Mikio Naruse Archives

Two in the Shadow

A man is involved in a fatal car accident, and though he is blameless, his company transfers him to a remote branch in a small town. Before he leaves, he gives the man's widow a large sum of money that she uses to move back to her hometown.

NR

7.9

1967 Drama 108 min Play

8.3

Yearning

After a bombing raid destroys the family store and her husband, Reiko rebuilds and runs the shop out of love stopped short by destruction.

NR

8.3

1964 Drama 98 min Play

7

The Wiser Age

Drama about the lives of the five daughters and daughter-in-law of a store owner.

NR

7

1962 Drama 111 min Play

7

A Wanderer’s Notebook

Considered one of the finest late Naruses and a model of film biography, A Wanderer’s Notebook features remarkable performances by Hideko Takamine – Phillip Lopate calls it “probably her greatest performance” – and Kinuyo Tanaka as mother and daughter living from hand to mouth in Twenties Tokyo. Based on the life and career of Fumiko Hayashi, the novelist whose work Naruse adapted to the screen several times, A Wanderer’s Notebook traces her bitter struggle for literary recognition in the ...

NR

7

1962 Drama 124 min Play

6

The Other Woman

In "The Other Woman" the children of a distinguished professor find that the woman they have come to regard as their racy and slightly disreputable Ginza aunt is really their mother.

NR

6

1961 Drama 106 min Play

6.4

The Approach of Autumn

A single mother from the country raising a 6th grade boy comes to Tokyo, leaves the boy to live with his uncle's family, runs a struggling grocery store, and works a local inn. The boy befriends a girl, the daughter of the innkeeper...

NR

6.4

1960 Drama 79 min Play

6.6

The Lovelorn Geisha

A woman and her daughter are in love with the same man, a chef at the restaurant that the mother manages. He is slightly crippled from frostbite in his years in Siberian labor camps and considers himself "already dead."

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs

Keiko, whom everyone calls Mama, narrates her story: she's a hostess on the Ginza, 30, a widow. She describes life's vicious cycle: acting cheerful around drunks, dressing and living well to convey confidence, needing money for these expenses and for her demanding mother and brother, and knowing she's growing older. She's of an age when she must choose: to seek marriage (difficult given her tarnished occupation), to be a kept woman, or to borrow money to buy a bar of her own. Each route has ...

NR

8.1

1960 Drama 111 min Play

6.8

A Wife’s Heart

Kiyoko (Takamine Hideko) and her husband want to open a coffee shop. She becomes increasingly close to the bank clerk (Mifune Toshiro) she's asked for a loan.

NR

6.8

1956 Drama 98 min Play

7

Flowing

Otsuta is running the geisha house Tsuta in Tokyo. Her business is heavily in debt. Her daughter Katsuyo doesn't see any future in her mothers trade in the late days of Geisha. But Otsuta will not give up. This film portraits the day time life of geisha when not entertaining customers.

NR

7

1956 Drama 117 min Play

7.8

Floating Clouds

A married Japanese forester during WWII is sent to Indochina to manage forests. He meets a young Japanese typist and promises to leave his wife. He doesn't and after the war, she turns up and the affair resumes.

NR

7.8

1955 Drama 123 min Play

7.2

Late Chrysanthemums

What is the life of a Geisha like once her beauty has faded and she has retired? Kin has saved her money, and has become a wealthy money-lender, spending her days cold-heartedly collecting debts. Even her best friends, Tomi, Nobu, and Tamae, who were her fellow Geisha, are now indebted to her. For all of them, the glamor of their young lives has passed; Tomi and Tamae have children, but their children have disappointed them. Kin has two former lovers who still pursue her; one she wants to ...

NR

7.2

1954 Drama 101 min Play

7.3

Sound of the Mountain

An ingratiating bride develops warm ties to her father-in-law while her cold husband blithely slights her for another woman.

NR

7.3

1954 Drama 96 min Play

6.6

Husband and Wife

A married couple looking for an apartment move in with the husband's co-worker, a widower. The husband becomes jealous of the widower and his wife.

NR

6.6

1953 Drama 87 min Play

6.2

Wife

Ten years into a marriage, the wife is disappointed by the husband's lack of financial success, meaning she has to work and can't treat herself and the husband finds the wife slovenly and mean-spirited: she neither cooks not cleans particularly well and is generally disagreeable. In turn, he alternately ignores her and treats her as a servant. Neither is particularly happy, not helped by their unsatisfactory lodgers. The husband is easily seduced by an ex-colleague, a widow with a small ...

NR

6.2

1953 Drama 96 min Play

6.8

Brother and Sister

The eldest daughter of a rural family Mon returns home from Tokyo pregnant after an affair with a college student Kobata, which causes a scandal that will threaten the marriage prospects of the younger sister San, in her cash-strapped family. The ill-tempered eldest brother Inokichi decides to take on the role of disciplinarian, with harrowing results.

NR

6.8

1953 Drama 86 min Play

6.6

Mother

A teenaged girl witnesses her widowed mother's attempt to sustain her family.

NR

6.6

1952 Drama 98 min Play

6.5

Okuni and Gohei

A high-born woman named Okuni travels around the country with Gohei, a samurai retainer who is in service to her. They are in search of Tomonojo, who has killed the man who was Okuni’s husband and Gohei’s master, and they cannot return to their lord’s home until they have fulfilled their duty of hunting down and killing Tomonojo.

NR

6.5

1952 Drama 91 min Play

5.6

Ginza Cosmetics

Italy is usually cited as the anchor of the neo-realist movement in cinema, but Mikio Naruse's Ginza Cosmetics (1951) is a reminder that Japan had its own output equally rooted in realism. Set in Tokyo's Ginza district, this low-key, lyrical unassuming account of a few days in the life of a luckless geisha (Kinuyo Tanaka), as she struggles to make a living for herself and her young son, has few dramatic highs or artificial moments, but possesses a startlingly vivid power in its ...

NR

5.6

1951 Drama 87 min Play

6.3

Dancing Girl

The troubled relationship between a writer and his ballet teacher wife, who has for years loved another man, finally leads to the breakup of the family.

NR

6.3

1951 Drama 85 min Play

7.5

Repast

Michiyo lives in the small place Osaka and is not happy with her marriage, all she does is cook and clean for her husband.

NR

7.5

1951 Drama 97 min Play

6.2

The Angry Street

The Angry Street includes a great deal of location shooting in the rebuilt city, including downtown streets, residential neighborhoods, the campus of the University of Tokyo, and the high life of jazzy dance halls. Sudo (Hara Yasumi) and Mori (Uno Jukichi) are two university students who make money by picking up rich girls in dance clubs and conning them into giving them cash. Mori is the brains of the operation, and Sudo is the suave dancer who picks up the girls. Over the course of the ...

Conduct Report on Professor Ishinaka

Three humorous love stories set in rural Japan.

NR

6.4

1950 Drama 93 min Play

6.4

White Beast

The critical establishment was clearly not prepared to accept a woman's prison film featuring former prostitutes recovering from venereal diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and estranged lovers. With its cat fights, hysterical tantrums, film noir lighting, and dramatic music, White Beast is indicative of the new influences of the Hollywood psychological thriller on Naruse. Caged (John Cromwell, 1950) initiated a cycle of women's prison movies in the United States that may or may not have been ...

NR

6.4

1950 Drama 97 min Play