ある町の高い煙突

When the brutal Boshin War breaks out in Japan, a group of inmates on death row unite to defend a fortress against the Imperial army.

Depicts the bloody siege of the fortress of Port Arthur, one of the most strongly fortified positions in the world, during the Russo-Japanese War of (1904 - 1905). In the story dominated the character Lt Takeshi Kogyo (Teruhiko Aoi), teachers, and a reserve officer who became commander of the platoon and later company. At the same time monitors the conduct of the army commander general Nogi (Tatsuya Nakadai), which was commissioned of the emperor Matsuhito (Toshirô Mifune) to the conquest of the fort.

At Sakurada Gate in 1860, the shogun’s chief minister and his retinue of bodyguards are ambushed and annihilated. Bearing the responsibility and shame for this failure is Shimura Kingo, master swordsman and chief of the guard. Forbidden to take his own life in atonement, he is instead tasked with hunting down the remaining assassins; however, fate intervenes and now only one is left. Devoted to his late lord and his duty, he relentlessly pursues the sole remaining assassin for the next thirteen years. But times are changing in Japan and the way of the sword has become outlawed. What does this mean for Kingo?

In 1868, after the Bakumatsu war ends, the ex-assassin Kenshin Himura traverses Japan with an inverted sword, to defend the needy without killing.

Traces the rise of the company Suzuki Shoten from the 1880's to 1919. After the death of her husband, Yoni Suzuki and her general manager built the company from a small sugar importer into Japan's largest trading and manufacturing company.

In the year 1868, three young men join the elite Shogitai division of the Shogunate. The Shogitai fights to the end and opposes the dismantling of the feudal military dictatorship known as the Bakufu system.

At the strong insistence of his father, Ushimatsu Segawa conceals his origins from a “buraku” area of low-class “untouchables,” leaving his hometown to serve as an elementary school teacher where he excels and is loved by his students. But he constantly struggles with the secret of his low-birth status and is disturbed by all of the discrimination levelled upon his class. It prevents him from pursuing a romance with Shiho, whom he meets at the temple where he resides, but who descends from a samurai family.

In 1868, after the fall of the Shogun-dominated Japan, the new government orders people from Awaji, near Kobe, to re-locate to the northern part of Hokkaido. These people once supported the now displaced Samurais of the older days. After two years, over 500 of them settled in their new land under the leadership of Hideaki, husband of Shino. However, as crops fail he is to go to Sapporo to learn new techniques of farming, leaving his wife and daughter for 5 years. All this time, the new community is constantly watched by the government which choose to again uproot them from their new homes.

Yuki's family is nearly wiped out before she is born due to the machinations of a band of criminals. These criminals kidnap and brutalize her mother but leave her alive. Later her mother ends up in prison with only revenge to keep her alive. She creates an instrument for this revenge by purposefully getting pregnant. Yuki never knows the love of a family but only killing and revenge.

A young girl named Oshin is sent to work for another family, because of her own family's financial condition. Nevertheless, the young girl lives strongly.

This is the true story of the last officially recorded case of adauchi, when a young man avenged the death of his father by brutally killing the murderers in broad daylight. Samurai revenge killings, or adauchi, was considered a rightful and noble act of honor and virtue.But all that changed abruptly on February 7, 1873, when adauchi became prohibited as part of the Meiji Restoration’s goal to Westernize Japan.