Movies: Kappei Matsumoto

A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a lif...

In the second film of the Lone Wolf and Cub series, Ogami Itto battles a group of female ninja in the employ of the Yagyu clan and must assassinate a traitor who plans to sell his clan's secrets to the Shogunate....

The story centers on an elderly hibakusha, whose husband was one of 80,000 human beings killed in the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, caring for her four grandchildren over the summer. She learns of a long-lost brother, Suzujiro, living in Hawaii wh...

Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money with tragic results. A man stranded in a blizzard is saved by Yuki the Snow Maiden, but his rescue come...

Legendary swordplay filmmaker Hideo Gosha's Sword of the Beast chronicles the flight of the low-level swordsman Gennosuke, who kills one of his ministers as part of a reform plot. His former comrades then turn on him, and this betrayal so shakes his ...

Two detectives are tasked to investigate the murder of an old man, found bludgeoned to death in a Tokyo rail yard....

Tells the story of the samurai Gengobe, who seeks revenge after falling prey to the schemes of a geisha and her husband....

Two Jesuit priests encounter persecution when they travel to Japan in the 17th century to spread Christianity and search for their mentor....

A woman's struggle for equality in Japan in the 1880s. Eiko Hirayama leaves Okayama for Tokyo, where she helps the fledgling Liberal Party and falls in love with its leader Kentaro Omoi, just as the party is being disbanded by the government....

An ageing fishing boat, Dai-go Fukuryu Maru ("Lucky Dragon No. 5") sets out from the port of Yaizu in Shizuoka Prefecture. It travels around the Pacific line fishing. While the ship is near Bikini Atoll, the ship's navigator sees a flash. All the cre...

Clumsy invaders from Neptune are thwarted by hero Space Chief and a nondescript group of microshort-wearing Japanese kids....

UFOs appear on Earth, and people who actually see them suddenly find that their blood has turned blue. Soon panic and hysteria result in the new "blue-bloods" being persecuted by the rest of mankind, and eventually certain all-too-familiar measures b...

A friendly rivalry turns into romance for Yukiko, an elite female detective, and a handsome private eye named Mitamura while both are investigating the missing person's case from a wealthy family....

Kumokiri Nizaemon, a former samurai warrior, has abandoned his class to become the leader of a gang of thieves. He leads his outlaws in an attempt to rob the castle of his former clan....

Journalist Kuroki is investigating clandestine arms sales to Southeast Asia. He discovers that the point man in an arms trade was also involved in the cover-up of a murder on an American base during the Allied Occupation. The film rolls along as a su...

The president of the Japanese National Railways is found dead during a period in which train service is plagued by numerous layoffs, strikes and shutdowns. The government says that the president was murdered; the police claim it was a suicide. A quiz...

In the Meiji period, a schoolteacher tries to hide his lower-class upbringing as he supports a visiting liberal intellectual....

On the way back to his childhood home, a septuagenarian man recalls his childhood and adolescence, in particular his love for a young woman....

Based on true events surrounding a Korean student who had entered Japan unlawfully and escaped illegal alien internment....

Master swordsman and loyal vassal Saotome Mondonosuke goes on a mission to find a missing princess....