Movies by Taiji Tonoyama

Housewife's Experience: Tenement Apartment 2

Day Dream
Loosely based on a 1926 short story by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, the film opens as an artist and a young woman are in a dentist's waiting room. Though he is attracted to the woman, he says nothing to her. They are later in the same examining room. When he is given an anesthetic, he begins to imagine a series of scenes in which the woman undergoes various forms of sexual abuse, including rape and torture. When the artist recovers from the anesthetic, he finds clues showing that he may not have been hallucinating.

Ballad of Orin
A blind traveling musician is abused and oppressed wherever she goes, even as the modern world imposes change around her.

Policeman's Diary
Lending money, job hunting for civilians and babysitting. All these things are usually not listed on a policeman's job description. But for the officers of this local police station, it‘s part of their daily routine. One day, patrolman Yoshii (Hisaya Morishige) finds an abandoned baby and a six year old girl standing in front of the station. When he's declined by the welfare office, orphanage and local health clinic to take them in, he decides to take care of them himself.

The Naked Island
A family of four are the sole inhabitants of a small island, where they struggle each day to irrigate their crops.

Jazz Daimyo
Shipwrecked African-American slaves arrive in the midst of Bakumatsu-era Japan; they soon carve out a niche in the market with their musical talents.

The Homeless
Two inmates are simultaneously released from jail, but go their separate ways, only to cross paths again in the nearest brothel. There they make the acquaintance of a would-be prostitute. They help her escape and decide to guide her on her quest for sunken contraband somewhere off the coast.

Bamboo Doll of Echizen
Based on a novel by Tsutomu Mizukami, this haunting melodrama focuses on a young bamboo worker who takes his father's prostitute as his wife.

Lost Sex
A well-respected drama teacher confesses to his housekeeper that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima has left him impotent. With the coming of spring, the sympathetic housekeeper suggests that the Master observe the Yobai , a custom in which the young men of a village steal into the bedrooms of susceptible women to have sex.

Our Town
In 1906, after finishing a tough migrant job in the Philippines, Takichi has returned to Japan. He starts to work as a rickshaw driver, but his lover had died of an illness, leaving a baby girl, Hatsue. Hatsue grows up beautifully and falls in love with Shintaro. But Takichi objects to their relationship...

Onna no Iji
2 years ago, Kumi broke up with Shuhei and decided to forget everything about him for good. However, after being told that her younger sister, Junko, fall in love with a man and is currently living with him. She was determined to discover who was the man who won her sister's heart. But what will happen when she found out that the man in question is Shuhei, her first love?

Internees of Kampili
In the autumn of 1945, Petty Officer Tadashi Yamaji is among the numerous war crimes suspects facing death on the gallows for maltreatment of Allied women and children interned in camp Kampili. Kampili is located some ten kilometers outside Macassar on the island of Celebes. Eighteen-hundred Allied women and children were interned for the duration of the war. Yamaji's iron rule for camp administration is : No violence; hands off internees; He also endeavors to establish self-administration by internees while aiming at a self-supporting camp ...

Irezumi
To satisfy her lover's fetish for tattooed women, Akane agrees to have her body covered in eloborate tattoos by Kyogoro, an old craftsman. Kyogoro has developed a special technique, by which his assistant, Harutsune, keeps Katsuko's mind off the pain while Kyogoro does his work. After the work is done, Harutsune makes the shocking discovery of how Kyogoro mastered his technique.

Jitsuroku Erogotoshitachi: Jungyô Hanadensya
Fresh out of prison a manager of live sex shows decides to take his show on the road. He persuades one of his former performers to join his troupe and she learns new tricks of the trade.

The Betrayers Out!
Shochiku's popular series of gang films, this one has the hero returning from prison bent on revenge. He runs into Chinese hoodlums, blackmailers and gold-smugglers. But he also aids and abets young lovers yet, despite his help, their love ends in tragedy and he tracks down his prey in Kobe.

On This Earth
Kanazawa in the Taisho era. A former junior high school student, Ichiro's family used to be a large landowner, but now they are living in poverty with his mother. His mother works hard to get her son through school. Under such circumstances, Ichiro meets Wakako, the daughter of a wealthy man, and they fall in love with each other, but they are opposed by those around them because of their different social status.

Tissue Paper By the Geisha's Pillow

My Way
Based on a true story, an elderly woman resiliently spends nine months attempting to retrieve her husband's dead body, fighting government bureaucracy and indifference all along the way.

Whistling in the morning
Minoru delivered newspapers to earn money for high school, but when his mother came down with illness he decided to use this money for her doctor's bill and gave up going to high school. His friends heard about this, and they donated money to his mother. So, Minoru goes to high school and yet he delivers newspapers cheerfully whistling every morning. A memorable film debut by Sayuri Yoshinaga, a representative of the Japanese film industry.The film adaptation of "Newspaper Delivery" by Minoru Yoshida, who won the Minister of Education Award...

The Last Swordsman
Personal tale of Okita Soji who fights to survive in a world without pity in the merciless era of the downfall of the Tokugawa Shogunate.