Shimada is a student of U College. When the college's baseball team wins the day, he and his friend Ito drug two girls they met at the game.
Two brothers compete for the amorous favors of a young woman during a seaside summer of gambling, boating, and drinking.
In the backstreets of Ginza, the boss of a hairdressing salon is found dead, killed by strangulation. The detective on the case soon hears rumors about the murder.
Kinichi and Akiko meet when they visit their fathers in prison. After successfully gambling on a bicycle race, they spend an enjoyable day together at the beach.
Nishi is an advertising executive for a caramel company that is planning to launch a new product, in fierce competition with two other companies.
A young man runs a scam selling pigeons that always return to his home. He falls under the wing of Kyoko, an older student whose heart is touched after Masuo sells his pigeons to her. However, after his scam is revealed, can these feelings truly remain the same?
The backstage romances of an egotistical singer and his under-valued manager, a lovelorn bandman and a nude dancer.
A budding gangster enthralls a freeloading young woman, soon taking advantage of her knack for hitch-hiking to rob middle-class, middle-aged men.
In Osaka's slum, youths without futures engage in pilfering, assault and robbery, prostitution, and the buying and selling of identity cards and of blood. Alliances constantly shift. Tatsu and Takeshi, friends since boyhood, reluctantly join Shin's gang. Shin's an upstart and moves his gang often to avoid the local kingpin. Hanoko is a young woman with ambitions: first she's in the blood business with her father, then she joins forces with Shin. She soon breaks off that partnership, even though she's taken the sensitive Takeshi under her wing. Double crosses multiply. Those with the closest bonds become each others' murderers.
Uninvited guests crash a former student radical's wedding and accuse him, his bride and other guests of ignoring their political commitments.
A family of four are the sole inhabitants of a small island, where they struggle each day to irrigate their crops.
In the city of Yokosuka, Kinta and his lover Haruko, both involved with yakuza, brave the post-occupation period with a goal to be together.
A vengeful contractor hires a series of young killers to target a woman muckraker. Trouble brews when an amateur marksman shows up his eclectic competition.
A young delinquent takes part in a robbery and is sentenced to a juvenile detention center, where he clashes with other youths and reflects on his life experiences.
Towards the end of the Second World War, a downed U.S. pilot is captured and imprisoned by rural Japanese villagers, who await official instructions as to how to proceed with their “catch.”
In the year 1637 in Shimabara of Tokugawa-era Japan, oppressed peasant Christians revolt against the shogunate with the aid of a charismatic Christian rebel leader Shiro Amakusa.
A man wanders into a seemingly deserted town with his young son in search of work. But after a bit of bad luck, he joins the town's population of lost souls.
Experienced shipyard worker Shimazaki gets an offer of free lodging from his employer in the company seaside rest house if he agrees to see to its running. After moving in, Shimazaki finds out that this will also mean taking care of a flock of youngsters, and he soon becomes their none-too-successful warden. At work the boys are disciplined, as soon as they return to their dormitory however they turn into an unmanageable mob.
As her husband Eiichi becomes more entangled in his life as businessman, Naoko looks for ways to expand her own life even as her husband's life shrinks in scope and intimacy. She finds new interests, new love, and a greater sense of her place in the world.
A vacationing entomologist suffers extreme physical and psychological trauma after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village and made to live with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.