Takashi Shimura

Set in the Middle Ages, the nature of truth and subjective reality are probed in a series of flashbacks from four viewpoints to present the case history of a man's murder and the rape of his wife by a bandit.

Testing of nuclear weapons over the Pacific Ocean triggers the awakening of a 400-foot, fire-breathing prehistoric lizard who begins to wreak havoc on the city of Tokyo.

Godzilla rises from the sea, his slumber disturbed by atomic tests. With its haunting scenes of a devastated Tokyo eerily echoing the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this film gave the world the perfect monster, and metaphor, for the Atomic Age.

A vivid, visceral Macbeth adaptation, directed by Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai), sets Shakespeare's definitive tale of ambition and duplicity in a ghostly, fog-enshrouded landscape in feudal Japan. The film fuses classical Western tragedy with formal elements taken from Noh Theater to create an unforgettable cinematic experience.

A bad day gets worse for rookie detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo's sweltering streets for the thief, whose desperation has led him to a life of crime. With each step, the cop and the criminal's lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination of Murakami's own dark side.

Sanshiro Sugata: Akira Kurosawa's effortless debut is based on a novel by Tsuneo Tomita about the rivalry between judo and jujitsu. Sahshiro Sugata, part two: This sequel is a hugely entertaining adventure, reuniting most of the major players from the original and featuring a two-part narrative in which Sanshiro first fights a pair of Americans and then finds himself the target of a revenge mission undertaken by the brothers of the original film's...

A young Japanese businessman dying of cancer wants to give something back to society before his death, so he decides to build a playground for children.

Godzilla: A prehistoric monster ravages metropolitan Tokyo. Scientists suspect that H-bomb tests awakened it from a two-million year sleep. They try to develop techniques to stop the monster. Godzilla, king of the monsters: An American reporter investigating a series of mysterious disasters off the coast of Japan comes face to face with Godzilla, an ancient powerful creature capable of reducing Tokyo to smoldering rubble.

This epic masterpiece is about a group of 16th century samurai who are hired to defend a small Japanese village that finds itself annually raided by an army of bandits who steal the meager crops harvested by the peasants. Tired of relinquishing their food supply but woefully inept in combat skills, the villagers decide to hire a band of samurai to protect them. In addition to the primary conflict between the villagers and the bandits, much of the...

After more than a decade of sober political dramas and social-minded period pieces, the great Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi shifted gears dramatically for this rapturously stylized quartet of ghost stories. Featuring colorfully surreal sets and luminous cinematography, these haunting tales of demonic comeuppance and spiritual trials, adapted from writer Lafcadio Hearn's collections of Japanese folklore, are existentially frightening and meticulously...