Two kids, fourteen-year-old Eriko and her thirteen-year-old brother Daigo, suddenly find themselves trapped in a parallel universe. Most things are the same as in their own world, but their parents are missing from home and are only contactable when using one particular phonecard.
The story of a Japanese man who as a 16-year-old went to Maui to work in the sugar cane fields in order to support his family back in Japan. Now 89 and still living in Hawaii he is visited by his granddaughter who brings him a letter from his disinherited and recently dead son. This brings back...
Set in the Taisho era, which might be regarded as Japan's Hippie Phase, Hana no ran is a story about fashionable people without impulse control. Much of the action centers on a popular woman writer, the real-life poet Akiko Yosano, and her experiences among the literati of early 20th century Japan....
Aya, a young Japanese war bride, arrives in a small Australian town during the 1950s. She and her husband, Frank, are very much in love. Yet somehow Aya still feels more comfortable with the Japanese-speaking Mac, a close friend of Frank's, whose wartime experiences left him with a deep regard for...
Commencing well-respected Nippon director Kazuo Kuroki's sixth decade behind the camera, "A Boy's Summer in 1945" (literally "A Beautiful Summer in Kirishima") is a lyric, novelistic drama set in the countryside in the last days before Japan's surrender ending WWII. Striking a welcome retro note in...
Go Ayano plays Kazunari Mizusawa, a young photographer gathering pictures of girls in Shibuya for a documentary. Suddenly the constant noise of the bustling crowd is drowned out by a high school girl (Aimi Satsukawa) shrieking in anger. Mizusawa is startled, but also confused by the fact that...
Suzumoto and Sumi creatively master their independent lives while living in a park in Nagoya. In contrast, a middle-class family is caught up in pressure and routine. The two threads of the story gradually intertwine, until a tragic escalation occurs. Shot with a black-and-white documentary feel,...
A man in hospital has a weird and sexy conversation with a woman in the next bed, whom he cannot see. He later discovers she is in her sixties. They meet several more times and, each time, she is younger.
Momotaro carries this sword into battle against injustice in shogunate Japan. Aided by ninja he must now wage a furious battle against the terrible “Ran” clan, villains in league with Ohara Ukon, a bitter samurai nursing a grudge against the shogunate. Together the ruthless conspirators will...
"I'm definitely going to be the best." This is the path that these young baseball players once chose to take to become entertainers. Just when they were sure they would finally make it, after struggling to reach the top amidst a burning sense of urgency, their partner was struck by fulminant...
A college student works a part time job at a bookstore, and meets an older patron wearing a long coat who tells her that "the young are beautiful, but the old moreso". Shortly afterwards, a friend tells her of a suspicious person who has been following her mother. When she gets home, she finds her...