Mikio Naruse Movies

Keiko, whom everyone calls Mama, narrates her story: she's a hostess on the Ginza, 30, a widow. She describes life's vicious cycle: acting cheerful...

A married Japanese forester during WWII is sent to Indochina to manage forests. He meets a young Japanese typist and promises to leave his wife. He...

War widow Reiko rebuilds and runs the grocery shop in the house of her husband's family. Many years later, their business is threatened by a newly...

Otsuta is running the geisha house Tsuta in Tokyo. Her business is heavily in debt. Her daughter Katsuyo doesn't see any future in her mother's trade...

The eldest daughter of a rural family Mon returns home from Tokyo pregnant after an affair with a college student Kobata, which causes a scandal that...

Michiyo lives in the small place Osaka and is not happy with her marriage, all she does is cook and clean for her husband.

A man is involved in a fatal car accident, and though he is blameless, his company transfers him to a remote branch in a small town. Before he...

Considered one of the finest late Naruses and a model of film biography, A Wanderer’s Notebook features remarkable performances by Hideko...

An ingratiating bride develops warm ties to her father-in-law while her cold husband blithely slights her for another woman.

Ten years into a marriage, the wife is disappointed by the husband's lack of financial success, meaning she has to work and can't treat herself and...

With delicate, unobtrusive strokes, Naruse evokes both the humor and bitterness of his characters’ dilemmas, in this bleak, compelling poignant...

The Angry Street includes a great deal of location shooting in the rebuilt city, including downtown streets, residential neighborhoods, the campus of...

A teenaged girl witnesses her widowed mother's attempt to sustain her family.

Sanae is left a widow after her prestigious husband dies, but holds the proceeds of a million yen insurance policy. Being childless, her former...

Tashiro coincidentally meets his best friend Sugimoto in a bar very close to the apartment in which Sugimoto’s wayward wife is found dead....

A married couple looking for an apartment move in with the husband's co-worker, a widower. The husband becomes jealous of the widower and his wife.

An aging geisha, whose angry teenage son is ashamed of her profession, works alongside a young geisha, resentful of her family for forcing her into a...

A woman marries, gives birth to a stillborn child, and divorces, falls in love with a hotel-keeper, only to find herself subordinated to his drive...

The critical establishment was clearly not prepared to accept a woman's prison film featuring former prostitutes recovering from venereal diseases,...

This film depicts a troupe of wandering kabuki players traveling through rural Japan.