Akira Terao
Based on a true story - a true love story of a man and his wife who are at the mercy of fate, but wish to be reunited for 11 years. With thoughts of his wife and his fellows, Yamamoto Hatao never gave up hoping that he'd return home despite hopeless circumstances.
Koichi Miyazawa runs a small, but longstanding company which makes tabi (traditional Japanese socks). He is the CEO of the fourth generation company with about 20 employees. Due to a decrease of demand for tabi, the company is struggling to keep afloat. Koichi Miyazawa thinks about launching a new product line. The new product is running shoes. For the company's surival, Koichi Miyazawa begins to develop running shoes using their accumulated knowledge for making tabi.
Yoneda Katsumi (Nishida Toshiyuki) is a police sergeant who exudes little presence.One day, Yoneda happens to come across an article on a cafe called Kohaku in a booklet at his regular cafe. Then he abruptly takes leave and heads to Kohaku which is located in Uozu, Toyama Prefecture by bullet train. For some reason, he has documents on an unsolved arson cum murder case which took place in Kichijoji 25 years ago.The owner of Kohaku is Arai Toshio (Terao Akira) who has seemingly sad eyes. They spend time together with his only regular customer, Hirai Sachiko (Suzuki Kyoka), a married woman who works at the port’s fisheries cooperative. Their interactions gradually start to deepen even as they sense the darkness in each other. What is the fate that awaits them?
Hikuma Koichi was a saxophone player, but he suffers from the after-effects of an accident. Due to that, he turned his back on music. Hikuma Koichi finds hope in the high school brass band. The band consists of problem students. Koichi struggles to instruct the brass band and to give them hope.
Takada Yu is an employee of a development firm. His father has favored his high-achieving older brother and been indifferent to Yu since young. So Yu craves for his father’s love and wants his recognition somehow. Then one day, Yu encounters a woman. Although it was the worst possible meeting, he gradually starts to have romantic feelings for her through work and an unexpected development. But ironically enough, she turns out to be the girlfriend of his older brother. Yu begins to realize what he truly treasures and matures as a person as he struggles with this complicated romance and with his older brother and father.
Kenta Kurata (Masaki Aiba) lives with his father, Taichi (Akira Terao), his mother, Keiko (Kaho Minami), and his younger sister, Nana (Kasumi Arimura) in an isolated home in the suburbs. He works as an unpopular commercial designer. Kenta Kurata possesses a timid personality, which he picked up from his father. Kenta doesn't like his father. One day, while waiting for the train, Kenta warns a man who pushed a woman and cut in line. Kenta is surprised that he spoke out with his normally timid personality. After that incident, Kenta's family home is targeted by an unknown person with flowers from their garden being pulled out and the seat of a bicycle being torn. Also, Kenta's younger sister Nana is stalked by her ex-boyfriend. Kenta and his family try to find out who is responsible.
Reporters Takehara and Tsumura Aki work for the magazine "Shukan Dodongo". Their chief editor tells them to monitor Okase Shohei who is an ex-bureaucrat and was recently released from prison. 7 years ago, Shohei was arrested for embezzling 1 billion yen. The investigation seven years ago was able to track down 700 million yen but unable to locate the remaining 300 million yen. Now, the chief editor is sure Shohei will go to wherever the remaining 300 million yen is hidden.
The second comic original drama starring Akira Terao! Comedy suspense with a variety of guests. Fukamachi, a detective who got information that Yasuo Domon, an executive of the Kurosaki Association, who was investigating at the request of a certain person, is in the church. While investigating with a voice microphone in his suit, a detective, Goshimada, who was also chasing Domon, appears there.
Story of friendship between an old man who slept for 45 years and his nurse who woke him up. (Source: D-Addicts)
Jotaro Fukamachi (Akira Terao) is a poor middle-aged detective who separated with wife and children. He rent the office in second floor of the building owned by beautiful dentist Reiko Sugimoto (Eriko Sato).
The Eternal Founntain was broadcast as the Saturday Drama Special on NHK. Laywer Akio Yamauchi takes over the court-appointed attorney for Yoji Kuramoto who confesses to murdering his wife. While following Kuramoto's action in Yamanaka and being sure of his innocence, Yamauchi remembers his wife who passed away 12 years earlier.
A widower's teenage daughter is murdered. A mysterious phone call tells him who the killers are and he plots revenge.
A drama about a rookie detective who teams up with a veteran detective and develops a good rapport while overcoming difficulties. Keigo starts his new post at a local police station where he partners up with Shoichi, a frigid, yet warm-hearted, detective on the verge of retirement. The drama features how the young detective builds up his career with the veteran and those who are connected with his cases.
After the unexpected death of her husband a new life begins for Toshiko. 30 years of a happy marriage seem to suddenly vanish as she finds out that her husband had lived a double life. Struggling between her anger and the chance to begin a new chapter for herself, she finds her life moving into unchartered waters as she faces her 60th birthday.
This is the story between single mother housekeeper and mathematics professor,who has a brain damage.
This is the story about one small coffee shop located in the northern island of Hokkaido. Yukichi Wakui used to work as a successful businessman at a prestigious trading firm. He worked for several years in New York as well as other cities around the world. When his wife Megumi died at the age of 47 in a car accident three years ago, he decided to leave the company. He was only 57. When Megumi died in the accident, her 18-year-old son Takuro was at the wheel. Yukichi declined an offer to switch to an affiliate company after his retirement, and moved to Megumi's hometown Furano, Hokkaido instead. There he started a small coffee shop named "The Forest Clock."
After the assassination of Tokyo's Governor by Yakuza members, the CIA bureau chief (William Atherton) for Tokyo puts out a call to an agent (Steven Seagal) that had been raised in Japan and trained by ex-Yakuza. Using his former ties, he quickly determines that a war is brewing between old-guard Yakuza members and a young, crazed leader (Takao Osawa) with ties to the Chinese Tong.
The Isokaze, an Aegis-class escort vessel, sets sail on a routine training exercise, playing host to a platoon from the Fleet Training Group. No sooner is the Isokaze on open water, however, then the FTG reveal themselves to be terrorist stowaways who kill the ship's captain, send the rest of the crew overboard and take control of the vessel. The ship is carrying a secret biological weapon which the terrorists are now threatening to use to level Tokyo! Only a stowaway NCO, Sengoko (played by Sanada Hiroyuki from Ring and Twilight Samurai) is in a position to stop them - but does he really have what it takes to save the day? Playing like a cross between a sea-faring version of Top Gun and Die Hard, director Sakamoto Junji shows that it's not just Hollywood that can produce thrill-a-minute action spectaculars.
Half a Confession introduces itself as a thriller and abruptly changes gears, transforming into a tale of morality with deeper insights into its characters than we had anticipated. It begins when Soichiro Kaji (Terao), a retired detective, walks into police headquarters and confesses to the murder of his wife. We learn that the victim had prematurely developed Alzheimer's after the tragic death of their son, and in her suffering, had asked to die. The police chiefs would be far more content to take him at his word if it were not for a conspicuous hole in his story: 48-hour gap between the alleged murder and his confession. Fearing a public relations nightmare, they are eager to bury the incident and keep the press in the dark.
Fifty years of war between the Great Eastern Federation and Europa - now merged as Eurasia - have taken their toll on planet Earth. As a result of the use of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, much of Earth has become uninhabitable and people have become prey to new diseases. Professor Azuma's "neo-cell" project, which is supposed to be the answer to mankind's hardships, becomes a nightmare come true when mutants spawned from the experiment escape and declare war on the human race. Azuma's son Tetsuya, who was killed during the previous war, is reborn into the cyborg Casshern as mankind's last hope against the new mutant threat. This live-action sci-fi movie based on a 1973 Japanese animé of the same name.
The husband leaves home, leaving behind his wife and child and his job as a middle school teacher. He leaves all this to live with a former girlfriend so that he can nurse her as she battles with terminal illness. He has decided to nurse her until the end. This sudden take-charge approach from a man she thought of as indecisive causes the wife to look at her husband in a completely different way. To top it off, the husband asks her to drop in on the ex-girlfriend from time to time to keep her company. Despite herself, she agrees to her husband's request. She thought that cursing her husband and celebrating the ex-girlfriend's suffering would make her feel better but instead she finds herself even more attracted to him. She even finds herself growing closer to the ex-girlfriend, creating a curious bond between the two women. In the midst of all this, the relationship between the husband and wife continues to change.
As the film begins, Takao (Akira Terao) and Michiko (Kanako Higuchi) have already pulled up their Tokyo roots and moved to a village that is Takao's ancestral home. They visit a thatched cottage that serves as a memorial shrine (amidado) for the village dead and chat with the attendant, the spry 96-year-old Oume (Tanie Kitabayashi). Together they admire the view -- from an inspiring distance. Oume, it turns out, is a kind of sage, whose thoughts and observations are a popular feature in a column in a local newsletter. Her amanuensis is a mute, sweetly smiling young woman named Sayuri (Manami Konishi), who is as devoted to Oume as Oume is to the souls of her beloved dead.
A middle-aged salaryman with a typical family, living quietly in a provincial city (Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture), wakes up one morning in the summer of 1994 to find himself the prime suspect in the biggest mass-murder case of the decade.
Eriko – lonely, aimless and self-absorbed – falls for Tamura. Despite knowing that he is waiting for his girlfriend to return from overseas, she requests to enter into a relationship with him for just one year.
A group of travelers is stranded in a small country inn when the river floods during heavy rains. As the bad weather continues, tensions rise amongst the travelers trapped at the inn. Ihei Misawa is a ronin, a samurai without a master, whose skills with a sword make him a valuable employee but whose brutal honesty and lack of social graces prevent him from staying with one master for too long. One night, Ihei impulsively offers to buy food and drink for the guests at a hotel; he doesn't have the money to pay, and to raise cash he concocts a scheme to take on anyone brave enough to fight him for a prize. Ihei's fighting skills impress Lord Shigeaki, who offers him a position as fencing master in his court. Ihei gratefully accepts, but when Shigeaki challenges him to a fight, Ihei beats the Lord decisively. Ihea is certain that he's managed to throw another opportunity away when a band of mercenaries attacks him, and his skills as a swordsman are put to the ultimate test.
13th year of the Genroku era. Matahachiro Aoe, a samurai of the Shonai clan from Dewa Province, accidentally learned that a group of conspirators led by the main vassal of Tango Otomi were planning to poison the Lord. Matahachiro decided to consult with the father of his fiancée Yuki, Kizaemon Hiranuma, an employee of the security department, and told him everything. However, when Matahachiro was about to leave for home, Hiranuma attacked him from behind and Matahachiro defended himself by killing his future father-in-law in front of Yuki. Matahachiro escapes to Edo and provides bodyguard services to earn a living. He is pursued by assassins who are sent by conspirators from his former clan. And soon he also becomes involved in the conflict between Asano and Kira, which arose due to a blade wound in a pine corridor in Edo Castle...
The tragic tale of two lovers whose passion burns so intensely it destroys them.
A historical chivalric drama with tears and laughter, telling the story of Jirocho Shimizu's family, his confrontation with Katsuzo Kurokoma's family, right up to the final battle on the Tenryu River to avenge Ishimatsu Mori.
The private eye of Shinjuku Yokubo Tantei is a lone wolf, lush, and loser but has kept his integrity in a dirty, dangerous world.
Mitsuo goes to Nagoya to visit Izumi, whose father left Izumi’s sad, bar hostess mother for another woman, so together they decide to confront him in Oita. Meanwhile, Izumi’s mother befriends Tora-san and together they travel to Oita to meet them, with Tora-san quickly falling for her en route.
With Ran, legendary director Akira Kurosawa reimagines Shakespeare's King Lear as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan. Majestic in scope, the film is Kurosawa's late-life masterpiece, a profound examination of the folly of war and the crumbling of one family under the weight of betrayal, greed, and the insatiable thirst for power.
Tora-san befriends the descendant of a feudal lord. The man asks Tora to locate his deceased son's wife who resides somewhere in Tokyo.
Tora-san arrives in Shibamata on Mitsuo's first day of school only to find that on his account, Mitsuo was embarrassed. After a fight with his family, he goes to a bar to drink, then brings home a surly old man with a sad story, whose identity will surprise everyone. Later, Tora meets Botan, a geisha.
This appears to be a labor of love. Its about a village which is given the opportunity to put on a musical. They would have to pay the overhead and, being that they are farmers and always busy and not rich, question the wisdom and feasibility of such an idea. A spokesperson for the acting troupe Ms. Kono lays out the whole thing and they must decide. You get little slices of rural life in Japan far, at least in sentiment, from Tokyo. The best thing about this film is that it has heart. The acting is good, but it is really about the simple storyline of outing on a show. Films rarely get made with such simplistic plots these days. Enjoy this little slice of what city people call “the simple life”.
Kitagawa is an engineer charged with construction of a gigantic tunnel through the Japan Alps for the transportation of equipment in the building of the massive Kurobe Dam. The tunnel crosses an earthquake fault and Kitagawa is beleaguered not only by cave-ins and flooding, but by strife between management and the workers's union. Adding to Kitagawa's stress is the knowledge that as his attention is pulled inexorably toward the tunnel construction, his youngest daughter is dying from leukemia.
Jotaro Fukamachi (Akira Terao) is a poor middle-aged detective who live separated with wife and children. He rent the office in second floor of the building owned by beautiful dentist Reiko Sugimoto (Eriko Sato).
