日本語
Description
Baker Sentaro's business enjoys new success when his new 76-year-old assistant Tokue shares her recipe for the sweet red bean paste used in the bakery's dorayaki pancakes, but another of Tokue's secrets may bring their happy work life to an early end.
Series
Language
日本語
Description
Tokyo Story follows an aging couple, Tomi and Sukichi, on their journey from their rural village to visit their two married children in bustling, post-war Tokyo. Their reception is disappointing: too busy to entertain them, their children send them off to a health spa. After Tomi falls ill she and Sukichi return home, while the children, grief-stricken, hasten to be with her.
Language
日本語
Description
An elderly and wealthy industrialist is driven to madness over fears of a nuclear attack. In a futile attempt to save his family he pressures them to leave Japan and move to the rain forest in Brazil where he believes they will be safe. His family, complacent and cynical, is outraged and move to have him declared insane.
13) Juon
Language
日本語
Description
An eerie tale of a family who is brutally killed in their own home, leaving behind an evil spirit lurking in the shadows. When an unknowing homecare worker enters the house, the spirit is awakened and a terrifying chain of events begin.
14) Kwaidan
Series
Criterion collection volume 90
Language
日本語
Description
After more than a decade of sober political dramas and social-minded periodpieces, the great Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi shifted gears dramatically for this rapturously stylized quartet of ghost stories. Featuring colorfully surreal sets and luminous cinematography, these haunting tales of demonic comeuppance and spiritual trials, adapted from writer Lafcadio Hearn's collections of Japanese folklore, are existentially frightening and meticulously...
Series
Criterion collection volume 240
Language
日本語
Description
The Mamiya family is seeking a husband for their daughter, Noriko, but she has ideas of her own.
16) Ukigusa
Language
日本語
Description
An aging actor returns to the town where his son lives, who has believed all these years that he is his uncle rather than his father.
Series
Criterion collection volume 584
Language
日本語
Formats
Description
In medieval Japan, a woman and her daughter are raped and murdered by soldiers during a time of civil war. Afterwards, a series of samurai returning from the war through that area are found mysteriously dead with their throats torn out. The governor calls in a wild and fierce young hero, to quell what is evidently a ghost. He encounters the two beautiful women, in an eery, beautiful scene. After spiritual purification, he meets the demon in a thrilling...
18) Kagemusha
Series
Criterion collection volume 267
Language
日本語
Description
Reconstructing the splendor of feudal Japan and the pageantry of war, Kurosawa creates a soaring historical epic about a peasant impersonating a nobleman in battle.
Series
Criterion collection volume 564
Language
日本語
Description
In this cool, seductive jewel of the Japanese New Wave, a yakuza, fresh out of prison, becomes entangled with a beautiful yet enigmatic gambling addict. What at first seems a redemptive relationship ends up leading him further down the criminal path.