Hiroshi Shimizu

The day to day life in an establishment for delinquent teenage girls.

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Based on the novel by Kojin Shimomura. Story of a young boy and his adventures in the country. His idyllic life is shattered by the illness and death of his mother.

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A university professor and his wife have two sons with infantile paralysis. Through trial and error, they struggle to open a school for disabled children at their own expense. Based on a true story, it features natural child performances under Hiroshi Shimizu’s skillful direction.

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As an orphan, Yamauchi Fumiko was taken in by the politician Kawabe Sotaro and raised by him. Perhaps because of their similar circumstances, she fell in love with Murakawa Sadao, a young man who had also been cared for by Kawabe after losing his father. Standing in the way of their romance is Kawabe’s only daughter Kyoko. She was in love with Murakawa, and Kawabe had even given his consent to their marriage. Through Kyoko’s scheming, Fumiko was forced into a blind date with Miyata, a senior executive at Murakawa’s company.

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A motley cast of characters, including a human billboard and a shoeshine girl, help a 5 year old girl after she is separated from her mother on the crowded streets of Ginza.

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Short documentary film on the architecture and history of Nara Kofuku-ji and Todai-ji temples.

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33-year-old poor writer Ogata was able to endure his miserable life cheerfully thanks to Yoshie, a 19-year-old innocent young wife. After graduating from a girls' school in Hokuriku, she immediately moved to Tokyo to meet and marry Ogata. After neatly writing Ogata's manuscript, he would buy dorayaki as a gratuity and devour it.

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The final film in the Beehive trilogy. Set in post-war Nara, it follows a group of orphans living in a temple who support themselves by acting as guides for tourists visiting the Great Buddha.

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A picture-story-show operator, accompanies her son, Akira, who lives apart from her, to a hot-spring medical treatment and spend a moment of brief happiness together, but eventually the time comes to say goodbye. The portrayal of the children and the atmosphere of the hot spring resort shine through in this film about a mother by master filmmaker Hiroshi Shimizu.

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In Shimizu’s sequel to his 1948 masterpiece, a journalist arrives in the secluded foothills of Izu to find a hidden commune to ask, “What happened to the children of the Beehive?” Three years have passed and her question situates itself not only in the realm of Shimizu’s craft, but that of reality: What became of the war orphans Shimizu raised?

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A bar girl tries to pass her three children, each from a different father, to rural relatives.

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Saheita, the final heir of a once rich and respectable family, can't refuse the many villagers that come to him for favours and money, even though he is on the brink of bankruptcy. Around town he is better known by his nickname Mr. Shosuke Ohara.

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Lost for 70 years until 2022, Shimizu’s second postwar film recalls Mr. Thank You as he frames the narrative in a familiar setting, tracking an autumnal bus ride from a hot spring town through a mountain pass. When the jaunty bus unceremoniously breaks down, a bittersweet sadness overcomes the passengers as unexpected reunions take place, but nothing can be what it was before the war.

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A group of war orphans initially seen scratching out an existence through black market work, as they are taken under the wing of a nameless soldier, just repatriated after the war.

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An anthology of thirteen patriotic stories about Japanese citizens contributing to the war effort.

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Based on the true story of a 17-year old Atayal girl called Sayun Hayun from Nan'oku village, Giran district, Taihoku Prefecture (in current Taiwan) who went missing and was thought to have drowned whilst helping carry the luggage of her teacher Masaki Takita during a storm in 1938.

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A group of female doctors travel to a remote village during their summer holiday to offer free medical care to villagers. There they must battle prejudice and superstition as much as disease.

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A Japanese mountain inn patron's foot is cut by an ornamental hairpin accidentally left behind by a former patron, leading to much curiosity among the other patrons regarding her identity.

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A young girl gives up high school to help out family expenses and starts to work as a bus conductor.

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A city boy moves to the countryside and the kids there pick on him.

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Uta’s mother died when she was six years old; her father she never met. She was forced to adopt a traveller’s life when her grandmother died, and now she is a dancer and part of a family of actors who travel from town to town, setting up street performances. A way of escape from this marginal existence arises when she gets the chance to move to tea merchant Hiramatsu’s place, where she is asked to teach his daughter to dance.

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A reformatory in the remote countryside houses 200 delinquents and problem children. The teachers and caretakers face much trouble. The school is often short on water, and one day, the well runs dry.

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This documentary was produced on the request of the Korean railway-organisation during the Japanese occupation of Korea. The news-coverage in those days was aimed at strengthening the public opinion that Korea and Japan were indissolubly allied. This film, as many other films in those days, was meant to clearly propagate this pact. However, the director of this film, Shimizu Hiroshi, only shows streetscenes. He films without the ideology that was so common in this kind of films. He registers the people in the street in their daily occupations.

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A spirited young teacher challenges the conservative school employing her with liberal thinking and teaching methods.

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Weed with Flowers

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The brothers of Children In The Wind deal with declining family fortunes: they must work when the father becomes sick, and eventually live with their grandfather, which means making new friends and struggling with a different environment.

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Two childhood friends go their own ways but meet again some years later after they have both married. They get re-acquainted, meet each others’ families, and all is well. Then the disagreements start...

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A pair of blind masseurs, an enigmatic city woman, a lonely man and his ill-behaved nephew—The Masseurs and a Woman is made up of crisscrossing miniature studies of love and family at a remote resort in the mountains. With delicate and surprising humor, Hiroshi Shimizu paints a timeless portrait of loneliness and the human need to connect.

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