Movies: Masao Oda

In Kabuki style, the film tells the story of a remote mountain village where the scarcity of food leads to a voluntary but socially-enforced policy in which relatives carry 70-year-old family members up Narayama mountain to die. Granny Orin is approa...

In the midst of an attempt to take over his company, a powerhouse executive is hit with a huge ransom demand when his servants son is kidnapped...

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...

Shuhei Hirayama is a widower with a 24-year-old daughter. Gradually, he comes to realize that she should not be obliged to look after him for the rest of his life, so he arranges a marriage for her....

A woman remember's her own marriage when dealing with the love life of her son....

Tragicomic road movie set during the Edo period. It follows a samurai, his two servants – including spear-carrier Genpachi – and the various people they meet on their journey, including a policeman in pursuit of a thief, a young child and a woman who...

A university student moves into an apartment building and becomes involved with a waitress. The landlord then attempts to evict the tenants and sell the building through illicit means....

A Japanese family is torn apart by the tensions of an avoidable nuclear world war between the superpowers....

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....

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 ...

A carpenter, Shigetsugu, learns a lesson of love and humanity from five orphaned children and an affectionate woman named Oritsu. It's a winning combination of drama and humor. The warm friendship that grows between the carpenter, the woman and the ...

The story is of two people. One is deaf, the other deaf and mute. They marry after meeting at a school reunion, and the film follows their trials and tribulations ... and joys....

The adopted son of an Osaka courier falls in love with a prostitute and, discovering that she is about to be purchased by a client, steals money from his employer to redeem her. Hunted criminals, the two young lovers take flight to Yamato, but, as in...

Considered one of the finest late Naruses and a model of film biography, A Wanderer’s Notebook features remarkable performances by Hideko Takamine – Phillip Lopate calls it “probably her greatest performance” – and Kinuyo Tanaka as mother and daughte...

In the thriving Tokyo neighborhood of Ginza, a woman in the process of selling her estranged husband’s art collection attempts to identify the man who painted her own portrait fifteen years prior....

One week into newlywed Teiko Uhara's marriage, her husband, Kenichi, leaves on a short business trip and never returns. Teiko travels across Japan to search for him, and along the way discovers some surprising facts about her husband's past. With onl...

Two obaachans become fast friends listening to music in front of a record store. They both boast about their loving sons but in reality, one had just escaped a retirement home and the other was looking for an escape from her son and daughter-in-law. ...

An investigation into a drug smuggler who is assassinated in front of an insurance building sets two detectives, Sumikawa and Akine, into a sprawling investigation through Tokyo's underworld....

A war widow with a young boy manages a farm with her bossy mother-in-law. When a reporter comes to interview her, the two begin an affair. He turns out to be married and won't leave his wife. Her older brother tries to marry off his children and hang...

The Wayside Pebble is an effective drama about the hardships of a childhood spent with a brusque, cold-hearted father and a submissive mother. The year is 1910 and the place is a small Japanese village. Goichi is suffering because he wants to go to s...