Tsutomu Tamura

The Dancer

Based on a semi-autobiographical story by Ogai Mori, about a Japanese medical student who goes to Berlin to study in the 1880s and falls in love with a German ballet dancer.

Beyond the Shining Sea

Heartbroken Ukiko takes refuge with a relative after a devastating breakup. While away, she makes a dangerous match with the husband of her frigid cousin.

MacArthur's Children

In this drama at the end of World War II, the inhabitants of a small Japanese fishing village must come to terms with their nation's defeat and the sudden occupation of General MacArthur and his troops.

Demon Pond

When a lone traveler stumbles upon a remote, drought-stricken village, he finds himself engulfed in a whirlpool of myth, mystery, and magic: in a nearby pond reside spirits who hold the fate of the town’s inhabitants, including lovers Akira and Yuri, in their hands.

Eighteen Years, to the Sea

Kei and Atsuo were both enrolled in summer school. Kei was an honor student, and Atsuo was the polar opposite - but opposites attract. After school, the two head to the beach, where they find another student from their school competing against a local gang member, to see who is able to hold his breath longer under water. Overwhelmed by the excitement, Kei and Atsuo decide to try themselves.

The Youth Killer

Though his parents help him run the family business, Jun still feels persecuted by their love; when they bar him from meeting with his girlfriend, tensions increase.

Dear Summer Sister

14-year-old Sunaoko travels from Tokyo to Naha, Okinawa, with her father’s young fiancée Momoko in search of her half-brother whom she has never met. Their guide, a beer-guzzling ex-soldier, takes them to the locale’s tourist attractions, quickly delving into the underlying scars of the island’s wartime history.

The Ceremony

Oshima’s magisterial epic, centering on the ambivalent surviving heir of the Sakurada clan, uses ritual and the microcosm of the traditional family to trace the rise and fall of militaristic Japan across several decades.

The Man Who Left His Will on Film

A metaphysical mystery involving a university student's camera getting stolen, and the thief then committing suicide.

Boy

A family of four lives off of scams in which they pretend to be injured by automobiles.

Diary of a Shinjuku Thief

In Tokyo's Shinjuku district, the lives of a young man prone to theft, a young woman he meets at a bookstore, and a kabuki actor intersect.

Three Resurrected Drunkards

Three students spend their holidays at the seaside where they are mistaken for Koreans, a minority which is looked down on in Japan. The action develops into a crime story.

Good-bye Moscow

Ex-jazz pianist turned promoter finds he is successful, but empty. When an entrepreneur sends him to Moscow with a jazz combo, he falls in with the dissident youth of the city, and again finds life empty.

Death by Hanging

A Korean man is sentenced to death in Japan but somehow survives his execution, sending the authorities into a panic about what to do next.

Impasse

Shingo and Ritsuko have a baby: Takashi. They happen to be a happy couple, but soon Ritsuko wants to know who is the true father of Takashi, born by artificial insemination.

Japanese Summer: Double Suicide

A sex-obsessed woman, a suicidal man she meets on the street, and a gun-crazy wannabe gangster become trapped in an underground hideaway.

The Affair

As a young woman, Oriko condemned her widowed mother for openly pursuing relationships with younger men. After her mother passes away, she finds herself in an unhappy, loveless marriage and begins to understand her mother’s actions.

Sing a Song of Sex

Four sexually hungry high school students preparing for their university entrance exams meet up with an inebriated teacher singing bawdy drinking songs. This encounter sets them on a less than academic path.

Violence at Noon

Two young women must come to terms with the fact that a man they're deeply linked to is a murdering rapist.

The Start of Life

A young girl in an industrial town is saving her money to enter college. But her drunken father loses his job, her mother cannot make ends meet, and then the boy she likes loses everything when his factory fails. She takes all her savings out of the bank and offers them to him to make a new start. He refuses at first but eventually agrees and so she goes back to school to tell her teacher that she has decided not to continue college, that she is young and strong, and can make her own way in life.

The Dawn of Asia

The Dawn of Asia (アジアの曙) is a TV drama consisting of thirteen episodes about the trans-China/Japan collaboration of revolutionaries in the early twentieth century. It was Nagisa Oshima’s rare attempt to direct a TV drama in a social atmosphere in which Japan was embracing postwar prosperity as well as the effects of permeating mass media. Making an effort to reach out to the mass audience through a seemingly conventional method of filmic representation, Dawn of Asia takes up the epic of trans-Asiatic solidarity while challenging nationalism on both sides.

Prince of Wolves

As the post-war turmoil continued, Take, the boss of the waifs, stole the money of US soldiers and lived with friends. They were like children of wolves. By chance, they were found by and became a members of a yakuza family. Five years later, Take dominated the port town as a young boss.

The Catch

Towards the end of the Second World War, a downed U.S. pilot is captured and imprisoned by rural Japanese villagers, who await official instructions as to how to proceed with their “catch.”

Volunteering for Villainy

Two outsiders start a relationship in a mining town.

Volunteering for Villainy

Two outsiders start a relationship in a mining town.

Only She Knows

A young woman is attacked by a serial rapist and murderer whom her detective father is investigating. Though she survives, the impact of the event creates increasing discord and agony for her and her loved ones.

Shisha to no kekkon

A case of mistaken identity in which a woman assumes the role of widow to a man killed in a train accident.

Street of Love and Hope

A young man runs a scam selling pigeons that always return to his home. He falls under the wing of Kyoko, an older student whose heart is touched after Masuo sells his pigeons to her. However, after his scam is revealed, can these feelings truly remain the same?