Tokyo Profile / Portrait of a City / Tokai no yokogai (1953)

To the sound of a jaunty rumba, we see a busy street out the rear of a moving streetcar. A crowd has gathered on the sidewalk, and in the center is Toshiko, a shoe-shine girl, and Michiko, a five year old girl who has gotten separated from her mother. Ueda, a passing advertising sign carrier, …

Chikamatsu’s Love in Osaka / Their Own World / Naniwa no koi no monogatari (1959)

Chubei has been adopted into a family to learn the business and eventually marry the daughter. Dragged by a friend/customer to the pleasure quarter, he is trapped reluctantly into spending his first night with a woman, the popular and lovely courtesan Umegawa. They fall in love, and when a rich man tries to buy Umegawa, …

Love Under the Crucifix / Ogin-sama (1962)

The American title of Love Under the Crucifix is more than a bit misleading. Though the movie is set in the 1580s, when there was a serious attempt to suppress Christianity in major part because it led to contact with foreigners, the film itself is not about Christians or their persecution. Rather, it is about …

Zero Focus / Zero no shoten (1961)

One week after her marriage, a young wife sees her new husband off on the train, supposedly to wrap up business at a branch office of his ad agency before moving permanently to Tokyo. He never returns and she sets out to find him. Before she's done, she uncovers a web of secrets and murder …

Black River / Kuroi kawa (1957)

Kobayashi's Black River marks a couple of significant "firsts." It is, as far as I can find, the first Japanese movie to deal openly with the continuing American presence in Japan, long after the Occupation had officially ended. Perhaps even more significantly, it is the first major screen appearance of Tatsuya Nakadai, initiating his strong …