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"...

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

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...

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 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....

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...

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....

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....

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 ...

A gang lord hires Kamimura, a hit man, to take out a rival boss who's gotten greedy....

Based on the popular comic, “Shonan Bakusozoku” illustrates the lives of high school bike fanatics....

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

Scantily clad female warriors battle thieves to save a small village. Director Yasuharu Hasebe crossed the Seven Samurai legends of Shichinin No Samurai with his own popular Naraneko Rokku series and dressed it up with some of the most popular softco...

Yuka is a “good-time girl” from Yokohama who is persuaded by her papa to sleep with a foreign business executive so that he can close an important deal. Nakahira presents a shrewdly observed portrait of a modern, sexually assertive woman—an unsettlin...

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....

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....

In historical times, the Shogun family employs a group of Iga ninjas to take over the Akizuki clan's lands. The Akizuki hire the Fumi ninjas, a group of female warriors who enhance their fighting ability with sexual magic such as the "white snake spe...

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....