Movies: Akira Kobayashi

In the teeming black markets of postwar Japan, Shozo Hirono and his buddies find themselves in a new war between factious and ambitious yakuza....

While Hirono is in prison, his rival Takeda turns his own crime organization into a political party, whose two executives stir up new tensions in their thirst for power....

Emerging from a stint in prison, yakuza lieutenant Sumukawa discovers that his gang has disintegrated. An ambitious type, he quickly hooks up with another gang who promise him a prominent position if he helps them deal with a rival family. But bonds ...

Shozo Hirono has managed to separate from the Yamamori family and create his own small family, and extend his circle of acquaintances. These new friendships include a powerful underboss of the Muraoka family, Noboru Uchimoto....

Saheji, a man-about-town, gets stuck at a high-class brothel when he can’t pay the bill. He makes the best of his situation by performing various tasks amidst the tumult of the end of the shogunate—but always by making sure to get a “commission” for ...

With a Kansai syndicate setting their sights on Tokyo, a former yakuza boss gets dragged back into a world of violence....

As Japan gears up for the 1964 Olympic games, the cops start to crack down on the gangs, under pressure from the public and the press, adding a new dimension in the war for power among the yakuza families of Hiroshima....

Udaka is a new, post-war city where corruption has already taken hold. A persistent district attorney wants to arrest and convict Katsumata, a laughing, self-confident thug. The D.A. gets an anonymous letter about the suicide five years' before of a ...

A young yakuza in love with the girl who's to marry his clan oyabun, kidnaps the girl before fleeing with her. In Tokyo, he hides under the identity of a worker while the young woman becomes a waitress in a restaurant....

Mainly the story of Shinsuke and his stepmother, ranging from Shinsuke's infanthood to his mid-teens. Coal workers and the mines dominate nearly every aspect of the life of the characters. Shinsuke's father dies while bravely using dynamite to rescue...

Amidst Japan's postwar economic boom, yakuza factions in Osaka fight for survival when Japan's largest crime syndicate plans a hostile takeover....

Post World War II, Minoru lives by selling supplies that had been stolen from the U.S. military. One day, he is arrested due to the plotting of Kurahata, a member of the Yakuza who doesn't like him....

A once-powerful yakuza clan disbands as a result of a police crackdown, but one small group refuses to bow to police pressure, and launches a campaign to take over Tokyo's drug, prostitution, and gambling rackets. Someone wants to stop them. Is it th...

Mid 50s: the trials and tribulations of Shinsuke Ibuki, freshly arrived in Tokyo from Kyushu....

Daisuke Honda, a war photographer in Vietnam, meets Yuriko Sawanouchi, a stewardess on his plane back to Japan. After drinking with her at a Tokyo bar, he becomes involved in saving Yuriko from assassination by stylish, female ninjas. When trying to ...

Follows the struggles of a yakuza wife after his husband gets hurt in a knife fight....

Legendary detective returns...

Shadowed and alone. Today, a melancholy guitar sobs in a wandering seaside town.... To make amends, he hides his identity and saves his girlfriend's sister from certain death. Filmed on location on the scenic Manazuru Peninsula, the action is set ami...

Vice Admiral Takajiro Ohnishi could see that Japan's defeat in WWII was inevitable. He came to realize that the only way to force a negotiated solution was to convince the Americans that invading Japan would cause massive casualties on both sides. Th...

Nobuo is a hot-headed hoodlum fresh out of reform school who struggles to make a clean break with his tearaway past....