Movies: Tsuruko Mano

The Blue Pearl depicts the interplay between a young man from Tokyo and two ama (pearl divers; literally “women of the sea”) in a superstitious coastal town. Though raised within the same tradition-bound crucible, the two women – Noe and Riu – are po...

A married couple looking for an apartment move in with the husband's co-worker, a widower. The husband becomes jealous of the widower and his wife....

...

This film depicts a troupe of wandering kabuki players traveling through rural Japan....

Okoma, a witty young woman working as a conductor in an old, rickety bus in Kōfu, Yamanashi (rural Japan), has a creative idea that could avert the dwindling number of passengers when her job and the bus company itself are at stake....

1962 Japanese movie...

Melodrama by Kon Ichikawa...

An Ishiro Honda film....

A woman struggles to raise her young son on her own in postwar Japan, finding companionship with a kind laborer while still hoping for the return of her missing husband....

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...

An Ishiro Honda film....

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

Three young employees navigate love, ambition, and meddling bosses as workplace crushes evolve into defiant relationships that challenge social expectations....

Japanese war-era film...

Following Flower Picking Diary (1939), Tamizo directed another film starring Hideko Takamine, based on a story by Nobuko Yoshiya. Takamine plays a poor young girl, trying to become a teacher on her quest to become independent to be able to look after...

The only son of a sushi chef hates sushi and decides to leave home to search for a job and make his own way....

An Ishiro Honda film....