
Sakura Ando
Acting
Biography
With parents in the show business perhaps it is not surprising that Sakura Ando would become an actress and, moreover, also end up marrying an actor. She was born to actor/director Okuda Eiji and celebrity Kazu Ando on 18.02.1986. Her great grandfather was prime minister Tsuyoshi. Her older sister is director Ando Momoko. She saw her father on stage at age five and decided to become an actress while in second grade. She was often ill as a child. Her disease made her dizzy, lose her balance and more throughout her childhood. Her brain would shut down. She would opt for her mother's maiden surname for her professional career. Sono Sion picked her for his film Love Exposure and gave her a major start on the big screen. She won an award as the Best Supporting Actress for her work in it at the 31st Yokohama Film Festival. Earlier her father cast her in his film Kaze No Sotogawa ('Outside The Wind') alongside her mother and sister. She has since appeared in multiple movies and serials and won several more awards. She married actor Emoto Tasuku in 2012. She had met him on a train in 2008 and had obtained her father's permission to date and marry. She was a boxer in 100 Yen Love, which was fortunate since she had practiced boxing when she was fourteen-years-old. She gave birth to her first child, a girl, in 2017. She won the award for Best Actress at the 42nd Japan Academy Prize for her work on 2018's Shoplifters. By then she was considered one of several top young actresses in Japan next to Yu Aoi, Miyazaki Aoi and perhaps Aso Kumiko. Interestingly, she had earlier decided to retire and focus on raising her child. She is a graduate of Gakushuin Women's College.
Known For

In postwar Japan, Godzilla brings new devastation to an already scorched landscape. With no military intervention or government help in sight, the survivors must join together in the face of despair and fight back against an unrelenting horror.
Godzilla Minus One

After an outburst at school involving her son, a concerned single mother demands answers, triggering a sequence of deepening suspicion and turmoil.
Monster

Ataru is a TBS series is about an autistic young man with a mysterious past who helps the police solve criminal cases. It stars Masahiro Nakai in the title role and has received 19.9% TV viewership ratings.
ATARU

Kiyomi Endo is a single mother working at a business hotel near Mount Fuji whose life takes an unexpected twist after an encounter with an alien.
The Hot Spot

Shomuni, that's the common name given to General Affairs Section 2 of a trading company. Here are six women who have ended up in this department known as "the dump" for office ladies. But Chinatsu Tsuboi (Makiko Esumi) declares that the value of woman is equal to the number of men. With her as the central focus they create a totally new type of office lady drama that does away with those heartless men still caught up in worn-out social ideas and the class system within the company.
Shomuni

A comedy focusing on Kondo Asami, a 33-year-old single woman who lives with her parents and works at the local city hall, and suddenly finds herself starting her life over from scratch.
Rebooting

Koharu is a dull high school girl who is always alone. Her only hobby is making plastic models. One day, Koharu stops by a mysterious antique shop and purchases a plastic model gun and a toy figure named Alice. After spending the entire night assembling the gun, Koharu wakes up and witnesses bullets flying everywhere in school. She then meets Alice who moves like a human and tells her to get ready for a survival battle called "Girl Gun Fight", where she has to attack her schoolmates with a gun.
Girl Gun Lady

The murder of a young girl shocks a small Japanese village, and the victim's mother is distraught when the classmates her daughter was playing with all claim not to remember the identity of the killer. In her anger, she puts a curse on them.
Penance

In the outskirts of Tokyo, a poor but close-knit group living on the fringes of society survives through shoplifting and odd jobs. When Osamu and his son take in a neglected young girl, their already fragile existence begins to unravel. As the family grows attached to her, buried secrets surface, forcing them to confront the true meaning of love, belonging, and what makes a family.
Shoplifters

Drama series depicts the lives of three men born in 1987 and oppose irrational things of the world through work, love, and friendship. The men are from the "yutori generation", when the Japanese government reformed the education system, emphasizing a pressure-free environment referred to as yutori education.
We're Millennials. Got a Problem?

In an attempt to conquer the world, the Nuisance World has stolen the Majoka Jewels and have corrupted each into an Akiramestone, which interferes with people's dreams and turns them into an Akiramest. Momoka, an ordinary middle school student, is summoned by Mokonyan, a fairy from the Magic World, to join Magic Warriors Rin and Mitsuki and stop the Nuisance World. Together, as MagiMajo Pures, they purelize the Akiramests back into Majoka Jewels with magic.
Magic × Warrior MagiMajo Pures!

Based on true story of the wife of Ando Momofuku, the businessman who founded Nissin Food Products Co. Ltd. and the inventor of instant ramen, the 99th Asadora follows the life of Tachibana Fukuko, a young woman who tries to survive tough times in Osaka with her husband from before WWII to the rapid economic development era. Together they overcome various setbacks before they succeed in creating instant noodles. (Source: MDL)
Mampuku

The story of a teenage boy called Yu, who falls for Yoko, a girl he runs into while working as an upskirt photographer in an offshoot of the porn industry. His attempts to woo her are complicated by a spot of cross-dressing – which convinces Yoko that she is lesbian – dalliances with kung-fu and crime, and a constant struggle with Catholic guilt. A television miniseries extension of Sion Sono's 2008 tragicomedy.
Love Exposure: The TV-Show

The story of a teenage boy called Yu, who falls for Yoko, a girl he runs into while working as an upskirt photographer in an offshoot of the porn industry. His attempts to woo her are complicated by a spot of cross-dressing – which convinces Yoko that she is lesbian – dalliances with kung-fu and crime, and a constant struggle with Catholic guilt.
Love Exposure

A cat who dreams of reuniting with its owner & works as a housekeeper to save money.
Today's Nekomura

Set in the Sengoku period, this story follows the Toyotomi brothers—Hidenaga and Hideyoshi—and their unbreakable bond as they rise to unify Japan.
Brothers in Arms

The drama is based on a novel by Sato Shogo called ‘Minoue Banashi‘. Its story revolves around a bookstore clerk named Michiru who unexpectedly wins the 200,000,000 Yen (2.5 million USD) lottery. Consequently, she starts to get involved in unpredicted betrayals and murder.
Shotenin Michiru no Mi no Uebanashi

Rinko and Aya, employed in the Philippines in 1944, escape one of the most gruesome battles of the Pacific War. Based on the accounts of actual women survivors, this special depicts the friendship - the joy and sadness - shared by these two women, whose lives remain intertwined in wartime and long beyond.
Mango no Ki no Shita de

A fragment of the lives of five 55-year-old men and women.
Hello Life from 55

Set in present day Japan in a provincial town, Bunzo Kurosawa, a greedy and violent father, is murdered in his own home. Bunzo has 3 sons: oldest son Mitsuru, second son Isao and youngest son Ryo. The three sons are suspected of murdering their own father.