Toshie Negishi
Call Me Chihiro tells the story of a former sex worker named Chihiro who works at a small bento shop in a seaside town. There, she interacts with people whose mental scars and struggles leave them unable to live happily, and her words and actions influence each person’s way of living.
Nagisa is transgender. She grew up in Hiroshima as a man, but now lives in Shinjuku, Tokyo as a woman. Due to an incident, she begins to live with middle school student Ichika, who is a distant relative. Ichika has been neglected by her mother Saori. From living in solitude by herself, to now living with Ichika, Nagisa develops maternal instincts for the first time.
The story centers on a group of young people who travel back in time when they are in a movie theater just before closing time. They witness deaths during the closing days of Japan’s feudal times and on the battlefront in China before they are sent to Hiroshima just before the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing of the city.
Three patients of different backgrounds, illnesses and stages are being treated at a psychiatric clinic in Nagano Prefecture. Their cases range from the criminal to merely asocial. That should be that, but soon matters take a darker turn when a corpse turns up and a murder has occurred. The culprit fingered is one of the patients.
When Kyoko was a child her stepfather loved her sexually. She took refuge in the world of fantasy and multiple personalities. Kyoko has three flat-mates now one of whom is a lesbian who is into Kyoko. In turn, Kyoko is beginning to be horny. Unfortunately, this is not helping Kyoko's precarious mental state.
Typically thieves enter a house, steal things and get out. This time an unsuspecting thief enters a home to steal as much as he can and instead is faced with an occupant inside the house. There is a woman within who is going to commit a murder. She is also about to set the place ablaze. The thief stops her and in the process the criminal becomes the one stopping a crime. The situation is connected to a case from some twenty years go.
A girl is kidnapped and the perpetrator roams freely. When a similar case occurs along the same road and in similar circumstances a suspect is identified leading to the accused running away and going into hiding.
Nagisa is 17 years old and attends 2nd grade in high school. He is apart from his parents and lives alone in the seaside town of Fujisawa in Kanagawa. He is passionate about surfing and works at a bathhouse in a hostel on the island Enoshima linked to Fujisawa. Shun is the same age as Nagisa and visits Fujisawa for spring break. They meet and develop a relationship more than friendship. However, the surfing equipment store owner’s daughter Chika has been secretly in love with Nagisa.
She's the most unlikely candidate to ever stumble into the role of a reporter, and she’s keeping everyone on their toes with her eccentric ways.
Long gone are the days of freedom. Preying on the weak and defenseless, the Dharma Family rules the town. It is now a time devoid of justice and order. Abandoned by their mother at a young age, Ami and her sister Yoshie scrape by doing fight shows for the Gotai Troupe.
Enokida Trading Post is a second-hand shop run by Yojiro Enokida , whose personal mantra is, "Anything but garbage. We take it all." The shop serves as a gathering place for employees and regular customers, who come with troubles in hand. One summer day, part of the shop's sign falls down. Yojiro thinks this is a sign that something spectacular is about to happen, and indeed their problems take on lives of their own from that day onward.
Set in the 1970's in the Kansai region of Japan.. Yong-Gil is Korean, but he moved to Japan and settled down. He runs a small restaurant named Yakiniku Dragon. He is married and has three daughters: oldest daughter Jung-Hwa, middle daughter Yi-Hwa and youngest daughter Mi-Hwa. Oldest daughter Jung-Hwa is dating Tetsuo, but they break up. Middle daughter Yi-Hwa loves Tetsuo and marries him, but Tetsuo still loves her older sister and they divorce. Youngest daughter Mi-Hwa wants to become a singer, but she is in love with a married man.
Why did an abused solitary boy become a murderer? A sad but powerful gut-wrenching drama portraying the destiny of humans seeking love, starting up-and-coming actor Yuma Nakayama.
Based on a 2016 novel by Mana Sakura, “The Lowlife” shows the stories of three women who work in Japan’s adult video industry .
Spring, 1941. Sixteen-year-old Toshihiko attends school in the coastal town of Karatsu, where his aunt cares for his ailing cousin. Immersed in the seaside’s nature and culture, Toshihiko soon befriends the town’s other extraordinary adolescents as they all contend with the war’s gravitational pull.
Mayu Daimon is a woman who does not remember her mother's face, and her father is the only person she has blood relationship in this world, but he is going to die soon. Mayu has just started a new life as a detective at the Criminal Investigation Division which deals mainly with murder cases soon, and has to handle with two corpses of old men continuously. One corpse found frozen buried in the snow and the freezing sea. Soon with a detailed investigation she finds out a connection between the two cases which seemed to be completely different at first glance. It was just the breach to open a history of an incident which had origin back to the 1960s in Aomori Prefecture. Growing more and more as a detective, Mayu has to unravel the mystery of a case which goes beyond time and space and which ends in Hokkaido with a result that no one expected.
Kiyotaka Sato (Shuhei Nomura) is a university student. He is sociable, but he looks like he doesn't have interest in those around him. During his summer vacation, Kiyotaka Sato plans to get his driver's license to impress schoolmate Matsuda (Yukino Kishii). At this time, a yakuza boss (Ken Mitsuishi) orders Todoroki (Kento Kaku) to get his driver’s license. Todoroki doesn't show his feelings outwardly. Later, Todoroki drives a car without a driver’s license and he hits Kiyotaka Sato. To cover up the accident, Kiyotaka Sato is placed in a car and taken to away. He arrives at an unofficial driving school. The driving school is run by the Uehara family. There, Kiyotaka Sato and Todoroki learn that they graduated from the same high school. They spend their summer at the driving school.
"Based on Fuyumi Ono's best-selling books, these 10 tales of spookiness by six Japanese horror directors are designed to chill viewers to the bone." - Netflix
Tsugumi Dozono (Nana Eikura) works at a large electronics company in Tokyo. She likes to spend long vacations at her grandmother’s house in the countryside. One day, her grandmother passes away and Tsugumi Dozono decides to live in her grandmother's house while working from home. She finds a strange middle-aged man in the house. The man's name is Jun Kaieda (Etsushi Toyokawa). Jun Kaieda tells Tsugumi that he is her grandmother’s ex-student and her grandmother gave him a key to the annex house. Tsugumi, who does not know the exact relationship between her grandmother and Jun, begins to live with him.
Relatives gather from afar in wintery Ashibetsu upon the death of patriarch Mitsuo (Shinagawa Toru). A mysterious woman named Nobuko (Tokiwa Takako) suddenly shows up. Her appearance gradually exposes wartime secrets and Mitsuo’s unknown past. Building on his previous film Casting Blossoms to the Sky, Obayashi focuses on the border between life and death and brings to light an untold war story that was hidden within a family.
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.
An actor named Kosuke plays the role of Iemon in a stage version of Yotsuya Kaiden and his new lover Miyuki plays Oiwa. However, as they delve deeper into their respective performances, the line between fantasy and reality becomes obscured until the murderous, vengeful themes of the play bleed into their own relationship.
41-year-old Shizuru (Takako Tokiwa) lives with her mother and grandmother in a mountain village in Gifu Prefecture. Shizuru's grandmother is gentle, but is also partially disabled. Shizuru and her mother takes care of her grandmother. Meanwhile, Shizuru's mother ignores her and often restricts what she can do. Consequently, Shizuru has little freedom and endures a monotonous life.
"Daijobu 3 Kumi" depicts the interactions between new teacher Shinnosuke Akao, who was born without arms and legs, and the 28 students in his 5th grade class, told from the vantage point of school board member Yusaku Shiraishi
Hasumi Kayoko, the rookie investigator at the all-female Hasumi Detective Agency, always observes people and cases in a level-headed manner. She detests lies and secrets, and has a strong sense of justice. Her late father worked at the city news desk of a newspaper, but committed suicide 7 years ago. However, the truth lies in darkness and Kayoko's mother, Kyoko, the agency's director, has been secretly pursuing the facts. An incident becomes the catalyst that entwines Kayoko and the people around her, and she closes in on the truth behind her father's death.
In 2011, a journalist arrives in Nagaoka, a Japanese village that underwent destruction during both World War 2 and the 2004 Chuetsu Earthquake, and is now notable for the fireworks it launches annually in memory of the victims of war. She is there for two reasons: firstly, to learn about the experiences of Nagaoka's inhabitants, and secondly, to watch a stage play written by an enigmatic student of her ex-boyfriend, which depicts the bombing of the city during WWII.
Hikari's boyfriend is one of those killed in the Akihabara massacre incident. Suffering from the shock of her loss and unable to accept this reality, she cuts herself off from the outside world. She eventually manages to muster enough courage to visit Akihabara, the scene of the incident. There, she encounters many people who are still coming to terms with the aftermath of the incident and are still suffering from the aftereffects.
The year is 1947, during the war torn period of the Showa era. The story begins when a man, presumed to have been killed in battle, returns home. Who was this man? Before the war, he had a bright future ahead of him as the proficient and popular rakugoka (comedic story-teller), Usagi Morinoya. However, because of an injury sustained during the war, his face is covered in bandages, and he suffers from total amnesia. As if trying to recover his memory, the man only keeps mumbling in a hollow voice his trademark rakugo, "Sokotsunagaya".
Kazu (Kengo Kora) lives in the Kabukicho entertainment district in Shinjuku, Tokyo. After falling into debt from gambling, he gets an offer from yakuza Ito (Jun Murakami) to trash the night club "New World" and his debt would be paid off. At the nightclub "New World," gambling goes on without permission from the gang which Ito belongs to. When Kazu attacks the bar with yakuza members, dancer Machiko Yagi (Anne Suzuki), who Kazu likes, is at the bar. Under this chaotic situation, Kazu takes Machiko from the waiting room and asks her to run away with him.
Daikichi learns that his recently deceased grandfather has an illegitimate daughter with an unknown mother. The girl's name is Rin and she is just 6 years old. Everybody in Daikichi's family looks at the girl as an embarrassment and wants no part of her. Daikichi, annoyed by his family's attitude, decides to raise Rin by himself. Even though Daikichi himself has no experience raising a child and is still single. The movie is based on Yumi Unita's popular manga series "Usagi Drop".
A senseless double murder resonates eight years later in four intertwined stories.
19-year-old freeter (a Japanese expression for people between the ages of 15 and 34 who lack full time employment or are unemployed, excluding housewives and students.) Tsuyoshi Osanai enters a school for guide dog trainers. After 2 years of training, Tsuyoshi becomes an assistant trainer. His first dog to train is Chie.
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.
The story of the relationship between a college student whose relationship with her boyfriend is going nowhere and a bisexual medical artist who makes prosthetic body parts. Haru is a college student ignored by her boyfriend yet believes she is still in love with him. One day at a café, Haru meets Riko, a medical artist (prosthetist) who creates body parts in order to disguise clients’ missing pieces, lost due to accident or disease. Both were alone, but struck up an immediate friendship and closeness. Riko doesn't care about gender when it comes to relationships, and believes that love itself is the most important thing a human can achieve. Haru struggles in her life between friendship and a deeper relationship with Riko.
Chief Iizuka (Kaoru Kobayashi), who works at the Cultural Center, misunderstands two chorus groups with similar names and double-books the concert hall on New Year's Eve. Although they talk to each other, neither of them gives up a step and develops into a big problem.Iizuka, who has lived his life with a "no-nonsense" attitude, finds himself in the middle of two groups and at a loss for words.
It is the second work of the Oita trilogy of Obayashi . Following " Nigori Snow ", Ise Masazo draws a song written by composers and songwriter "Farewell of 22 years old " as a motif and draws a story of love that spans two generations of mother and daughter.
What's scary is being a human being, and what's scary is being myself. Truly horrifying things reside inside oneself. The work asks if you can stand the inescapable terror.
The second feature from female director Shindo Kaze (Love/Juice), Princess in an Iron Helmet (a.k.a. Korogare! Tamako) is a bright and colorful youth film about a quirky young woman's reluctant coming-of-age journey. Tamako (Yamada Maiko) is 20 years old, lives at home with her mother (Kishimoto Kayoko) and teenaged brother, and simply refuses to grow up. Ever since her father (Naoto Takenaka) left the family, she's stopped trusting people, and now lounges around in her own small, claustrophobic world. Wearing an iron helmet whenever she steps outside, she ventures only to her mom's beauty salon, the mechanic shop, and the bakery - the source of her greatest joy in life, sweet buns. Her world is static, insular, and safe, and there's no need to change - that is until her cat runs away, the bakery closes, and her mom falls in love with another man.
Matsuko, in her 20s, is fired as a teacher and degenerates from an elite to a “Soap Lady.” Through her history of affairs with men, she kills her pimp and ends up in prison. Despite her rough lifex struck by terrible misfortunes, she does not stop loving some one and keeps her dreams until the very end. This drama depicts Matsuko’s stormy life as she deals with it head-on.
As Haru emigrates from Japan with her family to the coffee plantations in Brazil, Natsu is left behind in the care of spiteful relatives. Losing all contact, each must make her own way in an unforgiving world. Hardships abound in the struggle to survive in war-torn Japan and in the face of anti-Japanese sentiment in Brazil, financial ruin, familial pressure, abandonment and lost love. However they also experience the precious joy of survival and success. Now, after 70 years, Haru comes back to Japan to find her estranged sister.
Director Kazuo Hara tells the tale of the eponymous Chika and four different relationships she has during the turbulent political climate of the 1970s. Four different actresses play the role of Chika in order to emphasise the different ways she is perceived by her husband, a teacher, a student and an aging gangster.
Aimi and her father move into an old, apartment building and learn quickly that things are not as they seem.
Young assassins Azumi and Nagara continue their mission to prevent a civil war. In their hunt for Masayuki Sanada, who is protected by both an army and a dangerous clan, they meet Ginkaku, a person who shows a remarking resemblance with former friend Nachi.
Based on the classic adult manga of the same title, this film depicts the love between a stepbrother and sister discovered one weekend when their parents go away. The relationship must come to an end, but not before it changes their lives forever.
The portrayal of how the media's focus on a shocking crime causes a chain reaction and produces a copy cat crime: abduction and imprisonment by a young dry cleaner. Only the victim may be more than he bargained for…
Heaven's Bookstore is a 2004 Japanese film directed by Tetsuo Shinohara about a struggling classical pianist who is sent to heaven to work in a bookstore. It is based on two novels, written by Atsushi Matsuhisa and Wataru Tanaka.
A train station worker just recently released on charges of kidnapping and confinement repeats his crime and attempts to gain the trust of a young girl. Living together in the back room of a train station, they eventually come face to face with their own evils.
An intense, middle-aged postal worker kidnaps an university student and confines her long enough that he may have successfully be-petted her... a thrilling criminal-drama with a surprise twist that will satisfy all audiences.
A newly unemployed salaryman meets a particularly sexual woman.
When Aoi is gang-raped by her classmates and kicked out of her home by her own parents she sees no reason to continue living. Before she commits suicide, however, she receives an email on her cellphone from a man named Toshi addressed to a girl named Ai. The message simply thanks the girl for being alive, but this specific message has an effect on Aoi and she decides to keep on living. Without many options, Aoi resorts to everything from paid dating to porn to earn money and meets a lot of less than reputable characters. Throughout it all though she looks toward Toshi as her hope for happiness and the two form a relationship.
Sleeping Bride is the story of a girl, Yumi, who since birth, has never been awake. A boy called Yuuichi finds the girl in the hospital while he is a patient there. A nurse remarks that the girl is 'Sleeping Beauty', and Yuuichi believes that a kiss from a prince will wake her, just like the story. Yuuichi returns to see Yumi every day, says 'Wake up, I'm the prince' and kisses her. Ten years later he restarts his daily ritual to see Yumi, one day she wakes up.
Years after moving to Tokyo with her parents, Hinako returns to her hometown in rural Shikoku. She soon learns that her childhood friend, Sayuri, died several years ago and that Sayuri's mother, who used to perform seances and exorcisms, has gone almost insane with grief. After seeing Sayuri's ghost several times during the night, Hinako consults with some local experts on the paranormal and discovers that Sayuri's mother has something planned for her daughter...
Yoko always seems to say and do the right thing and has forever been the center of attention. Her younger sister, Tsukiko, having been compared to her sister since birth cannot help but feel inferior. Yoko has benefited from this situation for so long that she expects it to last forever. However, when Tsukiko's career takes a turn for the better and she gets engaged, Yoko feels that she must somehow sabotage her sister's success since her own career and marriage are not faring well. Tsukiko decides to defend herself, and the resultant feud threatens to ensnare their family and loved ones.
Kizaki, who moved to Tokyo from the Kansai region to become a manga artist, is assigned to work at a used electrical appliance store where he works part-time as a store keeper and repairman. One day, a woman comes to the store drenched from the rain. She is Setsuko, the only daughter of the store's president and a returnee. Since then, Setsuko often comes to the store. Kizaki becomes concerned about Setsuko, but Setsuko has something to do with Oshi, a senior who used to work at the store...
Fourteen-year old student Ayumi has leukemia and starts losing hair. She becomes depressed but receives overwhelming support from her classmates when they all shave their heads for her.
A dark and strange comedy about a bank robber with bad luck. Bungling a bank robbery turns out to be a profitable mistake for Yamazaki (Shin'ichi Tsutsumi), an amateur crook who ends up with 80 million yen after a string of improbable accidents. But having so much cash doesn't make his life is any easier. In fact, it gets much more complicated when Yamazaki stabs a hairdresser by mistake and instantly becomes a hunted fugitive. He's just one unlucky monkey -- but can he turn his luck around?
Akane is the young mistress of Notoraku Inn in Ishikawa Prefecture. She is trained by her mother-in-law, Takako, daily. One day, as Yohei, Akane's husband, and Takako are on their way to a friend's wedding, Rekiko, Yohei's childhood friend, confesses her feelings for Yohei in front of everyone at the hotel. The next day, Reiko's body is found and Akane and Yohei become murder suspects.
The second TV movie Obayashi Nobuhiko directed based on Akagawa Jiro's Mikeneko Holmes series.
On the set of a dark war time drama at an old movie studio, a young director, Toshio Murai (Yanagi), is trying to complete his debut film. The two starring actresses, Hitomi Kurokawa and Saori Murakami, play sisters in his film. Murai has a crush on Hitomi (Shiroshima), the seasoned leading actress, and keeps a photo of her by his bed. The younger and less experienced actress, Saori (Ishibashi), is annoying and likes to have recess on the set. The production of the movie is consistently interrupted by strange occurrences and the cast and crew begin to get spooked.
A young foot soldier in the yakuza seeks revenge when his prostitute girlfriend dies after a session with a high-ranking Japanese politician with a taste for torture. He sets out on a 'kamikaze' mission to kill his bosses and the politician; along the way, he acquires the aid of a taxi driver who has recently returned to Japan after living in South America for several decades and is struggling to cope with poverty and the prejudices of native-born Japanese.
It is 1965. High-school student Takeyoshi Fujiwara Yasufumi Hayashi) hears "Pipeline" by the Ventures, and is mesmerized by their unique sound. With three friends, he forms a band called "The Rocking Horsemen." A warm and comic glimpse into high-school and small-town life in Japan in the 60's.
The story centers on an elderly hibakusha, who lost her husband in the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, caring for her four grandchildren over the summer. She learns of a long-lost brother, Suzujiro, living in Hawaii who wants her to visit him before he dies.
An entire Japanese international grade school—and all within—are mysteriously transported to a foreboding desert wasteland. As the story unfolds, the diminishing student body weathers this apocalyptic crisis while searching for clues about their surroundings, and dealing with psychological breakdown and dangerous exterior forces.
Downed American fliers in WW II are vivisected by Japanese surgeons in medical experiments.
After a series of chance meetings, a shiftless motorbike enthusiast, Ko, begins a romance with a carefree girl, Miyo, after teaching her to ride. When Miyo proves herself a biker prodigy, Ko begins to fear that she is destined to crash.
During the fervently nationalist months leading up to World War II, a rebellious teenager is transferred to a new primary school in a small Inland Sea town. He vies with the school’s reigning bully, who takes a romantic interest in his older stepsister. When they learn she’s going to be sold to a brothel to pay off her father’s debts, they form an uneasy alliance to free her. With surprising moments of caricature and slapstick, Obayashi celebrates the anarchic world of adolescence while also satirizing adult hypocrisy and conformism.
NHK's 34th asadora is Miotsukushi. Kaworu marries the man she loves. After he dies at seas she takes care of the family. The series takes place in Choshi, Chiba during the 1920s.
A lonely high schooler suddenly meets the love of his life out of thin air. Is she a real person or a figment of his imagination?
After noticing in the news there was a fire in an old canal town, Eguchi recalls visiting there a decade ago as a university student.
Yoshiyama Kazuko is in the 3rd grade of junior high. One day, she's cleaning in the laboratory, she notices of the smell of lavender, and fainted. Since then, she acquires a mysterious power to travel time.
Famous detective Kosuke Kindaichi follows a dying man's words to an enigmatic island, where he meets beautiful twin sisters and tragic events unfold.
A policeman is murdered and his gun, stolen, used to commit the next crime. Detective Kashiwagi, who is leading the investigation, learns that the author of the killings “walks like a dead man”. Kashiwagi runs into Date, a former correspondent in the Vietnam War. There, Date discovered hell and something snapped in his mind.
A thief, a murderer, and a charming lady-killer, Iwao Enokizu is on the run from the police.
The story of a high school boy (Toshiyuki Nagashima) in Tokyo returning to his home town of Nagano upon the death of his father.
Kendo, friendship, family. A coming-of-age movie based on the same-name novel by Takahashi Michizuna, who won the Sasakawa Prize.
In the summer of 1947, various men and women gather at a mansion in the countryside at the invitation of Kazuma Utagawa. They are artists, novelists, poets, painters, playwrights, actresses, etc. Then the murders begin, one after another. The incident seemed to have no continuity...
Once again we focus on Nami Matsushima. This time she has a sister who goes missing and after getting too caught up in doing something about it, our innocent heroine is given a fifteen year sentence for a murder she didn't commit. She's sent to an all women prison where she's not exactly welcome. Her fellow inmates torture, humiliate and try to kill her; but the Scorpion prevails long enough to get some justice.
