Lists

Picture of a movie: Dr. Akagi
Picture of a movie: Tokyo Story
Picture of a movie: Where Chimneys Are Seen
Picture of a movie: Late Spring
Picture of a movie: One Wonderful Sunday
Picture of a movie: Shukujo wa nani o wasureta ka
Picture of a movie: The Only Son
Picture of a movie: Sisters of the Gion
Picture of a movie: Oboroyo no onna
Picture of a movie: Mr. Thank You
Picture of a movie: Wife! Be Like a Rose!
Picture of a movie: The Downfall of Osen
Picture of a movie: burden of life
Picture of a movie: Street Without End
Picture of a movie: Tonari no Yae-chan
Picture of a movie: Every-Night Dreams

21 Movies

小市民 映画

Sort by:
Recent Desc

Incorrectly called “ Shomin-geki” when it should be the above “shōshimin-eiga,” these are Japanese films about the ordinary, common people. Sometimes with humor, often harsh family relationships

Liked by

Inspired by this list

Picture of a movie: Tokyo Twilight
movies

Tokyo Twilight

1957
Tokyo banker Shûkichi Sugiyama's two surviving offspring, adult daughters Takako Numata and Akiko Sugiyama, live with him. He raised them on his own after his wife/their mother Kisako abandoned the family long ago. The father worries about both daughters in different ways. Takako has left her writer/translator husband Yasuo Numata without telling him, and she moves back to her father's home with her and Yasuo's 2-year-old daughter Michiko. Akiko, an English shorthand student who has no recollection of her mother, has been staying out to all hours of the night. Shûkichi and his daughters' Aunt Shigeko believe that sullen Akiko needs a boyfriend to shake her out of her funk, and Auntie starts trying to find her an appropriate suitor. Akiko's family doesn't know that her tie to fellow college student Kenji Kimura is the reason for her uncommunicative sullenness--and why she has secretly been trying to raise ¥5,000. While Shûkichi takes some responsibility for both their problems--he had preferred Numata to Takako's other suitor at the time, who might ultimately have been the better match--he's more disappointed in Akiko than worried about her; he had given her more attention than Takako in their formative years because Akiko never really had a mother. And at just this time, their mother, whom they had presumed was long deceased, reenters their lives, seeming to at least want to have some sort of relationship with them. Kisako's return has a profound effect on both Takako and Akiko, most specifically in how they view the recent goings-on in their own lives.
Picture of a movie: The End of Summer
movies

The End of Summer

1961
Approaching his senior years, widowed Manbei Kohayagawa is the owner of a small family run sake brewery in Kyoto. Hisao, his daughter Fumiko's husband, works for the company. Another daughter, Osaka based Akiko, who works at an art gallery, is widowed, her deceased husband who decided not to work in the family business, but maintain his own career as a college professor. Kohayagawa's third and last daughter, Noriko, a clerk in an office, has never been married, but is now of marrying age. Because the business is not doing well as it cannot compete with the larger sake companies, Kohayagawa wants to ensure that all his daughters are taken care of financially, which means finding husbands for both Akiko and Noriko, that task which is aided by Kohayagawa's younger brother-in-law, Yanosuke Kitagawa. Akiko and Noriko know about the arrangements with the potential husbands - although Akiko's first "date" is more of a surprise to her - and generally go along with the dates as are requested of them, but neither is sure if it is what she is looking for for herself. Akiko is quite content with her current lot in life, taking care of her growing son, Minoru. And Noriko has only confided in Akiko that she has a close friendship with a man named Tadashi Teramoto, a teacher who has just moved to Sapporo indefinitely for work. Kohayagawa's want for his daughters may also be because he has rediscovered companionship in his own life, with a former mistress, Sasaki Tsune, who he accidentally ran into after not seeing her for nineteen years. Sasaki has told him that her twenty-one year old daughter, spoiled Yuriko Tsune, is his biological daughter, something he believes, although Sasaki doesn't really know or care, as doesn't Yuriko, especially if they can get out of him what they want. Kohayagawa's family does not know of Sasaki currently in his life, but they do know of his marital indiscretion previously with her and do suspect that his "business meetings" which are ruses to meet with her are not what he says they are. Something that happens to Kohayagawa leads to Akiko and Noriko coming to some decisions about their own lives.

More lists by Niko Aiello

movies
movies
movies

    Best of All Time

    I guess I’m more of an arthouse snob than I thought
    February 2023
    10

    User Image: NikoAiello
    List by
    @NikoAiello
    movies
    movies
    movies

      Sci-Fi and/or Horror

      List includes: Stargate, Starship Troopers, Spaceballs
      February 2023
      1

      User Image: NikoAiello
      List by
      @NikoAiello
      movies
      movies
      movies

        Watchlist 2.0

        List includes: Songs from the Second Floor, Calvary, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
        February 2023
        0

        User Image: NikoAiello
        List by
        @NikoAiello
        books
        Image of Books to Read
        Image of Books to Read

          Books to Read

          List includes: Underworld, language history, language change, and language relationship: an introduction to historical and comparative linguistics, meaning in language: an introduction to semantics and pragmatics
          September 2022
          0

          User Image: NikoAiello
          List by
          @NikoAiello
          movies
          movies
          movies

            Italian Neorealism

            Fellini = fantasy/baroque, Pasolini = sexuality, Rossellini = war, Visconti = decadence/decline of nobility
            March 2021
            3

            User Image: NikoAiello
            List by
            @NikoAiello
            movies
            movies
            movies

              Poliziotteschi Films

              1970s Italian crime/action films. Born out of the French gangster film resurgence of the late 1960s-1970s, as well as the cultural turmoil in Italy at the time. Violence, vigilantism, corruption, “greatness of the working class protagonist over the corrupt bureaucracy”
              March 2021
              1

              User Image: NikoAiello
              List by
              @NikoAiello
              movies
              movies
              movies

                Hong Kong New Wave

                Post-Colonialism, nostalgia, modernity and youth culture, and the ultimate cultural identity of Hong Kong
                March 2021
                3

                User Image: NikoAiello
                List by
                @NikoAiello
                movies
                movies
                movies

                  Neuer Deutscher Film

                  German films, 1962 - 1982, born out of the Oberhausen Manifesto. Disillusionment with post-War Germany, rejection of mainstream German cinema and art, socially critical. Would go on to influence Italian Neorealism, Nouvelle Vague, and British New Wave
                  March 2021
                  0

                  User Image: NikoAiello
                  List by
                  @NikoAiello
                  movies
                  movies
                  movies

                    Commedia all'italiana

                    Italian Comedies from the 1950s to 1970s: lots of satire, lots of "socially taboo" subjects, usually to the background of the working class with some sprinkles of social criticism
                    March 2021
                    1

                    User Image: NikoAiello
                    List by
                    @NikoAiello