Miyoko Akaza

Apprentice chef Saori Nakagawa travels to Tokyo in 1964 to meet a dedicated cook and starts a training under him.

Rei Mikoshiba, a lawyer who will do anything to win. Yoko Kusakabe, the clerk who was introduced through Hello Work without knowing about that office and got a job there.

A girl is just 14 years old, but she endures a difficult life. Her parents abuse her at home and she is bullied by students at her school. She doesn't have a place where she can feel comfortable. One day, the girl is kidnapped by a man wearing a mask. The kidnapper names the girl Sachi, while wishing her to be happy. For the first time, Sachi can feel happiness.

A widower and his daughter deal with the death of the man's wife.

6.6/10

Fifty elderly women are abandoned to die on a snow covered mountain, but instead wor together to build their own village named "Dendera." Some of the women wants to live their remaining days in peace, but others seek revenge against the villagers and their own families who left them to die.

6.3/10

Kaseifu no Mita is a 2011 Japanese television drama series. The story revolves around a family who is grieving over their mother's recent suicide. They hired Mita as a housekeeper to upkeep the house, which has been thrown into disarray. Mita, who is played by actress Nanako Matsushima, will do anything that her employer orders her to do, except smiling or revealing her past. This television series was broadcast from October 12 to December 21, 2011, as part of Nippon Television's Tears Wednesday time slot, which airs every Wednesday from 10pm to 10:54pm. On average, Kaseifu no Mita garnered a viewership rating of 25.2%. Its last episode garnered a viewership rating of over 40% when it was aired, making it the highest watched show of 2011 in Japan. Kaseifu no Mita won several awards, including the "Best Drama" award, at the 71st Television Drama Academy Awards. Despite the popularity of Kaseifu no Mita, the scriptwriter revealed that there will not be any sequels to this series. The series was rebooted in 2016.

7.5/10

Miharu, who returned to Japan due to sudden company bankruptcy, finds a letter in an empty room after a long absence. With memories of his old lover in his heart, Miharu heads north on a motorbike, relying on the letter. While riding a motorcycle, Miharu meets a man who has an 8mm camera that his former lover had.

Based on the comic by Yukiya Sakuragi

Brought up in an orphanage, Haoto, a young blind girl, was teased and discriminated against, and the only things she enjoyed were playing with a puppy at the pet shop, and playing the piano. Even though she is blind, Haoto had an amazing talent that even she didn’t realize. A talent called “perfect pitch”. She could play any song on the piano after hearing it only once. Finally, someone noticed her talent. His name was Shinya Minazuki, and he was also a lonely pianist who was brought up in an orphanage. Haoto, about to start a new life in a world unknown to her, comes to be entangled in an intense dispute between the siblings of the rich Minazuki family over who will inherit their prestigious music school. What will happen to the gifted Haoto? This drama, which evolves around beautiful piano music, is full of love, suspense, and mystery.

Yoko Sakaki: 24 years old. Occupation: Ghost Negotiator. With her tomboyish attitude and severely bad mouth, she helps ghosts leave this world by shouting at them. But, that work is almost done - she and her boyfriend Toshio are about to get married, and their dream is to open a tofu shop together. However, she has kept her profession a secret from him, instead telling him she is a flight attendant... While out with him one night, Yoko gets a call from work telling her that a ghost has appeared in Hachioji... She goes to bust the ghost with her unreliable new partner, Yanagida, but can she hold on to her relationship at the same time?

2.7/10

Four people are discovered brutally murdered in an up-scale high-rise apartment. All the victims appear to be family, but as the investigation deepens it is discovered that one of the victims isn't related to the family.

7.1/10

After a series of arson attacks targeting red cars happens in the vicinity of Shiba Park, Shiho Kitami and Detective Hakamada of the MPD's First Investigation Division are asked by the local precinct to help with a stakeout. However, when the entire neighborhood loses power, a murder occurs...

Kiyotsugu Kito judges evil as acting chairman of Owada-gumi, Japan's largest organization, for the reconstruction of extreme society. Currently, he unexpectedly reunites with his former younger brother, Ejima, who is living in the Miyagawa group, which is a single-minded group. However, with Ejima as the starting point, the Miyagawa group will face the Owada group...

The third series of action series depicting the success of a woman torpedo who was caught in two groups of conflicts at a small port town in the Seto Inland Sea.

The first directorial work of Kazuhiko Murakami, a master of gangster comics. Yano-gumi Wakato and Kito Kiyoji, whose leader was shot dead, boarded the Owada-gumi alone. Owada-gumi chairman, Gozo Shimamura, who was impressed by that spirit, asks Kito to rectify the injustice of Owada Ichimon as a dark punisher who runs through the path. You can't go to the world without justice! The blade of Kito Kiyotsugu's judgment begins here!

A hard-boiled touch love story that depicts the momentary love between a hitman and a woman who had a dangerous escape together.

Based on the comic by Tatsu Kariya.

5.7/10

People from all walks of life (a high-school student, a middle-aged businessman, a yakuza chief, etc.) all receive mysterious messages from loved ones who were killed 3 months earlier in a shipwreck. They are instructed to go to a small island in the Inland Sea that evening. At the stroke of midnight, the lost ship emerges from the sea and they are given a brief time to say their final words to their lost loved ones, before the deceased must once again board the ship and it sinks back into the depths.

6.7/10

An illustration of the tragic lives of geishas at a popular geisha house, Shinonomero. Shortly after being sold to a geisha house at age 5, Shizu is befriended by a fellow older geisha, Tsuru. After years of living and working together, Tsuru and Shizu manage to run the operations of Shinonomero as the proprietress and assistant. Despite vows to never to let their lovers come between them or Shinonomero, moments of weakness leave Tsuru and Shizu caught up in a web of betrayal and plunged into debt. With the guilt of losing Shinonomero to Udo, a yakuza who loaned them money, it is now up to young Shizu to redeem Tsuru’s honor and restore Shinonomero as their own.

7.7/10

A heartwarming situation comedy about a newlywed couple sharing a house with the husband's parents in a suburb of Tokyo. Ordinary situations become hilarious cross-generational battlegrounds, as the wife and her mother-in-law pursue vastly different images of the ideal family. --TBS

7.8/10

Japanese drama film.

A romantic comedy involving shooting commercials, French food, and island visitors.

5.5/10

A high school girl travels to the island of New Caledonia and has magical adventures.

5.8/10

Musical star vehicle for a young Kikkawa Koji.

6/10

Drama set in the world of Formula 2 motor racing in Japan.

Kazumi - whose sensitivity does not undermine her strength when she handles her second husband's emotional conflicts with the wisdom of an adult. Kazumi's younger and more inexperienced husband Hideo is continually suspicious of her fidelity.

While Ryouko was in Europe studying music, her boyfriend died in a traffic accident. Ryouko believed that she had psychic powers that killed him, and when she returned to Japan she was sent to a mental hospital. While recovering, her brother-in-law, Kouji, decides to look after her, and she goes to his house to act as a governess for Kouji's daughter, Alice.

7.2/10

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

Saito Masao reminisces on the days of his youth more than 50 years ago and his forbidden love of his older cousin Tamiko. When he was 15, Tamiko moved in to take care of his sickly mother. The two quickly fell in love with each other but were inevitably forced by their family to live separate lives.

5.9/10

Jun has come to Tokyo from his family home, an island which resembles a ship. He works in a machine shop and is attempting to develop a career as a cartoonist in his spare time. When he travels around the town by subway, he has grown into the habit of groping female passengers in a sexual way. They never denounce him, and many seem to respond very favorably, moaning in apparent ecstasy. However, when his girlfriend sees him doing this, she denounces him to the police. The woman he was groping at the time refuses to press charges; indeed, she says that what was happening was nobody's business. Still, Jun's girlfriend leaves him. He goes to his father's grave to pay his respects, but somehow cannot find it. On his way back, he sees a number of men molesting a woman and does nothing to stop them. Eventually his girlfriend comes back to him, and his indulgence in train-groping tapers off.

A couple of sculptors who caused a traffic accident and changed their lives are led to a crime. The lives of the up-and-coming sculptor Sugio Nishikawa (Goro Ibuki) and Maiko (Wakako Sakai) have changed completely since the traffic accident. Sugio was forced to live in a wheelchair, and the quality of his work deteriorated. One day, Sugio insured Maiko for 50 million life insurance and forced her to cooperate with insurance fraud.

Kobasashi was learning Spanish so that she could go to Spain to look for her father who had left the family. She fell in love with her language teacher Ken. Finally she found her father in Madrid and she also met Ken's ex-girl friend Taeko there. Ken came to Madrid and learned of their meeting. He wanted her to help to look for Taeko. Ken was caught in between the past and the present.

6.4/10

Isamu, a star athlete in high school, becomes a race cyclist. He wins his debut races, but soon his opponents see through his lack of strategy and beat him easily. Isamu's maths teacher, a race cycling freak, says he knows the solution to Isamu's problem. But will Isamu listen to him?

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

Yuichi prides himself on the fact that he is a family man but contrary to his conception of an ideal family life, at age 24, his wife has already run out on him. In utter confusion, he tries to reason out where he had gone amiss that such a thing should happen out of the clear blue sky. About this time, Yuichi helps Ayako, a young girl, embroiled in trouble. She returns Yuichi's kindness by making off with his precious camera. Then she returns and since his wife has washed her hands of him, he forces himself on Ayako who acts as if she had been waiting for him to enter her. Suddenly, Yuichi's wife returns...

6.6/10

A parable about the inefficiency and anachronism of the Japanese educational system, which places an unusually large amount of importance on cramming for university entrance examinations, Panic High School is about the suicide of a high school student and its ensuing fallout at his school. When one of his classmates becomes frustrated with the math teacher's lack of sensitivity to the suicide, the student steals a rifle, returns to school, aerates the teacher's chest and then holds members of his class captive. This leads to an aggressive standoff with the police and lots of shots of his parents crying and bowing in shame, totally mortified.

6.8/10

Based on the manga of the same name. Originally published in the Japanese magazine Weekly Playboy. It follows Ippei Yasuda, son of a prominent family, who is immensely gifted in nearly everything he does.

A bad cop is engaged in a violent chase to catch a yakuza boss. In his absence his wife runs away with another man, who turns out to be the very same man that her husband is hunting. Once he discovers this, he loses his nerve and turns in his badge. But the chase turns into a personal vendetta where the ex-cop plans to wipe out the entire gang.

6.9/10

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

6.8/10

A young woman fails her university entrance exam and starts shoplifting.

5.9/10

With a Kansai syndicate setting their sights on Tokyo, a former yakuza boss gets dragged back into a world of violence.

6.8/10

Yuki's family is nearly wiped out before she is born due to the machinations of a band of criminals. These criminals kidnap and brutalize her mother but leave her alive. Later her mother ends up in prison with only revenge to keep her alive. She creates an instrument for this revenge by purposefully getting pregnant. Yuki never knows the love of a family but only killing and revenge.

7.7/10
10%

Masuda Toshio film starring Watari Tetsuya and Mori Masayuki, about a lone-wolf type (Watari) seeking love and defending the honor of an elderly widower (Mori).

It was five years ago when Minako spent a night with Sozo, younger brother of her ex-husband. She now lives in a local town with a rich old man who owns a dry goods store. Minako travels to Tokyo on business every three months, during which time she continues to meet Sozo, who has married the daughter of his respected teacher.

6.7/10

In this intricately layered Japanese film, the nature of actresses and what they gain from acting is explored. The lives of three actresses are laid bare, and scenes from their lives are woven in and out of interviews with each of them. Each of them has experienced a traumatic event which contributes to their particular enjoyment of becoming someone else in dramatic roles.

6.9/10

The film tells about Masayoshi, a noble Yakuza who lives by the laws of honor and humanity, and who is bound by an oath to his brother in a conflict between the Gamblers' family and the Tekiya family.

Gokudo goes politics. Gray-haired Bin Amatsu has Wakayama assist a politician, meaning trashing the opponent. But of course the opponent has a pretty daughter to have a crush on. Enter protective Bunta Sugawara and Gokudo’s gotta settle for a cheaper Toei nude actress.

A beautiful hostess of a small restaurant moonlights as a well-trained assassin tasked with taking the life of a wealthy businessman...

Coming of age/high school sports drama.

Rivalry between a hoodlum group and gangster organization.

On the night of the summer Obon festival, Hagiwara Shinzaburo meets a beautiful courtesan named Otsuyu. Not knowing she's a ghost, he becomes infatuated by her.

7.1/10

In an isolated mountain resort, a woman gets involved in a love triangle between herself, her volatile lover and her ex-boyfriend, for whom she had platonic feelings.

7/10

Film directed by Kenji Misumi

aka Libido.

6.8/10