Junzaburō Ban Movies

When an American is murdered in a Japanese inn, Tokyo police detective Munesue follows the trail of the killer to New York. There he is joined by a...

The film depicts carnivalesque atmosphere summed up by the cry "Ei ja nai ka" ("Why not?") in Japan in 1867 and 1868 in the days leading to the Meiji...

Three robbers escape with loot from a heist before one of them kills the others. Their corpses wash up near the aftermath of a maritime calamity,...

In Osaka's slum, youths without futures engage in pilfering, assault and robbery, prostitution, and the buying and selling of identity cards and of...

Three men vs. gangsters in a fight involving smuggled gold.

A young woman, an experienced gambler, enters a nunnery to atone for some of her father's crimes. When the nunnery runs into debt, she resorts to...

To solve the mystery of a murder of an old governess which takes place at a wealthy Daidoji family's country estate, family secrets and lies dating...

A quintessential example of the period "ghost cat" (bakeneko or kaibyo) movie, this was one of at least six such titles released by the studio Shinko...

The film is dedicated to the souls of flight school graduates killed in World War II. Young boys dream about becoming pilots and apply to flight...

The final film by Yuzo Kawashima.

Jiro, a smooth-talking, womanizing bartender, flees from a Yakuza boss to Yanagase.

Shiro Akitsu goes on a relentless search for his abducted 7-year-old daughter, with the aid of an Ainu dog summoned by a whistle she gave him.

Three men, all named Masa, join forces to capitalize on each of their unique yet questionable talents against a hyper-competitive Tokyo underworld.

Reiko Oshida stars as a young wannabe gangster tough girl, just released from reform school. She tracks down one of her classmates fathers, who runs...

A taut, economical policier-cum-gang-hostage thriller.

A roughneck named Komakichi of Kawachi, Osaka, comes back from a three-year training course to become a chef, hoping to be with his crush Tamae, a...

A Toho film featuring the comedy duo Konto 55, (コント55号), comprised of comedians Kinichi Hagimoto and Jiro Sakagami.

This extraordinarily complex film is not only a send-up of every samurai film ever made, it is also an extrapolation of the value of life. The...

Comedy around a motorman and a conductor of a streetcar.

This film follows the daily lives of a group of people barely scraping by in a slum on the outskirts of Tokyo. Yet as desperate as their...