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1-19 of 19
- A recently divorced writer is reunited with the ghosts of his parents who died when he was a boy. However, every time he sees them he loses more life energy. Now, he must choose between starting a new life or staying forever in the past.
- The struggles of a group of immigrant outcasts living in an alternative-future, xenophobic Japanese metropolis.
- A selfish playboy uses rich women to pay off his debts. Divorcing his wife and marrying the woman he loves throws him into a spiral of destruction.
- Tetsuro Haga is a troubled gangster, living under the assumed identity Ise for ten years, to escape jail for gunning down his cruel adoptive father. His life begins to unravel when a journalist following him takes an interest in the wife of a boyhood chum, and the wife of another close friend takes an interest in Ise. A couple of murders later, Ise/Haga goes on the run and also sets out for revenge.
- An old man, being rowed along a river, sees a field of daisies and thinks back to when he was fifteen. He recalls his time with, and away from, the girl cousin he grew up with and would have married, except the family and other pressures got in the way.
- A lonely gangster tries recruiting men to plunder a respected and powerful gang.
- Masao is falsely accused and jailed for the murder of a loanshark to whom he owed a lot of money. His sister Kiriko makes the long trip to Tokyo, specifically to accost Otsuka, Japan's top criminal defence lawyer, and plead with him to take her brother's case. They live in KitaKyushu which, though a city, she contends that the local lawyers are not up to the job. Otsuka contemptuously brushes her off. A year passes. Masao has suicided in jail, his appeal having failed due to the lack of interest and competence of the local defence lawyer. Kiriko returns to Tokyo, planning revenge on Otsuka for refusing the case and causing her brother's death. Meanwhile, through the actions of a crusading young journalist, Otsuka is informed of Masao's death. His curiosity piqued, he requests the file and reviews the evidence. Otsuka also has an adoring mistress who owns a bar. By coincidence (?), the real murderer is an associate of one of her employees. Kiriko, now working as a hostess in a different bar, is asked by a friend to tail her boyfriend, whom she suspects of cheating. The boyfriend is murdered in the bar owner's flat, and Kiriko grabs the chance to set her revenge plan into action. Kiriko rigs the crime scene to falsely incriminate the bar owner, who is subsequently jailed. Otsuka's mistress out of the way, Kiriko sets out to seduce and entrap Otsuka, against the advice of the crusading journalist.
- Opens with a journalist reporting on the 1997 Kobe earthquake, as he remembers a trip made as a young boy. Then, he and family took a boat trip from Awaji to Beppu in order to bury the ashes of his elder brother, killed in the just-ended WWII. The lad spends much of the trip trying to talk his elder brother out of running away. They encounter an array of characters on the journey. Most prominent among them a black marketeer who, like the elder brother, feels that the "new ways" can only benefit him, and work against the boys' father, who is strict and traditional.
- Story 1 : "The Thirteenth Night". Seki turns up at her parents' house in the dead of night, where she breaks down and says she cannot continue to live with her husband, a rich man to whom the family is indebted. After a tearful and long discussion, they convince her to return. On the way home, the rickshaw driver turns out to be an old school friend, and they reminisce about the old days. .... Story 2 : "The Last Day Of The Year". Mine is a hard-working maid in the house of a miserly, slave-driving old woman who is burdened by a wastrel son, who pesters the old woman and her new husband for money to pay off gambling debts. Mine's uncle is her only surviving relative, and the man who raised her, who is very ill and needs money to repay a loanshark. Mine promises to borrow the money from her employer but, although the old woman initially agrees, she breaks that promise on the due date, New Year's Eve. Can honest Mine resist the temptation to steal ? ..... Story 3: "An Inlet of Muddy Water". The trials and tribulations of a group of young to middle-aged whores. All the women in this particular bawdy house look up to and admire the stunning O-Riki. But O-Riki is nevertheless troubled. Gen, a shabby coolie, hangs around and pesters her, despite having a long-suffering wife and a young son, who calls O-Riki "The Demon". One night, desperate for clients, several of the girls lunge at and literally drag some passers-by inside. One of these men is cultured and gentlemanly, and becomes O-Riki's regular client. She looks forward to his visits and hopes he will marry her. Meanwhile, Gen's wife alternates between solicitousness and harassment, and home life becomes tough.
- Shoichi is a violent young man just released from jail who aspires to be a drummer. He works his way up by playing gigs in a hip Ginza club, an eventually wins a drumming contest. But what he really desires is the approval of his mother, who hates music and musicians.
- April 1954. 12 year old schoolgirl Sadako thinks her main problem is being unable to pass the baton in relay races. But just as her team starts winning, she starts getting tired more easily. She is sent back to the American Base Victory Hospital, where the diagnosis is lymphatic leukemia. And she has no more than a year left to live. Her parents agree with the doctor that Sadako should not be told, but will she find out anyway ?
- Mainly the story of Shinsuke and his stepmother, ranging from Shinsuke's infanthood to his mid-teens. Coal workers and the mines dominate nearly every aspect of the life of the characters. Shinsuke's father dies while bravely using dynamite to rescue a group of trapped Korean miners. Several older men attempt to help he and his mother cope, including a kind Korean and a Harley-riding yakuza.
- Takeo is a university graduate who stumbles his way through the idiosyncrasies of Japan's graduate recruitment market. Big and respectable corporations put him through the wringer, whilst smaller corporations try all manner of tricks and whiles to convince him to join. Mariko has always been there for him, as a friend, but when Takeo finds an ambitious girlfriend, she has to consider whether he is more than just a friend to her.
- It was a dark and rainy night. Momentarily distracted, salaryman Motomura runs over a young lady on a bicycle, panics and flees the scene. In discussion with his family, they all agree to cover up the crime, reported on the news the following day. The front of the car is damaged, so they clear a space in the loungeroom and bring the car inside. The family works at scrapping the car and disposing of the parts. Motomura's family is riven with crises, but co-operation in the conspiracy seems to bring them together. However, the attention of a nosy neighbour threatens the scheme.
- Salarymen Uozo and his friend Kosaku plan to climb a mountain. A few days before they are due to start, Kosaku confesses that he has had a fling with a married woman, with whom he is now madly in love, but she has just dumped him. The rope breaks during the climb, killing Kosaku. Was the rope faulty, or did Kosaku plan to kill himself ? The rope manufacturer pressures Uozo towards the suicide theory, but Uozo stands firm. Who will back down ?
- Two female truck drivers detest each other, and try to steal each other's business. Their rigs are both painted with elaborate large pictures of beautiful naked women. One day, whilst hauling loads of fish in Hokkaido, they are separately stopped by traffic police, who impound their trucks for various violations. About this time, one of the women meets a handsome man, with whom romance is a possibility. Then, the women discover they have been tricked. The cops were connected with the Russian mafia, who intend to ship their trucks offshore and sell them.
- A timber merchant and haulage firm in late 19th century Tokyo is in trouble. The widowed lady owner is being threatened by a scheming competitor who is offering much cheaper labour. X has just left the army, and his buddies in the firm beg him to rejoin them as second in command, which he does. Thus emboldened, the firm tries to make a deal to stay in business, which launches a serious turf war.
- Takuji spies a house on the hill while wandering on the beach. He is invited in and treated as an honoured guest, especially by the lovely young Kiyono. They soon marry, but as the year is 1940, the oncoming war threatens. Takuji disappears, then returns, then is enlisted.
- After release from jail, Katsumata forms a rag-tag gang calling themselves the Shinjuku Brothers. His partner and co-leader is a sleazy gambling addict he met in a nightclub. Actually, they got to know each other in a comic drunken brawl as opponents. After slugging it out for quite a while, the two men admire each other's toughness and become 'Kyodai' (equal brothers). The gang is made up of 'Chinpira' or 'Yotamono' (the lowest grade of gangsters, basically petty thugs), who spend their time smashing things and hitting people. Because they are muscling in on existing territory, they quickly make enemies. When the Brothers provocatively attend the funeral of a local gangster, they narrowly avoid a beating, held back only by a senior boss who tells them that "We, as Yakuza, are the rubbish of the world, but we still hold to a moral code". The boss of bosses invites them to join a respected local council of warlords. Katsumata is suspicious of why such powerful men would extend an invitation to lowlife like himself. Their plan is pretty clear. But how will the Brothers react...