Old films

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.

A troupe of travelling players arrive at a small seaport in the south of Japan. Komajuro Arashi, the aging master of the troupe, goes to visit his old flame Oyoshi and their son Kiyoshi, even though Kiyoshi believes Komajuro is his uncle. The leading actress Sumiko is jealous and so, in order to humiliate the master, persuades the younger actress Kayo to seduce Kiyoshi.

Episodes from the lives of a group of Tokyo slum-dwellers: Rokkuchan, an intellectually disabled boy who brings meaning and routine to his life by driving an imaginary streetcar; children who support their parents by scrounging or by tedious and ill-paying endeavours; schemers who plot or dream of escaping the shackles of poverty.

In the early 60's in Tokyo, the widower Hirayama is a former captain from the Japanese navy that works as a manager of a factory and lives with his twenty-four year-old daughter Michiko and his son Kazuo in his house. His older son Koichi is married with Akiko that are compulsive consumers and Akiko financially controls their expenses. Hirayama frequently meets his old friends Kawai and Professor Horie, who is married with a younger wife, to drink in a bar. When their school teacher Sakuma comes to a reunion of Hirayama with old school mates, they learn that the old man lives with his daughter that stayed single to take care of him. Michiko lives a happy life with her father and her brother, but Hirayama feels that it is time to let her go and tries to arrange a marriage for her.

It's the early twentieth century Sweden. Adolescent siblings Alexander and Fanny Ekdahl lead a relatively joyous and exuberant life with their well-off extended paternal family, led by the family matriarch, their grandmother, Helena Ekdahl. The openness of the family culture is exemplified by Helena's now deceased husband ending up becoming best friends with one of her lovers, a Jewish puppet maker named Isak Jacobi, and their Uncle Gustav Adolf's open liaison with one of the family maids, Maj, who everyone in the family adores, even Gustav Adolf's wife, Alma. Between the siblings, Alexander in particular has inherited the family's love of storytelling, his parents and his grandmother who are actors and who manage their own theater. Things change for Alexander and Fanny when their father, Oscar, dies shortly after Christmas 1907. Although she truly does believe she loves him, the children's mother, Emilie, decides to marry Bishop Edvard Vergérus, who she first met as the officiate at Oscar's funeral. She also wants a father figure for the children. Going into the marriage, Emilie has inclinations that it will be a much different life than she had with the Ekdahls, but is not prepared for the harsh, austere and strict life Edvard rules with an iron fist. Emilie, Alexander and Fanny end up being prisoners in the bishop's stark and humorless house. As Alexander butts head with his stepfather and tries to learn how to keep to his own principles while obeying Edvard, Emilie tries to figure out a way to regain her and her children's own destiny, as Edvard will not consent to divorce, and her "desertion" in the eyes of the law means that Alexander and Fanny would become his wards.

Kiichi Nakajima, an elderly foundry owner, is so frightened and obsessed with the idea of nuclear extermination that his family decides to have him ruled incompetent. Nakajima's fervent wish is for his family to join him in escaping from Japan to the relative safety of South America. Harada, a civil volunteer in the case, sympathizes with Nakajima's conviction, but the old man's irrational behaviour prevents the court from taking his fears seriously.

In 1923, in the province of Shinshu, the widow and simple worker of a silk factory Tsune Nonomiya (O-Tsune) decides to send her only son to Tokyo for having a better education. Thirteen years later, she visits her son Ryosuke Nonomiya (Shinichi Himori), and finds that he is a poor and frustrated night-school teacher with a wife, Sugiko (Yoshiko Tsubouchi), and a baby boy.

After securing a major victory on the battlefield, Taketoti Washizu and one of his commanders, Yoshiaki Miki, find themselves lost in the maze-like Spider's Web forest. They come across a spirit-like seer who tells them of their future: both have been promoted because of their victory that day; Washizu will someday be the Great Lord of the Spider's Web castle while Miki's son will someday rule as Great Lord as well. When they arrive at the castle, they learn that the first part of the prophecy is correct. Washizu has no desire to become Great Lord but his ambitious wife urges him to reconsider. When the current Great Lord makes a surprise visit to his garrison outpost, Washizu is again promoted to commander of his vanguard but his wife reminds him of the danger that comes with the position. As pressure mounts, Wahizu takes action leading to its inevitable conclusion.

While dealing drugs on the side, Gonda operates the Genet, a gay bar in Tokyo where he has hired a stable of transvestites to service the customers. The madame or lead "girl" of the bar is Leda, an older, old fashioned geisha-styled transvestite with who Gonda lives and is in a relationship. Arguably, the most popular of the girls working at the bar now is Eddie, a younger, modern transvestite. Like Leda, Eddie lives openly as a woman. Eddie's troubled life includes her father having deserted the family when she was a child, and having had a difficult relationship with her mother following, she who mocked Eddie's ability to be the man the of the family. Gonda enters into a sexual relationship with Eddie, who he promises to make madame of the bar, replacing Leda in both facets of his life, with Eddie having threatened to quit otherwise. While Leda suspects what Gonda and Eddie are up to, Gonda tells Leda what she wants to hear, much as he tells Eddie what she wants to hear. As this triangle plays itself out, what actually happens is affected by a joint history between Gonda and Eddie of which they are unaware. This film teeters between fiction and non-fiction as a secondary story is Eddie's friendship with a group of counter-culturalists, including filmmaker Guevara, whose making of a movie mirrors the making of this film. That balance tips into non-fiction as the actual actors in this and Guevara's movie talk about issues covered in this film, such as drug use, and sexuality, especially transvestism as the transvestite characters are played by real life transvestites.

In mediaeval Japan a compassionate governor is sent into exile. His wife and children try to join him, but are separated, and the children grow up amid suffering and oppression.

A father and his son, a son and his father. Horikawa is a widower, a teacher, and a good father to Ryohei, who's about 10. After a tragedy, Horikawa resigns from teaching and takes Ryohei from Tokyo to the town of Ueno, enrolling him in junior high; to the lad's sorrow, he will be a boarder. Horikawa returns to work in Tokyo, their separation is complete. Jump ahead more than ten years: with dad's help, Ryohei has finished college and has a teaching job in Akita. Horikawa considers living with his son, which Ryohei wants, but the elder's notions of duty and hard work preclude it. Ryohei arranges a ten-day vacation with his father. Heartbreak comes quietly, nearly hidden by dignity.

A young man and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he has an extramarital romance.

It's the early nineteenth century, and young Dr. Noboru Yasumoto has been summoned for a reason unknown to him to rural Koishikawa Medical Clinic from Nagasaki, where he has been stationed for three years completing his internship. The clinic, headed by the outwardly stern Dr. Kyojô Niide - nicknamed "Red Beard" for that attribute - under his very strict guidelines, treats the poor and disadvantaged of the region. Much to his surprise and dismay, Yasumoto is told he is to start work there immediately, staff, including doctors, living on site. As he was expecting a position as a physician for a shogunate in his privilege, Yasumoto shows his displeasure at this fate at every turn. He believes this fate was either orchestrated directly by Red Beard in solely wanting access to his detailed professional notes - Yasumoto believing he a much better doctor than his new, more experienced superior - or by the father of a female acquaintance in an effort to get rid of him. Yasumoto may get a different perspective of life as a doctor at the clinic in getting to view Red Beard's methods first hand, as he gets to know the stories of some of the in-patients at the clinic, and as he is assigned his first patient, Otoyo, a twelve year old orphaned girl who was raised in an abusive brothel environment in an effort to seal her supposed future.

In turn-of-the-century Sweden, cancer-stricken, dying Agnes is visited in her isolated rural mansion by her sisters Karin and Maria. As Agnes' condition deteriorates and pain management becomes increasingly more difficult, fear and revulsion grip the sisters, who seem incapable of empathy, and Agnes' only comfort and solace comes from her maid Anna. As the end draws closer, long repressed feelings of grudging resentment and mistrust cause jealousy, selfishness, and bitterness between the siblings to surface.

A young boy follows Tashiro home to his tenement housing complex on the outskirts of Tokyo, the boy who was separated from his carpenter father somehow and somewhere in Kudan. All Tashiro knows is that the boy and his father came to town from Chigasaki that morning. Despite Tashiro's want to house the kid until they decide what to do more permanently, Tashiro's roommate, Tamekichi, the tenement's head, won't let the kid stay, not liking children and not wanting to get involved. So Tashiro foists the kid onto their neighbor, the widowed Tane, who too protests, she also not liking children and not wanting to get involved. Tane treats the boy with disdain, which only increases by the next morning due to an overnight incident. Amongst the tenement residents, Tane is charged with going to Chigasaki to see if she can find the father or find out what happened to him. On that trip, what she learns by putting the pieces of the story together is that the father purposefully abandoned the boy as he went off to look for work. This news does not change Tane's outlook or poor treatment of the boy. Nothing changes as the week progresses, however Tane's outlook takes a one hundred eighty degree turn when there is the possibility that she may never see the boy again.

Noriko is 27 years old and is still living with her father Somiya, a widower. Noriko just recovered from an illness she developed in the war, and now the important question pops up: when will Noriko start thinking about marriage? Everybody who is important in her life tries to talk her into it: her father, her aunt, a girlfriend. But Noriko doesn't want to get married, she seems extremely happy with her life. She wants to stay with her father to take care of him. After all, she knows best of his manners and peculiarities. But Noriko's aunt doesn't want to give up. She arranges a partner for her and thinks of a plan that will convince Noriko her father can be left alone.

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.

Takeo, a capricious wife from Tokyo high-society, is bored by her dull husband, a quiet and reliable company executive raised in the country (Shin Saburi) After a crisis, she understands better his true value. A parallel sub-plot shows her niece rebelling against the tradition of arranged marriages.