Movies: Ayako Wakao

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

In Edo Japan, a kabuki actor seeks revenge against the three men who drove his parents to their deaths years ago....

With a price on his head, Ichi seeks tranquillity in a favorite village. Since his last visit, it has fallen prey to Boss Masagoro, the son of a merchant rumored to have stolen gold from the shogunate. The boss has hired Yojimbo as his hard-drinking ...

When a theater troupe's master visits his old flame, he unintentionally sets off a chain of unexpected events with devastating consequences. A remake of Ozu's own silent film The Story of Floating Weeds (1934)....

Otsuya, the daughter of a rich merchant, elopes with her lover Shinsuke, an employee of her father's. During their flight, Otsuya's beauty attracts the gaze of Seikichi, a mysterious master tattooist who sees her pristine white skin as the perfect ca...

The four principals in a love affair collide when jealousy, blackmail and suicide enter the picture....

Eiko seeks out Miyoharu, a geisha, and asks to be her apprentice. When she is ready to receive clients, both women want the right to refuse certain men....

On the eve of the Russo-Japanese war at the beginning of the 20th century, small-town girl Okane has married an old wealthy man to escape a life of poverty....

Japan, 1701. A group of samurai become rônin after their lord is forced to commit seppuku for assaulting a court official, who will become the target of a merciless revenge....

Based on a novel by Tsutomu Mizukami, this haunting melodrama focuses on a young bamboo worker who takes his father's prostitute as his wife....

Two poor, married farmers have recently lost their only child; after a freak visitation, they pry open an alien cocoon to greet their new daughter....

Satoko is a mistress by trade or fate: when her master, the silkscreen artist of the Kohoan Temple in Kyoto, dies, she is given to the temple's lascivious head priest Kikuchi. She is drawn to a melancholy young acolyte, Jinen, who has observed the pr...

Princess Kiyo accidentally injures a local priest, Anchin, while on a hunt. She apologizes, but feels irritated by Anchin’s indifference to her in spite of her beauty. One night, while Anchin is recuperating in a hot spring, he is approached by Kiyo....

Tied to a mountain between her brutalizing spouse and her secret lover, disaster strikes; the authorities accuse her of murder and prompt a confession....

In 1939, Sakura Nishi is a young army nurse who is sent to the field hospitals in China during the Sino-Japanese war. She has to assist the surgeon Dr. Okabe with an incredible number of amputations. In the crowded wards, she gives sympathy to some o...

A greedy, materialistic family attempts to cover-up the embezzlement committed by the son while keeping their other schemes active. They discover there are other, equally conniving players involved....

Momoko and Asako are half sisters, daughters of the famous architect Tsuneo Mizuhara, who also have another half sister in Kyôto, Wakako, whom they have not had. While Asako is a sweet young lady, Momoko, the eldest, goes out with whomever she wants,...

Based on the first novel, Spring Snow, of Mishima Yukio's Sea of Fertility tetralogy, it follows the troubled and illicit affair between two youngsters amongst the aristocracy and rich of early twentieth century Japan....

The disturbing story of a physician who conducted the first operation with general anaesthetic, and the women in his life who are both so determined to win his love that they volunteer as subjects for his experiments...

On his release from prison a young yakuza, along with his brother, decides to turn his back on criminal life instead of taking over the position of his recently deceased father, boss of the Asahina clan. But their exit proves more difficult than plan...