Yoji Yamada Trailers
55th anniversary performance of Tora-San: Rakugo, Talk and Tora Jiro Returns TrailerSeijo Story: 60 Years of Making Films TrailerKen San Trailer
Yoji Yamada (山田 洋次 Yamada Yōji, born September 13, 1931 in Toyonaka City, Osaka, Japan) is a Japanese film director best known for his Otoko wa Tsurai yo series of films.
He was born in Osaka. But because of the work of his father, who was an engineer for the South Manchuria Railway, from the age of 2 he was brought up in Manchuria. Following the end of World War II, he came back to Japan and subsequently he lived in Ube in Yamaguchi Prefecture.
After receiving his degree from Tokyo University in 1954, he entered Shochiku and worked under Yoshitaro Nomura as a scriptwriter or as an assistant director.
He has won many awards throughout his lengthy career and is well respected in Japan and by critics throughout the world. He wrote his first screenplay in 1958, and directed his first movie in 1961. Yamada continues to make movies to this day.
He once served as president of the Directors Guild of Japan, and is currently a guest professor of Ritsumeikan University.
Most Popular Yoji Yamada Trailers
Total trailers found: 164
01 November 2019
After meeting as college students in the cinema town of Seijo, husband and wife Nobuhiko and Kyoko Obayashi have gone on to direct and produce acclaimed films together for 60 years.
15 March 1969
The return of a man to Japan from Borneo creates chaos in a village.
15 January 1964
Yasugoro, goes to live in a quiet town where he falls in love with the priest's daughter-in-law. His does not declare his love because she is married, but he goes on a mission to please her, and is blinded.
05 August 1967
After an argument with his father a son leaves his home and comes back only, as an adult, many years later just to cause them problem after problem.
24 December 1988
Densuke Hamazaki is an office worker at Suzuki Construction and gets transferred to the main Tokyo office.
21 November 2025
One day, taxi driver Koji Usami is tasked with driving 85-year-old Sumire Takano from Shibamata, Tokyo to a senior care facility in Hayama, Kanagawa.
26 December 1964
Sabu was once a boy soldier but people in his village disliked him. He finally broke loose when his land was taken.
29 October 1983
An extremely lovely tribute to Ozu, on the 20th anniversary of his death. It uses a combination of footage from vintage films and new material (both interviews and Ozu-related locations) shot by Ozu's long-time camera-man (who came out of retirement to work on this).
07 August 1998
Anime adaptation of the "Otoko wa Tsurai yo (It's tough being a man)" film series by Youji Yamada. Kuruma Torajirou (or Tora-san), a traveling salesman whose sole possessions include only the contents of a small suitcase, the clothes on his back and some pocket money, wanders from town to town peddling his wares.
02 August 1986
Director Ogata discovers a new female star in Koharu Tanaka, who works selling candy at a studio theater and she is given a part as a bit player.
23 December 1995
Based on the manga by Sadao Jouji which has been running in the magazine Shukan Gendai since 1969.
18 September 2010
Kyoko is a university librarian and she also helps her parents with their drycleaning company. She is involved with a childhood friend from the neighborhood, Kota.
02 November 2002
Seibei Iguchi leads a difficult life as a low ranking samurai at the turn of the nineteenth century. A widower with a meager income, Seibei struggles to take care of his two daughters and senile mother.
13 April 1968
Police detectives investigate the link between a serial killer's machinations and a teenage boy who committed suicide.
19 March 1961
One week into newlywed Teiko Uhara's marriage, her husband, Kenichi, leaves on a short business trip and never returns.
28 May 1965
When her only relative, her elder brother is accused of robbing and murdering an old woman loan-shark, pretty, young Kiriko travels from her home in Kyushu to Tokyo to get Japan's top lawyer to defend her brother.
28 December 1996
A young man fails his company entrance exams and leaves home to work at a run-down cinema in Tokushima, whose owner lives to bring entertaining films to the residents of his small town.
12 October 1991
Tetsuo is a young man living in Tokyo, who falls in love with a deaf-mute factory girl. He has always felt jealous of his college-educated brother, but ultimately wins both the girl and his father's acceptance and support in a touching and refreshing way.
25 October 1975
This appears to be a labor of love. Its about a village which is given the opportunity to put on a musical.
27 December 1997
Sequel to The Rainbow Seeker where Ryo meets Katsu on a small island in the south of Japan. There, he falls in love for a single mother.
19 May 1971
Comedy of an entertainment agent and strip-teasers.
04 January 1968
Burned out butcher Hazama meets a woman at a restaurant and is asked to help her deliver a bag of diamonds.
01 December 2006
A look at the relationship between a young blind samurai and his wife, who will make a sacrifice in order to defend her husband's honor.
25 December 1993
After failing to find a job, Mitsuo becomes a fisherman on a small island, and develops a crush on a young nurse there.
20 April 2017
Several years after Shuzo settled his wife’s birthday-surprise divorce proposal (What a Wonderful Family, 40th), the Hirata family faces new problems.
06 November 1993
A cantankerous but loveable high school teacher teaches a night school in a poor neighborhood for adult students on the fringes of Japanese society.
16 March 2016
A husband and wife have been married for 50 years. For her birthday, the husband asks the wife what she wants for her birthday present.
01 October 1969
An uptight young man comes to suspect that his factory worker girlfriend has a secret involving his boorish older brother.
13 March 2025
Hirayama Konosuke is a retired man who expects to spend a peaceful life with his wife, Fumie. However, his world is turned upside down when Fumie reveals her long-held dream of opening a book café—using his retirement savings.
29 April 1967
The life in a small village in Shikoku and the love story between two young people.
01 January 1964
Based on Muneta Hiroshi's military novel. The main character, Yamaguchi Zensuke, is a military dog soldier.
30 September 1977
A convict, newly released from prison for murder, joins two strangers on a road trip through Hokkaido to visit his ex-wife, whom he hasn't seen in four years, knowing that if she puts a yellow handkerchief on the window, it would mean that she wants him back at home.
06 November 1976
Based on a children's book. Two children encounter a wooden chair that moves and speaks. The chair awaits their return, unaware the sister died in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
15 August 1987
When his travels take him to rural Hokkaido, Tora-san helps a cantankerous old veterinarian (Mifune) in his relationships with his estranged daughter, and a woman in whom he is secretly interested.
06 August 1988
The adventures and tribulations of a group of students during the years following the II World War.
12 November 1966
Saotome is a white-collar worker on the brink of a burnout who one day strikes up a friendship with Gen, a boorish drifter who approaches life one day at a time.
25 May 2018
At the Hirata home, three generations of their family live together. A crisis ensues when one afternoon, housewife Fumie falls asleep and wakes up to find a thief has stolen her secret money she kept hidden in the refrigerator.
19 November 2009
A road trip through Louisiana transforms three strangers who were originally brought together by their respective feelings of loneliness.
19 October 1974
Two detectives are tasked to investigate the murder of an old man, found bludgeoned to death in a Tokyo rail yard.
24 October 1970
The story is set in 1970 during the time of the first EXPO in Japan. The film’s main figure is a miner who suddenly becomes unemployed because the mine he worked in was shut down.
27 December 1981
The Story of Panda – Taotao, directed by Shuichi Nakahara and Tatsuo Shimamura, was the first animation produced as a Chinese-Japanese joint venture.
23 December 1994
Mitsuo, unhappy in his new job as a shoe salesman, is invited to a festival and is introduced to a friend’s sister.
29 August 2015
After the war, many filmmakers were expelled from the Japanese film industry due to the Toho Dispute and the Red Purge.
15 March 1980
The quiet life of a mother and her young son living on a farm in Hokkaido is changed by the arrival of a man who ignites flames of romance in the heart of the mother and shows her boy the importance of grit and kindness, but then he leaves with the autumn wind.
27 December 1989
Tora-san's nephew Mitsuo is exchanging letters with Izumi, a former classmate whose parents divorced and took her out of Tokyo.
28 December 1985
Tora-san's family's neighbor, Akemi, who had been married in Marriage Counselor Tora-san (1984), runs away from her husband, who is only interested in work.
16 July 1994
Approached by a friend about a matchmaking arrangement, Su-san goes to Hama-chan's home seeking help.
01 September 2023
Akio, an HR worker, visits his transformed mother Fukue in Tokyo. Baffled by her new lively self, he encounters a friendly neighbor.
30 October 2004
Set in 19th Century Japan a young samurai who finds himself in love with a farm girl leaves his home to begin a new life.
22 November 1997
Based on the long running manga by Sadao Shouji.
25 January 2014
Following the death of the unmarried and childless Taki, Takeshi, a young relative of hers, discovers several pages of closely written lines in which the old lady has recorded her memories.
05 August 2006
Yumiko returns to work in Hama-chan's department. She had once left the company after getting married, but a dark shadow now seems to loom over her.
10 October 2011
Set in Hokkaido, revolving around an ex-convict named Shima Yusaku (Abe) who has just been released from prison.
25 June 2018
The Akazas are a blue-collar family living in a working-class neighborhood of Tokyo. Older brother Inosuke is a carpenter who works for his father Shinobu's construction business.
27 August 1969
Tora-san, an itinerant peddler who is thrown out of his father's house twenty years before but reconnects with his aunt, uncle and sister Sakura.
25 December 1993
Hama-chan and Su-san go fishing during a business trip, but Hama-chan has to give a lecture on Su-san's behalf in a case of mistaken identity.
26 January 2008
Set in Tokyo in 1940, the peaceful life of the Nogami Family suddenly changes when the father, Shigeru, is arrested and accused of being a Communist.
27 December 2019
The 50th film in Tora-san series, using the old footages and newly shot scenes to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the series.
