Movies: Kamatari Fujiwara

A samurai answers a village's request for protection after he falls on hard times. The town needs protection from bandits, so the samurai gathers six others to help him teach the people how to defend themselves, and the villagers provide the soldiers...

A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the local gambling trade. Taking the name Sanjuro Kuwabatake, the ronin convinces both silk merchant Tazaemo...

Akira Kurosawa's lauded feudal epic presents the tale of a petty thief who is recruited to impersonate Shingen, an aging warlord, in order to avoid attacks by competing clans. When Shingen dies, his generals reluctantly agree to have the impostor tak...

In the midst of an attempt to take over his company, a powerhouse executive is hit with a huge ransom demand when his servant's son is kidnapped....

Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life....

In this loose adaptation of "Hamlet," illegitimate son Kôichi Nishi climbs to a high position within a Japanese corporation and marries the crippled daughter of company vice president Iwabuchi. At the reception, the wedding cake is a replica of their...

Toshiro Mifune swaggers and snarls to brilliant comic effect in Kurosawa's tightly paced, beautifully composed "Sanjuro." In this companion piece and sequel to "Yojimbo," jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out thei...

In feudal Japan, during a bloody war between clans, two cowardly and greedy peasants, soldiers of a defeated army, stumble upon a mysterious man who guides them to a fortress hidden in the mountains....

Shiba, a wandering ronin, encounters a band of peasants who have kidnapped the daughter of their dictatorial magistrate, in hopes of coercing from him a reduction in taxes. Shiba takes up their fight, joined by two renegades from the magistrate's gua...

Fearless Edo-period police inspector Hanzo Itami, nicknamed The Razor, has developed his own unique way of extracting information for his inquiries. His first adventure sees him investigating his superior officer's mistress, whom he suspects of havin...

Ryunosuke, a gifted swordsman plying his trade during the turbulent final days of Shogunate rule, has no moral code and kills without remorse. It’s a way of life that leads to madness....

A young girl is striving for stardom. In order to get a lead role in a new production, she agrees to stand-in for a famous star whose rich patron died in her arms one night. The real-life drama gradually comes to mirror the story of the play being pe...

Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot accept the fact that she was abandoned as a child....

A high-school girl inherits a declining yakuza organization, which seeks to repair its fortunes under her leadership....

Residents of a rundown boardinghouse in 19th-century Japan, including a mysterious old man and an aging actor, get drawn into a love triangle that turns violent. When amoral thief Sutekichi breaks off his affair with landlady Osugi to romance her you...

Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed when his first post after medical school takes him to a small country clinic under the gruff doctor Red Beard. Yasumoto rebels in numerous ways, but Re...

In the middle of the period of high economic growth in Japan, a family is thrown into disarray over work, money, and romance. Their father's sudden unemployment later in life causes friction among the siblings of the Akagi family. Kensuke, a salaryma...

A single mother from the country raising a 6th grade boy comes to Tokyo, leaves the boy to live with his uncle's family, runs a struggling grocery store, and works a local inn. The boy befriends a girl, the daughter of the innkeeper....

Kiichi Nakajima, an elderly foundry owner, is convinced that Japan will be affected by an imminent nuclear war, and resolves to move his family to safety in Brazil. His family decides to have him ruled incompetent and Dr. Harada, a Domestic Court cou...

The Americans are swiftly closing on Okinawa, an island just south of the Japanese mainland. The Imperial command sends top generals and several army divisions to defend it at all costs. The mission quickly degenerates as vital resources and troops a...