Movies: Akaji Maro

A treasure appears in front of antique dealer Norio Koike (Kiichi Nakai) and potter Sasuke (Kuranosuke Sasaki). The treasure is Hideyoshi Toyotomi’s chawan (procelain tea bowl) called Houou, that has been missing....

Rou has returned to the monastery he was raised in. As he listens to the whispering of the Gods through his germanium radio, Rou defies God in every which way and puts religion to the test....

Kenichi Asakura is an uptight, hyper-square salesman. One day, three bank robbers commandeer his van. They are in hot pursuit of their fellow robber who has snatched the money. Unfortunately for the bank robbers, Asakura never drives over 40 km/h spe...

Bald Moriyama wants a new image and buys a wig. It works: suddenly he has a career and a girlfriend. But life is hard when you have to keep a secret. Perfect timing and handling of real-life anxieties plus brilliant comedians MIMURA and OOTAKE make W...

An exploration of the spirit world as portrayed in the height of the J-horror era of the late ‘90s....

One day, while Seiya was calling everybody on the phone to tell them "It's me, thank you" on the rooftop of a building, a strange creature with emerald-blue fur, something he had never seen before, descended from the sky. The creature, along with its...

Whether it's someone mixing burnables and recyclables or noise from a neighbor's domestic spat, there's always something occupying the residents of a housing project in the suburbs of Osaka. However Hinako (Naomi Fujiyama) and Seiji (Ittoku Kishibe) ...

Am I really the daughter of a thieves family? Hana Mikumo, daughter of the "L family", a family of thieves, unexpectedly falls in love with Kazuma Sakuraba, the son of a family of police officers. She spends her days dreaming of a normal life whilst ...

Kagerota is a young ninja who embarks on his first mission: stealing the goldfish from a wealthy samurai. He succeeds, but then a mysterious fat cat starts following him. His distinctive red nose leads Kagerota to believe that the feline stalker is a...

Dark, cynical Japanese epic brought to U.S. in a dubbed version by shlockmeister Harry Novak. Still, this gory, sexy epic is made with style and interesting for to compare to "Yojimbo" and other masterworks of the form....

The film depicts the youth of Kinzo, a heretic painter who worked in Tosa during the late Edo period, and the hurricane-like inner side of his life....

Low-profile theater troop actor Mutsugoro Suzuki begins an oneiric journey back to his hometown, marked by his quest to find the one responsible of infecting him with a STD....

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Broke, with his vintage Nash convertible repossessed, private eye Mike Hama is reduced to combing the mean streets of the Yokohama waterfront on a borrowed bicycle. But when Lily, a beautiful stripper from out of Hama's past, returns to town, the fus...

An off-beat comedy about 3 'damejin' (useless persons), who don't work and spend their lives doing nothing. They actually don't want to work. When they hear 'in India one can live without working' they take it seriously. They begin to raise the money...

This faux-documentary follows a butoh master, a fashion designer, and a filmmaker racing against time to create art and help a young girl in love....

Tokyo. Asuka, a young cleaning lady working the night shift, is ready to pay a high price to achieve her dream of becoming a music star. She manages to perform on a TV-talent show, but all her sacrifices backfire when she is accused of murder and is ...

Taro Kuroki, 42, is a stuntman with a samurai's heart. He loves adventures, plays pranks with the police, tries to cure a cat lady by reversing her trauma, and finally, rescues his niece who is about to be lured into prostitution....

Set within the fictional city of Mahoro, Keisuke Tada runs a "benriya" - a general problem solver for hire. His assistant is his former high school classmate Haruhiko Gyoten. A big crisis then occurs for them....

A middle-aged man discovers an injured refugee woman trembling in the corner of his bar in Kabukicho. He quickly becomes aware that her life is in his hands when he learns she is hiding from the yakuza....