Kazuko Yoshiyuki
Two estranged brothers inherit Marukin Hot Springs, a small-town bathhouse. One sees it as an homage to their late father; the other – a struggling architect – as lucrative real estate for condos. Their eclectic collection of townsfolk customers show them the value of the bath goes way beyond a scrub and soak.
Saki, a high school girl who always skips classes, works part-time as a life adviser.
Movie theater Asahiza has existed for almost a 100 years in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture. Unlike other theaters, Asahiza plays old films and doesn't get a lot of customers. The manger of Asahiza, Yasuzo Morita, finally decides to close down the theater. When he is about to burn the old 35 mm films, a young woman named Rika Motegi suddenly appears and tries to stop him. Rika Motegi came to Minamisoma from Tokyo to save Asahiza.
A love story woven by a loveless mistrust girl, Kaede Tamaki who works for a small video production company, and a mysterious young man Seishiro who is attracted to her.
Looks back 20 years into the past of an elderly woman who died of heatstroke and paints a picture of a solitary woman's genuine despair.
At the Hirata home, three generations of their family live together. A crisis ensues when one afternoon, housewife Fumie falls asleep and wakes up to find a thief has stolen her secret money she kept hidden in the refrigerator.
High school student Naoki Tomura grew up in a remote area in Hokkaido. He meets piano tuner Soichiro Itadori in school and eventually decides to work at Itadori’s musical instrument store. Tomura gradually grows as a piano tuner through his interactions with the other tuners and musician clients
In 2012, Atsuya (Ryosuke Yamada) and his 2 childhood friends do something bad and run into an old general store. They decide to stay there until the morning. Late into the night, Atsuya sees a letter in the mailbox. The letter is addressed to the Namiya General Store and the letter was written by someone to consult about worries. Incredibly, the letter was written 32 years ago. The mailbox is somehow connected to the year 1980. Atsuya and his friends decide to write a reply and place their letter in the mailbox.
Several years after Shuzo settled his wife’s birthday-surprise divorce proposal (What a Wonderful Family, 40th), the Hirata family faces new problems. Ignoring his family’s worry that he is too old to drive, Shuzo takes his old schoolmate for a spin after carousing. Soon, a new disturbance arises for the Hirata family. Veteran director Yamada Yoji continues his comedy about the “perfect“ Japanese family turned upside down in chaos, laughters and understanding. This time, with an additional taste of death.
Set in an alternate universe, the ancient capital of Kamakura is a vibrant town where fantastical creatures live alongside humans. Akiko is a cheerful publishing assistant who moves into town after marrying Masakazu, a popular mystery writer. Akiko is surprised by the unusual town but enjoys the new curiosities surrounding her. However, just as she was beginning to settle in, a trifling incident sweeps her spirit to the underworld too soon. Convinced that destiny has something else in store for his wife, Masakazu journeys into the underworld to bring back Akiko’s spirit.
A husband and wife have been married for 50 years. For her birthday, the husband asks the wife what she wants for her birthday present. She replies that she wants a divorce. The wife's divorce announcement sends the entire family into chaos.
A female career banker shatters the glass ceiling of a mega bank by disclosing its shady business to light. Tamaki, the Gold Woman, has worked her way up to be appointed General Manager of the office regarded as the General Staff Headquar- ters of the Bank with an assignment to liquidate its subsidiary by laying off 200 employees in total. Such mentally challenging appointment was made via recommendation by her senior colleague Mai, a smart and foxy woman running ahead of Tamaki in her career. With the help of her male colleague, Tamaki, a lone female wolf dares to challenge the all-male executives to prove what a true business person is all about.
Suzume Akamatsu works at a library in Uwajima, Ehime Prefecture. She delivers books by riding a bicycle. Through her work, Suzume grows as a person.
Following the death of the unmarried and childless Taki, Takeshi, a young relative of hers, discovers several pages of closely written lines in which the old lady has recorded her memories. This is how he learns the truth about her youth working as a housemaid and nanny for the Hirai family in a little house in Tokyo with a red gabled roof.
Upon being sent to live with relatives in the countryside due to an illness, an emotionally distant adolescent girl becomes obsessed with an abandoned mansion and infatuated with a girl who lives there - a girl who may or may not be real.
In this film director Yoji Yamada bows down before his teacher and role model. Yamada was assistant director on Yazujirō Ozu’s Tōkyō monogatari, a moving family portrait set after the Second World War. In his remake, Yamada has made very few departures from Ozu’s masterpiece in order to update the story of ageing couple Shukichi and Tomiko to present day Japan. Once again, the pair decides to leave their quiet lives in the country to pay a visit to their children and grandchildren in Tokyo. Once there, they discover that neither their oldest son, a doctor named Koichi, nor their eldest daughter Shigeko - who runs a beauty parlour - has time for them: both are too busy attending to their everyday concerns. Even the youngest son went his own way. The old couple feel lonely and bewildered in the fast-paced metropolis.
Lonely after the death of her husband, whom she nursed for years, Tae decides to find a new life partner. Her family and friends try to dissuade her.
A group of elderly women come together to sell vegetable leaves.
Ryota, a timid salaryman who has difficulties fitting in at home and work has his average life changed after his estranged father falls ill. Along with his wife Sae and their only child Moe, he travels to his father's country town, where he begins to uncover his father's mysterious past spent searching for a mythical creature.
After she drives drunk and hits an old woman, a famous novelist is threatened with a law suit by the woman's son... unless she lets him publish his manuscript under his name.
Based on a true story, Yoshiko and Yuriko relates the journey and great love affair of Yoshiko, who was a renowned translator of Russian literature and drama, and Yuriko, who was a feminist novelist and great activist of the post-war democratic literature movement. Both have left huge marks on Japanese literary history. The two women shared a strong attraction to each other from their first meeting and enjoyed a powerful love affair. Yoshiko reveals that she's an out lesbian, whilst Yuriko is married (not altogether happily) to a well-known scholar - a situation she can't walk away from with ease.
In the lush tradition of the glorious films of Merchant and Ivory, comes the true life story of Leonie Gilmour (Emily Mortimer), whose life crossed continents, wars and cultures, embodied with courage and passion in search of art and freedom. A tender and inspiring story of a remarkable woman who nurtures the amazing artistic talent of her son who has only one way to succeed and one person to guide him, as he grows into the world renown artist, Isamu Noguchi.
30 year old Yoko Sasaki (Arisa Mizuki) works diligently at a publishing company. She then receives the unexpected news that she is pregnant. Having now to chose between having a baby and or her career.
A Japanese teenager embarks on a quest to find the Canadian lover of her grandmother.
Cyborg She follows the burgeoning romance between an ordinary college student and his sassy love interest - who happens to be a time-traveling cyborg with superhuman powers. One day, a beautiful cyborg girl appears in front of a dull university student. Even though the cyborg starts to like him, she can’t truly feel emotions, so the boy has no choice but to say goodbye. Missing her, he continues his lonely existence. One day, a disastrous earthquake hits Tokyo and the cyborg girl saves his life. In that moment, she starts to have feelings like a real human being.
Daigo, a cellist, is laid off from his orchestra and moves with his wife back to his small hometown where the living is cheaper. Thinking he’s applying for a job at a travel agency he finds he’s being interviewed for work with departures of a more permanent nature – as an undertaker’s assistant.
The son of a sailor, 5-year old Sosuke lives a quiet life on an oceanside cliff with his mother Lisa. One fateful day, he finds a beautiful goldfish trapped in a bottle on the beach and upon rescuing her, names her Ponyo. But she is no ordinary goldfish. The daughter of a masterful wizard and a sea goddess, Ponyo uses her father's magic to transform herself into a young girl and quickly falls in love with Sosuke, but the use of such powerful sorcery causes a dangerous imbalance in the world. As the moon steadily draws nearer to the earth and Ponyo's father sends the ocean's mighty waves to find his daughter, the two children embark on an adventure of a lifetime to save the world and fulfill Ponyo's dreams of becoming human.
Takeshi Kitano plays a version of himself in which he's a struggling director cycling through a number of different genres in an effort to complete his latest project.
Two mountaineers fall in love with the same woman. When one of the men plunges to his death, suspicion falls on the survivor.
Shinji (Shinichi Tsutsumi) steps out of a train station to find himself transported back to 1964.
Gabai Granny is based on the bestseller Saga No Gabai Baachan (Gabai Granny from Saga), which is penned by comedian Shimada Yoshichi as he recounts his childhood memories of growing up under the care of his grandmother.
Ever since his boyhood experience with a burglar in his house, Mamoru has made security a major theme in his life. Joining a security firm, gaining early promotion and his engagement to the daughter of the company director has brought him a very happy point in his life. But on the way to a business meeting, he meets Misa, a woman dressed in mourning, who seems to bear a deep grudge against him although he has no idea who she is. From that moment on, Mamoru’s life begins to collapse around him.
Hiroshi, a 30 year-old businessman, has traveled back in time 20 years. He encounters Kazumi, a young woman who was gravely ill. Hiroshi regarded this as an opportunity to help the young woman from his past, the memory of whom he had always cherished.
Hama-chan takes a vacation to go fishing in Akita despite warnings from Su-san as his company faces a restructuring process.
Haruo returns to his hometown for his mother’s second marriage and happens to meet his first love Miyuki in eight years. Haruo still has feelings for her, who left her hometown the day after they made love. Miyuki is back with her daughter Chiharu, after a failed marriage. They end up making love again in eight years, but Miyuki disappears again the next day. Haruo goes to meet Chiharu like Miyuki asked him to and spends the day with her. An awkward company at first, but as time passes he feels a certain responsibility for Chiharu, thinking that she might be his own daughter. Family relationship is changing in today’s Japan, as divorce and remarriage become commonplace. The film describes quietly but sharply how family relationship affects our other relationships through psychological changes in the main character.
While stopped at a roadside phone booth for transmitting his work through Internet to the university, Professor Hideki Satomi finds a scrap of newspaper with the picture of his five year old daughter Nana in the obituary. He sees his wife Ayaka trying to release their daughter from the seatbelt, when a truck hits his car killing Nana. Three years later, Hideki is divorced from Ayaka, who is researching paranormal people who claim to have read an evil newspaper anticipating the future. Still trying to believe in Hideki, she finds that there are people cursed to foresee the future but without the power to save the victims. When Hideki changes the future saving Ayaka, he becomes trapped in hell and he has to make a choice for his own destiny.
Translucent Tree is centered around divorced Chigiri, a suburban middle-aged mother taking care of her teenage daughter, Mayu, and her ailing father Kaho. Her life is mundane and rather hopeless until Go, a TV producer from Tokyo, pays a visit to her town and the tree they shared time under some twenty years back after a TV commercial shoot. His remembrances of her, the tree, and the long unrequited love stir both of their hearts to fumbling action as they re-discover the love between them.
Kunio Shibano was bankrupted. He visits a snowland spa area to commit suicide. But he meets Geisha Moeko, and she gives him power to face life one more time...
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.
Sachi Hamano's Yurisai (Lily Festival) is about a man (Mickey Curtis) in his seventies who comes to live in an apartment building that also houses seven elderly women. The film examines the ladies' sexual desires as the man proceeds to woo each of them. Kazuko Yoshiyuki portrays one of the female residents. The film was adapted from a novel by Houko Momotani and was screened at the Montreal World Film Festival.
Brash, loudmouthed and opportunistic, Kikujiro is the unlikely companion for Masao who is determined to see the mother he has never met. The two begin a series of adventures which soon turns out to be a whimsical journey of laughter and tears with a wide array of surprises and unique characters along the way.
A drama depicting the world of the female writer Midori Osaki in three parts: the dramatic creation of her masterpiece, "Wanderings in the Realm of the Seventh Sense," her unknown years spent in poor health and poverty, and the present-day world from which we see her work.
Immoral Affairs (Fukigen na kajitsu) is a Japanese film made in 1997 and directed by Katsuo Naruse.It centers on two characters: Mayako, played by Kaho Minami, a young women who is not content with her husband and begins to have many affairs with other men, and Kiriko Okabe, played by Isako Washio, a woman whom she befriends. Mayako's husband is played by Jinpachi Nezu.
Traveling chef Ryuji is called back to Tokyo to help save his late teacher’s restaurant. With the help of his close friend Kinu, Ryuji must complete the training of Wataru — the apprentice chosen by his late teacher to become the next master chef — in the art of culinary excellence and running a successful business.
About an establishment where old men pay to sleep besides young girls that had been narcotized and happen to be naked, the sleeping beauties. The old men are expected to take sleeping pills and share the bed for a whole night with a girl without attempting anything of bad taste like putting a finger inside their mouths.
Maria is in need of money. Because her day-time job doesn't pay enough, she works at night at a cabaret. She needs the money so that she can pay for her sister, Nana's eyes operation. When both Maria and Nana were younger, Maria burned down the home, causing her sister's blindness and killing their father (mother survived.) Shiro is a famous concert pianist. However, he isn't happy with his marriage or his life in general. Maria and Shiro are united through a traffic accident, causing Shiro to be hospitalized. Faking amnesia and his identity, he stays at Maria's place and eventually starts to work at the cabaret as a piano player. As you will find out later on, life was not meant for Maria and Shiro to find one another.
Koji Wakamatsu adapted the Kouhei Tsuka's play of the same name into a human comedy about the members of a traveling acting troupe.
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.
Chizuko and Mika are sisters who get along very well, and have a good relationship, but one day Chizuko dies unexpectedly in an accident. Mika always feels undermined for not living up to her sisters achievements until one day the ghost of her sister appears again. And by the encouragement of Chizuko, she overcomes various difficulties in her life.
TV film about the "Nishiyama Incident", a scandal surrounding the 1972 return of Okinawa to Japan. Produced to commemorate the 20th anniversary of TV Asahi in 1978 and released theatrically by Office Henmi in 1988.
The Yamaoki family moved from Kyoto to Tosa around the turn of the '50s; local school teacher Hirao becomes involved with Yasuko, sister to Sumio.
A continuation of the story of the postwar years in the Japanese Inland Sea. Now a decade has passed. Two friends meet and decide to look for the beautiful girl with whom they went to school as children.
An unemployed young man who has just broken up with his girlfriend meets a woman at a bicycle race. They start dating but then strange things then begin to happen to him, including a beating from the local yakuza. - Wikipedia
After returning from the Burmese front in WWII, a man finds trouble brewing back home.
The third work of the popular series depicting the famous detective Kyosuke Kozu. Blind musician Ryoichi Kashiwagi died of a heart attack. His father, Shigeyuki , is already bedridden and has billions of Japanese yen in assets. Ryoichi's wife Yukiyo and Ryoichi's younger sister Tsuruko have a dispute over these assets. Newspaper reporter Matsushita, who met Ryoichi just before his death, was interviewed, and was told that there was something unnatural about Ryoichi's cause of death. Soon, Tsuruko died mysteriously. Matsushita decides to have Kyosuke Kozu, a university professor and a famous detective, solve the case.
A valet at a fancy nightclub hatches a plot to punish those responsible for his father's death.
Japan in the 1940s. A high school boy went into a magic encounter with Ozuka Hana, a geisha (pub-girl) when he traveled through Amagi Pass. A mysterious murder took place afterwards, an Ozuka was held responsible. 40 years later, the boy, who became a printing shop owner, was visited by a retired policeman who came from Amagi Pass. The truth then started to reveal itself.
A lower-middle-class policeman lives decadently, chasing cheap beer and girls at the same time he's running from loan sharks and his personal expectations.
A man and a little girl meet in a bicycle parking in Tokyo. The little girl says she wants to watch the sea, and their travel begins. The man has no conscience of being a kidnapper. He asks the girl to phone her mother and tell her she’s with him. During their trip they will meet various people. But they always have to go further, or the man would to get arrested...
A star tennis player takes revenge on the blackmailers out to ruin his athletic career.
A motorcycle cop and a freelance photographer, having learned the location of 1 billion yen's worth of the Imperial Navy's gold, team up to salvage it.
Sayoko is desperate to bear a child of her own, but her live-in boyfriend Shinsaku strenuously objects to the idea. One day, someone leaves behind a six-year-old child at their door, claiming that Shinsaku—or four other men—is the child's father! Sayoko and Shinsaku set out on a journey to find the real father.
A young man has an affair with an older woman. He is very jealous of her husband and decides that they should kill him. One night, after the husband had plenty of sake to drink and was in bed, they strangle him and dump his body down a well. To avert any suspicions, she pretends her husband has gone off to Tokyo to work. For three years the wife and her lover secretly see each other. Finally, suspicions become very strong and people begin to gossip. To make matters worse, her husband's ghost begins to haunt her and the law arrives to investigate her husband's disappearance.
The story of a high school boy (Toshiyuki Nagashima) in Tokyo returning to his home town of Nagano upon the death of his father.
Lady Snowblood is caught by the police and sentenced to death for her crimes. As she is sent to the gallows she is rescued by the secret police who offer her a deal to assassinate some revolutionaries.
The story of the desperate struggle between the police and a large crime syndicate.
Tells of the feelings and sufferings of a young girl with an incurable paralytic disease.
Violent Gang Re-Arms is a rousing tale of friction in yakuza and labor interactions with Koji Tsurata as a yakuza supervising a dockworker's union. He finds himself between a rock and a hard place, at odds with both the dockworkers' leader (Tomisaburo Wakayama) and sadistic, unprincipled bosses (Fumio Watanabe and Tetsuro Tamba).
Zatoichi is mentored by the blind leader of a secret organization as he contends with both the Yakuza and a jealous husband.
A crime story (with strong elements of comedy) that pits a determined detective against a gang of pickpockets in Osaka. The detective (played by Keiju Kobayashi) and the leader of the gang (played by Norihei Miki) have an interesting wartime backstory together that fuels much of the story.
Heartwarming story of an ambitious girl who becomes a concert pianist with the help of her musician father.
An original warrior directed by Toshio Takagi, directed by Eisuke Takizawa of “Kiriko's Tango” by Toshio Yasumi, a comedy, cheerful widow. The photo was taken by Minoru Yokoyama from “Asakusa no Toko Odoriko Monogatari”
Set in Kawaguchi in the early 60s, this simple story chronicles the lives of foundry families and one girl's dreams of higher education.
Nakata (Keiichiro Akagi) is a nihilistic young buck who is willing to do anything to get money in his pockets. As he knocks back a couple drinks that he knows he won't be able to afford, a former marksman-turned-bad, Ishioka approaches him. Ishioka is looking for an unaffiliated hit-man who is willing to handle some business. Nakata is just the right man for the job.
A young doctor falls into a despair of developments. He plans to revenge the disgrace inflicted upon his sister, whose engagement was broken as a result.
When a middle aged salaryman is unknowingly used by drug traffickers he is dishonored and fires back at the Yakuza bosses, with destructive consequences.
Set in an old merchant house in Kyoto, the film traces the passing of an era through the story of a parent and child.
Minami Yasuo, a college student, lives with Yuriko who has become the mistress of a foreigner named Wilson. Whenever Wilson comes, Yasuo spends his time in the tea-shop "La Gana." Yasuo is asked by his brother Shigeru to teach French to Akiko, a young girl who is studying French songs. Yasuo then learns that he is the winner of an essay contest and will be offered a scholarship to study in France. Akiko, is now pregnant and Yasuo promises to break with Yuriko.
The story of a novelist whose wife is confined in a mental hospital. His love for her drives him to write about her, though he runs into trouble when her parents accuse him of cashing in on her misfortune.
