Movies: Tomisaburō Wakayama

1961 Japanese movie...

Yokomizo, a police officer in the traffic police force, is looking forward to watching his son Kazuhiko grow up. However, Kazuhiko rebels against his perfectionist father and turns to delinquency. Kazuhiko teams up with his bad friend Teshima to rob ...

As winds of change sweep Japan, an honest man joins the Shinsengumi out of admiration for its leader, and because he wants to live and die as a samurai. However, as his involvement grows, reality and idealism come into deadly conflict....

[Period covered: 1616] On May 8th, 1615 the summer campaign of Osaka has reached the climax. This film takes place immediately following 'Ninja 4: Mist Saizo, Last of The Ninja'. Staying one step ahead of the Shogun’s forces, “Mist” Saizo tries to sa...

A former soldier is caught working the black market and sent to prison while his partner escapes and goes on to become a gangster, but their paths cross again as they both fall in love with the same woman....

[Period covered: 1582-1594]. As the film opens, the warlod Nobunaga Oda rides to Iga Ayanokuni shrine. He is asked if he thinks he has destroyed all the ninja who opposed him and answers that he suspects that there may be more. A servant brings water...

Second film of the Gokudo series starring Tomisaburô Wakayama...

When Nizaemon Kumogiri, a major thief quits his job as a thief, he has two more big jobs planned in order to obtain a huge sum of money to enable his many subordinates scattered all over the country to live out the rest of their lives. First, he targ...

Part 7 in the Gambling Den series. This time Koji Tsuruta is a gambler who feels sympathetic towards a woman whose naive husband is driven to a debt trap by a rotten gambling den owner (Tatsuo Endo) and his dishonest card dealer (Isamu Nagato). The p...

An early fantasy film starring Tomisaburô Wakayama....

With his penultimate film, Uchida revisited one of his popular prewar titles, 1936’s Theatre of Life, an adaptation of Shiro Ozaki’s eponymous novel. Three-time Seijun Suzuki collaborator Goro Tanada wrote a gangsterized adaptation of Ozaki’s story f...

An Osaka gangster Shimamura just got married. His new bride, Mineko is also involved in drug trafficking. When she goes to China to make a deal, things get botched pretty badly. Shimamura must travel to save her and recoup his employers’ losses....

Set in Osaka, during the devastated time of post-war Japan, this is a tale of the yakuza who set about rebuilding after the death of their Oyabun (big boss). Battles erupt as tempers explode as someone seeks to fill the seat of power....

In the 12th century, Buddhism was still a relatively new religion in Japan. At that time, one school (Shingon) offered extensive training in complex and very demanding practices which might eventually bring about spiritual purification and realizatio...

The classic tale of the shogun's illegitimate son Aoi Shingo is told in three parts as he strives to become the greatest fencer in Japan, while his father Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune seeks to reunite with his lost son. When the secrets of Shingo's bir...

When the aging leader of the yakuza gang Maeda-gumi decides to retire, many of the gang members have no confidence in the young man he has chosen to replace him. A fight for the succession begins....

A crossover between Wakayama's Gokudo and Sugawara Mamushi series. Gokudo runs a restaurant and makes Takuzo Kawatani his kitchen bitch. He tries to do the same for the Mamushi bros. but the boys don't play along, which pisses Gokudo off. Things get ...

From the opening theme song to the grand finale, you know that you have found something special as this exciting movie stars the great Misora Hibari in one of her most memorable performances as she plays Shintaro and Oharu, a brother and sister, the ...

Shinkai comes to the aid of a coastal village being held hostage by a group of political revolutionaries....

A story about a man who stakes his life on horse racing....