Movies: Akikane Sawa

A modern gang version of Chushingura, chronicling almost scene for scene the Brave 47 Ronin story, transposed from the Genroku Period to the Showa Era....

The plot opens with the hero (Tsuruta) leaving prison, having served time through taking the blame for a fellow gang member’s crime. However, his former gang boss seems to have gone to seed, with people now killing each other and dealing in drugs. Th...

A poignant story about a young couple, Setsu and Chozo, who are torn apart to save Setsu's father's restaurant....

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A crime film released in 1965...

After the enactment of the Anti-Prostitution Law, the red-light district in Shinjuku lost its allure. Even the gambling den of the Ryūzaki family was always deserted. Ryūzaki, the boss, declared his retirement in response to the changing times. It wa...

Based on a 1956 television feature on Japan’s national network, NHK, this is one of Uchida’s rarest films. A socially conscious drama with a contemporary backdrop, Dotanba focuses on the attempts to rescue a group of trapped miners. The title is a fi...

Mayumi Ogawa stars in the tale of a Turkey miss—basically a prostitute who services men in Turkish baths—whose plans to get rich in the stock market, open a beauty salon, and marry her sweetie are turned upside down by the arrival of her boyfriend-st...

A yakuza gang gets driven out of Yokohama by a big gang from Tokyo. They relocate to Okinawa to violently start over....

Sayuri, a young woman born to a simple life on a farm, moves to Tokyo to pursue a life long dream of becoming a singer. Through dance, music, and songs, this story shows how a girl raised on a farm was able to make her dream a reality, with the love ...

Young geisha Kohana scrambles to realize her dream of bringing back her grandmother’s restaurant business....

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A roughneck named Komakichi of Kawachi, Osaka, comes back from a three-year training course to become a chef, hoping to be with his crush Tamae, a daughter of a Japanese restaurant’s owner. His father is not happy because Komakichi has no intention t...

Detective Tarao investigates the deaths of police officers who were involved in solving a kidnapping case....

After the war, Kijima (Bunta Sugawara) returns to Tokyo where he meets Ôba (Noboru Andô), an Ex-Kamikaze pilot, and the two ruffians gather hooligans to join their group. In Ginza, the Togawa gang have taken over Sakurada's territory. After several f...

Violent Gang Re-Arms is a rousing tale of friction in yakuza and labor interactions with Koji Tsurata as a yakuza supervising a dockworker's union. He finds himself between a rock and a hard place, at odds with both the dockworkers' leader (Tomisabur...

An early ninkyo film from before the genre had truly established its form. Koji Tsuruta plays an honourable outlaw who saves an older man from an ambush. It turns out the man is the head of a hard working clan appointed to a railway construction proj...

A human drama of crew and passengers on a special express train named “Sakura” from Tokyo to Nagasaki......

Shinichi “Sonny” Chiba returns as the reckless son of a private detective takes on the case of a minor league baseball pitcher who disappears right before signing a contract into the major leagues. Meanwhile, the body of an orthopedist is discovered ...

Tsunokichi and Ken face off against a rival yakuza in Kyushu....