Kitagawa is an engineer charged with construction of a gigantic tunnel through the Japan Alps for the transportation of equipment in the building of the massive Kurobe Dam. The tunnel crosses an earthquake fault and Kitagawa is beleaguered not only by cave-ins and flooding, but by strife between management and the workers's union. Adding to Kitagawa's stress is the knowledge that as his attention is pulled inexorably toward the tunnel construction, his youngest daughter is dying from leukemia.
After his own gang sets him up to kill a rival mobster, a hit man is forced to flee with his younger brother.
Volunteering as a "comfort woman" on the Manchurian front, where she is expected to service hundreds of soldiers, Harumi is commandeered by the brutal Lieutenant Narita but falls for the sensitive Mikami, Narita's direct subordinate. Seijun Suzuki's Story of a Prostitute is a tragic love story as well as a rule-bending take on a popular Taijiro Tamura novel, challenging military and fraternal codes of honor, as seen through Harumi's eyes.
The tragic tale of Kiyono, a young woman from the mountain who fell in love with Takuji, a fisherman's son, and her devotion to him during a time of war.
Akira, a young, jazz-obsessed drifter, returns to his squat, a ruined church, and finds Gill, a wounded African-American GI, on the run after the death of a white GI. Despite terrible misunderstandings and culture clash, Akira agrees to help Gill escape towards the sea, dodging military police along the way.
A hot-shot detective in Yokohama kills a witness during a drug investigation. He flees to the countryside and evades his past for several years, only to return to find the woman he loved married to his former partner. He searches for answers to his troubled past, knowing that his inevitable doomed fate is more or less sealed.
Handsome young Katsuta tries to follow the yakuza code, but even his boss doesn't believe in it. Diamond Fuyu is less ethical, and allows the idiotic Tetsu to trick a schoolgirl he fancies, Hanako, into a type of bonded prostitution. Because of gang conflict, the Izu family (to whom Katsuta belongs) has their last gambling den taken over, and he seeks revenge. This brings him back into contact with a former lover who is also a card trickster - she is also Diamond Fuyu's sister, and is now married to Okaru-Hachi, who has mastered a clever card cheating trick called Okaru, which involves the deft use of mirrors.
One summer day, the chief monk of the Hojuin Temple dies. Harumichi rushes back to town hearing about his brother's death and requests for a grand funeral. He had been unwilling to take over the family business and had chosen a life as a middle school teacher far away from home, but considering the circumstances, he changes his mind. As the new chief of Hojuin, Harumichi scrambles around day after day for donations. He has kept strictly to the straight and narrow, until he passes a bicycle race track where the sounds of cheering fans induce him into a new way of life...
The monologue and mysterious death of a man who survived and returned from Iwo Jima. A newspaper reporter writes an article about "The Man from Iwo Jima" asking the people who were close to him about his character and the painful memories off all those involved.