1930s Japanese Movies

A businessman’s daughter falls in love with one of her father’s employees.

Three sisters earn money for their bossy mother by being samisen street musicians. This means mainly playing a banjo type instrument for tips in bars...

The eldest daughter of a noble family is in love with an aviator while being courted by a fellow aristocrat she thinks is a dullard. Told from the perspective of Ryota. In this second part, we learn that Akemi is pregnant...

Jyuta, an honest owner of a taxi company, has a younger half-brother who is involved in the yakuza world and doesn’t get along well with his mother. Jyuta tries to correct him…

A salaryman finds some money in the street and gets a reward for returning it to its rightful owner. However his colleagues immediately start borrowing money and selling him things he doesn't need, much to his wife's annoyance. Considered to be a lost film.

One of Uchida’s early sound films, Unending Advance is based on a curious story by Yasujiro Ozu, in which an examination of the quotidian problems of a middle-aged salaryman and his family segues into an idyllic dream of an implausible future. The surviving print, although incomplete, offers an essential glimpse into Uchida’s prewar period, when he was associated more with realist dramas than with the period films that dominated his work after the war.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, a five-man reconnaissance unit is dispatched to scout enemy positions in a volatile territory. After a sudden and intense firefight, the group is separated, leaving the survivors to wait in agonizing suspense at their outpost.

The vassals of the Asano clan, who surrendered the castle & became wanderers, deceive the enemy and the public, wait for an opportunity to avenge their master and his family.

A young doctor, Kozo Tsumura, falls for young nurse Katsue Takaishi. But she's got a secret: she's a widow with a son. Kozo and Katsue decide to run away to Kyoto, but her child suddenly became sick and she just missed the train and Kozo. She makes it to Kyoto finally, but is unable to meet him. Plus she isn't accepted into Kyoto society. She goes back to her hometown and tries to forget him. She quits the hospital to concentrate on her singing. She makes her professional debut with the hit "Aizen Katsura". Kozo is in the audience.

Based on an original story by Yojiro Ishizaka, this well-made drama is set in a Christian school in a beautiful northern harbor town. Teacher Masaki (Obinata) speaks up for Keiko, one of the girls at the school, every time she causes problems because he feels sorry for her, a child born out of wedlock. Sumi (Natsukawa), one of Masaki’s colleagues and who is secretly in love with him, strongly disagrees with him about Keiko. Then Sumi hears a rumor that Keiko is pregnant with Masaki's child . . . .

A businessman runs afoul of the law and commits suicide, leaving behind a wife and five children. The eldest son takes the family to Tokyo and labors to restore its name and fortune

While returning by boat to Japan, Yoshie Fujiwara meets a rich woman who suggests him to become a singer thanks to an impresario friend of hers.

This is Kanjûrô Arashi's first film with Nikkatsu after his independent production company went bankrupt (many of these independent companies went bankrupt shortly after the transition to sound). As he is mostly famous for his portrait of Kurama tengu (and on the other hand, he's the definitive actor for Kurama Tengu as well), Nikkatsu made another version of Kurama tengu, co-directed by Masahiro Makino & Sadatsugu Matsuda who are both sons of Shozo Makino. Scripted by Yoshitake Hisa, a jidaigeki specialist who later scripted several Toei All-Star Jidaigeki.

A student comes up with various schemes to avoid paying a tailor the money he owes him. Considered to be a lost film.

Yuki is a young, single mother supporting herself and her son, Haru, with a job as a bar hostess.

Three men fall in love with the same young girl who works in a tonkatsu restaurant in the Shitamachi district of Tokyo.

A village romantic drama. (Now lost.)

The first part of a fascinating melodrama based on Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, the action of which is transferred to the era of the Meiji Revolution. The film has not survived.

Period film from 1934.

Silent comedic short by Mikio Naruse

Famous kabuki performer Kikugoro IV performs the Lion Dance, in which a young girl is possessed by the spirit of a lion and transforms into the demonic beast.

Hide-chan (Hideko Takamine) and her family are on a trip to Tokyo. While visiting a fairground, a pickpocket (Kamatari Furukawa) steals the father's wallet. While everyone is trying to hunt down the thief, Hide-chan decides to make the most of it and enjoy her stay, while the thief and his main pursuer (Akira Kishii) play hide-and-seek among the funfair's spectacles and freakshows

Brothers Keiji and Ryoichi move to a new neighborhood in the Tokyo suburbs after their father, an office clerk, is promoted. The boys join the local gang as lowly new kids and emerge as natural leaders after defeating a bully. While visiting the home of their father's boss, the brothers witness the ridicule their father endures to please his superior. Angry and embarrassed, the boys find their naive ideas about power being challenged.

Japanese silent film directed by Yasujirô Shimazu, originally released as a two-part movie on December 11, 1931.

Following the accidental death of a logging boss in the Kiso mountains, a local thug pressures the boss's daughter into marriage. When the boss's new foreman arrives to protect her, a trio of clumsy but loyal lumberjack friends hatch a series of schemes to defeat the thug's gang and secure the couple's union.

1930s Japanese film.

Teruo gets caught up in a conflict between tradition and modernism after returning to Japan from Germany after having spent a number of years there studying. Now, he is supposed to marry Mitsuko, the daughter of his adoptive father, to whom Teruo has long been promised. But Teruo, who has gotten to know the freedoms of the western world, would rather marry the woman he loves and behaves brusquely to Mitsuko.

Directed by Daisuke Itō.

Japanese silent film from 1932.

No overview available

In late 19th-century Tokyo, Kikunosuke Onoue, the adopted son of a legendary actor, himself an actor specializing in female roles, discovers that the praise he receives is only due to his status as his father's heir. Devastated, he turns to Otoku, a servant of his family, for comfort, and they fall in love. Kikunosuke becomes determined to leave home and develop as an actor on his own merits, and Otoku faithfully joins him.

A Japanese silent film

Wealthy young Toyomi and Shintaro are in love. However, Shintaro’s father is arranging for him to marry Yurie, the scion of an even wealthier family. The two lovers flee to Tokyo, but when Shintaro returns to proclaim his intent to marry Toyomi, his father browbeats him into attending the marriage meeting with Yurie. Part one of a two-part romance based on a story by noted author Kikuchi Kan.

Two people are fascinated by a sculptor's statue. The film is lost.

Japanese film from 1934, based on a novel by Itsuma Maki (real name Kaitarō Hasegawa).

Lost film, directed by Tomu Uchida. This film is a very funny comedy that makes fun of the moral code of the samurai Bushido, which has become obsolete and turned into an empty form during the period of feudalism.

Mitsuo the Counselor's son marries writer Miyoko, however a tender romance blossoms between Miyoko and Mitsuo's sister Kaoru. When the family falls to bankruptcy, heartache ensues; Miyoko's illness worsens and she is sent to a sanatorium, separating the lovers. Based on a story from Tales of Flowers by Nobuko Yoshiya

In Depression-era Japan, a courteous bus driver carries an eclectic group of passengers from the mountainous Izu to Tokyo.

Shigeko and Midori, star swimmers at the renowned Kirishima Girls’ School, are training relentlessly with their sights set on the Los Angeles Olympics. But for the past week, Shigeko has been absent from practice. Her father has fallen ill, and to support her family’s struggling finances, she has secretly taken a job at a trading company. When Masao discovers this, he asks Midori to convince her to return, but soon the school learns of her secret. The students rally to raise funds, though the principal refuses their help, promising instead to handle the situation himself. Shigeko resumes training and travels to Tokyo for the qualifying meet. She touches the wall first in the 100-meter freestyle—only to receive news of her father’s passing. Overcome with grief, she collapses, cared for by Midori, whose own exhaustion leaves her finishing fourth. Despite these hardships, their prior accomplishments earn them a place on Japan’s Olympic team.

A man gets rid of a cheap pot without knowing it contains a map to a treasure. As word spreads, many join in hunting it.