Kaori MomoiFilmography

Love and Honor

Actors: Takuya Kimura, Rei Dan, Takashi Sasano, Ken Ogata, Kaori Momoi

Synopsis: Yoji Yamada's torchy Japanese drama Love and Honor (AKA Bushi no Ichibun) follows the heartbreaking plight of Shinnojo (Yoji Yamada), a young man employed as a "food taster" for the imperial family. Shinnojo's position comes to a sudden and tragic end when he consumes poisoned fish intended for Read More

Faces of a Fig Tree

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Kaori Momoi, Hanako Yamada, Saburo Ishikura, Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa, Katsumi Takahashi

Synopsis: Japanese writer-director Kaori Momoi's feature Faces of a Fig Tree (AKA Ichijiku No Kao) observes the tragedies that begin to pull apart the ties of the Kadowaki family. The story opens with the clan rough-hewn but tightly-knit by the bonds of intimacy. Circumstances start to go awry when the Read More

Memoirs of a Geisha

Actors: Zhang Ziyi, Ken Watanabe, Michelle Yeoh, Koji Yakusho, Youki Kudoh

Synopsis: This film, based on the novel by Arthur Golden, unfolds from the perspective of Chiyo (Zhang Ziyi), a girl who, at the age of nine, is sold to a geisha house in Kyoto in the early 1930s. Here, she learns that becoming a geisha can be the single path to wealth and independence for a woman. The head Read More

The Sun

Actors: Issey Ogata, Robert M. Dawson, Kaori Momoi, Shiro Sano, Shinmei Tsuji

Ashura No Gotoku

Actors: Shinobu Otake, Hitomi Kuroki, Eri Fukatsu, Kyoko Fukada, Tatsuya Nakadai

Synopsis: Yoshimitsu Morita's comedy drama Ashura No Gotoku (Like Ashura) tells the story of what happens to four sisters when they discover a secret their father has been keeping. The film opens with third sister Takiko (Eri Fukatsu) revealing to the others that dad has been having an affair that has Read More

Yau Si Tiumo

Actors: Takao Osawa, Shu Qi, Michelle Reis, Kaori Momoi

Synopsis: Renowned director Stanley Kwan spins this parable about post-handover Hong Kong, the second in a trilogy about the former colony that began with Hold You Tight (1998). Inspired from the 1998 "bird flu" that killed several people and prompted authorities to order the wholesale slaughter of that Read More

Pyrokinesis

Synopsis: An unwitting superheroine has an unusual way of dealing with those who have earned her wrath in a sci-fi tinged action drama from Japan. Junko (Akiko Yada) is a woman in her early twenties who discovers she has a remarkable power -- she can set things on fire with the powers of her mind. Junko's Read More

Bounce Ko Gals

Actors: Hitomi Sato, Yasue Sato, Yukiko Okamoto, Jun Murakami, Shin Yazawa

Synopsis: Ripped straight from the headlines of 1990s Japan, this film directed by Masato Harada explores the ticklish issue of enjo kosai -- a much-hyped phenomenon in which Tokyo schoolgirls (kogyaru) go on paid dates with lecherous middle-aged men. Set in the ultra-fashionable neighborhood of Read More

Tokyo Yakyoku

Actors: Kyozo Nagatsuka, Kaori Momoi, Mitsuko Baisho, Takaya Kamikawa, Satoke Abe

Synopsis: Following up on his 1995 Ozu-like work Tokyo Kyodai with this restrained look at lost love, Ichikawa centers his film on Hamanaka (Kyozo Nagatsuka), a middle-aged native of Tokyo's old shitamachi district who returns to his job and his wife after years of meandering about the country. Soon he is Read More

Sewaroutoiru

Actors: Hiroshi Mikami, Chara, Ayumi Ito, Yosuke Eguchi, Andy Hui

Synopsis: Following up on the fantastic success of Love Letter, pop phenom Shunji Iwai directs this phantasmagoric sprawling sci-fi drama set in a polyglotic encampment known as Aozora (blue skies) on the fringe of a megalopolis called Yen Town. Its ragtag -- and remarkably fashionable -- inhabitants are Read More

The Girl of the Silence

Synopsis: This unfortunately titled work is a critically acclaimed look at sexual abuse, based on the real-life experiences of comic book artist Shungiku Uchida, as told in her controversial best-seller. When the young Shizuko (Mami Nakamura) learns that she is pregnant after an encounter with a classmate Read More

Goaisatsu

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Directors Toshio Terada, Jun Ichikawa, and Kaori Momoi spin this omnibus film about that cornerstone of Japanese society -- the goaisatsu. Long, stilted, and often painfully maudlin speeches delivered in the floral style of formal Japanese, the goaisatsu graces such public events as wedding Read More

Ashita

Actors: Kaho Minami, Nobuko Sendo, Arther Kuroda

Synopsis: Historians and humanitarians still argue over whether it was truly necessary to drop a second atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Ashita probes this volatile subject not by recreating the fateful blast, but by backtracking 24 hours. Director Kazuo Kuroki speculates on what things were Read More

Carefree Goddesses

Yen Family

Actors: Takeshi Kaga, Kaori Momoi, Mitsunori Isaki, Midori Kiuchi

Synopsis: Hajime has big dreams for his small family and has organized his wife and two children into a corporation. He runs a newspaper-delivery service, a taxi service, and a catering company, while his daughter has set up her school as a corporation, and his wife runs a telephone sex service. However Read More

Kamu Onna

Actors: Kaori Momoi, Toshiyuki Nagashima, Mitsuru Hirata, Kimiko Amari, Yoshihiro Katoh

Synopsis: A producer of softcore videos is a family man who suffers from sexual dysfunction in this often disturbing erotic drama. He discovers he can only be aroused when his blood is drawn. He carries on a series of affairs with some of his erotic actresses until two conspire to end his philandering ways. Toshiyuki Nagashima Read More

Mein Teema

Actors: Hironobu Nomura

Synopsis: In this run-of-the-mill romantic drama, Shibuki Ogasawara (Hiroko Yakushimaru) is a young kindergarten teacher who develops a passion for the divorced father of one of her students, only to discover that a travelling magician has a stronger attraction for her, an appeal that is definitely not Read More

Kidonappu Buruusu

Actors: Yosuke Yamashita, Yumiko Fujita, Kaori Momoi

Synopsis: In a slow-paced narrative interspersed with close-ups of tomatoes, a bottle, and similar animate or inanimate artifacts, this film carefully unfolds the story of how a musician gives a ride to a little girl as he is peddling along on his bicycle, and after an encounter with a man incongruously Read More

Eijanaika

Actors: Shigeru Izumiya, Kaori Momoi, Ken Ogata, Shigeru Tsuyuguchi, Masao Kusakari

Synopsis: Eijanaika is a dramatization of a brief but critical moment in Japanese history when Japan emerges from two centuries of isolationism in the 1860s. This new regime proves more receptive to opening Japan up to trade from the West--particularly America. The story is told through the eyes of a Read More

Kagemusha

Actors: Tatsuya Nakadai, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Kenichi Hagiwara, Kota Yui, Shuji Otake

Synopsis: Just as many American studio-era directors found acclaim abroad that was denied them in their home country, by 1980 Akira Kurosawa's reputation outside Japan exceeded his esteem at home. As uncompromising as ever, he found considerable difficulty securing backing for his ambitious projects. Unsure Read More

Mo Hoozue Wa Tsukanai

Actors: Kaori Momoi, Eiji Okuda, Reo Morimoto, Akemi Negishi, Juzo Itami

Synopsis: In this melodrama, a young Japanese student juggles two different lovers with the usual consequences. She is actually in love with one of them, an odd, eccentric journalist, but for various reasons she does not break off the relationship with her other lover, a less than likeable student. In Read More

Assassination of Ryoma

Synopsis: The various factions opposing the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1860s Japan did not always work in tandem, as is made clear in this historical drama about the assassination of Ryoma Sakamoto, the head of the important Tosa clan. The Tosa clan worked simultaneously (if not altogether cooperatively) with Read More