Movies by Kumiko Akiyoshi

Kamikaze, the Adventurer
An ex-Olympic athlete and a student commit cash robbery. Aki Hoshino, a pre-med student, becomes inspired to steal money the school collected as “special fees” from parents wanting to assure their offspring’s’ acceptance into the hallowed institution. He forms an unbeatable alliance with an ex-employee and crime bosses to retrieve the ill-gotten money from the “wrong” hands.

Tora-san Plays Daddy
A playboy-gambler friend of Tora-san’s dies and, abandoned by his mother, his little boy suddenly turns up in Shibamata. Searching for the boy’s mother, Tora-san meets a cosmetics saleslady and the three become a surrogate family, with Tora-san as “daddy”.

Date Masamune: The One-Eyed Dragon
Biopic of Date Masamune. Young Masamune upon learning of the death of Nobunaga decides that he is the man to fill those sainted clogs. The fastest way to do this is to subjugate the neighboring warlords. This is an action that results in the death of his father and younger brother and not the least brings him to the attention of Hideyoshi and not in a good way either but intervention by the regents nephew Hidetsugu and Maeda Toshiie save his neck although he is forced to move to a smaller fief and send his wife to Kyoto as hostage. Although ...

The Orphaned Geisha
Geisha Yaeko is approached by a samurai who has just returned to Edo while she is painting a picture of camellia flowers in a temple. The samurai, whom she meets again at a drinking party, is the heir to the castle's daimyo, Yuuki Shinichiro, and the two become romantically involved despite their different social standings. Although he tells her he cannot marry her immediately, Yaeko believes in Shinichiro and continues to wait for the day they can be together. However, Shinichiro's uncle, Kuwajima, tells her to end the relationship.

The Enchantment
A Tokyo psychiatrist is hoping to better his career by marrying the daughter of a prominent doctor. The match is threatened however when an attractive but very troubled tourist guide comes to him for consultation...

Cute Devil
While Ryoko is in Vienna studying music, her boyfriend dies in a traffic accident. Ryoko believes that she has psychic powers which killed him, and when she returns to Japan she is sent to a mental hospital. While recovering, her brother-in-law, Kouji, decides to look after her, and she goes to his house to act as a governess for Kouji's sister Keiko's daughter, Alice – who Ryoko becomes increasingly sure had something to do with her sister Fuyuko’s death.

Flakes of Snow
A troubled architect weaves his way through numerous romantic situations in a search for true love and contentment.

Weekend Shuffle
First mainstream film directed by Genji Nakamura, based on Yasutaka Tsutsui's 1974 short story of the same title.

Saito Dosan: Rage of Power
During the age of warring clans (Sengoku Jidai), many samurai lords sought to unite the country under their banners by becoming the supreme leader. One of the first to vie for power in this way was Saito Dosan, the 'Viper'. His son-in-law, Oda Nobunaga, did in fact unite the nation after subduing all of his enemies, yet falling at last to the treachery of one of his most trusted generals. This story is a pre-cursor to those later events as the brilliant military strategist Saito Dosan rises to power and notoriety as a great lord in his own ...

The Perennial Weed
A detective wonders that his sister is a murder suspect.

Heaven and Earth: Dawn Episode
Some of the greatest battles during the Age of Civil Wars were fought between the Uesugi and Takeda clans. Leading up to them was the incredible life of Uesugi Kenshin, who rose from a son out of favor with his...