The best Yoshio Harada’s drama movies

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.

In war-torn Japan, the Tokugawa Shogun, desperate to restore peace to his people, orders the assassination of the hostile warlords. A beautiful young woman is raised from birth with nine other orphans, to become an assassin. Her name is Azumi, the ultimate assassin.

Izo is an assassin in the service of a Tosa lord and Imperial supporter. After killing dozens of the Shogun's men, Izo is captured and crucified. Instead of being extinguished, his rage propels him through the space-time continuum to present-day Tokyo. Here Izo transforms himself into a new, improved killing machine.

Twelve years after their beloved eldest son, Junpei, drowned while saving a stranger's life, Kyohei and Toshiko welcome their surviving children home for a family reunion. Younger son Ryota still feels that his parents resent that he isn't the one who died; his new wife, Yukari, is awkwardly meeting the rest of the family for the first time. Daughter Chinami strains to fill the uncomfortable pauses with forced cheer.

A young boys' coming of age tale set in a strange, carnivalesque village becomes the recreation of a memory that the director has twenty years later.

A runaway cat-loving girl begins a love triangle with a reckless older man and a young biker in high school. The film follows their subsequent chaotic relationships.

Twelve-year-old Koichi, who has been separated from his brother Ryunosuke due to his parents' divorce, hears a rumor that the new bullet trains will precipitate a wish-granting miracle when they pass each other at top speed.

Near the end of Japanese civil war, several disgraced ronin living in Edo's red light district attempt to regain their honor by defending a brothel from a hostile militia bent on wiping out local prostitutes.

This movie is a political/espionage thriller, based on a real kidnapping incident of Korean politician, Kim Dae-Jun.

Kleptomaniac Sonoko and young, beautiful Mitsuko begin an unusual love affair which develops fast into a kinky sexual love triangle when Sonoko’s husband gets involved.

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.

The Isokaze, an Aegis-class escort vessel, sets sail on a routine training exercise, playing host to a platoon from the Fleet Training Group. No sooner is the Isokaze on open water, however, then the FTG reveal themselves to be terrorist stowaways who kill the ship's captain, send the rest of the crew overboard and take control of the vessel. The ship is carrying a secret biological weapon which the terrorists are now threatening to use to level Tokyo! Only a stowaway NCO, Sengoko (played by Sanada Hiroyuki from Ring and Twilight Samurai) is in a position to stop them - but does he really have what it takes to save the day? Playing like a cross between a sea-faring version of Top Gun and Die Hard, director Sakamoto Junji shows that it's not just Hollywood that can produce thrill-a-minute action spectaculars.

In a poor district of Edo lives a young samurai named Soza. He has been sent by his clan to avenge the death of his father. He isn't an accomplished swordsman however, and he prefers sharing the life of the residents, teaching the kids how to write etc. When he finally finds the man he is looking for, he will have to decide whether he follows the way of the samurai or chooses peace and reconciliation.

Artist Yumeji has gained fame and recognition for his skills at painting as well as notoriety for his untamed lifestyle. Despite his betrothal to a beautiful and timid young woman of high birth, his libido turns to his many female models. Despite this freedom from constraint, his lust and artistic sentiment cause him nothing but an increasing awareness of the elusive embodiment of true Beauty. While traveling he encounters a mesmerizing widow who relentlessly searches for her husband's body in the nearby lake, believing him killed at the hands of a ferocious roaming bandit. Infatuated with her beauty, he feigns to help her look for the corpse, only to unlock the mystery himself thereby sending him to further depths of debauchery and despair. This is the third and final film in director Suzuki Seijun's critically acclaimed Taisho Trilogy.

Based on a play by Hisashi Inoue, it focuses on the sufferings of the survivors of Hiroshima. The film takes place during 4 days in the summer of 1948, as the ghost of her father visits Mitsué (Rié Miyama). He had somehow learned that she has fallen in love, and tries to convince her to start her new life. But Mitsué obstinately refuses his warm and humorous encouragements : « People were killed in my place. I do not have the right to find happiness », she says.

A young jazz musician's desire to advance in his career runs afoul of organized crime in this thriller from Haruki Kadokawa. After a saxophonist starts playing at a particular nightspot, a thug from the Yakuza adopts him as a special friend for no greater reason than he plays one of his favorite songs well. As the dangerous life of the gangster intertwines with that of the musician, it brings harm to the musician's girlfriend, who is raped. This changes the young saxophonist's attitude about his patron, but his Yakuza "friend" is still too embroiled in his own problems to worry about anything else.

Following the bloody aftermath of a heist, three robbers are double-crossed by a new accomplice, who is then tracked down amid escalating carnage and spectacular car chases.

Heaven's Bookstore is a 2004 Japanese film directed by Tetsuo Shinohara about a struggling classical pianist who is sent to heaven to work in a bookstore. It is based on two novels, written by Atsushi Matsuhisa and Wataru Tanaka.