Hiroko Nakajima
In 1990, Hagizaki Tatsuo, the accounting department chief of Ukishima Electric Works, was busy negotiating on getting a loan together with Sekino, the company's general manager. However, just as they were about to get the funds, Sekino was involved in a 200 million yen fraud and he later disappeared with the loan. The company decides to cover up the incident to protect its image, but Hagizaki wants to get to the bottom of the matter with the help of his newspaper reporter friend, Muraki. Hagizaki later notices that the case becomes darker and darker as he continues to investigate. He then meets a beautiful woman, Uezaki Etsuko, whom he believes hold the key to the entire incident.
Rina Ichinose starts a busy work life at an advertising agency right after graduation. But the job doesn't go well and she has to work overtime every day. The nagging from her father after she goes back home drains her physically and mentally. So she resigns from the agency. Rina meets a charismatic therapist Karen at a job fair. Attracted by her vigor, Rina decides to become a therapist. But things do not go well at the beginning and she even infuriates a male customer, the former professional baseball player Usui. Usui was a preeminent professional baseball player but his contract was terminated by the club due to the sequela caused by a dead ball hit. Rina tries every means to help him come back to the field as a baseball player.
After a long and unsuccessful struggle to get pregnant, convinced by the discourse of an adoption association, Satoko and her husband decide to adopt a baby boy. A few years later, their parenthood is shaken by a threatening unknown girl, Hikari, who pretends to be the child's biological mother. Satoko decides to confront Hikari directly.
Saki, Anju, Chiaki, Ami, and Kaya reunite for the first time in years. The five of them excitedly decide to go Toshimaen Amusement Park, a place that was very important to them when they were younger. None of them know that they're about to enter a nightmare…
A popular high school band is scouted by a Tokyo-based record company. The band is involved in a car accident, however, shattering many hopes. The band receives a demo tape from a girl who lives on the navy base. They are reinvigorated.
Natsuko Miyamoto (48), a full-time housewife and mother of two (daughter Hana, 20, and son Kotaro, 17), is shocked when her husband Akira (54) announces that he will quit his job to explore his long-term interests in agriculture. In turn, Natsuko decides to seek employment of her own, but faces rejection due to inexperience and age. After a confusing mishap, she finds new hope for her life skills in an unexpected place -- a poorly managed supermarket.
College student Kahoko is the quintessential overprotected child born out of today's Japanese society. Shielded by her parents, Kahoko grew up completely pampered and became somewhat of a miraculously naive "test tube human." She is 21 years old and about to start working for a company, but she has never slept away from home, had a part time job, chosen her own clothes, or even ridden a train alone. Kahoko has had her picture taken, but she has never taken a picture herself. Now, Kahoko is about to step out of her germ-free isolation pod and into the germ-infested world. It won't be long until she realizes, "I'm different from everybody else!" She has been her mother's best friend all her life and her father can't live without her. As they become emotionally unstable from the changes that Kahoko goes through, their family begins to fall apart. That's when Kahoko herself and the people around her begin to see the strength that hides deep within.
The Japanese government carries out a program to increase the birth rate in the country. Their program analyzes gene information from its residents and selects a marriage partner for them. Aoi Nisaka is a high school student. She is in a love triangle with childhood friend Yuto Shiba and Sosuke Takachiho. Sosuke Takachiho is appointed by the government to become her husband.
After years of trying, Kyoko and her husband Takehiro are finally pregnant. But their joy at the prospect of becoming parents ends suddenly when they learn Kyoko has stage four cancer. They now must face agonizing decisions that force them to choose between the life of Kyoko or the health of their baby. Adapted from a true story.
When Naoko was a freshman in high school she was kidnapped and imprisoned by a man who lived next door. For one month, she went through hell. Finally, she killed the man and escaped. Now as an adult, Naoko is a doctor specializing in infertility treatment, but she also has another side. Naoko is a popular master in a S&M club.
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.
Akito has been the ears and voice of his mother, Reiko, since he was a child. Reiko was born deaf and has long dreamed that her son would become a professional pianist. Akito is studying to enter a prestigious music college, but he begins to have doubts about his talent. One day, he meets Izumi, a deaf girl who plays in a street band. He is attracted to her positive nature, but his mother disapproves, fearing Izumi could hinder his success in "a world with sound." Reiko insists Akito focus on his piano, but her expectations burden him. Then Akito begins to question his mother's attitude towards life as well as his own when he discovers something new about her.
An employee of a bank goes missing following his retirement from the bank. Veteran detective Yobuno (Koji Yakusho), who is set to retire himself, is charged with the investigating the missing person case. Det. Yobuno quickly finds more mysterious as he delves into the case, but a woman named Keiko Fukumura (Eri Fukatsu) surfaces who may hold the key to case.
Based on a true story about about a man who was told for many years that he was not employable, but threw all of his effort into working as a door-to-door salesman. Despite the pain attributed to his cerebral palsy, he walked eight to ten miles a day to meet his customers and achieved the highest sales for his company.
Kiri no Hi (霧の火) is a Japanese television drama which originally aired on Nippon Television (NTV) on August 25, 2008. Directed by Nozomu Amamiya and with a screenplay by Yō Takeyama, it starred Etsuko Ichihara and Karina Nose. The story takes place in Maoka City, Karafuto, Japan (Currently Kholmsk, Sakhalin, Russian Federation) during the final year of the Pacific War. Nine telephone operators in Maoka took their own lives by taking potassium cyanide when the Soviet Union invaded the city on August 20, 1945.
On April 9, 2000, Suzuki Kyoko receives a phone call from the police. She learns that her 19-year-old son and his friend were killed by a drunk driver while walking along a bridge in Zama. Suzuki Kyoko lost her husband to cancer five years earlier and her world crashes down. The drunk driver was given the maximum sentence at the time 5 1/2 years. Suzuki Kyoko then spearheads a movement to increase the penalty for reckless driving. She also enrolls at Waseda University where her son died just a week after his entrance ceremony. Suzuki Kyoko also starts an exhibit to honor the victims of reckless driving.
A hero called the legendary third baseman in the former prestigious grass baseball team "Peanuts", will start to rebuild the peanuts that have now turned into weak teams from the outset. Peanuts are going to fight against the team of strong teams, taking advantage of the redevelopment of the city where Captain Sagara lives.
Asuka, an architect, had deserted her family, former husband Satoshi and daughter Ayumi as she could not tolerate raising children.
About a family shouldering an unexpected responsibility when Alzheimer's disease strikes their grandmother. The superb cast portrays this serious and realistic situation with heart-warming compassion, stressing the importance of empathizing with the victims of this difficult disease.
Commencing well-respected Nippon director Kazuo Kuroki's sixth decade behind the camera, "A Boy's Summer in 1945" (literally "A Beautiful Summer in Kirishima") is a lyric, novelistic drama set in the countryside in the last days before Japan's surrender ending WWII. Striking a welcome retro note in its languid pacing and delicate handling of seriocomic ensemble threads, handsome production is a natural for fests. It might also prove a cornerstone for retrospectives or ancillary releases of works by a helmer ("Preparation of the Festival," "Ronin-gai") who's long been appreciated at home but has won just limited attention abroad.
While returning from a business trip to Hokkaido, Detective Kamei of the MPD greets a middle-aged traveler in the waiting room of Minami-Wakkanai Station but is ignored by him. On the limited express to Asahikawa, the same man happens to entrust Kamei with a floppy disk before dying. The floppy contains his investigative notes on a murder that happened two years ago...
Kyoko, an elite career woman working at a major bank, lives a high stress life surrounded by male colleagues and clients that discriminate against her, and a mother who constantly obsesses over Kyoko's lifestyle. As Kyoko is starting to buckle under the pressures of her high profile life, she is approached by a man who inquires if she is interested in working at an escort service. Kyoko refuses the offer at first, but he senses a hidden side to her and persuades her to give it a try. She soon finds herself living a double life: one as a businesswoman and one as a call girl. Her life begins to spin out of control, but a newfound friend may be able to help her escape from her situation.
A Takashi Miike film that is, to a degree, autobiographical-- Young Thugs: Innocent Blood follows three friends through their first year after leaving high school. Having robbed their teacher on their last day, Ryoko gets a job in a hair salon, while the two boys settle down into a career of enforcement and protection.
Midori is a coming-of-age drama set amongst the heady high school world of peer rivalry and sexual awakening, featuring an emotionally-detached high-school girl who, her parents dead, lives with her brother and his overprotective wife. After being sent out of class due to a dizzy spell, she becomes acquainted with Shun, a boy in the class below, in the school sanatorium. As the two begin feigning illness together on a regular basis, their uncomfortable flirtations soon blossom into a full sexual relationship.
An archery club on retreat in Hokkaido is forced to rescue their teacher who is kidnapped.
A widow and her two sons, Seitaro and Koji, live in the small town of Komori, where Buraku people are forced to reside. The two boys are continuously harassed by their teachers and classmates through their childhood as a result of their Buraku heritage. In the midst of the 1918 Great Rice Riots in Osaka, Seitaro meets with Asako, the daughter of a rice shop owner, and falls in love with her. She too is of Buraku descent. At the same period, Hideaki, an old friend of the brothers returns to Komori, and he along with Koji and the townspeople create "Zenkoku Suiheisha", the National Levelers Association, an organization pledged to build a bridge over the river of discrimination, making all people equal in every way.
A group of female police officers form a secret detective division called Eyecatch Junction. They go undercover in a prostitute racket to investigate the murder of a young woman.
At an all-girls school, a group of girls prepare for a stage performance of Anton Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard".
