Backdrop fallback

Chikamatsu Monogatari

Chikamatsu Monogatari

Share

Chikamatsu Monogatari

"The tortured heart behind the cultivated image."

1954

1h 42m

7.8(158 votes)

Drama

Romance

Overview

When the wife of a 17th-century Kyoto scrollmaker is falsely accused of having an affair with his best employee, the pair flee the city and find themselves truly falling for one another.

Where to Watch

Links & Resources

Social & External

Production Companies

Daiei Film

The people behind it

Cast & crew

10 featured cast members

Starring

Kazuo Hasegawa

Kazuo Hasegawa

Mohei

Kyōko Kagawa

Kyōko Kagawa

Osan

Eitarō Shindō

Eitarō Shindō

Ishun

Eitarō Ozawa

Eitarō Ozawa

Sukeemon

Yōko Minamida

Yōko Minamida

Otama

Haruo Tanaka

Haruo Tanaka

Gifuya Dôki

Chieko Naniwa

Chieko Naniwa

Okô

Ichirō Sugai

Ichirō Sugai

Gembei

Tatsuya Ishiguro

Tatsuya Ishiguro

Isan

Hiroshi Mizuno

Kuroki

Creative team

Directed by: Kenji Mizoguchi
Written by: Yoshikata Yoda
Matsutarō Kawaguchi
Produced by: Masaichi Nagata

Similar Movies

Heaven

Heaven

A woman takes the law into her own hands after police ignore her pleas to arrest the man responsible for her husband's death, and finds herself not only under arrest for murder but falling in love with an officer.

Hart's War

Hart's War

When Col. William McNamara is stripped of his freedom in a German POW camp, he's determined to keep on fighting even from behind enemy lines. Enlisting the help of a young lieutenant in a brilliant plot against his captors, McNamara risks everything on a mission to free his men and change the outcome of the war.

Seven Swords

Seven Swords

In the middle of the 17th century, the Manchus conquered China and founded the Ching dynasty. Due to widespread uprisings against the new rulers, the study and practice of traditional martial arts is forbidden and punishable by death. The unscrupulous leader of a troop of mercenaries takes advantage of this situation to make a fortune with the bounty on his head.

Experiment: Sorry

Experiment: Sorry

A teacher in his mid-seventies discovers a link between music and physics after 40 years of trying and uses his "Time-Piano" to mend the relationship with the love of his life.

Savage Grace

Savage Grace

This examination of a famous scandal from the 1970s explores the relationship between Barbara Baekeland and her only son, Antony. Barbara, a lonely social climber unhappily married to the wealthy but remote plastics heir Brooks Baekeland, dotes on Antony, who is homosexual. As Barbara tries to "cure" Antony of his sexuality -- sometimes by seducing him herself -- the groundwork is laid for a murderous tragedy.

Kings of the Road

Kings of the Road

Itinerant projection-equipment repairman Bruno Winter and depressed hitchhiker Robert Lander - a doctor who has just been through a break-up with his wife and a half-hearted suicide attempt - travel along the Western side of the East-German border in a repair truck, visiting worn-out movie theaters, learning to communicate across their differences.

Strange Circus

Strange Circus

The erotic novelist Taeko is writing a morbid story of a family destroyed by incest, murder and abuse. Her assistant, Yuji, sets on a mission to uncover the reality of this story, but the reality might be too much to bear.

I Just Want to Dance with You

I Just Want to Dance with You

Tom is an 18-year-old deaf boy who lives with his overprotective brother, Eliel. His life changes when he meets the dancer Anthony. As the two grow closer and Tom's feelings for Anthony awaken, a new perspective emerges in his life, leading him to follow the path he always wanted: his own.

Woman Without a Face

Woman Without a Face

Martin is married to Frida and together they have a son. One day after a quarrel with his wife, he goes to buy flowers to ask for forgiveness. In the flower shop he meets the beautiful Rut and falls instantly in love. They both start a passionate love affair but beneath the beautiful surface hides a completely different woman than he expected ...

Shall We Kiss?

Shall We Kiss?

When Gabriel and Emilie meet by chance, he offers her a ride, and they spend the evening talking, laughing and getting along famously. At the end of the night, Emilie declines Gabriel's offer of "a kiss without consequences". Emilie admonishes him that the kiss could have unexpected consequences, and tells him a story, unfolding in flashbacks, about the impossibility of indulging your desires without affecting someone else's life.

Führer Ex

Führer Ex

Ingo Hasselbach, whose parents were Communist Party members in East Germany during his childhood, has lived at both ends of the political seesaw. The question of how people reach a change of heart is a profound one; Hasselbach describes the external forces that led to his founding Germany's first neo-Nazi political party and the internal ones that led him away from it five years later.

In the Heat of the Night

In the Heat of the Night

African-American Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of murder by Bill Gillespie, the racist police chief of tiny Sparta, Mississippi. After Tibbs proves not only his own innocence but that of another man, he joins forces with Gillespie to track down the real killer. Their investigation takes them through every social level of the town, with Tibbs making enemies as well as unlikely friends as he hunts for the truth.

Big Girls Don't Cry

Big Girls Don't Cry

Kati and Steffi have been best friends since they were six. Now they're both 17 and enjoying the ups and downs of becoming adults together. While Kati's parents are religious and conservative, but argue constantly, Steffi comes from what appears to be a harmonious and liberal family. But the girls discover how quickly their attractive world can fall apart when, at a hip nightclub, they happen to see Steffi's father in the arms of another woman. Steffi is shocked, her trust in her small perfect world shaken to the core. She can only think of one thing: revenge.

Autumn in New York

Autumn in New York

Will Keane, a Manhattan restaurateur, is content with his playboy lifestyle until he meets Charlotte Fielding, a free-spirited young woman. Together the pair pursue a passionate affair that forces them both to reevaluate what they want out of life, even as fate threatens to steal away their future.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Successful surgeon Tomas leaves Prague for an operation, meets a young photographer named Tereza, and brings her back with him. Tereza is surprised to learn that Tomas is already having an affair with the bohemian Sabina, but when the Soviet invasion occurs, all three flee to Switzerland. Sabina begins an affair, Tom continues womanizing, and Tereza, disgusted, returns to Czechoslovakia. Realizing his mistake, Tomas decides to chase after her.

Happiness

Happiness

The lives of several individuals intertwine as they go about their lives in their own unique ways, engaging in acts which society as a whole might find disturbing in a desperate search for human connection.

Tell No One

Tell No One

A man receives a mysterious email appearing to be from his wife, who was murdered years earlier. As he frantically tries to find out whether she's alive, he finds himself being implicated in her death.

Hit Me Anyone One More Time

Hit Me Anyone One More Time

Keisuke Kuroda wakes up in a hospital bed unable to remember who he is. While sneaking out of the hospital, he sees a glimpse of the news and realizes that he is the Prime Minister of Japan. His approval rating was the lowest in the history of modern Japan. During a recent speech, a citizen had thrown a rock at him causing him to lose his memory. Keisuke Kuroda’s subordinate takes him to the official residence of the prime minister where he tries to implement changes to the country. The only people aware that he has lost his memory are his three secretaries.

Hunger

Hunger

This short film is a story about Vera who is desperately in love with Susanne. Vera is getting obsessed and hungry for love when her feelings are not responded. Egoism takes over and leads her in a bloody direction when she discovers her need to own something more.

Fatal Attraction

Fatal Attraction

A married man's one-night stand comes back to haunt him when that lover begins to stalk him and his family.

Recommended Movies

Early Spring

Early Spring

A young salaryman and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he embarks on an extramarital affair.

An Autumn Afternoon

An Autumn Afternoon

Widower Shuhei Hirayama's caretaker is his 24-year-old daughter, Michiko. Gradually, he comes to realize that Michiko should not be obliged to look after him for the rest of his life, so he arranges a marriage for her.

Dolls

Dolls

Dolls takes puppeteering as its overriding motif, which relates thematically to the action provided by the live characters. Chief among those tales is the story of Matsumoto and Sawako, a young couple whose relationship is about to be broken apart by the former's parents, who have insisted their son take part in an arranged marriage to his boss' daughter.

The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice

The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice

The arranged marriage between a capricious woman from Tokyo high society and a quiet rustic man is tested by a marital crisis.

Not Easily Broken

Not Easily Broken

A car accident and shifting affections test the bond between a married couple.

Romance Doll

Romance Doll

It was a pre-destined love and marriage for Sonoko and Tetsuo. They tied the knot and became husband and wife no questions asked. All is well then. Well, perhaps not. Each holds a secret that even the binds of matrimony cannot untie.

High and Low

High and Low

A Yokohama shoe executive faces a wrenching choice when kidnappers mistakenly seize his chauffeur’s son but demand the ransom anyway.

My Happy Marriage

My Happy Marriage

An unhappy young woman from an abusive family is married off to a fearsome and chilly army commander. But the two learn more about each other, love may have a chance.

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

An unexpected love triangle, a seduction trap, and a random encounter are the three episodes, told in three movements to depict three female characters and trace the trajectories between their choices and regrets.

Throne of Blood

Throne of Blood

Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by a spirit who predicts their futures. When the first part of the spirit's prophecy comes true, Washizu's scheming wife, Asaji, presses him to speed up the rest of the spirit's prophecy by murdering his lord and usurping his place. Director Akira Kurosawa's resetting of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in feudal Japan is one of his most acclaimed films.

Memoirs of a Geisha

Memoirs of a Geisha

In the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.

47 Ronin

47 Ronin

Kai—an outcast—joins Oishi, the leader of 47 outcast samurai. Together they seek vengeance upon the treacherous overlord who killed their master and banished their kind. To restore honour to their homeland, the warriors embark upon a quest that challenges them with a series of trials that would destroy ordinary warriors.

We Made a Beautiful Bouquet

We Made a Beautiful Bouquet

Two people meet each other after missing the last train home, leading to a beautiful relationship over five years.

Restless

Restless

Two outsiders, both shaped by the circumstances that have brought them together, forge a deep and lasting love.

After the Storm

After the Storm

Ryota is an unpopular writer although he won a literary award 15 years ago. Now, Ryota works as a private detective. He is divorced from his ex-wife Kyoko and he has an 11-year-old son Shingo. His mother Yoshiko lives alone at her apartment. One day, Ryota, his ex-wife Kyoko, and son Shingo gather at Yoshiko's apartment. A typhoon passes and the family must stay there all night long.

Ocean Waves

Ocean Waves

At Kichijōji Station, Tokyo, Taku Morisaki glimpses a familiar woman on the platform opposite boarding a train. Later, her photo falls from a shelf as he exits his apartment before flying to Kōchi Prefecture. Picking it up, he looks at it briefly before leaving. As the aeroplane takes off, he narrates the events that brought her into his life...

The Magic of Ordinary Days

The Magic of Ordinary Days

Pregnant out of wedlock, an educated young woman is pressured by her father into an arranged marriage with a lonely farmer in this drama set during WWII.

Ran

Ran

Shakespeare's King Lear is reimagined as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan where an aging warlord divides his kingdom between his three sons.

Endless Love

Endless Love

A privileged girl and a charismatic boy's instant desire sparks a love affair made only more reckless by parents trying to keep them apart.

The Age of Innocence

The Age of Innocence

In 19th century New York high society, a young lawyer falls in love with a woman separated from her husband, while he is engaged to the woman's cousin.