Fumi Dan

Shuichi is engaged to Sanae and they will marry soon. One day, Shuichi is driving a car and his friend Teru sits as a passenger. He is speeding because he is late for a meeting about his upcoming wedding ceremony. On the way there, he hits a woman and flees. The woman dies later and her parents Hikaru and Chizuko Tokiyama are grief stricken. Veteran detective Kozaburo Yanagi and rookie detective Shun Maeda investigate the hit-and-run case.

4.6/10

Junko Harumi was once a model student during her middle school and high school days. She failed to enter prestigious Tokyo University and her life has not gone smoothly since then. She has a hard time finding a job and having relationships with men. Now, at the age of 31, she works as a teacher at a private institute. 3 men, who vary in type, appear in front of her. Masashi Yakumo is smart and a cousin of Junko, Kyohei Yuri is a disorderly high school student and Kazuma Yamashita is Kyohei ’s teacher in high school.

6.6/10

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.

7.2/10

Fumi becomes Genzui Kusaka’s wife. During the turbulent times of the closing days for the Tokugawa shogunate, she lives positively and tries to keep up Shoin Yoshida's will. Shoin Yoshida is her older brother and intellectual.

Toru grew up in the Tateyama mountain ranges: alpine country. As a child, he resented the yearly trek up the mountain with his father to prepare their mountain hut for the summer season of climbers. When Toru grows up he leaves his hometown, entering the working world as a stock trader and becoming another office worker. But when Toru receives word that his father has passed away, he returns to Tateyama once again and becomes conscious of a new calling. But does Toru have what it takes to follow in his father footsteps?

6.3/10

Based on a short story written by Shuhei Fujisawa (who also wrote Twilight Samurai, The Hidden Blade, Love and Honor), the film depicts the uneasy life of Noe Isomura (Rena Tanaka) with the difficult family she has married into after her former husband passed away. One day as she tries to brake off a branch of a cherry tree, she is aided by a samurai who she does not recognize but who recognizes her. He turns out to be a former suitor that she never met named Yaichiro Tezuka (Noriyuki Higashiyama) and who teaches swordsmanship to the local samurai. Meanwhile, the powerful new chief retainer of the village enacts land policies that threaten the survival of the local farmers.

5.8/10

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.

7.7/10

This is a story of a girl born with a bad leg. Ritsuko longs to go to school and make lots of friends, but this proves as not so easy. Her mother is very protective of her, and she is teased by her classmates, because of her disability. Will she manage to keep her smile?

5.1/10

A dying pianist composes one final song for his childhood friend.

7/10

Keiko’s life is turned upside down when she discovers that she has been infected with HIV. As she struggles to cope with the situation and resist the infection, she finds new friendship and companionship with a journalist named Miyuki and a man named Akira.

4.9/10

As a little boy Kei saw his fisherman father lost at sea only seconds after catching his parting gift of a pan flute carved from whalebone. A few years later young Kei and his kid brother Moito discover a baby whale trapped by a rock in a shallow inlet near the Spanish coast.

6.2/10

Tora-san's nephew Mitsuo is exchanging letters with Izumi, a former classmate whose parents divorced and took her out of Tokyo.

7.2/10

Karin has lived alone in a secluded mountain village with her consumptive mother since her father died. Her worried grandfather advises her to send her mother to a sanatorium and be adopted by him, although she refuses to accept. On the Buddhist All Soul’s Day Festival in August, a messenger from her grandfather pays a sudden visit to her house.

6.2/10

In 1903, a young Scotswoman goes to join her diplomat fiancé in Manchuria. She marries him, and finds herself in a war zone. Disenchanted with her husband, she falls in love with a married Japanese nobleman, Count Kentaro Kurihama, and bears him a son. She carves out a life for herself in Japanese society, despite the hardships and ostracism she faces as both a Westerner and a woman.

8.1/10

In the 50s, the complicated life of a popular writer who must share his life with his family, his numerous mistresses and his work

6.8/10

Retired yakuza gangster Shuji (Ken Takakura) moves back from Osaka to a remote coastal village to start a new life as a fisherman with his family, his arrival from the city coinciding with that of the beautiful bar hostess Keiko (Yuko Tanaka, who provided the voice of Lady Eboshi in Princess Mononoke). Keiko's new bar, as its name Hotaru ('firefly') suggests is soon acting as a magnet for all the local fishermen, much to the chagrin of their wives. Not soon after the arrival of Keiko's roguish lover Yajima (Kitano), also an ex-mobster, the locals are drawn into a host of collective vices including gambling and all-night drinking sessions.

6.7/10
6%

1982 Japanese film directed by Tengo Yamada.

White Fang is born on the planes of Alaska to a wolf father and a half-wolf, half-dog mother. One day he and his mother run into an Alaskan inuit boy Mit-sah, who has long dreamed of a dog of his own, and by a marvellous twist of fate, the wolves are taken in by him and his father. But life in Alaska is harsh for humans and wolves alike, and as winter comes, hardships lie in waiting for White Fang and Mit-sah. Facing the extreme coldness of their habitat and that of humans' greedy hearts, the two journey towards what they hope to be a happier environment.

Mitamura Yuka is a normal, shy high school student… Except for the fact that she has psychic powers. When a new student with similar powers begins to show her skills, creating a force of psychic Nazi student enforcers, Yuka and her friends vow to stop her. But behind it all is a mysterious force that will put Yuka's powers to the ultimate test!

6.1/10

It has been six months since the tragic accident in Joe and Rikiishi's fight. Joe believes he has overcomed Rikiishi's death and decides to make a comeback. Joe does make a successful comeback by scoring 5 KO's by body blows. Joe is then given a shot at the national title as a means by the boxing commission to put him down. The champion, Tiger Ozaki makes use of Joe's habits and ends up making Joe's corner throw in the towel. Joe is afraid to throw punches at the face because of what happened to Rikiishi. Youko, Joe's love interest and the owner of the gym where Rikiishi trained at recruits a world ranked boxer from Venezuela, Carlos Rivera, to get Joe back on his feet and pursue his boxing career to the regional and world ranks.

7.5/10

An abridged remake of the first Ashita no Joe TV series, released in 1980 to provide back-story for the second TV series to new fans who were not familiar with the first TV series or the manga.

7.2/10

Obayashi’s take on the famous Kosuke Kindaichi series, made popular partly thanks to the numerous movie-adaptions by Kon Ichikawa, the most known being The Inugami Family. Kosuke Kindaichi is the most famous detective in Japan. Kindaichi gets a new case to figure out who has beheaded a valuable statue and made off with its head.

6.7/10

1978 Japanese film directed by Takafumi Nagamine.

Takeshi, bound to be an outlaw youth, boards at the home of his female schoolmate who works at the family restaurant in devil-may-care Akasaka.

Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip to the country to visit her aunt at their ancestral house. She invites her six friends, Prof, Melody, Mac, Fantasy, Kung Fu, and Sweet, to join her. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.

7.4/10
9%

Komori Tiaki is a budding tennis student, however one day in training her coach hits the ball into her eye accidentally. She is taken to hospital but it advised that she will never regain the sight in her eye. Her coach knows of a mysterious doctor 'Blackjack' who lives in a secluded house, who might be able to help. 'Blackjack' agrees to do the operation, but for a 'substantial reward'! Her sight is regained, but now she starts to see a mysterious man that is invisible to those around her....

5.9/10

Action-comedy film featuring the adventures of an itinerant merchant (Hiroki Matsukata) that becomes an unlikely hero.

Japanese youth film.

When Tora-san's infatuation with his nephew's school teacher causes family turmoil, he leaves on his travels again. When he returns, he falls in love with the teacher's mother.

7/10

Japanese drama film.

A footballing law student tutors an undergraduate, developing into a romance that soon enough goes awry.

6.8/10

The ninth and final film in the Contemporary Tales of Chivalry series.

7.4/10

Kazumi Murose was designated a holder of Important Intangible Cultural Property for his maki-e art by the Japanese government in 2008. He followed in the footsteps of his father, urushi artist Shunji Murose, and studied under such modern urushi masters as Gonroku Matsuda and Yoshikuni Taguchi. They taught him to “learn from people,” “learn from objects,” and “learn from nature.” This advice became the basis of the processes Murose employs in the quest to produce works in new materials. In addition, he learns from traditional Japanese lacquerwork by conserving cultural works and incorporating their materials and techniques into his contemporary pieces. This film presents how Murose achieves this, his views on creating works, and how he shares and passes on the values of Japanese urushi work, both at home and abroad. It is a meticulous record of the method and spirit behind the creative endeavors of Kazumi Murose, an urushi artist living in the present day.