Movies: Sadako Sawamura

A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of inter­generational relationships, Good Morning tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after their parents refuse to buy a television set. Ozu ...

Keiko, whom everyone calls Mama, narrates her story: she's a hostess on the Ginza, 30, a widow. She describes life's vicious cycle: acting cheerful around drunks, dressing and living well to convey confidence, needing money for these expenses and for...

A woman and her daughter are each forced to contend with an increasing pressure to marry, particularly from three men who knew her late husband....

In Edo Period Japan, a noblewoman's banishment for her love affair with a lowly page signals the beginning of her inexorable fall....

Three robbers escape with loot from a heist before one of them kills the others. Their corpses wash up near the aftermath of a maritime calamity, provoking a policeman's interest....

A woman's struggle for equality in Japan in the 1880s. Eiko Hirayama leaves Okayama for Tokyo, where she helps the fledgling Liberal Party and falls in love with its leader Kentaro Omoi, just as the party is being disbanded by the government....

After their lord is tricked into committing ritual suicide, forty-seven samurai warriors await the chance to avenge their master and reclaim their honor....

The lives of five prostitutes employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation is debating the passage of an anti-prostitution law....

Yuko is sent to the coastal regions to be raised away from the rest of her sophisticated family where she finds out from her ill grandmother that she is not who she thought she was....

In early post-war Osaka, three women, war widow Fusako, her sister Natsuko, an expatriate from Korea, and Kumiko, Fusako's sister-in-law, descend into prostitution, all for their individual reasons....

A sad and troubled man finds a new job five years after the end of WWII, where he writes love letters for other people....

Anzukko (Little Peach) is the daughter of a successful writer. She turns down each one of her suitors, until she marries a beginning writer named Ryokichi. Their life quickly sinks into despair....

With delicate, unobtrusive strokes, Naruse evokes both the humor and bitterness of his characters’ dilemmas, in this bleak, compelling poignant portrait of a quartet of aging geishas contemplating their troubles with men and money....

Mayumi Ogawa stars in the tale of a Turkey miss—basically a prostitute who services men in Turkish baths—whose plans to get rich in the stock market, open a beauty salon, and marry her sweetie are turned upside down by the arrival of her boyfriend-st...

Ginko, a poor cobbler's daughter, becomes a geisha to support her family. She passes from one geisha house to the next, trying to find love and hope in the process. No matter how hard she tries, she just can't escape her sad fate....

Two high school girls, Ruri and Yumi, go to Kyoto on a school trip, here they get acquainted with Hinagiku, there are many adventures ahead of the three of them. A musical starring 3 Japanese pop music and TV stars....

In the wake of the 1956 Prostitution Prevention Law, a young woman recently released from one of Japan's new rehabilitation centers struggles to build a new life....

A teenaged girl witnesses her widowed mother's attempt to sustain her family....

A successful textile industrialist from the provinces, who is beloved by his employees for his kindness, cannot find a wife because of a disfiguring birthmark on his face. Even the courtesans in Yoshiwara refuse to entertain him, until an indentured ...

On his way to Tokyo one night, a truck driver picks up a country girl and has his way with her amidst a forest. A few days later he loses his job after a run-in with some punks, but is offered a job by a gangster impressed by his fighting skills. He ...