The best Shôichi Hirose’s thriller movies

A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the local gambling trade. Taking the name Sanjuro Kuwabatake, the ronin convinces both silk merchant Tazaemon and sake merchant Tokuemon to hire him as a personal bodyguard, then artfully sets in motion a full-scale gang war between the two ambitious and unscrupulous men.

Yuki's family is nearly wiped out before she is born due to the machinations of a band of criminals. These criminals kidnap and brutalize her mother but leave her alive. Later her mother ends up in prison with only revenge to keep her alive. She creates an instrument for this revenge by purposefully getting pregnant. Yuki never knows the love of a family but only killing and revenge.

Lady Snowblood is caught by the police and sentenced to death for her crimes. As she is sent to the gallows she is rescued by the secret police who offer her a deal to assassinate some revolutionaries.

A car strikes an unseen object; blood spreads from an invisible source which becomes visible as the bleeding man dies. He carries with him a suicide note dedicated to his only friend, who is also an invisible man. An eager young reporter tracks down Takemitsu Nanjo, a war veteran who makes his living visibly, painting his face like a clown's and carrying advertising signs. His favorite neighbor is a little blind girl whose mother is running afoul of local gangsters. The gangsters have been terrorizing the city as "the invisible gang," wrapping themselves up in scarves and trenchcoats so as to be visible to their victims, even though they are supposed to be invisible underneath. Once they discover Nanjo, who is defending his only friends, they beat him and leave him for dead.

Taut thriller about a too-perfect criminal case against an ex-convict that makes a nosy detective suspicious.