Movies: Chōei Takahashi

In this humorous paean to the joys of food, a pair of truck drivers happen onto a decrepit roadside shop selling ramen noodles. The widowed owner, Tampopo, begs them to help her turn her establishment into a paragon of the "art of noodle-soup making"...

The tragic, true story about Hachikō, an Akita dog who was loyal to his master, Professor Ueno, even after Ueno's death....

Rin Jyoshima lost her father to death-by-gambling; years later, she's grown up in the Kosugi household and has fallen victim to gambling herself....

A young man is falsely accused of molesting a high-school girl on a train. He is arrested and charged, and goes through endless court sessions, all the while insisting that he is innocent....

Intrepid tax investigator Ryoko Itakura sets her sights on the mysterious and philandering Hideki Gondo, a suspected millionaire and proprietor of a thriving chain of seedy hourly hotels, who has for years succeeded at hiding the true extent of his a...

A struggling Japanese neighborhood supermarket manager chances upon an old classmate, who has plenty of ideas for revitalizing his business....

Ryōko Itakura returns as the tough-as-nails government taxing agent. This time she must figure out a way to expose a fanatical religious cult lead by a corrupt sociopath....

A young girl suffers a terrifying nightmare of a vampire with blazing golden eyes. Eighteen years later, it is revealed to be a hellish prophecy when a strange package containing an empty coffin mysteriously turns up at a nearby lake....

A government employee meets a hostess of a "pink club," and together they set out on a journey....

Vain, middle-aged actress Biwako is placed in witness protection while authorities investigate the brutal murder she witnessed. Under the watch of two dedicated cops, Biwako struggles to maintain her career, her public image, and her personal life as...

A melodrama about the life of a mentally disabled young man and his devoted sister after their famous novelist father and housewife mother go to Australia on a business trip....

This anthology film consists of nine incidents in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when assassins changed the course of Japanese history....

Based on a short story written by Shuhei Fujisawa (who also wrote Twilight Samurai, The Hidden Blade, Love and Honor), the film depicts the uneasy life of Noe Isomura (Rena Tanaka) with the difficult family she has married into after her former husba...

In the aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, a journalist arrives in Nagaoka, a city decimated during a WWII air raid and by the 2004 Chūetsu earthquakes, to report on the disaster; there, she learns about the experiences of its inhabi...

A successful Japanese movie director in his sixties becomes increasingly ill while working on his latest film. Though his family, friends, and doctor try to keep the secret of his terminal cancer from him, Buhei gradually comes to realize the truth o...

Sen Rikyu is a ceremonial tea master who advises warlord Hideyoshi in sixteenth-century feudal Japan. His daughter, the beautiful Lady Ogin, has an unrequited love for Lord Ukon, who has angered Hideyoshi by becoming a Christian convert. Ogin's fathe...

An old woman has died and her widower with dementia confesses to killing her. After this, the story goes back in time to show the events leading up to her death....

A young man returns home from the bar only to find a woman who was about to kill herself. Taking her home and protecting her, he learns that she’s escaped from a violent husband. but there’s more to her story than she's willing to tell at first....

The year is 1945. After the horrific fire-bombings of the Pacific War levels Japan to the ground, the government decides to consult spiritual psychics to aid them in winning the war. Unfortunately, the resentment and agony of the souls of the fire-bo...

It is based on the story of The Ballad of Narayama updated to the present day, with the substitution of putting a parent into an old people's home for the abandonment of the original. The film won the Golden St. George and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2...