Kazuo Kitamura

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.

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In the aftermath of a major earthquake, scientists predict that Japan will sink into the sea. As further disasters follow, politicians plead with other countries to take refugees, while scientists struggle to save Japan itself.

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Hiromi, attends junior high school in Tokyo. The combination of getting bullied on campus and her fathers death causes her to stop attending school. One day she is invited by her online friend, Kenmun, to visit him on Ishigaki Island. Hiromi sets out to meet Kenmun, however, Hiromi has another reason to go to Ishigaki Island. She may be able to see her mother who left when she was a child. Will she be able to find her long lost mother? More importantly, will she be able to find happiness in life?

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Henshin tells the story of Junichi, a young boy who is forced to go through a life-saving brain transplantation. By his side, his girlfriend Kei is watching over him all the time. Junichi seems to recover complete from this operation, but while Kei is thrilled that he is back by her side, Junichi senses that all is not well. Something inside of him seems to have changed and his feelings for Kei are beginning to fade. Though he wants nothing more than for the two of them to be happily together, Junichi realizes that something must be done. He makes a bold decision to protect the young woman he loves that will prove to everybody, especially himself, what his true feelings for Kei really are.

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Even though Gennosuke and Oboro are from rival ninja villages, they are secretly in love. At an annual conference with the Lord, it is dictated that a competition--a fight to the death--will take place between the five best shinobi from each village. Gennosuke and Oboro's love is made even more impossible when they each got picked as the leader of the five to represent their respective villages.

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A woman in a bright green coat, Mizue (Toda Naho), gets off the bus at Shikaoi Town in Hokkaido. She has followed her former salsa dance partner, Arisaka (Endo Kenichi), to his hometown. Arisaka, who is about to start a new life, is troubled, and soon their feelings for each other burn intensely...

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Orphaned when he was not yet ten, Musashi grows up skilled in the martial arts. During the Battle of Sekigahara, he fights on the side of the losing Toyotomi forces, but eludes the enemy as they hunt down the vanquished soldiers. He then spends years wandering the countryside mastering the sword. As his fame spreads throughout the nation, men seek him out to test their skills against him--most notably Sasaki Kojiro who faces Musashi in the ultimate duel at Ganryujima.

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A down-and-out businessman travels to a seaside town, where he meets a woman with unusual sexual powers.

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When her husband is betrayed by his fellow yakuza and jailed, his wife takes over and fights to prevent his expulsion from the clan. 14th installment of the 16-film franchise.

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The 64th NHK Asadora Renzoku Drama is Churasan, a story of a young woman, Kohagura Eri, who was born in Kohamajima Island, Okinawa on May 15, 1972, the day when Okinawa was returned to Japan from the U.S. Eleven years later, Kamimura Shizuko and her two sons, Kazuya and Fumiya, from Tokyo come to stay as the guests of a small inn run by Eri’s family. Eri’s fun-loving, yet eccentric family welcomes them warmly. However, Eri is shocked to hear one of the sons, Kazuya is terminally ill and Shizuko and her sons came to Okinawa to spend his last moment together in beautiful nature. Fumiya, Kazuya’s younger brother, and Eri promise to marry each other someday. However after Kazuya’s death, Fumiya and his mother leave the island to go back to Tokyo. Years later, they are reunited, Eri as a nurse and Fumiya, a doctor, working at the same hospital in Tokyo.

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A middle-aged salaryman with a typical family, living quietly in a provincial city (Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture), wakes up one morning in the summer of 1994 to find himself the prime suspect in the biggest mass-murder case of the decade.

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Nakazo is forced by his foster mother, Shun, to practice dance intensively. He is bullied in the Kabuki world, and worries about his future as an actor.

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Traditional Japanese pop singer Reiko (Muroi) decides to enter a well-known TV program for amateur singers along with a confused teenager (Ôtomo) and a 40-year-old father of four (Bito).

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Hama-chan’s sales department gets a new supervisor, a hard-working taskmaster that’s the very opposite of carefree, irresponsible Hama-chan. The veteran employee decides to find his boss, a divorced father, a new wife. The supervisor loves a bar hostess “mama-san,” but is unable to confess his true feelings until Hama-chan comes to his rescue.

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Akemi's marriage was the kind that no one could complain about. Akemi had perfect kids and a great husband. Everyone was happy. Until her husband, Eiji, starts having an affair, and a cruel fate calls upon her.

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Documentary about Japanese film director Shohei Imamura.

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There is a man who divorced his wife. He moved to rural Hokkaido from Tokyo where he lived with his family without running water or electricity. He has his son and daughter in tow and works hard for them. The folk in the area try to help. A couple of years pass and the older son moves back to Tokyo, attends school and works part-time. The daughter commutes to the city to attend school. She wants to become a nurse. To become a registered nurse she needs to study a further three years. This takes money.

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The biggest crisis has come to Matsushita, a shootist who has passed through numerous shrines!

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Rin Jyoshima lost her father to death-by-gambling; years later, she's grown up in the Kosugi household and has fallen victim to gambling herself.

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Nayoko, a good-hearted geisha, brings luck to the men she sleeps with, even though most are scoundrels who don’t deserve it.

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A fierce succession battle ignites at a newspaper company when the president passes away.

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Shigematsu Shizuma, who lives with his family in a village near Fukuyama, was in Hiroshima with his wife and niece just after the devastating atomic bombing, a tragedy that cruelly took the lives of thousands of people and forever marked the harsh existence of the survivors.

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TV film about the "Nishiyama Incident", a scandal surrounding the 1972 return of Okinawa to Japan. Produced to commemorate the 20th anniversary of TV Asahi in 1978 and released theatrically by Office Henmi in 1988.

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Set in a sushi restaurant in Tokyo shortly after the end of the war, the story follows a stubborn, old-fashioned master and his hot-tempered, brash apprentice growing up among the warm-hearted people of downtown Tokyo.

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A divorced man meets a kindly Korean prostitute whom he cannot get from his mind. Things don’t prove to be straightforward for either of them.

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Yokiro was the most successful Geisha house in Western Japan during the first half of the 20th century and remains open to this day. At its peak, it was home to over 200 geisha, however behind the fabulous facade, there were many battles - between family members, men and women, and with the Yakuza. Momokawa was sold to Yokiro at age 12, and despite being the top geisha, her many complicated relationships provide unending challenges throughout her glamorous but turbulent life.

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Izumi Kayo, who works as a surgeon at a university medical school affiliated hospital in the Sanin region, is in love with Katano Shuji, a lecturer who is taking an elite course at the same first surgery department. Kayo asks her mentor, First Surgery Professor Hida Kiichiro, to agree to her marriage with Katano, but is refused. In fact, Hida had always had feelings for Kayo...

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After a passenger ship sinks in 1954, Go Akutsu devises a life-saving project in the form of a tunnel under the Tsugaru Strait. While working on this project Akutsu becomes involved with Tae Makimura leading to his estrangement from his wife.

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A free-spirited girl living in a Japanese province spends her time working in a brothel and running with her dog. When her routine is shattered she gets on a path of hate and self discovery.

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This film stays very faithful to the original down to the smallest details, save for the kangaroo-rat that suddenly appears twenty minutes into the movie and subsequently follows Aladdin around, serving no purpose in the story but fulfilling the role of token animal mascot. The story takes some illogical and confusing jumps at the point where Aladdin begins to court the princess, and the extravagant animation that had characterised Toei films of the 60s, when Toei had the best animators around, had become a thing of the past long before this point; but this is still an above-average film, in large part because of the screenplay that stays so faithful to the original. The character designs are slightly more western-looking than one is accustomed to seeing in anime.

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A high-school girl inherits a declining yakuza organization, which seeks to repair its fortunes under her leadership.

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The film depicts carnivalesque atmosphere summed up by the cry "Ei ja nai ka" ("Why not?") in Japan in 1867 and 1868 in the days leading to the Meiji Restoration. It examines the effects of the political and social upheaval of the time, and culminates in a revelrous march on the Tokyo Imperial Palace, which turns into a massacre. Characteristically, Imamura focuses not on the leaders of the country, but on characters in the lower classes and on the fringes of society.

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