Movies: Ayako Wakao

When a theater troupe's master visits his old flame, he unintentionally sets off a chain of unexpected events with devastating consequences....

With a price on his head, Ichi seeks tranquillity in a favorite village. Since his last visit, it has fallen prey to Boss Masagoro, the son of a merchant rumored to have stolen gold from the shogunate. The boss has hired Yojimbo as his hard-drinking ...

The lives of five prostitutes employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation is debating the passage of an anti-prostitution law....

Tied to a mountain between her brutalizing spouse and her secret lover, disaster strikes; the authorities accuse her of murder and prompt a confession....

Fleeing a distressing family situation, Eiko, a very young girl, becomes an apprentice to Miyoharu, a veteran geisha. Both, determined to preserve their professional integrity, must face the selfishness and ambition of several petty people....

Japan, 1701. A group of samurai become rônin after their lord is forced to commit seppuku for assaulting a court official, who will become the target of a merciless revenge....

Based on the first novel, Spring Snow, of Mishima Yukio's Sea of Fertility tetralogy, it follows the troubled and illicit affair between two youngsters amongst the aristocracy and rich of early twentieth century Japan....

In Edo Japan, a kabuki actor seeks revenge against the three men who drove his parents to their deaths years ago....

In 1939, Sakura Nishi is a young army nurse who is sent to the field hospitals in China during the Sino-Japanese war. She has to assist the surgeon Dr. Okabe with an incredible number of amputations. In the crowded wards, she gives sympathy to some o...

Yuko is sent to the coastal regions to be raised away from the rest of her sophisticated family where she finds out from her ill grandmother that she is not who she thought she was....

In 39 interviews with actors and actresses, writers, producers and staff members, interspersed with film excerpts and stills, Shindō recounts the life and career of his friend and mentor Mizoguchi....

The entangled relations between the son of a seductive tea-ceremony teacher and the women in his father's life. Based on the novel by Kawabata Yasunari....

Hikaru Genji, the haunted romantic hero of Lady Murasaki Shikibu’s “Genji Monogatari” (Tale of Genji) comes to life in this new tale of his further romantic adventures. Young Genji, the emperor’s illegitimate son cuts a swath through the women of the...

The four principals in a love affair collide when jealousy, blackmail and suicide enter the picture....

Two poor, married farmers have recently lost their only child; after a freak visitation, they pry open an alien cocoon to greet their new daughter....

Kikuji is the scion of an Osaka merchant family whose traditional power is matrilineal. Instructed by his overbearing mother and grandmother to give them an heiress for the family business, he stands by helplessly as his wife is thrown out of the hou...

Otsuya, the daughter of a rich merchant, elopes with her lover Shinsuke, an employee of her father's. During their flight, Otsuya's beauty attracts the gaze of Seikichi, a mysterious master tattooist who sees her pristine white skin as the perfect ca...

[Period covered: 1614-1615] Tokugawa Ieyasu is now the ruler of all Japan. But one last loose thread must be tied up before his domination is complete -- the destruction of the Toyotomi clan, now beseiged in Osaka castle. Ieyasu's ninja are the only ...

A young man is determined to have as many affairs as possible but not to get married. One of his conquests is of a different mind however. For she is pregnant and so he agrees to live with her. But he misses very much the other younger girl whom he s...

[Period covered: 1595-1600] We last saw ninja Ishikawa Goemon, as he was about to be boiled alive. But a good ninja is both hard to find, and even harder to kill. With the help of the enigmatic Hattori Hanzo, Goemon lives to skulk another day, and se...