Movies: Isao Bitō

In 1930, the chance meeting of a novelist and one of his fans opens the door to a series of mysterious events culminating in the death of a wealthy industrialist who may have been leading a double life....

Kotaro and Kuroe marry almost immediately in a Christian ceremony and move into an apartment. Life is completely joyous until, one day, Kuroe falls ill....

Life seems to be good for Shintoto, an up-and-coming rakugo artist who has just had his first sexual experience at a local brothel. Lucky for him, he gets to date the beautiful sex worker he meets that day, and a younger high school rakugo aficionado...

A man whose son has been murdered pushes to create laws to financially protect victims' families....

Hiroshi Kakurai is an assassin who was thinking of retiring. He travels to an island in the Seto Inland Sea and begins to live peacefully with Shinobu, a woman he has fallen in love with, but the intensity of his love for her begins to drive him towa...

It is 1965. High-school student Takeyoshi Fujiwara hears "Pipeline" by the Ventures, and is mesmerized by their unique sound. With three friends, he forms a band called "The Rocking Horsemen." A warm and comic glimpse into high-school and small-town ...

About a girl who marries in the middle of the Pacific War, is widowed at 18, and her unflagging struggle to survive during and after the war with her son....

Follows the fluctuating fortunes of three ronin in feudal Japan who wander from castle to castle, selling their services to whichever lord will fill their rice bowls. Though they use the servants' entrance, they still feel themselves bound by the sam...

Kazama and three others defeated Yoshie Sangyo, but the Nishio group was disbanded due to public pressure, and the territory belonged to the Hirata group....

The story of a Japanese man who as a 16-year-old went to Maui to work in the sugar cane fields in order to support his family back in Japan. Now 89 and still living in Hawaii he is visited by his granddaughter who brings him a letter from his disinhe...

A Japanese soldier is forced to question alliances when he meets and falls in love with the leader of the rebel movement....

A young jazz musician's desire to advance in his career runs afoul of organized crime in this thriller from Haruki Kadokawa. After a saxophonist starts playing at a particular nightspot, a thug from the Yakuza adopts him as a special friend for no gr...

At a certain high school in Karuizawa, students relied on ordinary local trains for their commute, but with only seven trains running per day, missing one meant spending two or three hours killing time in town. This sparse train schedule on the Shine...

A black comedy about a former Rock'n'Roll singer, who becomes the mayor of Tokyo....

Political fixer Homei Yamaoka's misdeeds come to light, throwing Japanese politics into deadly confusion. But he's not going down without a fight....

...

Akagi appears again one year after the night where he first played mahjong....

After a death-defying game of chicken one evening in 1958, Akagi nonchalantly enters a Yakuza Mahjong parlor to shake the cops' trail. Even unfamiliar with the rules of Mahjong, his gambling intuition is enough to save a small time gambler, Nangou, a...

After three consecutive days of heavy rain, the water level at Sumida River rises and the newly built Eitai Bridge collapses just two years after its completion. Among the 20 victims is Okou, the lover of Yokichi, a member of the theatrical entertain...

Traditional Japanese pop singer Reiko (Muroi) decides to enter a well-known TV program for amateur singers along with a confused teenager (Ôtomo) and a 40-year-old father of four (Bito)....