Yamada Yoji's Bushi no Ichibun (AKA Love and Honor), becomes available with english subs on June 1st. It's third in a trilogy of samurai films (the first two being The Hidden Blade and Twilight Samurai) made late in the acclaimed director's life.
Also, Give It All director Isomura Itsumichi's Gege gets a priced down edition (from 6000 yen to 2800) on April 20th.
cdjapan.co.jp has a listing up now for Kuroki Kazuo's last film/swan song The Youth of Kamiya Etsuko. I think a number of people here enjoyed The Face of Jizo, and Mark Schilling's review (Japan Times, free reg required) of the film sounds more than interesting to me (some excerpts):
Mark Schilling wrote:Film directors are often "in production" to the last, even when they're breathing on a respirator (John Huston) or recovering from a stroke (Nagisa Oshima). There's something valiant about this, even if the late films are a falling off from the best work.
Sometimes, though, they are a precious final statement about saying farewell to the passion of your life.
Kazuo Kuroki, who died of a stroke at age 75 last April, summed up an era for his entire generation in his last four films, starting with "Tomorrow" (1988), about the Nagasaki atomic bombing, and concluding with "Kamiya E-tsuko no Seishun (The Youth of Etsuko Kamiya)," which became a posthumous film -- and a fitting coda to Kuroki's four-decade career.
...But "Kamiya Etsuko" is also austere -- hardly any music, mostly long takes and only straight cuts -- in a way identifiably Kuroki. It is as though, knowing the end was approaching, he concentrated his remaining energies to make a strong-but-simple drama, with maximum efficiency and minimum distractions.