Movies like Chikamatsu Monogatari

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

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.

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

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

A failed novelist's inability to pay the bills strains relations with his wife and leads him to work at an escort service, where he becomes entwined with a wealthy woman whose husband is a successful writer.

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.

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.

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.

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

A married farmer falls under the spell of a slatternly woman from the city, who tries to convince him to drown his wife.

Residents of a rundown boardinghouse in 19th-century Japan, including a mysterious old man and an aging actor, get drawn into a love triangle that turns violent. When amoral thief Sutekichi breaks off his affair with landlady Osugi to romance her younger sister, Okayo, Osugi extracts her revenge by revealing her infidelity to her jealous husband.

In 1870s India, Charulata is an isolated, artistically inclined woman who sees little of her busy journalist husband, Bhupati. Realizing that his wife is alienated and unhappy, he convinces his cousin, Amal, to spend time with Charulata and nourish her creative impulses. Amal is a fledgling poet himself, and he and Charulata bond over their shared love of art.