Mikio Naruse Movies

Keiko, whom everyone calls Mama, narrates her story: she's a hostess on the Ginza, 30, a widow. She describes life's vicious cycle: acting cheerful...

A woman marries, gives birth to a stillborn child, and divorces, falls in love with a hotel-keeper, only to find herself subordinated to his drive...

A melodramatic love story, a would-be apprenticeship between the titular bad girl and the optimistic scholar returning from the big city. It is...

An ingratiating bride develops warm ties to her father-in-law while her cold husband blithely slights her for another woman.

A married Japanese forester during WWII is sent to Indochina to manage forests. He meets a young Japanese typist and promises to leave his wife. He...

Drama about the lives of the five daughters and daughter-in-law of a store owner.

The eldest daughter of a rural family Mon returns home from Tokyo pregnant after an affair with a college student Kobata, which causes a scandal that...

With delicate, unobtrusive strokes, Naruse evokes both the humor and bitterness of his characters’ dilemmas, in this bleak, compelling poignant...

A man is involved in a fatal car accident, and though he is blameless, his company transfers him to a remote branch in a small town. Before he...

A woman and her daughter are in love with the same man, a chef at the restaurant that the mother manages. He is slightly crippled from frostbite in...

A luckless geisha struggles to make a living for herself and her young son.

War widow Reiko rebuilds and runs the grocery shop in the house of her husband's family. Many years later, their business is threatened by a newly...

When an only child is struck by a car and dies, the child's mother seeks vengeance against the driver in this thrilling drama. The car was driven by...

A war widow with a young boy manages a farm with her bossy mother-in-law. When a reporter comes to interview her, the two begin an affair. He turns...

Considered one of the finest late Naruses and a model of film biography, A Wanderer’s Notebook features remarkable performances by Hideko...

A teenaged girl witnesses her widowed mother's attempt to sustain her family.

Sanae is left a widow after her prestigious husband dies, but holds the proceeds of a million yen insurance policy. Being childless, her former...

Kimiko, a Tokyo white-collar working girl, lives with her serious, intellectual, haiku-writing mother. Kimiko seeks to marry her boyfriend but needs...

Michiyo lives in the small place Osaka and is not happy with her marriage; all she does is cook and clean for her husband.

Tashiro coincidentally meets his best friend Sugimoto in a bar very close to the apartment in which Sugimoto’s wayward wife is found dead....