In Kabuki style, the film tells the story of a remote mountain village where the scarcity of food leads to a voluntary but socially-enforced policy in which relatives carry 70-year-old family members up Narayama mountain to die. Granny Orin is approaching 70, content to embrace her fate. Her widowed son Tatsuhei cannot bear losing his ...

Schoolteacher Hisako Oishi struggles to imbue her students with a positive view of the world despite the fact that war is looming.

A girl who'd left her hometown for the exciting adventure of the big city returns home years later for a visit, soon somehow causing scandal.

The year is 1932, and a woman, whose tenant-farmer fiancé is fighting in China, is raped by the landowner's son, who has returned from the war with a crippling injury, and then forced into marriage with him. In four more chapters, presented over three decades, their children undertake their own searches for love, while the parents try ...

A widow raises her sickly son to be strong enough to join the army and fight on the front lines.