Movies: Chōichirō Kawarasaki

In this gritty tale of gamblers battling in the samurai era, Okawa Hashizo gives perhaps his greatest performance as a gambler returning to his home town. Swearing allegiance to his fiancée’s father, a decent boss, he had taken to the road after a ga...

Based on the life of Japanese serial killer and thief Kiyotaka Katsuta....

A survivor of the tragic mass suicides on Tokashiki Island in 1945 falls in love with a near-mute motorcycle engineer....

After the 1995 Kobe earthquake, a writer remembers travelling with his family to bury his brother after World War II....

Hirobe is a lonely man. After witnessing her girlfriend die with a terminal illness, he wanders through the city like a shadow. One day, he meets Masako and they begin an affair. Masako is in an unhappy marriage with Yazawa, who is also cheating on h...

A young and newly-married couple in Tokyo lives a hard life moving repeatedly because of their unfamiliar relationships with their surroundings....

When Kanbe Nagakichi has his turf taken over by Ano-Toku, the father-in-law of his sworn brother Kira Nikichi sets in motion one of the most violent gang battles in Japanese history. Forced by the situation to choose between family and yakuza honor, ...

A film adaptation of Masatsugu Nobuhiko's novel of the same name, directed by Tasaka Tomotaka and starring Nakamura Kinnosuke. This literary epic tells the story of how the protagonist, who has become mired in evil due to his poverty and low position...

Hiromi Go plays a high school student who need's a role model in his life badly. He's raised by his older sister played by Keiko Matsuzaka who is a hostess at a night club. She meets a man who becomes her boy friend. He races in a off road car rally ...

Michio Yamada, a recent school graduate, is sent to Tokyo to work as a fruit-packer in a department store as part of a government programme. He takes a gun from a house on an American base and uses it to kill several people. The scene changes to Yam...

An auto repairman's daughter questions him about what happened to her aunt during the war, but the father remains reticent. Finally the man opens up, and the girl is able to piece together her aunt's tragic story....

A group of pirates led by the evil Gondaiyu and his wizard, Genkuro, capture the Golden Peacock Castle and massacre the peaceful clan that lives there. The few survivors that manage to escape plot their revenge and wait for the right timing for an at...

The great Okawa Hashizo, in one of his most powerful roles risks his life and limb to help save the lovely Onaka from a terrible lifestyle. Starting out as a down on his luck gambler, Hantaro refuses to accept punishment for running up a 10 ryo debt ...

A parable about the inefficiency and anachronism of the Japanese educational system, which places an unusually large amount of importance on cramming for university entrance examinations, Panic High School is about the suicide of a high school studen...

An injured Edo official is rescued by a vassal whose appearance is exactly like himself, and swears to sweep out the criminals from the town on his behalf....

A Japanese soldier deserts his position and travels to a small town on the Sea of Japan to start over. When a young maid falls for him, he talks her into sleeping with an older man for money....

A headstrong young man seeks to join the Shinsengumi, but while his determination impresses his superiors, questions begin to arise as to his true identity and intentions....

Osaka in the early 1600s, aftermath of the historical Battle of Sekigahara; a group of orphan children are wandering through the battlefield scavenging for armour when they encounter a young boy named Sasuke with magical powers he says came from a me...

A story of an orphan boy who wanted the love of parents so badly, another orphan sincerely pitied him to the point he gives his secret birthright as an illegitimate son to a Shogun as a "gift of hope" to the sad boy. As the orphan boy grew up, his lo...

A Tokugawa Daimyo rebels against an his lord after the battle of Sekigahara. Samurai Matabei, a famous spear fighter and warrior, is a vassal of lord Honjo. One of Honjo's most trusted under-lords is Sanzaemon. He has designs on Matabei's fief, and h...