Best movies like The Flower and the Angry Waves

Harry Kilmer returns to Japan after several years in order to rescue his friend George's kidnapped daughter - and ends up on the wrong side of the Yakuza, the notorious Japanese mafia.

Utamaro, a great artist, lives to create portraits of beautiful women, and the brothels of Tokyo provide his models. A world of passion swirls around him, as the women in his life vie for lovers. And, occasionally, his art gets him into trouble.

A lonesome stranger with nerves of steel must track down and kill a rogue hitman to satisfy an outstanding debt. But the only information he's been given is a time and location where to find his quarry. No name. No description. Nothing.

Set in Toronto's Little Italy, Boy Meets Girl stars Sean Astin as Mike, a cynical writer who pens copy for a romance magazine, and Emily Hampshire as Angelina, who has just arrived in Canada from Italy to marry a man she unfortunately doesn't care for. Mike's next door neighbor is an eccentric wallpaper hanger who writes poetry in his spare time. Somehow, one of the paperer's love verses ends up in Angelina's hands and she's convinced Mike wrote it -- and suddenly love is in the air and romance is sparked between them.

A Tokyo college student is attacked by a ghoul, a super-powered human who feeds on human flesh. He survives, but has become part ghoul and becomes a fugitive on the run.

Chihiro is raped by three men and it is captured on video camera. She leaves her hometown and prepares to marry a colleague five years later, when one of the rapists arrives and says the others are on their way. He behaves like her long-lost lover and mistreats her again. Chihiro takes revenge, kills him and puts him in a freezer. The other rapists are awaiting a similar fate...

Yokiro was the most successful Geisha house in Western Japan during the first half of the 20th century and remains open to this day. At its peak, it was home to over 200 geisha, however behind the fabulous facade, there were many battles - between family members, men and women, and with the Yakuza. Momokawa was sold to Yokiro at age 12, and despite being the top geisha, her many complicated relationships provide unending challenges throughout her glamorous but turbulent life.

Brazilian-Japanese gangster Mario rescues his Chinese girlfriend Kei as she's about to be deported from Japan. Desperate to escape, he hides in Tokyo's booming Japanese-Portuguese community and seeks passage from the country from a Russian mobster. To meet his price, they hold up a bigtime drug deal between the Chinese Mafia and the local Yakuza.

When her visa expires, a young Japanese immigrant in San Francisco agrees to marry a Japanese-American boy to avoid being deported back to Japan.

Famed movie director Paul Robaix breaks with tradition by not casting his actress-comedienne wife, Lucy Dell, in his latest film production, a version of Madame Butterfly. Undaunted, the resourceful Lucy wings her way to Tokyo and, masquerading as a Japanese geisha, lands the coveted role from her unsuspecting husband! But in front of the cameras (and behind the pancake makeup), Lucy faces greater challenges: her lecherous leading man - and a husband who is beginning to realize that his talented new "discovery" seems vaguely familiar...

Two employees at a gift shop can barely stand one another, without realising that they are falling in love through the post as each other's anonymous pen pal.

Rei Iwatsuki moved from her hometown Kōchi to Tokyo to pursue her dreams. On arrival, she found a job as a waitress in a restaurant and met guitarist Ryuuji Shintani. Ryuuji liked her voice and invited her to join his band as the vocalist, The Survival Company (also known as Sabakan). The two started a relationship but then broke off when Rei wanted to write her own songs. Rei met other girls also working in the restaurant, Hirono, Ryoko and Maki, all in pursuit of their own dreams, and became good friends with all of them. One day, Rei receives news that Takashi was seen in New York and she decides to go look for him...

A man and a woman committed double suicide in Kanazawa City. Immediately after the incident, Yoshiko Shiota, a woman living in Tokyo, contacts the local newspaper of Kanazawa, saying she wants to read the novel serialized in it by Ryuji Sugimoto. How did this woman know the novel is serialized in the newspaper? And why does she want to start reading it in the middle of the story? Which article was she actually interested in? Sugimoto cannot help making his own investigations about Yoshiko, but the more he searches, the more astonishing facts come to light...

Yukiko's fiance learns her mother runs a geisha house and ends their engagement. She despises what her mother does until one of her clients shows interest and starts to woo her.

What is the life of a Geisha like once her beauty has faded and she has retired? Kin has saved her money, and has become a wealthy money-lender, spending her days cold-heartedly collecting debts. Even her best friends, Tomi, Nobu, and Tamae, who were her fellow Geisha, are now indebted to her. For all of them, the glamor of their young lives has passed; Tomi and Tamae have children, but their children have disappointed them. Kin has two former lovers who still pursue her; one she wants to see, and the other she doesn't. But even the one she remembers fondly, when he shows up, proves to be a disappointment.

Nana is 19 and lives in a corner of Tokyo. Her birth mother and Marin, a girl the same age who she loves, were the only people she could trust. Nana confronts them in her yearning for love, but the world does not give it to her. With her whole life ahead of her, Nana struggles, suffers, and begins a search for the true meaning of love.

In 1870's Tokyo, Den steals to support the daughter of her first marriage and her consumptive second husband. She falls in love with a young policeman, but is coerced into becoming the mistress of and procurer for a vice boss.

Akira Hojo and Chiaki Asami live different lives in Tokyo, Japan: Hojo is the leader of a small but rising Yakuza clan, while Asami is a politician aiming to become the youngest member of the Japanese parliament. But while they both live in different ways, Hojo and Asami share the same past; both of them were survivors of the Killing Fields of Cambodia. With the aggression and survival instincts they learned in the Cambodian jungles, Hojo and Asami strive in both the Yakuza and political world to reform Japan into their own sanctuary.

Retired Yakuzas open a ramen restaurant and become an overnight sensation, thanks to their recipe developed in prison. But a mysterious upstart gang is taking down every Yakuza family one by one, drawing the chefs back into the gangland underworld once more!

Young geisha Koshizu's wish of reuniting with the man, Yukichi, who helped her ten years ago comes true. When she learns of the trouble Yukichi's business is facing, she stands ready to come to his aid, and thus repay a debt that's long overdue.

The head of the Tatsumi family falls ill and dies after requesting that his son, who disappeared 15 years ago, takes over. The Tatsumi family, including the young head Ryu, decides to search for his son's whereabouts in order to keep his will. They finally find his son and learn he is now a woman. Meanwhile, the hostile Honjoukai are plotting to steal the Tatsumi family's territory.

After being excommunicated from the yakuza, Ginya Yabuki returns from the shadows as leader of his own crime syndicate known as the Tokyo Mafia.

Popular geisha Shinji (Fuji Junko) must defy a gang who plot to steal a lucrative coal business from struggling miners during the turbulent Meiji Era. With a stellar all-star cast, thrilling story and Takakura Ken's violent swordplay, makes this into a classic Yakuza movie!

Osaka, 1907: Asajiro lives between a rock and a hard place: he has to keep his business clean and running, tame his late oyabun’s hot-blooded son and suffer the throes of his impossible love for beautiful geisha Hatsue.

It takes place in the sunset days of the yakuza in the 1970s. The postwar turmoil that created the black market and lubricated illegal business opportunities was giving way to Japan Inc. A young Bunta Sugawara takes over as the oyabun of a crime syndicate in Yokohama, where he is struggling to keep operations at the port there alive. As his syndicate is eroding quickly, a major heavy industries company offers his gang the chance to chase some vagrants out of a shantytown where they are squatting on land where a factory is to be built. The job would secure steady profits for Bunta's crime ring for years to come. However, Bunta and other members of his outfit grew up in the shanty, and they would be muscling their friends and neighbors. This sets the stage for an internal struggle that complicates the violent struggle with a rival mafia organization in Tokyo.

In a small town on the Kasumigaura coast in the early Showa period, the Masukawa clan from Tokyo is trying to take away the interests of the local Isetoku family. Setsuko, the adopted daughter of the Isetoku family, falls in love with Seijiro, a travelling raven she meets on a whim. However, Koide, a businessman connected to the Masukawa clan, wants Setsuko to become his mistress... Setsuko puts aside her love and her regrets and bets on the greatest female challenge of her life!

Asakichi beats a ganster, Sada, in a physical fight, leading to recognition by Sada's clan boss. When Kotoito, the geisha Asakichi is in love with, is kidnapped by a rival clan and sold to a a house of pleasure, Asakichi and Sada set out to rescue her.

Townsend Harris is sent by President Pierce to Japan to serve as the first U.S. Consul-General to that country. Harris discovers enormous hostility to foreigners, as well as the love of a young geisha.

Jesus Christ and Gautama Buddha, the founders of Christianity and Buddhism, are living together as roommates in a Tokyo apartment while taking a vacation on Earth. The comedy often involves jokes about Christianity, Buddhism, and all things related, as well as the main characters' attempts to hide their identities and understand modern society in Japan.

After graduating high school, Hiromi moves from the coastal town of Niigata to Tokyo in the hopes of becoming a famous actress. Her dream seemingly comes true as a manager scouts her off the street. He recruits her as a model but it's actually to be a "nude" model. It's not exactly what Hiromi was looking for, but she can't turn down the opportunity. As her career dwindles, the manager coerces her to make the jump to AV and Hiromi gains a new identity as Mihiro.

A restaurant opens at midnight. Both the menu offerings and personality of the owner draw a series of flawed patrons including Tamako, whose boyfriend has passed away, live-in worker Michiru, and ruckus-raising Kenzo.

Mega star Akira Kobayashi stars as Jiro in the rambunctious tale of a chef who opens a restaurant in the busy Ginza district. His culinary skills and dashing good looks bring in the women as well as unwanted trouble, while an explosive political scandal builds around his girlfriend’s business...

Tokyo, 1934. The boss of the clan that controls gambling agonizes and some of his followers propose to Nakai to take his place, but he refuses the offer.

Artist Ryan Gander explores Japan's highly sophisticated visual culture, expressed through images and symbols. He makes unexpected connections between everything from geisha to tattoo art.

Kei works at a cocktail bar, while Ai works as a model. Fearing she'll be ostracized by society, Kei chooses not to admit her sexual orientation to anyone, and, as a result, she becomes distressed and lonely. One day, Kei gets close to Naima, an Iranian student studying art in Japan.

Yuki Onozaki, who was studying at a Women's College in Tokyo, was originally a young and ignorant girl, but her life changed completely in the summer of a certain year. During the summer vacation, Yuki returned to her hometown of Kyoto, only to be raped by the lover of her mother. Yuki then abandoned her studies and chose a depraved life. She met the gang leader Kiyoshi Oba and factory industrialists. Although these men could give her more or less physical comfort, they could not open Yuki's locked heart. It was not until the appearance of the young architect Yoichiro Honma that Yuki's love flower gradually bloomed. Soon, Yoichiro's first love while studying in France, Sandra, finds her, which makes Yuki's heart surge. After several twists and turns, Yoichiro decided to marry Yuki, but the trials never stopped...

Otsuta is running the geisha house Tsuta in Tokyo. Her business is heavily in debt. Her daughter Katsuyo doesn't see any future in her mother's trade in the late days of Geisha. But Otsuta will not give up. This film portraits the day time life of geisha when not entertaining customers.

A ruined businessman was forced to sell his daughter, Hisano, to a brothel in Yoshiwara, the largest red-light district in Tokyo. The owner of the brothel has hopes to make her a great new addition which will attract the richest of customers. But after several months of training, she tries to flee Yoshiwara when the time has come for her to take her first customer...

Two Tokyo co-workers come across a destitute young lady in search of a place to live.

It's a man's world. Shimamura, an artist, comes to this snowbound town to rejuvenate himself. He connects with Komako, a geisha he met on a previous trip, and it seems like love. She's the foster daughter of a local family, almost engaged to the family's son Yukio, now dying of consumption. He's tended by his sister Yuko who's angry at Komako for abandoning her brother. Shimamura returns to Tokyo but promises he will be back soon. In anticipation of his return, Komako breaks with her patron and her family loses their home. Complications arise when Shimamura doesn't come back as promised. Then Komako discovers that he and Yuko knew each other in Tokyo. Can Komako escape destiny?

A woman and her daughter are in love with the same man, a chef at the restaurant that the mother manages. He is slightly crippled from frostbite in his years in Siberian labor camps and considers himself "already dead."

The story of a young man who has felt since childhood utterly alien from others around him. Since that time he has learned to put on a face to hide his alienation. He feels incapable of belonging to the human society, especially so by society's refusal to take him seriously. He then follows a descent into alcohol, drugs, & suicide ...

Kimiko, a Tokyo white-collar working girl, lives with her serious, intellectual, haiku-writing mother. Kimiko seeks to marry her boyfriend but needs her absent father to act as the go-between and negotiate the marriage. Kimiko travels and finds her father living with a second family.

The story of a beautiful model from the flesh-pots of Tokyo.

Takako (Mei Kurokawa) is a beautiful woman in her 30's and she works as a designer. Takako has only had relationships with married men. She decides to change herself with the help of her manga artist friend Keiko (Asami Usuda). Takako signs up at a matchmaking site. Soon. Takako meets two men and she takes an interest in the two men. Meanwhile, Takako has an argument with her friend Keiko. (Asianwiki)

In a corner of Tokyo, a man named Natsuo lives as a yakuza and a woman named Natsuki works part-time. Although they rarely think about their families, they attempt to reunite with them. Brother and sister, father and daughter; the distance between them begins to shrink, but... This film portrays the dynamics of people trying to co-exist in nature and in the city. Even though two individuals may be insignificant in the context of a large society, one life meets another and they move forward. This is a movie about their small footsteps.

An Elderly fruit grower sends a photo of his foreman, not himself, to a waitress he wishes to marry. She falls in love with the foreman.

Richshaw man Tatsu has wandered to Osaka from Tokyo. He has quarrels with Kimiyakko, a geisha, and throws her into the river. But later, he falls in love with her. Yasaburo, the oyabun of the Nishikawa Gang, loves her very much too. However, as he likes Tatsu's dynamic personality, he volunteers to become a go-between for their marriage. Yasaburo gets tipped off by Yajima who wants to take over the territory of the Nishikawa Gang, and is arrested and imprisoned. After his release, Yajima tries to kill him. Ginjiro, a lover of Tamaryu respects Kimiyakko as an older sister and a follower of Tatsu, is murdered. After the third marriage ceremony just between Tatsu and Kimiyakko, Tatsu goes off to the place of fighting.

Mizuho takes over a restaurant in Nago, Okinawa, which was left to her by her grandmother. She single-handedly runs “Gajimaru Diner”, named after the large, deeply-rooted Gajimaru (banyan) tree in the area. Eventually, circumstances lead to her being brought together with an unknown traveler named Hayato, her ex-boyfriend Shota who returns after living in Tokyo for the past seven years, and a woman named Riko who shares something with both of them. As they work at the diner together, their relationships reveal themselves differently than what they had in mind.

A young woman must choose loyalty to a historical Asian clan, and her non-traditional love, amidst the deaths of her dance partners being investigated by her new lover.