Movies: Chōko Iida

A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a lif...

Doctor Sanada treats gangster Matsunaga after he is wounded in a gunfight, and discovers that he is suffering from tuberculosis. Sanada tries to convince Matsunaga to stay for treatment, which would drastically change his lifestyle. They form an unea...

An errant salaryman's son gets lost until a man from the Tokyo tenements brings him to vendor Tane, who's reluctant to let the kid board....

A silk factory worker is persuaded to support her son's education up to a college level despite their poverty. Many years later, she travels to Tokyo to visit her son....

An aging actor returns to a small town with his troupe and reunites with his former lover and illegitimate son, a scenario that enrages his current mistress and results in heartbreak for all....

Tetsuo Nomoto, a young college graduate tries to find a decent job by himself. Later on, he will marry his girlfriend, Machiko, whom he hides the fact that he has no job. Hardships come quickly, which forces Machiko to find a job in a bar....

A poor rickshaw driver finds himself helping a young woman and her son after the woman's husband dies suddenly....

Fumiko, mother of two children and wife of an unfaithful man, shares her family life with her budding vocation as a poet. The beginning of her successful literary career coincides with her divorce and her breast cancer diagnosis. In the last stage of...

A young woman, who must support her father as a middle-aged man's mistress, finds herself falling in love with a student closer to her age....

In Depression-era Tokyo, a struggling middle-aged single father with a young son comes across a homeless young lady and convinces a bar owner to take her in....

Iemon Tamiya is an impoverished masterless samurai who craves a better life, which he cannot have because of his marriage to Oiwa, who is completely devoted to her husband....

The few residents left on the streets in Tokyo share their individual stories and come to understand the melancholy of saying goodbye....

Adaptation of a novel by Yojiro Ishizaka, originally released in two parts....

An unemployed Japanese man and his two sons wander the industrial flatlands of Depression-era Tokyo, until he chances upon an old friend and befriends a woman and her daughter, who are in a similar predicament....

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...

Alongside Tokyo's Sumida River is a ragpickers' settlement known as Ant Village. One night, a young Catholic girl, Satoko Kitahara, who has been baptized under the name of Maria, comes to offer her services. However, Ant Village is not just an ordina...

On Wings of Love is a 1957 Japanese romantic musical film directed by Toshio Sugie. It was Toho's highest-grossing film of the year and the first film released in Tohoscope....

In Depression-era Tokyo, a young man struggles to provide for his family after he is fired from his job....

This historical film depicts the life of a man who was at the mercy of the waves during transition from the end of the Edo period to the Meiji Restoration, and therefore, shows audience the dynamic change from Edo to Meiji. Before the war, the direc...

A professor, Komiya, and his bossy wife, Tokiko, are to look after Setsuko, their high-spirited niece from Osaka. Despite being a minor, Setsuko is a liberated woman who does whatever she wants, including smoking. She even convinces Koyima to take h...