Movies: Hyōe Enoki

In this humorous paean to the joys of food, a pair of truck drivers happen onto a decrepit roadside shop selling ramen noodles. The widowed owner, Tampopo, begs them to help her turn her establishment into a paragon of the "art of noodle-soup making"...

In the city of Yokosuka, Kinta and his lover Haruko, both involved with yakuza, brave the post-occupation period with a goal to be together....

A backstage documentary and interview with the real life lesbian stage performer Kaoru Kiri mixed with a fictional life of her rejected lover....

Saheji, a man-about-town, gets stuck at a high-class brothel when he can’t pay the bill. He makes the best of his situation by performing various tasks amidst the tumult of the end of the shogunate—but always by making sure to get a “commission” for ...

Kitagawa is an engineer charged with construction of a gigantic tunnel through the Japan Alps for the transportation of equipment in the building of the massive Kurobe Dam. The tunnel crosses an earthquake fault and Kitagawa is beleaguered not only b...

A 1920s playwright meets a beautiful woman who may be the ghost of his patron's deceased wife....

Subu makes pornographic films. He sees nothing wrong with it. They are an aid to a repressed society, and he uses the money to support his landlady, Haru, and her family. From time to time, Haru shares her bed with Subu, though she believes her dead ...

The neglected common-law wife of a Japanese librarian is repeatedly harassed by a young man with a heart condition who seduces her with the prospect of a better life....

A surreal, isolated village sees its inhabitants gradually leave behind their mutual traditions and superstitions as they leave for the city. Among them are two cousins who love each other and who get into a quarrel with other villagers....

A hustler who gets in trouble with a gang boss in the port town of Sukago agrees to make good with the don by putting him in contact with a mysterious hitman — an assassin the hustler has no idea how to contact. Instead, he hires an actor to play the...

Tajima is a private detective in charge of his own company, Detective Bureau 2-3. When warring criminal gangs go overboard by robbing U.S. military munitions, Tajima steps in to stop what the cops can't....

In the setting of the Hokuriku region, where the snow and cold winds rage, for the first time in true-life yakuza film history, director Kinji Fukasaku shows battles among yakuza who value land over tradition. Hiroki Matsukata stars as Noboru Kawada,...

A former boxer gets involved with a club hostess trying to escape the clutches of her gangster employer....

New Year's Eve at a posh hotel and all should be shipshape. It is not. There is the traditional party, an official ceremony, entertainment and a special dinner planned and yet there is trouble everywhere. An Animal is on the loose, a politician to pr...

Filled with guilt over his forbidden desires, a young man leaves home and his studies. He finds a new smaller place to stay, a low-paying but satisfying job and a girlfriend. Then his mother, unable to fight her forbidden desires, shows up....

A wandering matchmaker finds she must defend the brothel she is staying at when a local yakuza boss targets the women working there with a hired gang of three brothers with unusual sexual powers....

Goro has always been a lone wolf. When he arrives at an industrial city in Keihin, there is certain restlessness in the air. The Iriezaki family and the Kanto Touyu-kai were in the midst of a territorial dispute. Goro was quick to notice, but had no ...

In an endless cycle a daughter born of a prostitute takes up her mother’s trade among the pimps, the working poor and dilapidated slums....

Two newlyweds decide to build their dream home, and hire an old friend named Yanagisawa to design it. Unfortunately, Yanagisawa isn’t licensed to build homes, so they call in the wife’s father, a retired carpenter, to help out. When Yanagisawa’s cont...

Japanese crime film...