Unlucky Woman's Blues

In a distinctly contemporary Tokyo that looks backwards to the city’s disappearing past, Yoko is a writer investigating the life of a modernist composer of the 1930s. She is pregnant by a man she does not want to marry and has found a kindred spirit in a used bookstore owner who aids her research.

Prostitutes in burnt out Tokyo ghetto of post-WWII Japan peddle their flesh and save one-third of their money for a proposed dancehall to be named Paradise. The hookers live in a bombed-out building, but they accept the precarious situation with typical resolve.

Kiyoha rises from the lowly courtesan ranks to the high class position of Oiran in the steamy red-light district of Yoshiwara. She is determined to stand on her own two feet and live life as she pleased.

An elderly couple journey to Tokyo to visit their grown children, only to find them preoccupied and self-involved.

When Muraki, a porn magazine editor, watches a blue film depicting a gang rape in a school, he becomes obsessed with the lead actress. Quite by chance, whilst looking to reserve a location for a shoot, he happens to encounter her at a love hotel where she works as a receptionist. Her name is Nami and she reluctantly agrees to speak with him, and confesses that it was her in the film. Then, Muraki tells Nami that he wants her to model for him.

After being cruelly set up and deceived by Sugimi, a detective in cahoots with the mob with whom she was whole-heartedly in love, Matsushima’s desire for revenge knows no bounds.

Buddies working at an oshibori factory bond over an uncontrollable rage neither can control, as well as a strange jellyfish they keep as a pet.

Follows five sex workers employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation debates the passage of an anti-prostitution law.

In a small village in a valley everyone who reaches the age of 70 must leave the village and go to a certain mountain top to die. If anyone should refuse they would disgrace their family. Old Orin is 69. This winter it is her turn to go to the mountain. But first she must make sure that her eldest son Tatsuhei finds a wife.

After being used and betrayed by the detective she had fallen in love with, young Matsu is sent to a female prison full of sadistic guards and disobedient prisoners.