A Yakuza Has His Way (1972)

Branded to Kill

After botching his latest assignment, a third-ranked Japanese hit man becomes the target of another assassin.

Sword: Flower-Strewn Path of Courage

After serving his sentence, Yakuza family member Toshin-gumi Umebayashi is released from prison. Toshin-gumi was already headed by the boss in the second generation of Shotaro, but Shotaro fell into a trap, he is manipulated by his sworn enemy Kanzaki-gumi. Kanzaki-gumi captures the Toshin-gumi oil fields mined by the first boss. Umebayashi explodes in anger and attacks Kanzaki-gumi, but...

The Symbol of a Man

In 1936, under the war clouds over the Manchurian border, 60-year-old Shozaburo Oshima is concerned about the future of his only son, Ryuji, who has refused to follow in the footsteps of his gambler father and decided to become a doctor. Ryuji leaves home to work at a clinic at a dam construction site where he finds the treatment of the laborers intolerable. But when he challenges the boss, who thinks nothing of murder, he discovers to his astonishment that he is safe because of his father's reputation. Torn between filial piety and his ideals, Ryuji is told of the murder of his father by men of a rival gang. He experiences another shock when informed that the woman behind the rival gang is his true mother who was forced to leave his father due to an unwritten code among gamblers.

Savage Chivalry

After eight years in prison, Ban makes his return to the Oyama Family. Now headed by Ouchi, a rookie the last time he saw him, the family is overrun with unfamiliar faces. With nowhere to turn to, Ban reunites with his former right-hand man, Narumi. An encounter with a woman with a large scar on her face named Kyoko leads him to find out more about the current state of the Oyama Family.

Port City Blues

Plot unavailable

The Tale of Zatoichi Continues

Returning to the village where a year before he had killed Hirate, a much-admired opponent, Zatoichi encounters another swordsman and former rival in love.

Yamazaki Ichimon ~ Nihon Touitsu: The Movie (or "The Y-Team")

Himuro (Yasukaze Motomiya), Captain of the Kyowa Clan and Tamura (Yoshiyuki Yamaguchi), the Chief of Headquarters, are arrested on suspicion of assault. Sakaguchi (Takashi Kitadai), the fourth leader in the Yamazaki Family, and other members of the group scramble to prove their innocence. In doing so, they discover the existence of a gold smuggling ring and an international espionage organization behind the case.

Contemporary Tales of Chivalry: The Traitor Shall Die

The ninth and final film in the Contemporary Tales of Chivalry series.

A Weapon in My Heart

A detective and his partner track down a call girl with information about a drug cartel. After taking her into custody, they are attacked by cartel members. The detective and the woman manage to escape, but they are soon hounded by a professional hitman hired to eliminate them and recover the heroin stolen by the woman.

Lupin the IIIrd: Goemon's Blood Spray

A yakuza boss hires Goemon Ishikawa, a modern day samurai, to protect him aboard his cruise ship casino. Everything goes sideways when the famous thief, Lupin the Third, tries to rob the vessel. Lupin's being hunted by a powerful and mysterious man: the so called “Ghost of Bermuda.” With Goemon's employer dead in the ensuing chaos, his honor is at stake, and the only way to preserve it is with blood. But this opponent is like no other, and to make things right, Goemon may need to sharpen not only his sword, but himself as well!

The Tale of Zatoichi

The adventures of a blind, gambling masseur and master swordsman. Zatoichi targets a yakuza-controlled village, because war with a neighbouring town's smaller gang is brewing.

Tokyo Decadence

A submissive hooker goes about her trade, suffering abuse at the hands of Japanese salarymen and Yakuza types. She's unhappy about her work, and is apparently trying to find some sort of appeasement for the fact that her lover has married.

Yakuza Vassal

A young samurai defends townsfolk from evil forces.

Graveyard of Honor

A barkeeper saves a Yakuza boss' life and thus makes his way up in the organization. However, his fear of nothing soon causes problems.

Street Mobster

After serving time, a defiant street thug is incensed to find his town overrun by two yakuza factions. He gathers his crew and takes them on.

Painful Bliss: Final Twist

A young executive has a really bad night after an encounter with a crazed bisexual wannabe yakuza and his horny girlfriend.

Dolls

Dolls takes puppeteering as its overriding motif, which relates thematically to the action provided by the live characters. Chief among those tales is the story of Matsumoto and Sawako, a young couple whose relationship is about to be broken apart by the former's parents, who have insisted their son take part in an arranged marriage to his boss' daughter.

Motorpsycho!

A vengeful veterinarian and a grieving widow join forces to track down violent bikers after they commit heinous acts against their loved ones.

Fireworks

Beleaguered police detective Nishi takes desperate measures to try and set things right in a world gone wrong. With his wife suffering from leukemia and his business partner paralyzed from a brutal gangster attack, Nishi borrows from a yakuza loan shark and then robs a bank to clear his debt.

Wolves, Pigs & Men

Sabu and his pals hold a pauper's funeral for Sabu's mother. His brother Jiro arrives home, fresh out of jail, and Sabu pointedly states that Jiro is not invited. Jiro meanwhile is planning a big job - steal 40 million in cash and drugs, and he invites Sabu and gang to act as decoys, for 50,000 each. The sting is a success, but the double-crossing starts almost immediately. Sabu discovers how little of the take they were promised and hides the stash. Jiro and his slimy partner pressure the kids to fess up. Meanwhile, their respectable elder brother Ichiro is being leaned on by the town's big boss, whose money it was.

Firebrands

Barely scraping by making an honest living as a rural yakuza, Hachiya (Yasukaze Motomiya) dreams of the City of Flowers. Unable to conceal their growing frustration at their everyday lives, he and his partner, Sagane (Yoshiyuki Yamaguchi), choose to pursue their own paths as yakuza, hiding a new major source of income from the family. But when the family captain (Kazuyoshi Ozawa) shows up for the first time in ten years...

Age of Nudity

The story deals with a juvenile delinquent gang surviving through petty thievery. However, everything gets screwed up when they accidentally steal big bucks from the Yakuza.

House of Gamblers

Ken Takakura stars as Ryoji one of the Aramasa family's loyal lieutenants whao takes the burden of his family being insulted by the Tanuma's family goons, by retaliating on his own. After injuring the head of Tanuma's family, and slaying others along the way, he then surrenders to the law and serves time. Before his last year to serve, the head of the Aramasa family falls ill and decides to retire, Ryoji miss chance to be successor, his old friend is reluctant but accepts. Now this gives the Tanuma family a chance for revenge! But with Tomisaburo Wakayama (Sekine) always having your back, how can you go wrong?

Black Rain

Two New York cops get involved in a gang war between members of the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia. They arrest one of their killers and are ordered to escort him back to Japan. However, in Japan he manages to escape, and as they try to track him down, they get deeper and deeper into the Japanese Mafia scene and they have to learn that they can only win by playing the game—the Japanese way.

Taxi 2

A cabdriver and a cop race to Paris to rescue a love interest and the Japanese minister of defense from kidnappers.

Shinjuku Swan

Shiratori Tatsuhiko works as a scout for Burst, a talent agency in Kabukichō, Shinjuku's red light district. In a business where money means everything Tatsuhiko finds himself in a constant struggle between rival talent scouts and the yakuza.

Sonatine

Murakawa, an aging Tokyo yakuza tiring of gangster life, is sent by his boss to Okinawa along with a few of his henchmen to help end a gang war, supposedly as mediators between two warring clans. He finds that the dispute between the clans is insignificant and whilst wondering why he was sent to Okinawa at all, his group is attacked in an ambush. The survivors flee and make a decision to lay low at the beach while they await further instructions.

Yakuza vs. Gang Leader

Gokudo Shimamura comes to blows with the Delinquent Boss who rolls into town with his motorcycle gang.

Kill Bill: Vol. 1

An assassin is shot by her ruthless employer, Bill, and other members of their assassination circle – but she lives to plot her vengeance.

Gambler Tales of Hasshu: A Man's Pledge

This is one of the many films based on the legend of Chuji Kunisada, a wandering gambler and a defender of the weak in the Edo period. In other words, he was the Japanese Robin Hood. In this film Kunisada (Chiezo Kataoka) arrives to a small town terrorized by an evil gang. He insists that he is not Kunisada, as the word is Kunisada has been executed, but of course the audience know better. Sonny Chiba plays an unusual supporting role as a helpless young man unable to defend himself from the gangsters. He does, however, get to play taiko drums and dance with Junko Fuji (who makes her film debut here). Chiba's father, an old judge who helps Kunisada, is played by Takashi Shimura. The film hardly anything exceptional, but it's a pretty decent jidai geki / yakuza drama.

Showdown in Little Tokyo

An American with a Japanese upbringing, Chris Kenner is a police officer assigned to the Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles. Kenner is partnered with Johnny Murata, a Japanese-American who isn't in touch with his roots. Despite their differences, both men excel at martial arts, and utilize their formidable skills when they go up against Yoshida, a vicious yakuza drug dealer with ties to Kenner's past.

The Man's Crest: I Shall Kill

Plot unavailable

Dead or Alive 2: Birds

Two contract killers cross paths in the middle of the same job and realize they are childhood friends. Together they take a break from killing and visit the small island they once called home. After reflecting on their past lives they decided to team up and use their talents in killing for good... much to the upset of the crime syndicates.

Gozu

Minami mistakenly kills a gangster associate of his named Brother. Almost as soon as the murder takes place, the body of the deceased man is gone, prompting Minami to conduct a search. While looking, he finds a mysterious isolated hotel where he decides to take a rest. Not only are the front desk clerks a bit strange, but even the ambiance feels unusual. Minami soon realizes he may have gotten more than he bargained for.

Outrage Coda

Five years after the all-out war between the Sanno and Hanabishi crime families, former yakuza boss Otomo works in South Korea for Mr. Chang, a noted fixer. When tensions rise between Chang and the Hanabishi, and Chang's life is endangered, Otomo returns to Japan to settle things once and for all.

Melody of Crime

Pro boxer Aoshima Toru is diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor and given three months to live. He uses his prize money to pay the medical expenses for a young boy with polio. But when Toru learns from his fiancee Itsuko that his own mother has died, things take a turn for the worse.

The World of Shura

A yakuza movie starring Koji Matoba, depicting the lives of men left behind in the times. In the Ryuan-gumi, which is based in Yokohama, drug business was prohibited by the leader Engetsu. One day, in order to protect leader's teachings, Mouri of the Ryuan-gumi assassinates the leader of the Yamagami group, a hostile organization that trades drugs. This causes a conflict with the neutrals in the Ryuan-gumi. During this turbulent time, the leader Engetsu asks Mouri to take care of his son Saiga and guide him on the path to becoming a yakuza.

Roughneck From Asama

When Boss Juzo's Shinmachi Yakuza family struck fear into the hearts of his adversaries, Boss Shohei's Okabe Yakuza family with a merciless gang of raiders, Itaro of Asama was missing. With the courage of a lion he had gone off to face the enemy and settle the score all by himself. As a result he had to take the blame in place of Boss Shohei, and went off to adventures on his own.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon

Former yakuza underling Kazuma Kiryū has recently been released from prison after a lengthy incarceration and is trying to piece his life together and distance himself from his yakuza past. Unfortunately, Kiryū's problems slowly escalate as he is pursued by a former associate, the baseball-bat-wielding psycho Gorō Majima, who has a grudge to settle with Kiryū.

The Yakuza

When George Tanner does business with high-ranking Yakuza Tono, Tono kidnaps his daughter, and George summons his old friend, private eye Harry Kilmer, to Japan to investigate.

Kingdom 5: The Man Who Became the Leader

Shimazu Clan's third-generation boss, Tetsuo Sakuragi (Yasukaze Motomiya), and his sworn brother, Kenichi Kanamori (Yoshiyuki Yamaguchi), are set to be released from prison. Although Sakuragi plans to personally welcome his brother's return, Eitoshi Kaji (Hitoshi Ozawa) advises against it. Sakuragi dismisses Kaji's concerns, but Kaji reaches out to Tomomatsu Miwa (Naoki Hongo) of the Miwa Clan for support in convincing Sakuragi. On the day of Kanamori's release, it is Kaji, not Sakuragi, who comes to greet him. Witnessing this, Kanamori’s reaction is…

Ichi the Killer

As sadomasochistic yakuza enforcer Kakihara searches for his missing boss he comes across Ichi, a repressed and psychotic killer who may be able to inflict levels of pain that Kakihara has only dreamed of.

Jirocho’s Days of Youth: Boss of the Tokai Region

His skill and courage were the best in Japan! The life story of Jirocho, a man who protected people on the Tokaido Road. The fearless Kinnosuke Nakamura enthusiastically plays the young Jirocho from Shimizu in this chivalrous story.

Crows Zero

The students of Suzuran High compete for the King of School title. An ex-graduate yakuza is sent to kill the son of a criminal group, but he can't make himself do it as he reminds him of his youth.

Chocolate

Zen, an autistic teenage girl with powerful martial arts skills, gets money to pay for her sick mother Zin's treatment by seeking out all the people who owe Zin money and making them pay.