Set in Kawaguchi, just north of Tokyo in the early 60s, this simple story chronicles the lives of poor foundry workers and their families, and one girl’s dreams of self-improvement through going on to higher education.
Tag: JAPAN
A young man struggles to come to terms with his true identity in a remote caste-based village in early 20th century Japan.
A soldier has been in the Japanese military for the entirety of WWII, and in that time, his dedication to the army has never faltered. However, as the war draws to a close, his commanding officers become increasingly desperate and push their men to ever more absurd extremes. The ridiculousness of the orders from above peak when the hero of the story is assigned to drive a one-man submarine straight into the hull of an enemy battleship.
When a team of detectives losees the trail of a murderer, they decide to keep an eye on the suspect’s ex-lover, who is trapped in an oppresive marriage.
This biopic is centered on New Year’s Day of 1894, when Kitamura is recovering from a suicide attempt. Japan is then under the spell of fervent patriotism because the government wants to build up public support for a war with China. Kitamura’s literary friends and militant comrades come to visit. They wonder why Kitamura wants to kill himself. Kitamura at first refuses to receive them, then he sits down with them and looks back on his days as a civil rights militant, his stormy love life and his ardent but destructive desire to live literature to the full.
A war widow searches for the true reason behind her husband’s death, and why she’s been unable to collect survivor benefits. It turns out he has been classified a traitor and a deserter, and the exact cause of his death listed as ‘unknown’. She sets out on a quest to find the people he served with, to determine the real story behind the government smokescreen.
A married couple looking for an apartment move in with the husband’s co-worker, a widower. The husband becomes jealous of the widower and his wife.
Kuroki, a journalist for a trade paper, is investigating clandestine arms sales to Southeast Asia. He discovers that the point man in the illegal arms trading was also involved in the cover-up of a murder on an American base during the Allied Occupation. The film rolls along as a suspenseful thriller while offering a critique of political corruption, hypocrisy, and journalistic cowardice in postwar Japan.