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.
OSHINO, the beautiful daughter of restaurant owners, is in love with SHIRASAGI the painter. But there is another young man, the son of a moneylender family, who is desperately in love with Oshino...
This is the only surviving “Mito Komon Manyu-ki” film. This release also known as "Adrift Tour Memoir" or literally "Mito Komon's Pleasure Trip" is an 80-minute compilation of the first (東海道の巻 or "Tokaido no maki") and second (日本晴れの巻 or "Japan's Fine Weather Reel") parts (147 minutes), which were re-edited and screened at a time when presentable films were dried up immediately after the defeat of the war.
Adaptation of a novel by Nobuko Yoshiya that was serialized in "Shufu no tomo" between 1939 and 1940.
“19 vassals of Lord Hosokawa ask permission to commit harakiri with him, as a demonstration of their loyalty. Only Yaichiemon Abe is refused permission, forced instead into the vassalage of his lord’s successor. Humiliated and derided, Yaichiemon eventually commits harakiri without permission. His eldest son is then punished for Yaichiemon’s suicide, and when he resists, is sentenced to death. The entire Abe clan rebels upon the son’s execution, and the clan is annihilated.” --Alan Poul, Japan Society
Part 2 of a 2-part romance (fist part - Kafuku zempen) based on a story by noted author Kikuchi Kan. In the second half, we discover that Toyomi is pregnant -- and while Shintaro and Yurie are on their extended honeymoon, she bears his child, a girl named Kiyoko. She is supported in adversity by Michiko -- and gets considerable moral support from not only her own mother but also from Shintaro's mother and siblings. Even more surprisingly, Yurie strikes up a friendship of sorts with her. When Yurie learns that the child is Shintaro's, she convinces Toyomi that it would be best to let Shintaro (and her) raise Kiyoko, so Toyomi can get on with making a proper life for herself. Tearfully, Toyomi agrees. Sometime later, Michiko goes to visit Toyomi -- and sees her at work, as a kindergarten teacher.
Set in Qingdao, China, a Japanese company locates an office there and begins work and cooperation with a local Chinese company for business. Many Japanese engineers also move to China, with their families, for the company in order to construct a canal. There are young Chinese resisting the Japanese in this area.
What is marriage? Young couple in match-making wanted to know before they decide. They visited married couples of sisters and brothers. Love comedy in 1942.
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 because it is also his most direct engagement with the culture of war. When a newsreel comes to Kameoka featuring a local man named Yoichi, it causes some excitement in the community and, of course, in Yoichi's own family. First of all his mother makes the newsreel (Nippon News, no. 14), which begins with the same marching music that opens his own film, followed by a curious baby judging context in Los Angeles featuring two hundred Japanese babies. Released in January 1941, almost a year before the pacific war begins, this “found footage” is indicative of Japanese imperialist ambitions beyond Asia long before Pearl Harbor.
1941 Toho adaptation of Natsume's novel.
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 Japan) runs up against an impertinent Yamaguchi (representing the continent); not surprisingly, in the course of the film the woman comes around and realizes the benevolent intentions of the Japanese. In Song of the White Orchid Yamaguchi leaves Hasegawa, who plays an expatriate working for the railway, because of a misunderstanding. She joins a communist guerilla group plotting to blow up the Manchurian railway. Learning of the subterfuge that led to the misunderstanding, she renews her faith in Hasegawa—and by extension Japan—and tries to undermine the plot.
The film was produced during Second Sino-Japanese War, before the Pearl Harbor Attack in 1941. The film mainly concerns the training of newly-recruited pilots and their daily life, then their subsequent fighting experiences in China. Army supported the production, providing all the authentic airplanes, training and actual actions. They even provided the older biplanes disguised as Chinese fighter planes. Obinata plays the trainer-turned-combat-leader, who is passionate and cool at the same time. All his boys love him, of course. The film is not as intense, full of sugar-coated camaraderie, until young pilots are killed in action one by one. Last twenty minutes are fairly grim, as the message of self-sacrifice is heard loud and clear.
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 known as "Chinese Continental Friendship" made by the occupying Japanese in China.
It was supposed to be about a love story, but it was and was not. An aircraft mechanic working for the government is matched by his boss with the latter man's daughter (Setsuko Hara) who is both beautiful and aggressive. Yet, he picks a woman who is less assertive as his bride.
This film depicts a troupe of wandering kabuki players traveling through rural Japan.
The Opium War is a 1943 black-and-white Japanese film directed by Masahiro Makino. "Ahen senso" in Japan refers to the First Opium War. The story of the film concerns this war.
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 information he provides, she begins in sales and is successful. Her original guide eventually begins to feel strange about her...
