Kaneto Shindô

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A mining town in Kyushu. Zenzo (Tennoyama Yasuji) is unemployed after the mountain collapses. If Dad becomes a coward, Mom will become a strong man. Fumiko (Otowa Nobuko) takes her daughter Kimiko (Yamagishi Eiko) to Kyoto and becomes a hostess at the “Salon Heian Mothership”. The two use various tactics to get money. Their target is Yamamoto Gonbei (Kanze Hideo), a large landowner in Rakusai with a 200-year tradition. Gonbei quickly becomes obsessed with Kimiko and starts giving her a lot of money. They even start thinking about getting married, but their dignified mother Ryu (Nakamura Ryoko) is against it, saying that it is outrageous to marry a mere hostess. At that time, Dad comes to consult with her because Fumiko is working and his unemployment insurance is about to be terminated.Read More »

The relationship between a rich young student and his lower class friend changes when they start to live both at a guest house. Both will be attracted towards Iko, the beautiful daughter of their landlady.Read More »

Shusei Tokuda’s starkly realistic novel about a poor girl pressed into becoming a geisha was forcefully adapted by Kaneto Shindo (Onibaba). When Ginko (Nobuko Otowa, Shindo’s wife) falls in love with one of her clients, she is handily rebuffed by the young man’s wealthy family, and left to wander from geisha house to geisha house.Read More »

Written and directed by renowned Japanese filmmaker Kaneto Shindo (Onibaba, Hadaka no shima, Genbaku no ko), “Black Board” tells the story of middle school bullying taken to the point of homicide in this 1986 classic.Read More »

The world-famous woodblock artist Hokusai is a widower who lacks the ability to earn money, and he lives with his daughter Oei at the house of his friend, Bakin. Hokusai meets a woman called Onao and finds himself uncontrollably attracted to her, but she disappears all of a sudden. One day, an excited Oei brings home a young girl who looks exactly like Onao. Immediately, Hokusai starts to paint, using the young girl as a model. The illusion of Onao drives Hokusai back into the waves of youth as he painted the masterpiece of the gigantic octopus and the beauty being seduced, at the age of 90.Read More »

Kaneto Shindô’s 1974 film “My Way” is a throwback to films of his early career and is an exposure of the Japanese government’s mistreatment of the country’s migratory workers. Based on a true story, an elderly women resiliently spends nine months attempting to retrieve her husband’s dead body, fighting government bureaucracy and indifference all along the way.Read More »

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A story of Japanese writer Kafu Nagai (1879-1959), a man about sixty with a huge reputation of seducer who falls madly in love for a young geisha named Oyuki. Meticulous and smartly dressed, Nagai patiently wrote in his diary his thoughts during many years. A melancholy reflection on the passage of time and a brilliant interpretive exercise.Read More »

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A morally-suspect and self-serving retainer rashly baits her high-ranking employer, a regional governor, with a salacious story of a former acquaintance and catastrophe ensues.Read More »

Tamiko is a divorced mother with a seriously ill son, struggling to save him and give both a sense of their existence. She lives with her mother and brother, but will marry a man older than her. The dramatic shadow of Hiroshima bombs is always hovering over the fate of the characters.Read More »