Toshiyuki Nagashima Movies

Isshin Inudou's drama Bizan concerns a woman named Sakiko (Nanako Matsushima) who returns home when her mother (Nobuko Miyamoto) goes into the hospital. The daughter discovers in quick succession that not only is her mother dying, but the father she never met, and thought had been deceased, is actually alive. Sakiko sets off to find him, guided only by a stash of letters he wrote to her mother. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

Following up on his 1995 violent crime-thriller Gonin, Tadashi Ishii adds sex into two-fisted mix of action and bloodlust: instead of a quintet of disenfranchised guys, this go-around features five very angry women. Small factory owner Masamichi Toyama (Ken Ogata) is deeply in debt to the local yakuza. One night, while returning from buying his wife a birthday present, he comes home to find the mobsters demanding payment. They rape his wife and beat him as a warning. The incident drives his wife over the edge: she frantically starts looking for the lost birthday present and then that night hangs herself. Like in the first movie, Toyama sets out to strike bloody revenge against the yakuza office. Meanwhile, the film catches up with four women in similarly desperate straits: Ran (Kimiko Yo), an out of work former owner of a fitness club; Sayuri (Shinobu Otake), an aging hooker with few prospects; Shiho, a housewife who just discovered her husband in mid-philander; and Saki, a low-rung corporate drone who is still traumatized by memories of a childhood rape. The four find themselves in the midst of a daylight robbery of a high-end jewelry store. While the ski-masked thieves busy themselves with grabbing as much loot as possible, the office worker zaps one with a tazer while the housewife bashes another on the head. Chaos breaks out and soon the four, along with a store saleswoman (Mai Kitajima), are fleeing place with jewels in hand. Having laid waste to the Mob lair and still brandishing a bloodied weapon, Toyama staggers to the store, looking to buy his dead wife the diamond ring she longed for, only to get swept up in the melee. Soon Toyama and the five women are fending off vengeful yakuza and enraged jewel thieves. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

This Japanese action film offers Westerners a look into the seamy world of the Japanese Mafia (the yakuza). Nami loved her husband, a policeman with an undercover assignment to get into a yakuza gang of drug-dealers. The ruse failed and he was shot to death and dumped into the sea. While Nami was mourning, the drug dealers broke into her home looking for confiscated amphetamines. They then raped her and broke her husband's funeral urn. Traumatized, Nami attempts suicide but is rescued by the mysterious and heavily tattooed yakuza, Muraki. She decides to seek revenge and so pretends to be a prostitute in order to get close to yukaza ring leader Ikejima. She succeeds, but then fails in her attempt to murder the crime lord. Once again she is saved by Muraki. She is sold to a brothel where she becomes a drug addict. Muraki again intervenes and she is able to kick the drugs and return to her quest for revenge. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Famed onnagata (a man who plays women's parts in Kabuki) Tamasaburo Bando follows up on the success of his directorial debut, Gekashitsu, with this soft-focused romance about love and obligation, based on a novel by Kafu Nagai. Set during the Meiji period (1868-1912), Kaede (Sayuri Yoshinaga) is the former mistress of a wealthy merchant. When he dies, she is forced out on the street and forced to give up her young daughter to the merchant's family. The film opens with her working in a high-class brothel abutting Tokyo Bay. Though she has passionate affection for a drug wholesaler, whom she loves as well, Kaede is swamped with not only debts to the bordello and family obligations -- she is expected to support her parents and her sister -- but also guilt over losing her child. This pain is only increased when Kaede learns that her daughter is being abused. She does the only thing she can: She buys back her child by signing on at the brothel for a longer stint. Meanwhile, her lover tries to buy her out of prostitution, but she refuses in order to pay for her child's freedom. As a result, her lover hangs himself, heaping further sorrow on the downtrodden but elegant heroine. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

The Japanese Ijintachi Tono Natsu was based on a novel by Taichi Yamada. Morio Kazama plays a television writer whose spirits are crushed by his divorce. The writer moves into a tiny apartment in another part of town, hoping for a fresh start in life. But his emotions are in for another jolt: his new neighbors are his long-lost parents, who had reportedly died years earlier. The film's English-language title is The Discarnates. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In Paul Schrader's unusual biopic, Ken Ogata stars as Yukio Mishima, perhaps the most celebrated Japanese novelist of the last five decades. The film begins with Mishima's youth, then moves forward in episodic fashion to his 1970 suicide, symbolically committed at a military site. Originally titled Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, the film is neatly divided into a quartet of acts, and the screenplay does not flinch in its depiction of Mishima's hyperactive sex life. Among the many neat directorial touches is the decision to offer the narrative in black-and-white, while depicting scenes from Mishima's novels in vibrant color. Written off as self-indulgent by those impatient with Schrader's fragmentary technique, Mishima was produced in Japan by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, an offshoot of Coppola's involvement with Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Based on a novel, Lady, Lady, I Did It by Ed McBain, this story begins with three people murdered by a gunman while in a bookstore. It is soon revealed that one of the victims was the girlfriend of Kita (Toshiyuki Nagashima), a policeman sent there to help out with the incident. Kita asks to be put on the case and his fellow officer, Murakami (Yutaka Mizutani) accedes to his request -- and from that point onward, the two officers join forces to track down the killer, at first following a false lead but then correcting their mistake. It turns out in the end, that the last words spoken by one of the victims gave them the clue they needed to start to unravel the mystery of the multiple murder. Cinematographer Kiyoshi Hasegawa has shot the film so that some of the color is washed out, leaving dominant hues of grays and browns to add to the feeling of an urban environment. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

The Japanese Chasing Horizons might have completely escaped notice in America had it not been picked up for telecast by pay-cable. This is surprising, since the greater part of the film is set in the good ol' USA. Toshiyuki Nagashima stars as a top Japanese athlete, whose particular forte is roller skating. No one can dissuade Nagashima from taking on his biggest challenge: to skate across the Continental United States. Kazuko Kato costars. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Mitsuo Wada (Toshiyuki Nagashima) works at raising tomatoes in a greenhouse, next to a big public housing complex. Because his father has moved out to go live with his girlfriend, Mitsuo lives alone with his mother and grandmother, a situation that does not particularly curb his romantic life. First he becomes involved with Kaede (Rie Yokoyama) a cafe manager, but that is not going to be a very permanent relationship once he discovers she is married. Next, he goes through slightly more formal channels to meet Ayako Hanamura (Eri Ishida) and the two decide that marriage might be the best option for both of them. Unfortunately, his former lover Kaede has run off with his best friend, Hirotsugu Nakamori (Johnny Ogura) -- who is in a lot of trouble already because of stealing some money -- and the two are not heard from again until the day of Mitsuo's wedding. Hirotsugu shows up alone at the wedding, bearer of a tragic tale -- not the kind of auspicious beginning Mitsuo and his bride would have wanted for their new life together. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

The infamous "Criminal 22" is at large in Tokyo. This is a vicious, sadistic murderer who takes special delight in "offing" cops. Detective Ken Takakura makes it his mission in life to wipe Criminal 22 from the face of the earth. If The Station plays like an American crime-and-punishment picture at times, it comes by this honestly. Like Kurosawa's High and Low, the film was adapted from an "87th Precinct" novel by Ed McBain (aka Evan Hunter and Salvatore Lambino). The Station bears no relation to the 1990 Italian film of the same name. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this courtroom drama, a murdered woman's former schoolteacher and various local merchants contribute vital evidence leading to the conviction of her murderer. As important as the mystery of the murder is the jockeying for position between the various lawyers and judges. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi