Movies: Kinuyo Tanaka

This documentary composed of numerous testimonies and archives, filmed in Japan highlights the extraordinary career of the actress-director Kinuyo Tanaka and her singular ambition to impose a female point of view on cinema, reflecting her own vision ...

short film about Banchō Sarayashiki....

In this Golden Globe winner for Best Foreign-Language Film, director Heinosuke Gosho -- a master chronicler of Japanese middle-class life -- presents the story of Kiyoshi Yoshida (Koji Shitara), who feels estranged from both parents after his father ...

Kenichi Horie is determined to challenge his family, the law and the nature crossing the Pacific to America in a small sailboat. Despite his careful planning many unforeseen events will test his determination....

The Fencing Master tells the story of a man trying to survive as the only world he knows is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Danpei Ichikawa lives for swordfighting – he was once a renowned kabuki swordfight choreographer, and as the Chairman of the...

1939 Japanese movie...

Two men at an ironworks encounter roadblocks: the first does not have the grades to get a job, while the other finds himself falling for a co-worker....

Ryoichi and Chikako, brother and sister, live together. Chikako toils during the day and, at night, prostitutes herself to fund his college tuition....

The basic story in Love under the Crucifix is about Ogin, daughter of a tea master, who are both Christians in feudal Japan. Ogin falls in love with a feudal prince, also a Christian who is already married, and that creates problems. Further, when th...

A period mystery in which an unconventional priest exposes the truth behind the bizarre death of a maid in the shogun's harem. Kinuyo Tanaka stylishly plays a constantly intoxicated geisha in this all-star entertainment film....

Part 2 starts where the first film ended, with Iemon disposing of the bodies of his wife and Kohei, marrying upward, and being blackmailed by the evil Naosuke....

"The Dancing Girl of Izu" tells of the story between a young male student who is touring the Izu Peninsula and a family of traveling dancers he meets there, including their youngest girl. The student finds the naïve girl attractive even though he eve...

A young student falls into a hopeless romantic attraction to a sick girl, whom he can only see from afar....

The first of five Musashi series, Shinobu and her brother Genichiro plead with the famous swordsman Musashi Miyamoto to teach them swordsmanship to avenge their father's death. The killers of their father see the sister and brother practicing with Mi...

After finishing the course of junior high school, Kazuo comes up to Tokyo, leaving his mother alone in the unproductive northern district. He finds a job in a small laundry in downtown Tokyo and works hard till late at night. At a nearby restaurant a...

A widowed high-school teacher tries to raise his four children alone....

Soichi Ataka is the eldest son of Ataka family. Although mentally challenged, he's a person with a gentle heart. Soichi's wife, Kuniko is devoted to her husband and together the couple runs the family farm. Their happy family life comes to an abrupt ...

The three-hour Ai yo jinrui to tomo ni are / Love, Be with Humanity (1931) starts as a satire of alienation in the world of money, develops into a lumberland epic with a forest fire on Sakhalin Island, turns into a tragedy of King Lear dimensions, an...

A jewelry store president begins to fall for the doctor treating her husband's illness....

Let's Go, Grandma! plays like an exuberant, goofy update to Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story. Kinuyo Tanaka plays the titular Grandma, who, after selling her Hokkaido property, is apparently flush with cash but newly homeless. Her grown children take turns...