In Paul Schrader's unusual biopic, Ken Ogata stars as Yukio Mishima, perhaps the most celebrated Japanese novelist of the last five decades. The film begins with Mishima's youth, then moves forward in episodic fashion to his 1970 suicide, symbolically committed at a military site. Originally titled Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, the film is ...
Consumed by the jealousy and power struggles of their own relationships, a man, his mistress and his wife involve three children in their own games-with tragic results. After Sokichi stops providing his mistress with monetary support, she leaves her three children with him, whom she insists are also his, and disappears. Sokichi is bewildered and ...
A gut-wrenching, violent psychological crime drama from start to finish, this award-winning film by noted Japanese director Shohei Imamura is based on a true story. Iwao Enokizu (Ken Ogata) is a murderous sociopath who kills two money lenders in a gory opening scene. Then flashbacks are interspersed with Enokizu's flight across Japan as his ...
Eijanaika is a dramatization of a brief but critical moment in Japanese history when Japan emerges from two centuries of isolationism in the 1860s. This new regime proves more receptive to opening Japan up to trade from the West--particularly America. The story is told through the eyes of a Japanese peasant who has just spent several years in ...
Peter Greenaway directed this elliptical and visually intricate tale of the far side of erotic and intellectual attraction. As a girl, Nagiko would receive a special gift each year from her father: a calligrapher (Ken Ogata) who would carefully paint a poem on her face, as her aunt (Hideko Yoshida) read aloud from The Pillow Book, a classic ...
In this second, award-winning interpretation of a novel by Shichiro Fukazawa, director Shohei Imamura has inserted some scenes of violence and ritual sex that are shocking and were absent in the first, 1958 film. The story is set in the 19th century in a remote and severely impoverished mountain village in northern Japan. In this fictional society ...
Kihachi Okamoto directs his 37th film with this sweet-natured satire about bungling cops and tax scams. The story opens with an 84-year-old widow and grandmother (Tanie Kitabayashi), who lives in a palatial estate in rural Wakayama prefecture, getting jumped by a trio of bumbling thugs (Toru Kazama, Katsuyoshi Uchida, and Hiroshi Nishikawa) and ...
Director Hideo Gosha goes behind the doors of one of Japan's most popular Geisha houses on a mission to demystify one of the country's oldest traditions. During the first half of the 20th Century, Yokiro was the most successful Geisha house in Western Japan - housing over 200 geisha in its heyday. But don't be fooled by the fabulous façade, ...
An aging man in a dying town tries to sort out the loose ends of his life, with tragic results, in this drama. Nobuo (Ken Ogata) is an elderly man living in a remote village on the Japanese island of Hokkaido, known for its punishing winters. While the community was once prosperous thanks to the fishing trade, the harbors no longer yield many fish ...
Yoji Yamada's torchy Japanese drama Love and Honor (AKA Bushi no Ichibun) follows the heartbreaking plight of Shinnojo (Yoji Yamada), a young man employed as a "food taster" for the imperial family. Shinnojo's position comes to a sudden and tragic end when he consumes poisoned fish intended for the clan leader and is forever robbed of his sight. ...
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