The best Emiko Azuma’s drama movies

Set in the underground gay culture of 1960s Tokyo, a loose adaptation of Oedipus Rex in which a transgender sex worker kills his mother and sleeps with his father.

After a salary-man's fiancée attempts suicide, he recounts his gruesome family history which saw generations of his ancestors suffer and sacrifice themselves for the sake of their cruel lords.

The female members of the family of the Minister of Health and Welfare, who has just proposed a program of birth control, become pregnant one after the other. - Nikkatsu

Katiri is a reporter so ambitiously amoral that he’ll sell out anyone—including his partner and the drug dealer he’s sleeping with—to get a scoop. But what happens when an even more ruthless female gang boss kidnaps his sister?

Yoji Kitami, a fisherman's son, is a student in Tokyo. His father had died at sea and Taichiro, his brother, is sending him to the university. But the outbreak of violence by radical students and blockade of classrooms make studying impossible and Yoji goes home. Fortunately, he meets Katsuyuki Shinoda, a childhood friend, who works on a whaling vessel. Yoji decides to join him and rediscover a meaning in life. But finding sidework on a whaler is not so easy and Ogaki, a veteran harpooner, curtly turns him down. But finally, deeply touched by Yoji's earnestness, Ogaki reluctantly agrees to take him with them. Rules are very strict, for even one slight slip-up may jeopardize the safety of the entire ship. For a long time, it seems like a living hell, but with patience and courage, he begins to learn the ropes. And the day they sight their first whale, Yoji comes into his own and finds the real meaning of life.

First film of a trilogy following the dramatic life of Rika, a half-Japanese/half-American woman who becomes the tough-as-nails leader of an all-girl crime gang.

Three girls come to Tokyo to stay with their elder sister. Actually they are running away from home because their father has married again to a very young woman. They have many romantic adventures and one finally decides against the boy she thought she loved because he, just like her father is always away from home. But directly after her marriage to another young man, her sister runs after the former boy-friend.

Suzuko, a woman in her twenties who has a brother with political problems (due to communist reprisals), lives for over five years in a love affair with Tate, who plays a young lieutenant in the Army as a right-wing fundamentalist revolutionary. She marries another man in an arranged marriage, but the bond that unites her with Tate is too strong.

Tajima Yumi, in grade school, is overjoyed when her father says they are moving to an apartment in a big city. But the beautiful home she had imagined is in a slum area called Samurai Village, a little settlement, where people live from hand to mouth. To make things worse, a group of vagrants descends on the already crowded ragpickers' village. The sight depresses and saddens little Yumi, but when her father gives up drinking, it makes up for everything in her eyes, and when he runs past liquor shops to avoid temptation, Yumi's laughter rings out merrily again. A unique social drama depicting the growth of a new generation that confronts the world of adults full of vanity in the image of a girl living in poverty.

In 1943, critical developments in the Pacific War have placed Japan at a disadvantage, although the fiery breaths of war hadn't yet reached Okinawa Normal School for women. Nothing seemed the least bit out of the ordinary, as Kazuko and her friends enjoyed a day of sports. A year later the war takes a devastating turn, as US forces plan an amphibious attack known as "Operation Iceberg" on the Ryukyu island.