The best Ayako Wakao’s movies
If you love cinema, you will share this ranking of the best Ayako Wakao’s movies, although you may have ordered them differently. In any case, we hope you love it and with a little luck discovering a movie that you still don’t know about Ayako Wakao.
Street of Shame
7.8/10
The personal tales of various sex workers who occupy a Japanese brothel.
A Geisha
7.6/10
In the post-war Gion district of Kyoto, the geisha Miyoharu agrees to apprentice the 16 year-old Eiko, whose mother was a former geisha who had just died. After a year of training they have to find a large sum of money before Eiko can debut. Miyoharu borrows the money from the tea-house owner, Okimi, who in turn obtains the money from the businessman Kusuda. Kusuda fancies Eiko himself and wants to give Miyoharu to Kanzaki in order to close a large business deal. However both geishas have minds of their own and, going against tradition, want to be able to say no to clients. Written by Will Gilbert
Floating Weeds
7.9/10
A troupe of travelling players arrive at a small seaport in the south of Japan. Komajuro Arashi, the aging master of the troupe, goes to visit his old flame Oyoshi and their son Kiyoshi, even though Kiyoshi believes Komajuro is his uncle. The leading actress Sumiko is jealous and so, in order to humiliate the master, persuades the younger actress Kayo to seduce Kiyoshi.
An Actor's Revenge
7.4/10
While performing in a touring kabuki troupe, leading female impersonator Yukinojo comes across the three men who drove his parents to suicide twenty years earlier, and plans his revenge, firstly by seducing the daughter of one of them, secondly by ruining them...
Irezumi
7.1/10
A mysterious tattoo artist puts his masterpiece, a human-faced spider, on a kidnapped woman's back. She and her lover are then forced into a conspiracy-born nightmare, where they face the danger of becoming the very evil they seek to escape. With each new bloody incident, the spider's face seems to redden with ever-growing hunger…
Red Angel
7.8/10
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 of the soldiers, including sexually servicing one who has lost both arms and has no hope of returning home. She falls in love with Dr. Okabe, and follows him to the front, even though he is impotent from his morphine addiction
Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo
7/10
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 enforcer, but Yojimbo is both a spy for the shogunate, trying to find the gold, and in love with the merchant's unwilling mistress, Umeno. Ichi hires on as the merchant's masseur and buys Umeno's freedom with his employer's own money. This embarrasses Yojimbo who withdraws from a pact with Ichi to stir up trouble between father and son and their gangs. As the two sides fight, Ichi finds the gold and sets up a final set of confrontations.
Princess from the Moon
6.3/10
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.
Manji
6.8/10
The four principals in a love affair collide when jealousy, blackmail and suicide enter the picture.
Bonchi
6.8/10
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 house for producing a son. Driven to a life of dissipation - his mistresses also fail to produce daughters - in the end he is just too tired to care. The film presages Ichikawa's The Makioka Sisters in its World War II nostalgia and visual sophistication.
A Wife Confesses
7.5/10
Tied to a mountain between her brutalizing spouse and her secret lover, disaster strikes; the authorities accuse her of murder and prompt a confession.
A Geisha's Diary
7.3/10
A young girl is rigorously trained in the feminine arts so that she can become a geisha. As she struggles through life, she learns to live not just as a woman, but as a complete person.
Seisaku's Wife
7.7/10
On the eve of the Russo-Japanese war at the beginning of the 20th century, small-town girl Okane has married an old wealthy man to escape a life of poverty. Upon her husband’s sudden death, she withdraws to her small farming village where she stoically submits to public opprobrium and lives the silent sullen life of a pariah. Along comes Seisaku, the local “model youth”, returning from his army duty: while she is the shame of the village, he is the pride of his community. Nevertheless, the disreputable beauty and the honorable patriot begin an unlikely and tumultuous love affair that will eventually render him as marginal as she.
The Temple of Wild Geese
7.2/10
Satoko is a mistress by trade, or fate: when her master, the silkscreen artist of the Kohoan Temple in Kyoto, dies, she is given to the temple's lascivious head priest Kikuchi. She is drawn to a melancholy young acolyte, Jinen, who has observed the profligacy of his cruel master and Satoko's utter dependence on the man. Jinen is both fascinated and disturbed by Satoko's interest in him; he is similarly caught between loathing of Kikuchi and of the dark circumstances of his birth and his own moral weakness. The story unfolds in a dreamlike manner, a flashback inspired by a now-infamous image on a silkscreen in the souvenir shop at the so-called Temple of the Wild Geese.
Shinobi no Mono 3: Resurrection
6.7/10
[Period covered: 1595-1600] Third film in the famous shinobi no mono series. We last saw ninja Ishikawa Goemon (Raizo Ichikawa), 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 sets his sights on bringing down the warlord who tried to turn him into soup – Toyotomi Hideyoshi. And as always, in the background, the suble hand of Tokugawa Ieyasu is pulling strings as he plots to rule all of Japan!
The Graceful Brute
7.3/10
A greedy, materialistic family attempts to cover-up the embezzlement committed by the son while keeping their other schemes active. They discover there are other, equally conniving players involved.
Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director
7.2/10
Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director (Aru eiga-kantoku no shogai) is a 1975 Japanese documentary film on the life and works of director Kenji Mizoguchi, directed by Kaneto Shindo (Onibaba). It runs 150 minutes and can be found on the second disc of the Region 1 Criterion Collection release of Ugetsu (1953).
The Loyal 47 Ronin
7.3/10
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.
The Great Wall
6.6/10
In 221 BC, Qin Shihuangdi conquered the rest of China. Qin's great accomplishments and also his serious faults are showed in this film. Qin adopted autocratic dictatorship and led a luxurious life: abolition of feudalism and the centralization of power in the form of a now-hereditary bureaucracy loyal to himself; burning books and burying scholars; the construction of a sumptuous palace for his concubines and also the Great Wall.
Afraid To Die
6.4/10
On his release from prison a young yakuza, along with his brother, decides to turn his back on criminal life instead of taking over the position of his recently deceased father, boss of the Asahina clan. But their exit proves more difficult than planned when their rival clan steps in to exact revenge.
