Movies:

A Japanese family weathers much hardship after their military uncle comes to live with them during WWII....

Japanese film based on the life of writer Ichiyo Higuchi (1872-1896)....

In this semi-documentary, an older locomotive driver is tasked with training younger ones and is currently training two in particular. The old man is finding the task overwhelming as it is hard work with practical lessons and classroom components. Hi...

This film attempts to reconstruct the tension of the Battle of Shanghai through an episode in an understated way, introducting its story in a documentary mode. In the film story, Japan's marine regiment protects Japanese residents and Chinese refugee...

An episodic film about life in and around a rural police station and the people it serves....

The premature death of a young mother serves as inspiration for her husband and son....

Wartime propaganda filmed by the Japanese in occupied China, Shirley Yamaguchi portrays an orphan rescued from the streets by a kindly Japanese merchant marine officer. Part spy thriller and part Shanghai travelogue, it was part of a popular series k...

Father of nine children cannot find a job. Despite their aspirations, the children are encouraged by both parents to hold down menial jobs and contribute to the family expenses....

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The year is 1936. Ōhinata-mura was a very poor village between deep valleys. Soncho, the village head is trying to collect the village taxes from the villagers but he knows full well that no one can afford to pay the village tax which has been unpaid...

A "slice-of life" film about a group of high school girls in 1940s Japan....

This is the story of a woman who enters the world of sales. She works at a company in Ginza as a typist. She determines that she needs money for her family and herself and asks her co-worker, who is a salesman, for guidance on sales. Armed with the i...

Song of the White Orchid was a co-production of Toho and Mantetsu, the railway that served the colonial region of Manchuria, and the first film in the Kazuo Hasegawa/Shirley Yamaguchi (Ri Koran) “Continental Trilogy.” Handsome Hasegawa (representing ...

Venice Film Festival 1939...

Part two of two....

A film that begins with wit and comedy when a husband tries to hide and mask his drinking, which his Jesus freak and very Christian wife dislikes, by gargling and other methods, turns somber when the man loses his job after being fired. He attempts t...

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Part one of two....

A Fond Face from the Past is also set in a rural community, specifically a village outside Kameoka, near Kyoto. In some ways this short, thirty-six-minute film is Naruse's most moving negotiation of the militarist restrictions of the time, perhaps be...