Hirayama is content with his life as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Outside of his structured routine, he cherishes music on cassette tapes, books, and taking photos of trees. Through…
A businessman kills his adulterous wife and is sent to prison. After the release, he opens a barbershop and meets new people, talking almost to no one except an eel…
Biopic based on the life of poet and novelist Kenji Miyazawa, one of Japan’s most read and beloved authors of children’s stories. The story traces the genius writer’s brief but…
Mikami, an ex-yakuza of middle age with most of his life in prison, gets released after serving 13 years of sentence for murder. Hoping to find his long lost mother,…
Unhappy after his new baby sister displaces him, four-year-old Kun begins meeting people and pets from his family’s history in their unique house in order to help him become the…
Set in 1988 in Hiroshima, Japan, prior to the enactment of the anti-organized crime law. A rumor exists that Detective Shogo Ogami has ties with the yakuza. He is partnered…
A lonely, chain-smoking office lady in Tokyo falls for her teacher when she decides to take English lessons. When her teacher disappears, she sets out on a journey to find…
The background to and depiction of a watershed battle in Japanese history, at Sekigahara in 1600, when Tokugawa Ieyasu’s Army of the East defeated the Army of the West of…
In July 1945, during the end of World War II, Japan is forced to accept the Potsdam Declaration. A cabinet meeting has continued through days and nights, but a decision…
Kyuta, a boy living in Shibuya, and Kumatetsu, a lonesome beast from Jutengai, an imaginary world. One day, Kyuta forays into the imaginary world and, as he’s looking for his…
When Kanako, a model daughter and a brilliant student, disappears, her mother asks her ex-husband, a violent former policeman, to find her. As his investigation progresses, his idealized image of…
After the forced suicide of Nobunaga Oda at the Incident at Honnō-ji, powerful figures Katsuie Shibata, Hideyoshi Toyotomi, Nagahide Niwa and Tsuneoki Ikeda meet to decide on a successor. The…
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (1884-1943) was the Japanese Naval commander who was given the order to attack Pearl Harbour, an order he was duty bound to obey which went against his…
A tale of revenge, honor and disgrace, centering on a poverty-stricken samurai who discovers the fate of his ronin son-in-law, setting in motion a tense showdown of vengeance against the…
16 years after the fateful “revenge of the Forty-seven Ronin,” involving samurais from the Ako domain who avenged their leader and then commited seppuku (ritual suicide), the sole survivor of…
A bravado period action film set at the end of Japan’s feudal era in which a group of unemployed samurai are enlisted to bring down a sadistic lord and prevent…
A 48-year-old company chief, Yukihiro Fujiyama (Koji Yakusho) goes to a hospital. There he discovered that he has got terminal lung cancer and will die within half a year. He…
A detective investigates a series of murders. A possible serial killer might be on a rampage, since they all are in the same vicinity and by the same method, but…
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…
New Year’s Eve at a posh hotel and all should be shipshape. It is not. There is the traditional party, an official ceremony, entertainment and a special dinner planned and…
Based on the best-selling novel by Alessandro Baricco, this visually stunning film tells the story of a French trader who finds unexpected love far away from home.
Three couples are staying at a lakeside cottage with their children. They want them to prepare intensely for a prestigious high school’s entrance exam with the help of a private…
In Babel, a tragic incident involving an American couple in Morocco sparks a chain of events for four families in different countries throughout the world. In the struggle to overcome…
When radicals from Japan’s Red Army took a woman hostage in the resort town of Karuizawa, Nagano in 1972, Officer Atsuyuki Sassa was put in charge of diffusing the situation….
A wave of gruesome murders is sweeping Tokyo. The only connection is a bloody X carved into the neck of each of the victims. In each case, the murderer is…
Kuki is a veteran newspaper reporter who has been shuffled off to a book-development branch and finds escape in an illicit relationship with Rinko. Together they find the passion no…
A bored Japanese accountant sees a beautiful woman in the window of a ballroom dance studio. He secretly starts taking dancing lessons to be near her, and then over time…
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…
The president of the Japanese National Railways is found dead during a period in which train service is plagued by numerous layoffs, strikes and shutdowns. The government says that the…