The best Nenji Kobayashi’s movies

Seibei Iguchi leads a difficult life as a low ranking samurai at the turn of the nineteenth century. A widower with a meager income, Seibei struggles to take care of his two daughters and senile mother. New prospects seem to open up when the beautiful Tomoe, a childhood friend, comes back into he and his daughters' life, but as the Japanese feudal system unravels, Seibei is still bound by the code of honor of the samurai and by his own sense of social precedence. How can he find a way to do what is best for those he loves?

In a small village in a valley everyone who reaches the age of 70 must leave the village and go to a certain mountain top to die. If anyone should refuse he/she would disgrace their family. Old Orin is 69. This winter it is her turn to go to the mountain. But first she must make sure that her eldest son Tatsuhei finds a wife.

As Japan gears up for the 1964 Olympic games, the cops start to crack down on the gangs, under pressure from the public and the press, adding a new dimension in the war for power among the yakuza families of Hiroshima.

After being cruelly set up by a crooked detective named Sugimi (Isao Natsuyagi), whom she loved, Nami Matsushima (aka Matsu the Scorpion) (Meiko Kaji) is sentenced to do hard time in a women's prison, which is run by sadistic and horny male guards. There are 700 other prisoners, making Matsu number 701. Her crime was making a failed attempt to stab Sugimi on the steps of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters because he used her to win favor with the Yakuza. While in prison she meets inmates like Yuki Kida (Yayoi Watanabe) who was committed for fraud and theft, Otsuka (Akemi Negishi), jailed for burglary and extortion, and Katagiri (Rie Yokoyama) who has been impounded for arson and illegally disposing of a body.

Following the death of the second Tokugawa shogun, it is revealed that he was poisoned by retainers of his son Iemitsu in hopes of gaining him the shogunate despite the stammer and birthmark which undermine his respect. Iemitsu and his brother Tadanaga become bitter rivals for the shogunate, and the land is split into factions, eventually erupting into warfare. Iemitsu's mentor, his fencing instructor Yagyu, is fixated upon securing Iemitsu the shogunate and ends up betraying everyone, even his own family, in pursuit of the goal.

"Tsubaki Sanjuro" is a remake of Sanjuro (1962) by Akira Kurosawa. Sanjuro returns with sharper, faster, subtler sword, talking and perception. He uses them to settle the trouble and uses them good!

A detective goes out of his way to crack the case of a serial killer who specialises in murdering police officers.

In this film director Yoji Yamada bows down before his teacher and role model. Yamada was assistant director on Yazujirō Ozu’s Tōkyō monogatari, a moving family portrait set after the Second World War. In his remake, Yamada has made very few departures from Ozu’s masterpiece in order to update the story of ageing couple Shukichi and Tomiko to present day Japan. Once again, the pair decides to leave their quiet lives in the country to pay a visit to their children and grandchildren in Tokyo. Once there, they discover that neither their oldest son, a doctor named Koichi, nor their eldest daughter Shigeko - who runs a beauty parlour - has time for them: both are too busy attending to their everyday concerns. Even the youngest son went his own way. The old couple feel lonely and bewildered in the fast-paced metropolis.

Matsu, known to the prisoners as Scorpion, is locked away in the bowels of the prison as revenge for disrupting the smooth operation of the prison and for her disfiguring attack on the warden. Granted a one day reprieve due to the visit of a dignitary, she takes advantage and attacks the warden again. This leads to more brutal punishment and humiliation. But the punishment gives her an oppurtunity to escape along with six other female prisoners. Their surreal flight from prison pits the convicts against the guards, the warden and each other.

The seventh in the shocking "Jingi Naki Tatakai" movie series, which exposes the true lives of the yakuza that is hidden by a mask of "jingi". The next stage of this continuing drama is the Kanmon Channel where the Owada and the Kyoei groups are battling for territorial rights and drug smuggling. The Owada sends their man, Tetsu, and his friend Shuji to kill the Kyoei boss. With the promise of fame and riches, Shuji takes the fall and goes to jail for 7 years. But when he's released, he discovers that he and Tetsu have been all but forgotten by the Owada. Feeling betrayed, Shuji takes natters into his own hands and becomes an unsuspecting pawn in an internal conflict and an assassination attempt on the Owada boss. And now angered, Shuji seeks revenge...

A look at the relationship between a young blind samurai (Kimura) and his wife, who will make a sacrifice in order to defend her husband's honor.

A police investigator cracks down on yakuza business, but once he realizes the police are in negotiations with certain factions, he sides with his own syndicate of choice.

A husband and wife have been married for 50 years. For her birthday, the husband asks the wife what she wants for her birthday present. She replies that she wants a divorce. The wife's divorce announcement sends the entire family into chaos.

After a desperate gang of ex-soldiers and gamblers meet in a fistfight in occupied Ginza they decide to make the neighborhood their own.

The peaceful planet of Jillucia has been nearly wiped out by the Gavanas, whose leader takes orders from his mother rather than the Emperor. King Kaiba sends out eight Liabe holy seeds, each to be received by a chosen one to defend the Gavanas. Each recipient, ranging from hardened General Garuda to Gavana Prince Hans to young Terrans Meia, Kido, and Aaron all have different reactions to being chosen.

The film depicts carnivalesque atmosphere summed up by the cry "Ee ja nai ka" ("Why not?") in Japan in 1867 and 1868 in the days leading to the Meiji Restoration. It examines the effects of the political and social upheaval of the time, and culminates in a revelrous march on the Kokyo, which turns into a massacre. Characteristically, Imamura focuses not on the leaders of the country, but on characters in the lower classes and on the fringes of society.

A car going at 25 mph plunges into the sea at Shinko Harbour, Toyama prefecture. Inside is the local business magnate Fukutaro Shirakawa, who perishes. Riding alongside him and surviving unhurt is his second wife, Kumako. It soon comes to light that Kumako’s husband was insured for 300 million yen and she is arrested on suspicion of murdering her husband for the insurance money. The newspapers denounce her as an evil woman, while the public is in no doubt about Kumako’s crime. Ritsuko Sahara is chosen as her defence attorney but the pair clash over almost everything...

An entire Japanese international grade school—and all within—are mysteriously transported to a foreboding desert wasteland. As the story unfolds, the diminishing student body weathers this apocalyptic crisis while searching for clues about their surroundings, and dealing with psychological breakdown and dangerous exterior forces.

After a passenger ship sinks in 1954, Go Akutsu devises a life-saving project in the form of a tunnel under the Tsugaru Strait. While working on this project Akutsu becomes involved with Tae Makimura leading to his estrangement from his wife.