Shigeru Kōyama

Takanosuke Ushio and Tae Horikawa are unable to forget each other, even though they met and fell in love 20 years ago. They had promised each other that they would build a retreat in Shiguretei, but Ushio was hospitalized after a stroke a few days later, and when ...  (more)

Two New York cops get involved in a gang war between members of the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia. They arrest one of their killers and are ordered to escort him back to Japan. However, in Japan he manages to escape, and as they try to track him down, they get deeper ...  (more)

A pair of down-on-their-luck swordsmen arrive in a dusty, windblown town, where they become involved in a local clan dispute. One, previously a farmer, longs to become a noble samurai. The other, a former samurai haunted by his past, prefers living anonymously with ...  (more)

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 comes at a cost. ...  (more)

Toshiro Mifune stars as Isaburo Sasahara, an aging swordsman living a quiet life until his clan lord orders that his son marry the lord's mistress, who has recently displeased the ruler. Reluctantly, father and son take in the woman, and, to the family’s surprise, ...  (more)

A high school science teacher is the butt of all his students' jokes, until their bus is hijacked on a school trip. But something more sinister lurks beneath the surface: he's building an atomic bomb in his apartment.  (more)

Aoshima, a police detective working in the Bayside Precinct, is continually frustrated by the hierarchy and red tape that plague the system. His friend Muroi is climbing the ladder of the police bureaucracy. Muroi has made a pact with Aoshima that while Aoshima ...  (more)

Nakadai is an English teacher at a local school. He’s put-upon like the patron figure of dozens of films and televisions shows. Viewers who are especially fans of Nakadai will appreciate how the actor comically rants about here. His home life is almost disastrous, ...  (more)

A drama based on the 1985 plane crash that caused 520 deaths, the worst aviation event in Japanese history.  (more)

Downed American fliers in WW II are vivisected by Japanese surgeons in medical experiments.  (more)

A dying pianist composes one final song for his childhood friend.  (more)

A top police-guard, charged with protecting a visiting politician and ruthless dictator, contends with an assassin set to kill the man.  (more)

Ex-jazz pianist turned promoter finds he is successful, but empty. When an entrepreneur sends him to Moscow with a jazz combo, he falls in with the dissident youth of the city, and again finds life empty.  (more)

The patriarch of a bickering family announces his retirement, stirring competition about who will succeed him as a leading practitioner of Noh theater, his granddaughter or grandson.  (more)

Yoshida’s first big-budget production and colour film is a haunting tale of unrequited love and postwar disillusion. The story of the fatal attraction between a spineless intellectual and a strong woman is conventional, but its enactment is radically new.  (more)

A lavish retelling of the true story of the final voyage and ultimate destruction and sinking of the battleship Yamato, Japan's greatest flagship during the Second World War.  (more)

When bribe money from a rigged election funnels into a dam construction project, collusion, lust, greed and even murder are on the ballot.  (more)

Recently released from prison for a murder sentence, a yakuza boss's wife leaves Hong Kong for a fresh start, but a betrayal leads to her return.  (more)

The unexpected death of Fujishima Motoharu, president of a medium-sized firm, triggers a fierce battle over his estate inheritance among family members.  (more)

Masao is falsely accused and jailed for the murder of a loanshark to whom he owed a lot of money. His sister Kiriko makes the long trip to Tokyo, specifically to accost Otsuka, Japan's top criminal defence lawyer, and plead with him to take her brother's case. They ...  (more)