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"Ichikawa has always been a difficult director to pin down. His work here seems to inhabit a static, novelistic space, but the final result is personal and elegantly filled out." Pat Graham, Chicago Reader

Heads turn as beautiful women in dazzling kimono glide through a cascade of cherry blossoms against a setting sun. Osaka, 1938, and four daughters of an old merchant family face all unknowing the end of a gentler way of life. Adapted from the classic novel by Junichiro Tanizaki - written as Japan burned around him during the War, even as he determined to preserve forever in his art a world he knew already lost - with director Kon Ichikawa (Burmese Harp, Fires on the Plain, etc., etc.) himself recreating the Golden Age of the Japanese Film, another world gone. A four season chronicle of Jane Austensian, Henry Jamesian, Anton Chekhovian incident, this was the director's dream for a quarter-century, and he brought to it his typically lush pictorialism and insidious black humor. Among the terrific ensemble cast, Keiko Kishi was midway through a six-decade career that included starring for Ozu and Kobayashi (and with Robert Mitchum); while Juzo Itami, multi-awarded as her husband, was about to begin a new one as director of The Funeral, Tampopo, and A Taxing Woman.

Toshiro Mifune portrays a Samurai who finds himself in the middle of a feud-torn Japanese village. Neither side is particularly honorable, but Mifune is hungry and impoverished, so he agrees to work as bodyguard (or Yojimbo) for a silk merchant (Kamatari Fujiwara) against a sake merchant (Takashi Shimura). He then pretends to go to work for the other, the better to let the enemies tear each other apart. Imprisoned for his "treachery," he escapes just in time to watch the two warring sides wipe each other out. This was his plan all along, and now that peace has been restored, he leaves the village for further exploits. Yes, Yojimbo was the prototype for the Clint Eastwood "Man with No Name" picture A Fistful of Dollars (1964). The difference is that Fistful relies on Eastwood for its success, whereas Yojimbo scores on every creative level, from director Akira Kurosawa to cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa to Mifune's classic lead performance.

Acclaimed director Yasujiro Ozu explores the flipside of the traditional mother-daughter bond in this touching family comedy set in postwar Japan. Reluctant to marry and leave her widowed mother (Setsuko Hara) all alone, a dutiful daughter (Yôko Tsukasa) resists selecting a suitor. But her late father's friends, who are eager to see both women happy, insist on stepping in to play matchmaker.

Masahiro Shinoda's brilliant film opens with mobster Murakami just getting released from prison for murdering a member of a rival clan, only to learn that during his internment, the two syndicates arranged a truce. Not unlike the protagonist in Albert Camus' The Stranger, Murakami's motives for killing were vague and that life holds little value for him. At an illegal gambling parlor, he finds himself drawn to a mysterious waif-like young woman named Saeko (Mariko Kaga) who lives life from one thrill to the next. Though she seems remarkably adept at losing large sums of money, she asks Murakami to find games with larger and larger stakes. Soon they become involved in an intense mutually destructive relationship. High stakes gambling and racing her little sports car eventually grow tiresome, and Saeko becomes attracted to drugs. Instead of dope, Murakami offers to let her watch him kill a rival clan leader, describing it as the ultimate thrill.

Akira Kurosawa directs the black-and-white 1949 film noir Nora Inu (released in the U.S. in 1963 as Stray Dog). In his third film with Kurosawa, Toshiro Mifune plays young police detective Murakami. One summer day on a crowded bus in Tokyo, his gun is stolen by a pickpocket. Rather than face the shame of reporting his gun missing, he chooses to go out and find it himself (there were not many weapons on the streets of Tokyo immediately following WWII). While trying to locate the gun, he discovers an entire criminal underworld. He is eventually helped on his journey by superior officer Sato (Takashi Shimura), who seems to suggest that the young detective is indulging in his own criminal desires. The search becomes even more desperate when Murakami finds out that his gun has been used in several crimes, including murder. He then develops an obsession with finding both the gun and the killer.