The film depicts carnivalesque atmosphere summed up by the cry "Ei ja nai ka" ("Why not?") in Japan in 1867 and 1868 in the days leading to the Meiji Restoration. It examines the effects of the political and social upheaval of the time, and culminates in a revelrous march on the Tokyo Imperial Palace, which turns into a massacre. Characteristically, Imamura focuses not on the leaders of the country, but on characters in the lower classes and on the fringes of society.

At the strong insistence of his father, Ushimatsu Segawa conceals his origins from a “buraku” area o...

A group of travelers is stranded in a small country inn when the river floods during heavy rains. As...

In the last days of the Tokugawa shogunate, there was a cute warrior, Souji Okita, who belonged to t...

Ogami Itto battles a group of female ninja in the employ of the Yagyu clan and must eliminate a trai...

Kenji, the eldest son of Masajiro, a wealthy moneylender, refuses to work in the family business and...

A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival ...

Akira Kurosawa's lauded feudal epic presents the tale of a petty thief who is recruited to impersona...

Toshiro Mifune swaggers and snarls to brilliant comic effect in Kurosawa's tightly paced, beautifull...

Two rogue vagrants make their living as "manure men", turning the waste from the tenement toilets in...

Ryunosuke, a gifted swordsman plying his trade during the turbulent final days of Shogunate rule, ha...

Kanichiro Yoshimura is a Samurai and Family man who can no longer support his wife and children on t...

Down-on-his-luck veteran Tsugumo Hanshirō enters the courtyard of the prosperous House of Iyi. Unemp...

Seibei Iguchi leads a difficult life as a low ranking samurai at the turn of the nineteenth century....

The story of Ryoma Sakamoto, considered to be the architect behind the downfall of the Tokugawa shog...

In a poor district of Edo lives a young samurai named Soza. He has been sent by his clan to avenge t...

A look at the relationship between a young blind samurai and his wife, who will make a sacrifice in ...

Before Tokugawa Yoshimune, known as the "Ravage Shogun", was the lord of the Kishu domain, before he...

In the Edo period, a nameless ronin accepts an assignment to go to a mountain pass and wait. Near th...

Before he was a protector, Kenshin was a fearsome assassin known as Battosai. But when he meets gent...
