Chōei Takahashi

Intrepid tax investigator Ryoko Itakura sets her sights on the mysterious and philandering Hideki Gondo, a suspected millionaire and proprietor of a thriving chain of seedy hourly hotels, who has for years succeeded at hiding the true extent of his assets from the ...  (more)

Ryōko Itakura returns as the tough-as-nails government taxing agent. This time she must figure out a way to expose a fanatical religious cult lead by a corrupt sociopath.  (more)

A successful Japanese movie director in his sixties becomes increasingly ill while working on his latest film. Though his family, friends, and doctor try to keep the secret of his terminal cancer from him, Buhei gradually comes to realize the truth of his condition ...  (more)

In this humorous paean to the joys of food, a pair of truck drivers happen onto a decrepit roadside shop selling ramen noodles. The widowed owner, Tampopo, begs them to help her turn her establishment into a paragon of the "art of noodle-soup making". Interspersed ...  (more)

Melodrama about the life of a mentally disabled young man and his devoted sister after their famous novelist father and housewife mother go to Australia on a business trip.  (more)

Biwako is a vain, middle-aged actress who witnesses a brutal murder. Realizing that the very public life of the woman makes their sole witness vulnerable to the killers, the police assign two officers to safeguard her until the trial. In the interim, the lives of ...  (more)

The tragic, true story about Hachikō, an Akita dog who was loyal to his master, Professor Ueno, even after Ueno's death.  (more)

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

In 2011, a journalist arrives in Nagaoka, a Japanese village that underwent destruction during both World War II and the 2004 Chūetsu earthquakes, and is now notable for the fireworks it launches annually in memory of the victims of war. She is there for two ...  (more)

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.  (more)

A woman living alone is visited by her ex-husband. At the same time a young couple who are about to break up get trapped in the town as public transport is cut off.  (more)

Sen Rikyu is a ceremonial tea master who advises warlord Hideyoshi in sixteenth-century feudal Japan. His daughter, the beautiful Lady Ogin, has an unrequited love for Lord Ukon, who has angered Hideyoshi by becoming a Christian convert. Ogin's father Rikyu also ...  (more)

It is based on the story of The Ballad of Narayama updated to the present day, with the substitution of putting a parent into an old people's home for the abandonment of the original. The film won the Golden St. George and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 21st Moscow ...  (more)

Dr. Hattori and her husband watch footage of brain surgery experiments with Manchurian, Russian and Japanese guinea pigs that had been found in the basement of a wrecked hospital. Out of the blue, there is a white light and when they look back, they see they ...  (more)

An alcoholic civil servant wakes up under a cherry tree in Tokyo next to a bar hostess with whom he's impulsively made a suicide pact. Though he's now changed his mind, he agrees to travel with her to Hokkaido, her preferred site for ending it all.  (more)

Haruo returns to his hometown for his mother’s second marriage, where he happens to meet his first love Miyuki for the first time in eight years. Miyuki is back in town with her daughter Chiharu, after leaving a failed marriage.  (more)

An alien is pursued as a traitor by his own race because he refuses to kill humans.  (more)

An old woman has died and her widower with dementia confesses to killing her. After this, the story goes back in time to show the events leading up to her death.  (more)

A young man is falsely accused of molesting a high-school girl on a train. He is arrested and charged, and goes through endless court sessions, all the while insisting that he is innocent.  (more)

A young girl suffers a terrifying nightmare of a vampire with blazing golden eyes. Eighteen years later, it is revealed to be a hellish prophecy when a strange package containing an empty coffin mysteriously turns up at a nearby lake.  (more)