Minoru Yokoyama

In Burma during the closing days of WWII, a Japanese soldier separated from his unit disguises himself as a Buddhist monk to escape imprisonment as a POW.

A young girl in an industrial town is saving her money to enter college. But her drunken father loses his job, her mother cannot make ends meet, and then the boy she likes loses everything when his factory fails. She takes all her savings out of the bank and offers them to him to make a new start. He refuses at first but eventually agrees and so she goes back to school to tell her teacher that she has decided not to continue college, that she is young and strong, and can make her own way in life.

When Toru Sagara (Yujiro Ishihara) returns home from a foreign cargo route, he proposes to his beloved girlfriend Akiko (Ruriko Asaoka). She joyously agrees, promising a life together. On the day they were to be joined in matrimony, Akiko suddenly goes missing. Toru waits hours for her to show, but he is only greeted by the darkness of night. Four years later, his fiancée turns up at a night club in Yokohama with another man.

Romantic melodrama

Around Ginza there is a night-city of bars and cabarets, hostesses, customers. Assisting to keep order here is Kagari (Akira Kobayashi) who specializes in the women, their problems and troubles. He has saved many a girl from blandishments of pimps, makes customers pay up and women play straight. So he is called 'the woman's police-man' and he takes his job seriously. One day, Chiyoko (Yukiyo Toake), a former hostess, comes to him. Her husband has been murdered and she wants help. The man had been a college classmate and Kagari decides to do what he can. In his investigation he overturns a whole nest of intrigue. Men he had thought irreproachable turn out to be corrupt; solid citizens are seen as the worst kind of scoundrels. Until now, Kagari has specialized in women and their problems. But, realizing the real state of affairs, he rolls up his sleeves for a good cleaning- up-at the same time discovering the murderer of his friend.

The Sengoku Era was coming to an end. The monopoly of the ever powerful shogun, Ieyasu Tokugawa, was at a near. Only one man was brave enough to stand in Ieyasu's way - A lone wolf samurai by the name of Kagekatsu Uesugi. Inspired by Uesugi's courage to revolt, a young samurai warrior, Touzou Kuruma decides to join the fight. Their target: the Tamonyama Castle.

No description available.

An original warrior directed by Toshio Takagi, directed by Eisuke Takizawa of “Kiriko's Tango” by Toshio Yasumi, a comedy, cheerful widow. The photo was taken by Minoru Yokoyama from “Asakusa no Toko Odoriko Monogatari”

A Buddhist monk becomes ensnared by a seductive woman who, according to legend, transforms her lovers into beasts.

This little seen early work by Ichikawa was produced during the director's Shintoho period (1947-51). Written by Kaneto Shindô and featuring Ryô Ikebe as a young policeman it is part crime drama, part social study. Definitely not an undiscovered masterpiece, but still a must for Ichikawa buffs.

College students come up with a scam to rob a gambling house. When it comes time to collect, the money isn't there, leading the young men into even more serious crime.

Ryu (Akira Kobayashi) sets foot on the Yokohama port with a suitcase filled with 300 thousand dollars. He was sent by a jewelry company in Hong Kong to retrieve a certain diamond that was stolen from them. The "Himalayan Star" is worth couple hundred million yen and unbeknown to Ryu, it now lays in the hands of Aizu (Jo Shishido), the infamous ”Pirate of the Tokyo Bay."

A reporter Takuo, who is sleeping in the newspaper room of the Maichō newspaper company, receives a sudden report from a reporter that the missing Akiyama JNR president was found dead.

A touching story of a girl who sails away from her love to keep her family together.

A genius gambler and born hunter is a Buddhist monk by occupation. A raunchy comedy about a lecherous monk who, despite serving the solemn Buddha, keeps breaking the precepts one after another.

Yakuza Ryuichi, nicknamed the Dragon-killer, went on a journey with his son Tatsuo after he lost his wife. Due to Tatsuo's sudden illness, Ryuichi had money problems, and he became dependent on the head of the local tekiya and finds himself involved in the tekiya war with the Yakuza.

Aboard a night ferry in the Inland Sea, Masaaki Kagari (Akira Kobayashi), a young tough, who supplies hostesses to night spots, encounters Yuko, his ex-sweetheart. He considers himself a private underworld sort of policeman-in the com- munity of such women. Yuko, now a bar proprietress, is under the protection of Tahei Daigo, a sinister gang boss who in his quest for chances of good investments abroad plans to offer young girls to rich foreigners. Asked to gather attractive girls by Yuko, now Tahei's puppet, Masaaki collects many only to find them mysteriously missing...

The love story between a traveling guest and a geisha who inadvertently becomes the leader of her father's yakuza clan, after his death.

Masaaki Kagari (Akira Kobayashi) is the recruiter and protector of hostesses at the Club Rose. One day he visits Club Aron, to complain about attempts to lure hostesses from Club Rose. Aron's madam Hisayo reminds him of a tragic experience five years before, when a lovely girl named Kumi committed double suicide with a man in a hotel. For Aron's madam is Kumi's elder sister. Kagari's friend Hayazaki introduces him to Chie, the young sister of the man who died with Kumi, who has come to Tokyo to learn the truth about her brother's death. Kagari sends them both away. But he continues to be haunted by the warmed-over memories. When Club Aron is found selling bootleg whisky Kagari learns that Hisayo has been a tool in the hands of the Akune group who are also responsible for trying to steal his girls, and that Fujikura, the public prosecutor who presided over the case of Kumi's death and ruled it suicide, is now the personal lawyer of the Akune group...

The story of the tender love between Junki, the son of a wealthy landowner, and Kayuki, the daughter of a forester, who decided to unite their destinies against their parents' wishes. Neither war nor years of separation could kill this love. It was only cut short by Kayuki's tragic death.