Movies: Taiji Tonoyama

At the time between the World Wars, Japan is involved in empire-building throughout East and Southeast Asia. After a brief career as a low-level military adventurer, Iheiji sets up chains of brothels throughout Asia. As Japan's power in the region gr...

Based on the original novel by Tokuda Shusei, adapted by frequent Masumura scribe Kaneto Shindo, this downbeat melodrama features a battle of women for the affections and commitment of the same man, a handsome car salesman. Masuko is the number one h...

Two young women must come to terms with the fact that a man they're deeply linked to is a murdering rapist....

Oshima’s magisterial epic, centering on the ambivalent surviving heir of the Sakurada clan, uses ritual and the microcosm of the traditional family to trace the rise and fall of militaristic Japan across several decades....

A writer haunted by the death of his wife and threatened by the imagined infidelities of his lovers uses his affairs for the subjects of his novels....

Reform schools are a way of protecting society by ridding it of lawless juvenile delinquents. But who's protecting the juvenile delinquents from corrupt reform schools? Rica could be considered a bit of an expert on reform schools, having spent most ...

A noir drama depicting the downfall of a veteran detective who hates evil and falls into its depths. Ace detective Sugai pursues Chiyo, the mistress of a man who was arrested for extortion, and takes advantage of her weakness. However, as his colleag...

A blind traveling musician is abused and oppressed wherever she goes, even as the modern world imposes change around her....

Dumb Tatsuo Umemiya / Shingo Yamashiro comedy about a young bloke whose dick grows to inhuman dimensions (obviously a role tailor made for star Umemiya's ego). He visits a doctor, impresses ladies and opens a porn shop before running afoul with yakuz...

After the bankruptcy of her foster-father's condom factory, Tamae sets out to make a living on her own and ends up working as a geisha at a hot spring resort. After rising in popularity, a climactic sex battle is held to decide who gets to lay claim ...

The neglected common-law wife of a Japanese librarian is repeatedly harassed by a young man with a heart condition who seduces her with the prospect of a better life....

To satisfy her lover's fetish for tattooed women, Akane agrees to have her body covered in eloborate tattoos by Kyogoro, an old craftsman. Kyogoro has developed a special technique, by which his assistant, Harutsune, keeps Katsuko's mind off the pain...

Saheji, a man-about-town, gets stuck at a high-class brothel when he can’t pay the bill. He makes the best of his situation by performing various tasks amidst the tumult of the end of the shogunate—but always by making sure to get a “commission” for ...

The Taisho era was a time of turbulence in Japan. From new marks of modernity to full-blown riots, a sense of revolution filled the air. The Dam Dam Group is a small anarchist organization lead by Daijiro, a silver tongued "Benshi", a performer who p...

Murase is a bodyguard of yakuza group. Ochiai is a police officer who once was a student activist. When they meet, they are surprised how identical they look....

The film tells the story of four orphans living in an impoverished mining town. An adaptation of a best-selling book based on the diary of a ten-year-old zainichi (ethnic Korean Japanese) girl, it was one of the first films to deal with the subject o...

For a girl who works in a 3rd rate bar, Ayuko is full of vanity. Nomura, her patron, is besotted by her and it is their habit that they cannot reach a climax unless they peek at a couple, across the way, making love. Intent on climbing up in the worl...

Handsome young Katsuta tries to follow the yakuza code, but even his boss doesn't believe in it. Diamond Fuyu is less ethical, and allows the idiotic Tetsu to trick a schoolgirl he fancies, Hanako, into a type of bonded prostitution. Because of gang ...

The brief love story of an attentive young man and a beautiful woman who meet, fall in love and part during the course of a train ride....

Misawa Ihei (Nagato) is traveling with his wife Tae (Iwashita Shima) who abhors the practice of sword fighting for prize money. Tae is the daughter of the clan's chief counselor who married the low-ranking Ihei to avoid becoming the clan lord's mistr...