Ichikawa’s 1956 adaptation of Nihonbashi was the first to take the work of Kyoka Izumi— until then regarded as a writer of common tragic melodramas—and re-evaluate it as a tanbi-ha…

A young widow, made world weary by her abusive, neglectful husband, finds herself in a minor scandal when she’s seen with her intense, no-nonsense childhood sweetheart.

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, a brilliant tactician, is a loyal subject of the emperor, despite his grave misgivings about leading Japan’s navy into war with the United States. He opposes the…

The arranged marriage between a capricious woman from Tokyo high society and a quiet and rustic man is tested by a marital crisis.

A gentle, war-shattered ex-soldier, Kinji Kameda, arrives in wintry Hokkaidō and is pulled into a volatile tangle of love and pity between the disgraced Taeko Nasu, the proud Ayako, and…

A few days in the life of a quiet geisha, single mother of a smart young boy, in the lively Tokyo quarter of Ginza. A woman devoted to others’ needs,…