Movies: Misako Watanabe

Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money with tragic results. A man stranded in a blizzard is saved by Yuki the Snow Maiden, but his rescue come...

A "Goze" is a blind entertainer who travels to various places singing stories while playing the shamisen (Japanese three-stringed lute). Becoming a goze due to her blindness at seven-years-old, Haru was strictly trained with a parent's affection by h...

The Master’s late-night diner welcomes a woman troubled by funeral fans, an elderly scam victim, and a noodle delivery man struggling with love....

When a mysterious stranger muscles into two rival yakuza gangs, Tokyo's underworld explodes with violence....

A couple decide to relocate from Tokyo to the northern island of Hokkaido where they settle and establish a bakery and café called Mani. One cooks. The other bakes. Everyone walks out happy....

A dying businessman intends to will his fortune to his three illegitimate children, whose whereabouts are unknown, so a bevy of lawyers and associates scheme to take advantage of the situation....

Majime, an eccentric man in publishing company, who has unique ability of words, joins the team that will compile a new dictionary, The Great Passage. In the eclectic team, he becomes immersed in the world of dictionaries. But the team is overwhelmed...

Adapted from the bestselling Japanese autobiography of the same title, this gentle coming-of-age drama concerns an adolescent boy, Boku - Masaya, torn between the inherited recklessness of his father Oton and the inherited responsibility, wisdom and ...

An ardent culture-vulture youth, previously charged for the murder of a woman when he was young, plans to hold hostage a local bank....

Awkward and withdrawn, Masako kills her sister in an explosion of pent-up humiliation and rage that sends her tumbling into fugitive life....

Years of warfare end in a Japan unified under the Tokugawa shogunate, and samurai spy Sasuke Sarutobi, tired of conflict, longs for peace. When a high-ranking spy named Tatewaki Koriyama defects from the shogun to a rival clan, however, the world of ...

A Choice between Loyalty or Duty of the Samurai! Can the heartlessness of society crush the honor of an individual? In the spring of the 18th year of Kanei, Hosokawa Tadatoshi, feudal lord of the Higo area, died. Although Tadatoshi forbade his vassal...

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....

A sniper kills two prisoners in a police van, and the driver sets out to find the killer....

An illustration of the tragic lives of geishas at a popular geisha house, Shinonomero. Shortly after being sold to a geisha house at age 5, Shizu is befriended by a fellow older geisha, Tsuru. After years of living and working together, Tsuru and Shi...

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When the man who seduced the famous painter Otoko as a teenager--and then wrote a bestselling novel about it--reappears in her life, her pupil--and lesbian lover--hatches a plot to destroy the man and his family....

Kôsuke Kindaichi, a somewhat peculiar private detective, visits a remote town. He meets a police detective and they start to investigate an old unsolved murder. Then some murders happen. Kindaichi must find out about the past in order to reveal who t...

Fictionalized account of 20-year-old Noriko Tsuji, a real-life victim of a severe birth defect which afflicted 8,000 Japanese, children whose mothers took the sedative thalidomide during pregnancy. Tsuji has stunted flipper-like arms amputated at the...

Three stories revolve around independence, a man searching for his wife, and a poor craftsman trying to make money....