Haruko Sugimura Movies

This Japanese-Swiss documentary is a lyrical meditation on the similarities between geishas and the male Kabuki dancers who play females in their traditional plays. Interspersed amongst the interviews of key figures from both fields are long clips of Kabuki performances, and others playing traditional music and performing the old dances. Among those interviewed are Tamasaburo Bando, one of Japan's most esteemed Kabuki performers who has been impersonating women on stage since he was five, and Aasji Tsutakiyokomatsu, the 101-year-old reigning matriarch of the geishas. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In 1820, young Noboru Yasumoto (Yuzo Kayama) completes his medical education in Nagasaki and returns to his native Edo hoping both to marry the daughter of a wealthy man and to achieve affluence himself through his medical practice. He happens to visit the famed Koishikawa clinic for the indigent, which is run by the autocratic Dr. Kyojo Niide (Toshiro Mifune), better known as Red Beard. To his intense displeasure, he soon finds himself assigned to the clinic for his internship. At first, the young intern is arrogant and rebellious, intent on displaying his knowledge of medical innovations and contemptuous of the older doctor for spending his life among the poor. But as time passes, he gains an intimate knowledge of the kind of suffering that is endemic to the impoverished, and at length, becomes an acolyte of this seemingly dictatorial physician, who heals his patients with gentleness and humility as much as with his medical skill. ~ Michael Costello, Rovi

In this Japanese melodrama set in 1941, a baby girl is born blind just as her father is sent off to fight for his country. Wanting to cure her child, the mother convinces a local medico to do the surgery, but before he can, he too goes to war. Years pass and the doctor finally performs the surgery. Unfortunately, it fails and the girl accepts her blindness. Soon after, she falls for a blind boy and the two happily marry. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The highly accomplished Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu demonstrates his stylistic touch for deceptive simplicity, rapier wit, and nuances of melancholy in this well-wrought drama about a man in the declining years of his life. Manbei Kohayagawa (Ganjiro Nakamura) has a rich life on three different fronts. He is the head of a brewery that is having problems at the moment, the head of a family in which one widowed daughter needs his help in finding a new mate and the other needs him to help her make the right choice in a future spouse. Manbei has a strong devil-may-care streak and his solution to his burdens at the moment is to look up his old mistress and resume a relationship with her. His decision has unexpected consequences for himself and his family. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

This 1959 Ozu production centers on the likable but fallible leader of an itinerant acting troupe ("floating weeds" being the Japanese name for such groups), Kimajuro, played brilliantly by Ganjiro Nakamura. The film opens on a lazy, stagnant river as the troupe lays spread about on a boat deck drifting downstream. It's obvious that they're a ragged bunch as they sit fanning themselves and smoking on deck. The boat pulls into a quiet fishing village where the troupe proceeds to canvass the town, hanging up posters and performing impromptu stunts for the inhabitants. Kimajuro and his actress mistress, Sumiko (Machiko Kyo), head to the theatre and secure their cramped quarters above the theatre's main hall. Kimajuro leaves to pay a visit to a local saki bar owned by Oyoshi (Haruko Sugimura), who, years previous, had conceived a child with Kimajuro. The child has grown into a strapping young man, Kiyoshi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi), who has a good job at the post office. Kimajuro, although clearly proud of his son, has refused to take responsibility for the child and Kiyoshi thinks Kimajuro is merely his uncle. Unbeknownst to Kimajuro, Sumiko has discovered his secret, and, infuriated, hires a young actress to seduce Kiyoshi. Terrified that his son is falling for this woman of loose morals, Kimajuro has to decide what's most important: keeping his secret safe or saving his son by acknowledging his paternity. ~ Brian Whitener, Rovi

A Full-Up Train follows a young "salary man" as he struggles to adjust to Japan's hectic postwar economy while his personal life becomes more and more chaotic. After graduating from college among a faceless throng of fellow students, he begins working in a brewery, living in a bland workers' dormitory and toiling away at a monotonous desk job. But soon a succession of complications involving his parents (who are accusing one another of being insane) and his college girlfriend (whom he can't marry because women aren't allowed in the dorm) knock him down to the bottom rung of the corporate ladder. Like Pu-San and A Billionaire, A Full-Up Train satirizes Japan's postwar economic miracle with merciless, acidic satire, and the three films have come to be known as Kon Ichikawa's "black comedy trilogy." ~ Tom Vick, Rovi

Like most of director Yasujiro Ozu's work, Early Spring is a deceptively simple family drama: a middle-aged office worker, bored with dreary routines of his job and his marriage, succumbs to a brief fling with the office flirt. His wife inevitably discovers his infidelity, but when he accepts a transfer to the country, she follows him to start their life anew. Ozu's depiction of marital difficulties is hardly depressing. Instead he employs his signature warmth, sensitivity, and humor to create a touching, thoughtful film. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

As with much of director Yasujiro Ozu's work, a plot summary of this film does not do justice to the emotional power that Ozu lends to this sad, understated tale. An elderly couple, Shukichi (Chishu Ryu) and Tomi Hirayama (Chieko Higashiyama), leaves their small coastal village in southern Japan to visit their married children in Tokyo. Their eldest son, Koichi (So Yamamura), a doctor running a clinic in a working-class part of town, is too busy to show them around town, and their eldest daughter is occupied with her beauty salon. Only their widowed daughter-in-law, Noriko, played memorably by Setsuko Hara, is willing to take time off work to show the couple the sights of Tokyo. The older children arrange for their parents to visit Atami Hot Springs, but the unimpressed couple soon returns to Tokyo. Tomi stays with her daughter-in-law while Shukichi goes out drinking with some of his buddies, and the bunch complains about their vague sense of disappointment toward their children. Later, he stumbles into his daughter Shige's (Haruko Sugimura ) house late at night. On the way back to their village, tragedy strikes. The callous inattention that son and daughter paid to their parents becomes unamendable. Shige and Koichi quickly return to their busy lives in Tokyo after the funeral, as Noriko and youngest daughter Kyoko (Kyoko Kagawa) remain. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Based on popular Japanese writer Fumiko Hayahi's final novel, a condemning portrait of married life and women's position in Japanese society, Repast tells the story of Michiyo and Hatsunosuke, a married couple who, in the routine of family life, have begun to fall out of love. With no child to cement their bond, they are still free to question their marriage. Especially since it was a marriage not of convenience, but of love. While Hatsunosuke seems unperturbed, Michiyo fully realizes the growing distance between them and the anguish deeply pains her. Events come to a head when Hatsunosuke's attractive young niece arrives and Michiyo suspects her of making advances. Her heart broken, Michiyo confronts her husband with all of her complaints. Once again, he is uninterested and aloof and she flees his house back to her family. After a long period of depression and several total failures to begin her life anew, Michiyo meets with Hatsunosuke and they superficially patch up their differences. The film ends with Michiyo returning to her married home, forlornly staring out the train window. ~ Brian Whitener, Rovi