Shadow Within / Kage no kuruma (1970)

A man (Go Kato) sees a beautiful woman (Shima Iwashita) on a crowded bus, and she reminds him of a girl he knew in high school. He speaks to her and she recognizes him. She is a now a widow, selling insurance for a living, but he is married to a woman who is as …

Flag in the Mist / Kiri no hata (1965)

Flag in the Mist is an engrossing example of a kind of movie we rarely associate with Japanese cinema. Like so many Japanese films, it starts as one thing and then shifts into something else entirely, but in this case, the shift is hard to describe in any detail without some significant spoilers, so I …

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 …

Stakeout / The Chase / Harikomi (1958)

In general, police procedural movies made up only a small portion of the Japanese film industry.  Crime stories were popular in the newspapers and bookstores, but most of these followed the lead of Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie, featuring an intricate puzzle to be solved by a brilliant private detective. After the war, many of …