A Geisha on Horseback (1954)

Memoirs of a Geisha

In the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.

In the Realm of the Senses

A passionate telling of the story of Sada Abe, a woman whose affair with her master led to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship.

Zatoichi

Blind traveler Zatoichi is a master swordsman and a masseur with a fondness for gambling on dice games. When he arrives in a village torn apart by warring gangs, he sets out to protect the townspeople.

The Geisha

Yokiro was the most successful Geisha house in Western Japan during the first half of the 20th century and remains open to this day. At its peak, it was home to over 200 geisha, however behind the fabulous facade, there were many battles - between family members, men and women, and with the Yakuza. Momokawa was sold to Yokiro at age 12, and despite being the top geisha, her many complicated relationships provide unending challenges throughout her glamorous but turbulent life.

Madame Butterfly

Pinkerton marries Cho-Cho San in Japan, whilst on shore leave. When he leaves, she keeps his Japanese home as he left it. He returns three years later, having married again in America, and tells Cho-Cho that their affair is over. She has had a child in his absence, who is sent to her family, before she kills herself.

Arashi Tatsunari

Can a woman love two men at the same time? Set against the backdrop of Kyoto's rich history, this story depicts a woman's difficult choice for love. Ayako, played by Yukiyo Toake, is an international conference coordinator. Torn between her childhood sweetheart (played by Kenji Sawada) and her English professor (played by Noboru Nakaya), Ayako will seek answers to love, marriage, and choice.

Late Chrysanthemums

With delicate, unobtrusive strokes, Naruse evokes both the humor and bitterness of his characters’ dilemmas, in this bleak, compelling poignant portrait of a quartet of aging geishas contemplating their troubles with men and money.

Lady Maiko

Country bumpkin Haruko only ever wanted to become a maiko, an apprentice geisha. Initially rebuffed for lack of references, Haruko's strong accent intrigues a linguistics professor, who undertakes to coach her.

A Geisha

Fleeing a distressing family situation, Eiko, a very young girl, becomes an apprentice to Miyoharu, a veteran geisha. Both, determined to preserve their professional integrity, must face the selfishness and ambition of several petty people.

The Scent of Incense

After her mother runs away from home, Tomoko is raised to be a geisha. One day Tomoko meets her mother in a red-light district in Tokyo and her life deeply gets in trouble.

Flowing

Otsuta is running the geisha house Tsuta in Tokyo. Her business is heavily in debt. Her daughter Katsuyo doesn't see any future in her mother's trade in the late days of Geisha. But Otsuta will not give up. This film portraits the day time life of geisha when not entertaining customers.

The Flower and the Angry Waves

A young yakuza in love with the girl who's to marry his clan oyabun, kidnaps the girl before fleeing with her. In Tokyo, he hides under the identity of a worker while the young woman becomes a waitress in a restaurant.

Ginza Cosmetics

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

Hot Springs Geisha

A look at the lives of a troupe of geishas working in a small seaside resort town. For the most part, their lives consist of greeting boatloads of oversexed businessmen and providing bawdy entertainment through the evening followed by private companionship at night, interspersed with occasional catfights with the rival geisha house. Their routine is suddenly thrown off by the appearance of an abandoned baby in the geishas' dormitory, followed by its disappearance only a short time later. Who could be responsible for such a thing?

A Woman Called Sada Abe

The young and beautiful Sada Abe, the daughter of a rich merchant, is banished for losing her virginity after being raped by a college student. Sada wanders the city, becoming a geisha and eventually meeting Kichizo, a posh restaurateur who falls under her spell. Together, they embark on a week-long sexual escapade filled with dangerous obsessions. Their complete descent into each others desires culminates in a shocking crime of passion which captures the city's headlines. Based on a real event from 1936.

The Barbarian and the Geisha

Townsend Harris is sent by President Pierce to Japan to serve as the first U.S. Consul-General to that country. Harris discovers enormous hostility to foreigners, as well as the love of a young geisha.

Zigeunerweisen

A surreal period film following a university professor and his eerie nomad friend as they go through loose romantic triangles and face death in peculiar ways.

Apart from You

An aging geisha, whose angry teenage son is ashamed of her profession, works alongside a young geisha, resentful of her family for forcing her into a life of ignominy.

A Courtesan with Flowered Skin

Japan around 1860: popular courtesan Asagiri will be freed soon from her service, yet she cannot imagine any other existence. Until one day at a local festival, Asagiri meets the young artisan Hanjiro by chance – an encounter that changes her destiny. With a strong performance by leading actress Yumi ADACHI and exquisite camerawork and production design, A COURTESAN WITH FLOWERED SKIN succeeds in recalling the golden age of Japanese erotic film.

What Did the Lady Forget?

A professor, Komiya, and his bossy wife, Tokiko, are to look after Setsuko, their high-spirited niece from Osaka. Despite being a minor, Setsuko is a liberated woman who does whatever she wants, including smoking. She even convinces Koyima to take her to a geisha house. When she gets rather tipsy, the professor calls Okada, one of his students, to take her home. The wife becomes suspicious of Setsuko when she sees Okada bringing her home.

Wife! Be Like a Rose!

Kimiko, a Tokyo white-collar working girl, lives with her serious, intellectual, haiku-writing mother. Kimiko seeks to marry her boyfriend but needs her absent father to act as the go-between and negotiate the marriage. Kimiko travels and finds her father living with a second family.

Demons

Tells the story of the samurai Gengobe, who seeks revenge after falling prey to the schemes of a geisha and her husband.

Samurai Geisha

Popular geisha Shinji (Fuji Junko) must defy a gang who plot to steal a lucrative coal business from struggling miners during the turbulent Meiji Era. With a stellar all-star cast, thrilling story and Takakura Ken's violent swordplay, makes this into a classic Yakuza movie!

A Lively Geisha

Young geisha Koshizu's wish of reuniting with the man, Yukichi, who helped her ten years ago comes true. When she learns of the trouble Yukichi's business is facing, she stands ready to come to his aid, and thus repay a debt that's long overdue.

A Story Written with Water

Struggling with his true emotions, dreams, memories of the past and the reality Shizuo is about to marry, but is torn between his wife-to-be and the love to his mother.

Serpent

This is the story of a samurai who falls on hard times due to misunderstandings and follows the plots of his enemies.

Yoshiwara

Based on a novel by Maurice Dekobra, the film is set in the Yoshiwara, the red-light district of Tokyo, in the nineteenth century. It depicts a love triangle between a high-class prostitute, a Russian naval officer, and a rickshaw man.

The World of Geisha

The world is in turmoil with the October Revolution of 1917, riots over the inflationary price of rice, and the military expedition to Siberia in 1918. But Shinsuke, a brothel owner, spends his days in the arms of geishas, paying little heed to the events happening around him.

Lusty Hot Spring

Kiriko is a beautiful woman working in a quiet hot spring town. The owner of the inn, Goro, is attracted to her beauty and asks her out, but she refuses. Meanwhile, Imai, a detective staying at the inn, recognizes Kiriko's face and investigates her past on his own.

BU・SU

Mugiko, an 18-year-old attempts to escape her unhappiness with village life by going to Tokyo to live and work in the geisha house run by her aunt. The daughter of a once great geisha, Mugiko is entitled by blood to train in the geishas ancient art of classical Japanese song and dance.

Earth Defense Widow

Dan is a former geisha, now working as an ace pilot for the Earth Defense Troops. Her fiance was killed by the space monster Bemurasu which consumes nuclear waste. To save Planet Earth, Dan attacks Bemurasu, but whenever she does, she feels ecstasy. Can she save Planet Earth?

Geisha Assassin

One rainy night in the Edo period, Kotono (a geisha) confronts samurais who killed her father. The samurais attack her one after another, but she fights hard against samurais with her sword. Kotono tries to chase the samurais who scramble to escape. Yet now three ninjas stand up against her. Kotono drops her sword by their wave of assaults. Can she beat them?

Inju: The Beast in the Shadow

The writer and college professor, Alexandre Fayard, researches and gives lectures about the gruesome literary work of the mysterious Japanese writer Shundei Oe, considered by him to be the master of manipulation.

Maiko Haaaan!!!

Kimihiko Onizuka is a salaryman infatuated with maiko (apprentice geisha) and whose greatest goal in life is to play a party game called "yakyuken" with one.

My Geisha

Famed movie director Paul Robaix breaks with tradition by not casting his actress-comedienne wife, Lucy Dell, in his latest film production, a version of Madame Butterfly. Undaunted, the resourceful Lucy wings her way to Tokyo and, masquerading as a Japanese geisha, lands the coveted role from her unsuspecting husband! But in front of the cameras (and behind the pancake makeup), Lucy faces greater challenges: her lecherous leading man - and a husband who is beginning to realize that his talented new "discovery" seems vaguely familiar...

RoboGeisha

Sisters Yoshie and Kikue are two Geisha who are abducted by a mysterious organization to be transformed into murderous cyborg assassins.

The Geisha Boy

Gilbert Wooley is a second-rate magician who is sent to entertain the troops in the pacific. During his time in Japan he becomes attached to a little orphan boy.

Detective K: Secret of the Lost Island

Joseon's top detective Kim Min attempts to track down those responsible for circulating massive amounts of counterfeit silver bullion in Joseon. He also tries to find the missing sibling of a young girl.

Afloat

'Afloat' is an experimental film that paints a portrait of Japanese performance artist: Ayumi Lanoire. The film opens as a telephone call between Ayumi and Person X, which meanders the audience through the various layers that make up her personas leading one to wonder whether she is in fact a myth or reality.

Cry for Happy

Army photographers on leave in Japan take over a geisha house.

The Revelation of a Geisha

After the bankruptcy of her foster-father's condom factory, Tamae sets out to make a living on her own and ends up working as a geisha at a hot spring resort. After rising in popularity, a climactic sex battle is held to decide who gets to lay claim to her.

Hot Springs Mimizu Geisha

Many persons visit the hot springs resort to try out Reiko's famous vagina with quivering walls, "the sensation of worms wiggling about"... that won her her nickname (Mimizu = earthworm).

Three Little Geisha

A young girl works as a geisha to earn money for travel.

Matsuchiyo - Life of a Geisha

Matsuchiyo - Life of a Geisha’ is a documentary about one of the last surviving true geisha in Japan. The story begins with Matsuchiyo’s wartime childhood. She and her mother were the only two surviving members of the family. Matsuchiyo joins an “Okiya” (a traditional geisha agency), to pay the family debts and support her ageing mother. In her adulthood, Matsuchiyo becomes one of the top geisha in the city of Atami and experiences romance, tearful farewells, being a mistress of married men, motherhood and tragic deaths. Today, in her 80’s, Matsuchiyo the geisha, is as motivated and inspiring as ever. She still delivers a mesmerising performance on stage. ‘Matsuchiyo - Life of a Geisha’ is narrated by her own son and film director, Ken Nishikawa, and it is adorned by hundreds of beautiful pictures from Japan’s bygone era. This film illustrates the trials and tribulations of the ultimate Japanese cultural enigma that is - The Life of a Geisha.

Hot Spring Resort: Geishas vs. Ozashiki Strippers

In a rural town the local elders and a band greet the arrival of a troupe of strippers. After a show two men who claim to be show biz producers make the elders an offer. If enough funds can be raised they will make their favorite lead stripper a star. Is this an offer too good to be true?

Happenstance

Christina and Keith are childhood friends who see each other at a mutual friend's birthday party. They recall old memories and find themselves seeing each other in a new way.

Jesus is My Boss

A warring Yakuza awakens to Christianity and becomes an evangelist. The film is modelled on the real-life "Mission Barabbas," a Christian evangelistic group of ex-Yakuza.

Brothers in Space

15-year-old Johan helps his 9-year-old brother, Oscar, to build a space rocket to go visit their dad. Johan has made up a story for Oscar, as to why their dad is no longer with them. But on the day that Oscar celebrates his 10th birthday, this lie turns into something unexpected. Will Johan tell Oscar the truth?

Dealova

Libby, a female basketball player, is caught in confusion when she is faced with two boys who are quite different in age from her and who both love Libby.

Jessy

13-year-old Jessy can hardly remember that her father Miro used to be an important part of her life. His unexpected return after seven years in prison and his intrusion into the safe space she and her mother have built severely disrupts their symbiotic relationship. Forced to deal with this stranger to her, Jessy increasingly trusts Miro. She learns to open up and set new boundaries. Then she meets Max, who strengthens her urge for freedom. Stirred up by new relationships and feelings, she begins to listen to herself and enjoys a sense of independence.

Liebes Lager

In a Nazi concentration camp, German soldiers shamelessly abuse the inmates, mocking and brutalizing them. But the prisoners never give up on the violence they have suffered, convinced that they can rebel and take revenge.