Postwar Tokyo. Pin and Toku live in the squatter area of Kappanuma, also known as “The Ditch”. Pin and Toku are avid gamblers. They take in Tsuru, a slightly demented woman who has run away from a geisha house. In order to rip Tsuru off, Pin lies that he’s a student who can’t afford his school fees. Tsuru willingly whores herself to support Pin. Eventually the neighbours start to exploit Tsuru as well.
Tag: JAPAN
Kyoko, the daughter of a successful novelist, marries an aspiring writer. However, her husband’s difficulties with his writing and his resentment over her father cause deep strains in the marriage.
In this intricately layered film, the nature of actresses and what they gain from acting is explored. The lives of three actresses are laid bare, and scenes from their lives are woven in and out of interviews with each of them. Each of them has experienced a traumatic event which contributes to their particular enjoyment of becoming someone else in dramatic roles.
Two young people are finally able to marry, but the war intervenes almost immediately and the husband never returns from it. The wife, however, lives on like an ever-reviving phoenix through her destructive experiences.
Kon Ichikawa’s rich adaptation of Natsume Soseki’s classic novel depicts a complex relationship between a student and an older man he calls “sensei.” The older man’s relations with his wife seems curiously strained to the student. When the boy goes to the country to tend to his dying father, he learns that “sensei” committed suicide.
Oharu is the daughter of Kyôsai Shimura, a samurai who now makes his living making umbrellas. She is in love with another samurai, Reisaburô Asai, who lives next door, but he is being pursued by two of the town beauties, Otomi and Fujio. To make things even more difficult for Oharu, her father is obsessed with antiques, buying them even though he has little money and even when most of them eventually turn out to be fakes. A mistake, however, puts him deeply in debt to the local lord, Tanbanokami Minezawa, and he is confronted with having to sell Oharu in order to pay it off.
A second-generation Korean-Japanese taxi driver suffers chronic discrimination and pursues a romance with a pretty Filipina who works as a B-girl at his mother’s nightclub.