Akira Kurosawa's patriotic World War II morale booster focuses on a volunteer corps of women working at an optics factory to produce lenses for binoculars and targeting scopes, and was shot on location at the Nippon Kogaku factory in Hiratsuka.

Volunteering as a "comfort woman" on the Manchurian front, where she is expected to service hundreds of soliders, Harumi is commandeered by the brutal Lieutenant Narita but falls for the sensitive Mikami, Narita's direct subordinate.

Portrait of an inexorable fall from grace, as an imperial lady-in-waiting gradually descends to street prostitution.

1895, Japan. In a small village, Seki is the wife of the litter carrier Gisaburo. Seki has an affair with Toyiji, a man twenty-six years younger her. Toyiji becomes jealous of Gisaburo and plots with Seki to kill him. After Gisaburo has had plenty of sake to drink and goes to bed, the two strangle Gisaburo and dump his body inside a well in the woods. Seki tells the locals that Gisaburo moved to Tokyo to work. Finally, three years later, suspicions...