Essential Art House: Janus Films Collection 🎞 🎥

In 1939, Sakura Nishi is a young army nurse who is sent to the field hospitals in China during the Sino-Japanese war. She has to assist the surgeon Dr. Okabe with an incredible number of amputations. In the crowded wards, she gives sympathy to some of the soldiers, including sexually servicing one who has lost both arms and has no hope of returning home. She falls in love with Dr. Okabe, and follows him to the front, even though he is impotent from his morphine addiction.

To win the war, the Americans dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

World War II, in a British disciplinary camp located in the Libyan desert, prisoners are persecuted by Staff Sergeant Williams (Ian Hendry), who made them climb again and again, under the heavy sun, an artificial hill built right in the middle of the camp. Harris (Ian Bannen) is a more human and compassionate guard, but the chief, R.S.M. Wilson (Harry Andrews), refuses to disown his subordinate Williams. One day, five new prisoners arrive. Each of them will deal in a different way with the authority and Williams' ferocity.

Mizushima is a soldier in the Japanese army in Burma in World War II. He's a good soldier and frequently plays his harp to entertain his fellow soldiers. When the war comes to an end, he is asked by the British to go into the mountains to try and convince a Japanese troop to surrender. Given only 30 minutes to convince them, Mizushima is unsuccessful - they would rather die with honor - and the British attack. Deeply affected by what has happened, he becomes a Buddhist monk, traveling the countryside burying the remains of Japanese soldiers. He is unable however to rejoin his brothers-in-arms.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, in 1940, Lieutenant Kurokawa returns home as a honored and decorated soldier... but deprived of his arms and legs lost in battle in mainland China. All hopes, from the village men and women to close family members, turn to Shigeko, the Lieutenant's wife: she must honor the Emperor and the country in setting an example for all by fulfilling her duty and taking care of the 'god soldier'...

In WW2 Manchuria, a prostitute grows to resent an abusive adjutant and falls in love with his aide.

Kaji is sent to the Japanese army labeled Red and is mistreated by the vets. Along his assignment, Kaji witnesses cruelties in the army; he revolts against the abusive treatment spent to the recruit Obara that commits suicide; he also sees his friend Shinjô Ittôhei defecting to the Russian border; and he ends in the front to fight a lost battle against the Russian tanks division.

Twenty six years after the execution of her soldier husband on the dying days of World War II the widow is still searching for the truth by meeting with, questioning and interviewing the dead man's comrades, companions and executioner. The stories retold are one part of the reason why war is as bad as has been said. The state and existence of the survivors is another witness to the dangers of war and warmongers.

Part three of a trilogy. After the Japanese defeat to the Russians in the last episode, Kaji, the Japanese soldier and humanistic protagonist, leads the last remaining men through Manchuria. Intent on returning to his dear wife and his old life, Kaji faces great odds in a variety of different harrowing circumstances as he and his fellow men sneak behind enemy lines. Ultimately, he finds himself in the exact opposite position he held in the first episode: Then a labor manager, Kaji is now a prisoner of war, forced to work for the Russians, who do not seem to hold to the Communist ideals in which Kaji himself had put his faith.

In a freezing cold World War II winter, two pro-Soviet partisans - Sotnikov and Rybak - head off to find food for themselves and their compatriots. They find a sheep at the home of a German Headman but their return to camp is interrupted when they are arrested by a Nazi patrol. Taken prisoner, Sotnikov stands true to his beliefs and refuses to answer any questions despite physical abuse and torture. Rybak on the other hand argues that since they know nothing, they should simply tell them all that they know and do whatever they can to stay alive. One of them will live, but at a very heavy cost.

Six years after the atomic bombing of 06 August 1945, the school teacher Takako Ishikawa returns to Hiroshima on her vacation to visit friends and to honor her parents that died in the bombing. Takako was raised by her uncle and aunt. While in her hometown she stays with her friend, Natsue Morikawa, who has become infertile due to the side effect of the A-bomb. While walking along the destroyed city, she sees a former family friend, Iwakichi, who worked with her father, and is almost blind and has become a beggar. She pays a visit to his shanty in the slums and discovers that his grandson, Taro, is living in an orphanage since Iwakichi's shanty is no place to raise the child. When Morikawa tells her that three former pupils from the kindergarten have survived to the bombing, Takako pays a visit to each one of them and finds how the A-bomb and the radiation have affected their lives. Before returning home, Takako asks Iwakachi to let her bring Taro with her; but their bond is very strong.

Mr and Mrs Shizuma, and their niece Yasuko, make their way through the ruins of Hiroshima, just after the atomic bomb has dropped. Five years later, Yasuko is living with her aunt and uncle, and her senile grandmother, in a village containing many of the bomb survivors. Yasuko does not appear to be affected by the bomb, but the Shizuma's are worried about her marriage prospects, as she could succumb to radiation sickness at any time.

The young and patriotic student Demachy joins the French army in 1914 to defend his country. But he and his comrades soon experience the terrifying, endless trench war in Champagne, where more and more wooden crosses have to be erected for this cannon fodder.

In the World War II, the pacifist and humanist Japanese Kaji accepts to travel with his wife Michiko to the tiny Manchurian village Loh Hu Liong to work as supervisor in an iron ore mine to avoid to be summoned to the military service. Kaji works with Okishima (Sô Yamamura) and he implements a better treatment to the laborers and improves the mine production. When the feared Kempetai (The "Military Police Corps", the military police arm of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1881 to 1945) brings six hundred Chinese POWs to the mine, Kaji negotiates with their leaders expecting them to control their comrades. However the methods of Kaji upset the corrupt system in the site, and the foreman Furuya (Kôji Mitsui) plots a scheme to use the naive Chen (Akira Ishihama) to turn off the electrical power of the barbwire fences to allow the prisoners to escape. When seven prisoners are falsely accused of an attempt of fleeing, a cruel Kempetai sergeant uses his sword to behead the prisoners. When Kaji protests, the POWs react sparing the lives of four prisoners but Kaji is arrested and tortured. When he is released, he is summoned to join the army and accused of being Red.

July 1944, The Imperial Japanese Army Garrison on Saipan mounted its final suicidal Banzai charge against the American Marines in the Battle for Saipan. Out of the 4000 Japanese who waged the charge there are almost no survivors but among them left alive is Captain Oba Sakae (Yutaka Takenouchi). Playing dead, he initially avoids capture and then is joined by a small band of survivors who retreat deep into the jungle. There, he as the highest ranking officer still alive will take command of the surviving 46 soldiers and 200 plus Japanese civilians now in his care who will evade the Marines and conduct a hit and run Guerrilla War long after the Americans declare the island secured in American hands. Enraged by Oba's resistance, the temperamental USMC Commander Colonel Pollard (Daniel Baldwin) launches an all out effort to hunt the man the Marines have dubbed "The Fox" of the Pacific. Failing to Capture Oba, Pollard is sacked and replaced by the mild mannered Colonel Wessinger (Treat Williams) who decides to take a rational less aggressive approach by deploying Captain Lewis (Sean McGowan) who lived in Japan and was both fluent in Japanese language and Culture to go reason with Oba and convince him to surrender. Based on the real life exploits of Captain Oba Sakae, Oba - The Last Samurai tells the incredible true story of one man who found the courage to live defying both the Bushido of the day and the overwhelming US Forces for over 512 days raiding US bases for supplies while evading capture well past the Japanese Surrender and into history.

While performing in a touring kabuki troupe, leading female impersonator Yukinojo comes across the three men who drove his parents to suicide twenty years earlier, and plans his revenge, firstly by seducing the daughter of one of them, secondly by ruining them...

In 1942 British soldier Jack Celliers comes to a Japanese prison camp. The camp is run by Yonoi, who has a firm belief in discipline, honor and glory. In his view, the allied prisoners are cowards when they chose to surrender instead of committing suicide. One of the prisoners, interpreter John Lawrence, tries to explain the Japanese way of thinking, but is considered a traitor.

A Japanese soldier endures illness, starvation and brutality in the Philippines at the tail end of WW2.