Ryoko Nakano Movies

Ajisawa (Ken Takakura) is a mysterious warrior in a secret Japanese paramilitary group who, while on a training exercise in the woods, stumbles into a group of rural party-makers. In the ensuing conflict he kills everyone except one young teenaged boy. The boy was wounded in the conflict, but Ajisawa adopts him and nurses him back to health. A year later, he returns to the scene of the crime in his job as a claims adjuster, investigating the death of a newswoman who was digging into the story of the woodland killings. Police detective Kitano (Isao Natsuki) has been looking into the killings also, as well as the death of the woman. He believes that these crimes have something to do with the gangster Ochi (Ryoko Nakano), and that Ajisawa is responsible. When he arrests Ajisawa, the paramilitary group decides to execute its own man because he showed "softness" in adopting the boy. The boy and the policeman also become targets, and the three become allies in their attempts to escape death. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Takiji Kobayashi (1903-33) was a Japanese writer who began his life in rural poverty and was tortured to death by the Imperial Police in 1933. In the Japan of the '20s and '30s, any criticism or dissent from the official line was punishable by death. Kobayashi, a leftist, violated those strictures, and, subsequently, distribution of his works was restricted until after the Second World War, when he was recognized as one of the great Japanese writers of this century. He loved a woman (a prostitute) who would not marry him, and married yet another, all the while struggling to write despite the inhospitable climate of the times. This drama re-creates episodes in Kobayashi's short but eventful life. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi