Kinuyo Tanaka
Birthday: 1909-11-28
Place of Birth: Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi, Japan
Biography: Kinuyo Tanaka (田中 絹代 Tanaka Kinuyo, 29 November 1909 – 21 March 1977) was a Japanese actress and director. Tanaka was born in Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan. She became a leading actress at seventeen years old, appearing in Heinosuke Gosho's An Embarrassing Dream in 1927. She proceeded to take leading parts in, among others, Yasujirō Ozu's I Graduated, But... in 1929, Gosho's Aiyoku no ki in 1930, and in 1931, Japan's first talkie, The Neighbor's Wife and Mine, directed by Gosho. She had a close working relationship with director Kenji Mizoguchi, having parts in 15 of his films, including leading roles in The Life of Oharu (1952), Ugetsu (1953) and Sansho the Bailiff (1954). Their working relationship ended when Mizoguchi countered a recommendation from the Directors Guild of Japan for the Nikkatsu studio to hire her as a director. Despite this, the production of her second film as director went ahead, but Tanaka never forgave Mizoguchi, and the reasons for his behaviour are unclear. She also played Noboru Yasumoto's mother in Akira Kurosawa's Red Beard (1965). For her portrayal in Kei Kumai's Sandakan N° 8 she won the Best Actress Award at the 25th Berlin International Film Festival in 1975. Her last screen appearance was in 1976 in Kei Kumai's Kita No Misaki. Tanaka was the second Japanese woman who worked as a film director, after Sakane Tazuko (1904‐1975). Her first directing job was on the film Love Letter in 1953, and she made five further films in that role.
Movies
Sansho the Bailiff
In medieval Japan, a woman and her children journey to find the family's patriarch, who was exiled y...
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Sandakan No. 8
A young journalist interviews an elderly woman about being forced into prostitution in Borneo at a b...
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Equinox Flower
Wataru Hirayama's outwardly liberal views on marriage are severely tested when his daughter declares...
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The Life of Oharu
In 17th century Edo Period Japan, a noblewoman's banishment for her love affair with a lowly page si...
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The Love of the Actress Sumako
The stage director Shimamura, who is bringing western theatre to Japan, falls in love with the outsp...
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Miss Oyu
Shinnosuke is introduced to Shizu as a prospective marriage partner, but he falls in love with her w...
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The Woman in the Rumor
After living a traumatic experience in Tokyo, Yukiko returns to Kyoto, where Hatsuko, her mother, ru...
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Flowing
Otsuta is running the geisha house Tsuta in Tokyo. Her business is heavily in debt. Her daughter Kat...
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The Munekata Sisters
Setsuko is unhappily married to Mimura, an engineer with no job and a bad drinking habit. She had al...
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Alone Across the Pacific
Kenichi Horie is determined to challenge his family, the law and the nature crossing the Pacific to ...
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Women of the Night
In early post-war Osaka, three women, war widow Fusako, her sister Natsuko, an expatriate from Korea...
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Miyamoto Musashi
The first of five Musashi series, Shinobu and her brother Genichiro plead with the famous swordsman ...
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Utamaro and His Five Women
Utamaro, a great artist, lives to create portraits of beautiful women, and the brothels of Tokyo pro...
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Her Brother
Set in 1926 when Japanese tradition was much stronger, this drama looks at the inner workings of a s...
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Flame of My Love
A woman's struggle for equality in Japan in the 1880s. Eiko Hirayama leaves Okayama for Tokyo, where...
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Woman of Tokyo
Ryoichi and Chikako, brother and sister, live together. Chikako toils during the day and, at night, ...
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Bright Sea
On the day of college graduation, Mieko (Sayuri Yoshinaga) stood on stage as the valedictorian for t...
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Ornamental Hairpin
A Japanese mountain inn patron's foot is cut by an ornamental hairpin accidentally left behind by a ...
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Sincere Heart
A young student falls into a hopeless romantic attraction to a sick girl, whom he can only see from ...
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The Village Bride
Japanese silent film from 1928. Kinema Junpo ranked it among the ten best Japanese movies of the yea...
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King of the Land
Japanese silent film from 1928, ranked as Kinema Junpo's second-best Japanese movie of the year....
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A Tale of Archery at the Sanjusangendo
In A Tale of Archery, young, timid bowmaster Kazuma (Akitake Kôno) seeks to beat the archery record ...
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Useless Button
A hard-working new employee at a trading company is promoted through the company president's busines...
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The Ballad of Narayama
In Kabuki style, the film tells the story of a remote mountain village where the scarcity of food le...
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A Wanderer's Notebook
Considered one of the finest late Naruses and a model of film biography, A Wanderer’s Notebook featu...
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The Neighbour's Wife and Mine
A playwright moves to a rural neighborhood to avoid the distractions of the city, but he discovers t...
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The Dancing Girl of Izu
"The Dancing Girl of Izu" tells of the story between a young male student who is touring the Izu Pen...
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A Legend or Was It?
A Tokyo family escaping the war relocates to a Hokkaido village; their daughter is set to marry the ...
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Burden of Life
A middle-aged father has just married off his third daughter, but still has his nine year old son to...
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Army
Though plagued by ill health all his life, a young Japanese man is obligated to fulfill his family's...
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The Three Treasures
The legend of the birth of Shintoism. In Fourth Century Japan, the Emperor's son Ouso expects to suc...
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The Eternal Rainbow
Two men at an ironworks encounter roadblocks: the first does not have the grades to get a job, while...
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Wedding Ring
A jewelry store president begins to fall for the doctor treating her husband's illness....
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Yotsuya Ghost Story Part 1
Iemon Tamiya is an impoverished masterless samurai who craves a better life, which he cannot have be...
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Yotsuya Ghost Story Part 2
Part 2 starts where the first film ended, with Iemon disposing of the bodies of his wife and Kohei, ...
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A Man's Recompense: Part 1
Sabu Toshinobu is an archaeologist who has taken a liking to Kinuyo Tanaka, the daughter of an archa...
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A Man's Recompense: Part 2
Sabu Toshinobu is an archaeologist who has taken a liking to Kinuyo Tanaka, the daughter of an archa...
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Flower
Most of the students studying Ikebana with Kozoe Iemoto are daughters of rich Tokyo families. Kozoe ...
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A Certain Woman
Pretty Oshige is deceived by her first love. After this, she lives a hard lifestyle, working at a nu...
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The Travels of Kinuyo Tanaka
Compilation of film footage documenting Japanese film star Kinuyo Tanaka's goodwill tour of the U.S....
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Forever a Woman
Fumiko, mother of two children and wife of an unfaithful man, shares her family life with her buddin...
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The Moon Has Risen
Mokichi is the widowed father of three daughters, with whom he lives on the premises of a temple sin...
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Record of a Woman Doctor
A group of female doctors travel to a remote village during their summer holiday to offer free medic...
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Okoto and Sasuke
A period piece about the love of a wealthy blind woman, a teacher of koto and shamisen, and her devo...
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An Heir's Place
This film stars Tanaka Kinuyo as the mother of the heir to the Hosho name, a famous lineage of Noh a...
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Victory of Women
Representing a destitute mother in an infanticide trial, a female lawyer attempts to convince a cons...
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Yellow Crow
Ichiro Yoshida, the father of the boy Kiyoshi, who has been repatriated from China, returns home aft...
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I Graduated, But...
Tetsuo Nomoto, a young college graduate tries to find a decent job by himself. Later on, he will mar...
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The Scent of Incense
After her mother runs away from home, Tomoko is raised to be a geisha. One day Tomoko meets her moth...
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The New Road: Akemi
The eldest daughter of a noble family is in love with an aviator while being courted by a fellow ari...
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Where Chimneys Are Seen
Where Chimneys Are Seen focuses primarily on the interconnected lives of two couples in a lower-midd...
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Kinuyo Tanaka, a Woman We Talk About
This documentary composed of numerous testimonies and archives, filmed in Japan highlights the extra...
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Marching On
A farmer’s boy, obsessed with his balsa-and-paper flying models and with dreams of real aircraft, de...
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I Flunked, But...
This bittersweet comedy tells the tale of a group of college roommates attempting to cheat their way...
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Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?
When a young man inherits his father's lucrative business, he cheats the system to set up three of h...
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Dragnet Girl
A gangster tries to find redemption with the inadvertent help of an innocent shop girl and his jealo...
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Okayo's Preparedness
A young student of traditional dance falls in love with a handsome young man who visits the dance sc...
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Red Beard
Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed w...
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Mama, I Need You!
After finishing the course of junior high school, Kazuo comes up to Tokyo, leaving his mother alone ...
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(Street of Wandering Pigeons) When Will the Birds Come Home
Yoshida Denkichi does loses sight of his wife Chiyoko and daughter Toyoko during the war, and is tak...
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Osayo Koi Sugata
The poor novelist Yamamoto is writing his novel, determined and with a headband around his head. Wit...
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The Bride Talks in Her Sleep
This pair of gentle yet witty and inventive comedies from the director of The Neighbour's Wife and M...
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Lullaby of the Earth
The story of an orphan girl, brought up in naive, rustic innocence by an elderly relative, who is su...
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The Loyal 47 Ronin
This 1932 adaptation is the earliest sound version of the ever-popular and much-filmed Chushingura s...
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Ginza Cosmetics
A luckless geisha struggles to make a living for herself and her young son....
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The Inner Palace Conspiracy
A period mystery in which an unconventional priest exposes the truth behind the bizarre death of a m...
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The Tree of Love
A young doctor, Kozo Tsumura, falls for young nurse Katsue Takaishi. But she's got a secret: she's a...
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Tsukiyo no kasa
Housewives from four neighboring households casually gather at an old well at Kaneko's house in a re...
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The Lady of Musashino
Set in post-war Japan, The Lady of Musashino tells the story of Michiko, a disillusioned young woman...
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Marriage
In postwar Japan a young woman is unable to marry her sweetheart because her family's in difficult c...
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Geisha in the Old City
Directed by Hiroshi Inagaki, the drama, set in the brothels of Shimabara in post-war Kyoto, is a mov...
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Love Letter
A sad and troubled man finds a new job five years after the end of WWII, where he writes love letter...
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How Sorrowful
The story of a novelist whose wife is confined in a mental hospital. His love for her drives him to ...
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The Ataka Family
Soichi Ataka is the eldest son of Ataka family. Although mentally challenged, he's a person with a g...
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The Fencing Master
The Fencing Master tells the story of a man trying to survive as the only world he knows is becoming...
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The Genealogy of Women
A melodrama by noted auteur and father of director Yoshitaro Nomura, Hotei Nomura. This is apparentl...
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Chikamatsu's Love in Osaka
Chubei, the adopted son of an Osaka courier, falls desperately in love with the courtesan Umegawa. T...
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My Elder Brother
Jyuta, an honest owner of a taxi company, has a younger half-brother who is involved in the yakuza w...
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On This Earth
Ichiro’s family used to be a large landowner, but now he is living in poverty with his mother. His m...
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Lady Doctor Kinuyo
Kinuyo is a daughter of doctor of Chinese medicine, and Yasuo is a son of surgeon. Their families al...
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Song of the Flower Basket
Three men fall in love with the same young girl who works in a tonkatsu restaurant in the Shitamachi...
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Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director
In 39 interviews with actors and actresses, writers, producers and staff members, interspersed with ...
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Men vs. Women
A musical film made for the inauguration of Shochiku's Ofuna Studio, with an all-star cast of the er...
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Stepbrothers
In a military family, an illegitimate son is brutalized by his brothers. A patriarchal, feudalistic ...
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An Innocent Maid
In a back alley of the Shitamachi district of Tokyo, Kihachi bears witness to a series of romantic c...
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Young Lady
Lost film. Two reporters find that they are repeatedly beaten to the scoop by a new female journalis...
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A Hen in the Wind
Tokiko is a mother patiently waiting for her husband's return from the war when her 4-year old son b...
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Women in Prison
The woman prison has a cast all with a story of their own and with no dull or routine day. There is ...
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Ugetsu
In 16th century Japan, peasants Genjuro and Tobei sell their earthenware pots to a group of soldiers...
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Sorrow Is Only for Women
The beauty of the Japanese family system is portrayed through the women who greet a woman who went t...
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Tora-san's Dream-Come-True
When Tora-san returns to visit his family, he is surprised to find an arrogant professor occupying h...
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Spring Thunder
Eiko is an innocent young lady born into a wealthy family with nothing to offer. She was good at sin...
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The New Road: Ryota
The eldest daughter of a noble family is in love with an aviator while being courted by a fellow ari...
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The Blacksmith of the Forest
A blacksmith is chased out of the village by the sinister village chief and forced to move to the f...
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Let's Go in Good Spirits
In the movies of those times, you can see young boys in the company scene often. Those boys were cal...
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Let's Go, Grandma!
Let's Go, Grandma! plays like an exuberant, goofy update to Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story. Kinuyo Tanak...
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Mother and Child
The movie follows a young woman (Kinuyo Tanaka), a daughter of a high-ranking businessman and his ne...
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Kinuyo's First Love
Kinuyo is a daughter of rice cracker shop in downtown. She fell in love with her sister's boyfriend....
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Osaka Woman
When Ochika, from a rich family, marries Danpei, a poor shamisen player, she devotes herself complet...
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Story of Lightning
Gensaburo Funaki and Oyuki were childhood friends, but Gensaburo misunderstood that Oyuki was hesita...
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Fallen Samurai
A period drama about samurai who survived a loss in battle. An early jidaegeki by Hiroshi Shimizu....
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Oh! Carefree, Aren't You?
Short Japanese silent comedy from 1926. Directed by "Kamata Nonkinosuke," a probable pseudonym for a...
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Young Master
Japanese silent film from 1926. (Obo-chan meaning "Young Master.") Written by Ayame Mizushima, the f...
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Torrent
Japanese silent film from 1926, directed by Heinosuke Gosho and featuring Kinuyo Tanaka....
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The Complete Story of Jirocho Shimizu, Part 2: Ashura's Revenge
A dramatized chapter in the life of Shimizu Jirocho, a famous yakuza boss, gambler, and folk hero of...
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An Embarrassing Dream
Japanese silent film from 1927. A landmark in the careers of two up-and-coming stars: director Heino...
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Madame Pearl
Japanese silent film from 1927, based on a popular serialized novel by Kan Kikuchi....
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Sankichi the Flying Squirrel
Japanese jidaigeki from 1927. The titular character's nickname may suggest agility, stealth, or othe...
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Chronicles of a Sea Country
Japanese silent film from 1928, co-starring Chojiro Hayashi and up-and-coming actress Kinuyo Tanaka....
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The Eternal Heart
The logger Yamato has been raising his daughter alone since his wife died in childbirth. The baron w...
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Iron Virgin
After being separated from their parents in childhood and left as orphans, Kyōko and Namiko were rai...
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A Wife Quits
Hirano's wife Yasuko had grown weary of her life of poverty. Her feelings of dissatisfaction deepene...
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Mother, Don't Tarnish Your Name
Because of her husband’s suicide, a young widow finds herself suddenly cast into a life of solitude,...
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The Model of New Women
A feature-length work based on Kan Kikuchi’s newspaper novel, adapted for the screen by Kōgo Noda. W...
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The Beating
Japanese silent comedy from 1930. The directorial debut of Hiromasa Nomura....
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Song of Youth
Shirō Kuroki, the adopted son of the Yamada family, shares a deep and mutual love with his foster si...
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Where Do Women Go?
Japanese silent film from 1930 with an acclaimed performance by Sumiko Kurishima....
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The Big City: Explosion
Japanese silent film from 1930. The second chapter of "The Big City: Labor" (1929)....
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The Tale of Kinuyo
Japanese silent film from 1930. Directed by Heinosuke Gosho, the film marked a new stage in the arti...
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Record of Love and Desire
Record of Love and Desire a.k.a. Desire of Night (愛慾の記[b], Aiyoku no ki; lit. "Memories of Love and ...
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Love, Be with Humanity: Part 1
The three-hour Ai yo jinrui to tomo ni are / Love, Be with Humanity (1931) starts as a satire of ali...
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Love, Be with Humanity: Part 2
The three-hour Ai yo jinrui to tomo ni are / Love, Be with Humanity (1931) starts as a satire of ali...
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ABC Lifeline: Fujieda Chapter
First chapter of Tasujiro Shimazu's ABC Lifeline, released two months before ABC Lifeline: Part 1 an...
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ABC Lifeline
Japanese silent film directed by Yasujirô Shimazu, originally released as a two-part movie on Decemb...
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The Golden Demon
Kan’ichi Hazama and Omiya Shigisawa are engaged to be married, but Omiya breaks the engagement to ma...
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Victory or Defeat
Japanese film from 1932, adapted from the novel by Kan Kikuchi. The first sound film from director Y...
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The Sun Rises from the East
The Japanese debut film of silent-era star Sessue Hayakawa, in which he not only starred but directe...
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Shine, Japanese Women
Shigeko and Midori, star swimmers at the renowned Kirishima Girls’ School, are training relentlessly...
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The Cheerleading Captain's Love
Tsukamoto and Omitsu are close friends, but one day, Tsukamoto becomes fascinated by Ayako, whom he ...
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Clear and Cloudy
Japanese film from 1933, adapted from a story serialized in the entertainment magazine "Fuji."...
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Mother of the East
Japanese drama from 1934. A major production of Shochiku Studio, directed by Hiroshi Shimizu....
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Sakura Ondo
Sakura Ondo was a sound adaptation based on a popular 1934 song, produced at the Shochiku Kamata Stu...
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Constellations on Earth, Part One: Earth Chapter
Japanese film from 1934, based on a novel by Itsuma Maki (real name Kaitarō Hasegawa)....
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Constellations on Earth, Part 2: Constellations
Japanese film from 1934, based on a novel by Itsuma Maki (real name Kaitarō Hasegawa)....
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Storm in the City
Japanese movie from 1934. The final film of director Hôtei Nomura, who died from a stroke suffered a...
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