Acting
The 13th NHK Asadora. Starring Youko Takahashi in a story about a brother and sister coming of age in Hakodate and Kanazawa.
In a small Tokyo apartment, twelve-year-old Akira must care for his younger siblings after their mother leaves them and shows no sign of returning.
Ohisama is a Japanese television drama that aired on NHK in 2011 in the Asadora time slot. Set in Nagano prefecture, "Ohisama" covers the life of Yoko Sudo (Mao Inoue) through World War II. Yoko Sudo with her smile is able to bring brightness to those around her & she follows her mother's motif to laugh through the hard times. During the onset of WW II, Yoko is a high school student and "Ohisama" follows her as she eventually becomes a teacher and then gets married and has a child. Yoko then opens a soba restaurant with her student. --asianwiki
The chronicles of Sakamoto Ryoma, a pre-revolutionary who helped shape the face of modern Japan. In order to study swordsmanship, Ryoma heads for Edo where he meets many people who influence his thinking. He becomes close friends with men like Katsu Kaishu and Saigo Takamori and later establishes a naval training school in Kobe. Ryoma's controversial political views make him a target for shogunate assassins but his fervent belief in a classless society helps forge the Choshu-Satsuma alliance which ultimately brings about the Meiji Restoration.
In a Japan of the near future, the government program Plan 75 encourages senior citizens to be voluntarily euthanized to remedy a super-aged society. An elderly woman whose means of survival are vanishing, a pragmatic Plan 75 salesman, and a young Filipino laborer face choices of life and death.
It's a sad and humorous story about a man encounter with various women and slowly regaining his smile. The woman whom he loved most in his life, Asuka, made a living by selling saliva for perverts. The story will focus on his six years with Asuka.
A 3-part series of biographical dramas to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the establishment of NHK.
A popular poet, Goku, becomes depressed when his editor jokingly suggests that he is a sell-out.
A young man awakens in the hospital after an accident wipes his memory. Fascinated by a textbook full of drawings of dissections, Hiroshi is drawn to medical school. There he catches the eye of a fellow student, but it's another who becomes his obsession: the dead woman on the cadaver table.
A former idol becomes a teacher at the high school she graduated from, but her new career is threatened by an expose book her ex-manager is planning to publish.
In an alternate version of 1949 Japan in which World War II never happened, the Japanese capital of Teito is home to both an ultra rich upper class and the dirt poor masses. The city is thrown into a state of panic when a phantom thief called “The Kaijin (Fiend) with 20 Faces” (K-20 for short) begins to use his mysterious abilities to steal from the rich and give to the poor. One day a circus acrobat named Heikichi Endo (Takeshi Kaneshiro) is framed for K-20’s crimes and becomes determined to clear his name. He teams up with K-20’s next target, a wealthy duchess named Yoko Hashiba (Takako Matsu) and her detective fiancé (Toru Nakamura), to take K-20 down once and for all.
The film tells the story of Aya, a woman suffering from congenital heart disease who has inherited a vast fortune. She marries the seemingly gentle and considerate Haruki, only to find herself trapped in a nightmare of his brutal abuse and humiliation. Pushed to her breaking point, she eventually kills Haruki and carefully stages his death as an accident. However, her relief is short-lived, as chilling supernatural events begin to haunt the house in the wake of the crime.
Four sexually hungry high school students preparing for their university entrance exams meet up with an inebriated teacher singing bawdy drinking songs. This encounter sets them on a less than academic path.
Kanto Torishimari Shutsuyaku Sakon Oyamada and Shinbei Asano, called "Hashū-sama" by the people. Sakon, a family man, and Shinbei, a serious man, travel around the crime-ridden Kanto region and solve crimes...
A retired samurai must redeem himself for a crime that he committed earlier in his life.
Naruse Uta is a "unique" 13 year old child. She possessed the talent to read sheet music even before she could speak, but has now come to the point where she hates playing the piano. Her father was also a piano virtuoso, but mysteriously disappeared from her life at a young age. Because of her father's disappearance Uta's mother had to move out of their posh home and into a far modest working class neighborhood. In this working class neighborhood there is a local grocer. The grocer's son Kikuna Oto happens to be a budding musician, but lacks the drive to truly succeed. That is until Uta Naruse comes into his life...
Set in a small Nagano village in the 1930s, the film follows Hanji, a young boy captivated by a local kabuki performance. Inspired by Yukio, Hanji learns kabuki with Utako. As they grow, they become skilled actors, performing in a final kabuki before World War II. After the war, Hanji returns to revive kabuki and restore the community’s spirit. In the 1980s, as he nears death, the villagers organise a final performance in his honour, where he performs “Tenryu Koishibuki” for Yukio.
No description available.
Riko Narumi plays an unpopular idol who in an attempt to boost her faltering career becomes police chief for a day. During the day a robbery occurs at a convenience store and instead of letting a real police chief deal with the robbery she decides to take the matter into her own hands.
Set in Shanghai during the turbulent years leading up to and through World War II, the film follows a group of Japanese jazz musicians and performers struggling to hold onto music, love, and friendship amid political unrest and war. As censorship, nationalism, and conflict reshape the city, their once-vibrant nightlife gradually gives way to disillusionment, separation, and loss.