Movies: Akitake Kōno

After handing in a report on the treatment of Chinese colonial labor, Kaji is offered the post of labor chief at a large mining operation in Manchuria, which also grants him exemption from military service. He accepts, and moves to Manchuria with his...

The story of Sanshiro, a strong stubborn youth, who travels into the city in order to learn Jujutsu. However, upon his arrival he discovers a new form of self-defence: Judo. The main character is based on Shiro Saigo, a legendary judoka....

In medieval Japan, a woman and her children journey to find the family's patriarch, who was exiled years before....

Over more than a decade, the daughter of a Kyoto Imperial University professor comes of age as she witnesses her father fired for opposing the rise of fascism in Japan and becomes involved with two of his students....

The stories of several young women who work in a 'precision optical instruments' factory during the second World War. Despite illness, injury, and tremendous personal hardship, the women persevere in their tasks, devoted to their work and their count...

In this government-suggested sequel, Sugata again grows as a judo master, and demonstrates his (and by extension, all Japanese) superiority to the foreign warrior....

Saheji, a man-about-town, gets stuck at a high-class brothel when he can’t pay the bill. He makes the best of his situation by performing various tasks amidst the tumult of the end of the shogunate—but always by making sure to get a “commission” for ...

In Part I we see the young would-be swordsman setting out to achieve greatness in war, achieving nothing because fighting on the losing side, & then beginning his long period of wandering & training, with the goal always in mind of his duel with Koji...

Yoshie Nogami, a factory worker by day, works as a bar hostess at night. She begins a passionate affair with one of her regulars, but his changing demeanor and constant demands for money lead Yoshie down a dark path....

Yoshitsune Minamoto, disguised with his retinue as monks, must make do with a comical porter as their guide through hostile territory en route to safety....

Blind swordsman/masseuse Zatoichi befriends a young woman looking for her father, a village leader who has disappeared. As he helps her investigate the disappearance, Zatoichi also becomes involved with another young woman who is trying to help her b...

Special Forces commander Captain Tadamori returns to Kyoto after successfully defeating the uprising of pirates in the western sea of Japan. But because the high courtiers dislike career soldiers gaining power and influence, they ignore the will of e...

Kokubu, captain of his university's kendo team, is a mystery to those who know him: An ascetic dedicated to a point of obsession with the simplicity and beauty of the sword arts. Kagawa, a promising but arrogant kendo student, is attracted to Kokubu'...

A young girl named Oichi is abandoned by her mother and blinded by a lightning strike. When her guardian is killed, she learns to wield a sword from a traveling ronin. As she develops into a master swordsman, her profession becomes that of a bounty...

Movie adaptation of the 1959 ninja novel. With war against Korea looming on the horizon, Hideyoshi Toyotomi, the 'Taiko' becomes the target of an assassination attempt to be carried out by the Iga Clan of ninja spies. Master spy Juzo Tsuzura (Ryutar...

Okatsu the Fugitive is the third film in the "Ohyaku/Okatsu" series. Okatsu; a "tomboy" who is good with a sword. Her father has found her a man to marry and actually she doesn't seem too upset about the situation. At the same time, a bunch of farmer...

Sinza who is secretly the well known "Sea Glow Burglar", gives to the poor the money he takes from the bad lords and greedy merchants, who live just to exploit the poor for their small coins. On his travel he meets a man and his little girl Onatsu. T...

Film about the 2-26 Incident....

Young men endure challenging flight training in the Yokaren, a program feeding new pilots into the Army and Navy. By the time of the filming, the pressure of the war had led the government to shorten the training and expand the age range of the recr...

This is the second installment of the trilogy based on Japan’s greatest novel “The Great Bodhisattva Pass”, following the life and times of bloodthirsty samurai, Tsukue Ryunosuke. Blinded in an explosion and further injured from a fall, the master sw...