A Wanderer's Notebook

Follows five sex workers employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation debates the passage of an anti-prostitution law.

In 1923, teenager Kim Shun-Pei moves from Cheju Island, in South Korea, to Osaka, in Japan. Along the years, he becomes a cruel, greedy and violent man and builds a factory of kamaboko, processed seafood products, in his poor Korean-Japanese community exploiting his employees.

Kiyoha rises from the lowly courtesan ranks to the high class position of Oiran in the steamy red-light district of Yoshiwara. She is determined to stand on her own two feet and live life as she pleased.

The tragic, true story about Hachikō, an Akita dog who was loyal to his master, Professor Ueno, even after Ueno's death.

During the Edo Period, a noblewoman's banishment for her love affair with a lowly page signals the beginning of her inexorable fall.

In post-WWII Osaka, a middle-aged woman is forced to examine her dreary life and marriage when her husband's young and flirtatious cousin arrives for a brief stay to escape an arranged marriage.

Before he hit it big, Takeshi Kitano got his start apprenticing with comedy legend Fukami of Asakusa. But as his star rises, his mentor's declines.

The master of a dorayaki pastry store hires a 76-year-old woman whose talents attract customers from all over. But she's hiding a troubling secret. Life's joys are found in the little details, and no matter what may be weighing you down, everyone loves a good pastry.

Chinatown, San Francisco, 1928. Former private detective Dashiell Hammett, a compulsive drinker with tuberculosis who writes pulp fiction for a living, receives an unexpected visit from an old friend asking for help.

A postman learns that he doesn't have much time left to live due to a terminal illness. A devil then appears in front of him and offers to extend his life if he picks something in the world that will disappear. The man thinks about his relationships with ex-friends, ex-lovers, relatives and colleagues who will be sincerely sad when he dies.

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 trapped travelers.

A restaurant opens at midnight. Both the menu offerings and personality of the owner draw a series of flawed patrons including Tamako, whose boyfriend has passed away, live-in worker Michiru, and ruckus-raising Kenzo.

Keiko, whom everyone calls Mama, narrates her story: she's a hostess on the Ginza, 30, a widow. She describes life's vicious cycle: acting cheerful around drunks, dressing and living well to convey confidence, needing money for these expenses and for her demanding mother and brother, and knowing she's growing older.

Dorothy Parker remembers the heyday of the Algonquin Round Table, a circle of friends whose barbed wit, like hers, was fueled by alcohol and flirted with despair.

A woman, Tome, is born to a lower class family in Japan in 1918. The title refers to an insect, repeating its mistakes, as in an infinite circle. Imamura, with this metaphor, introduces the life of Tome, who keeps trying to change her poor life.

A teenager faces an uphill battle when she fights to give women the opportunity to play competitive soccer.

The neglected common-law wife of a Japanese librarian is repeatedly harassed by a young man with a heart condition who seduces her with the prospect of a better life.

The story of a young boy in the Midwest is told simultaneously with a tale about a young girl in New York from fifty years ago as they both seek the same mysterious connection.

Jamie Fitzpatrick and Nona Alberts are two women from opposites sides of the social and economic track, but they have one thing in common: a mission to fix their community's broken school and ensure a bright future for their children. The two women refuse to let any obstacles stand in their way as they battle a bureaucracy that's hopelessly mired in traditional thinking, and they seek to re-energize a faculty that has lost its passion for teaching.

Residents of a rundown boardinghouse in 19th-century Japan, including a mysterious old man and an aging actor, get drawn into a love triangle that turns violent. When amoral thief Sutekichi breaks off his affair with landlady Osugi to romance her younger sister, Okayo, Osugi extracts her revenge by revealing her infidelity to her jealous husband.