Asian Drama

"Tora-san, Welcome Back" is the fiftieth film in the "Tora-san" series. Its release is also set to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the series. Kiyoshi Atsumi, who played the eponymous character, will appear via scenes intercut with previous films.

Based on novel by Yamasaki Toyoko, screenplay by Habara Daisuke and directed by Tsuruhashi Yasuo. The era setting is changed from the Showa 30's to the year 2019.

Rekihiko Tokiya is an excellent detective in Kyoto. While chasing a suspect, Rekihiko Tokiya falls into a water storage pool at an abandoned factory. He wakes up in a hospital room, stunned that he cannot remember anything from the last 20 years. Although he is 51 years old, he cannot recall anything past the age of 31 when he first started working as a detective. He is a divorcee, but he does not remember his ex-wife. His personality also changes, once confident but now meek and timid. His sense of justice is still strong. Rekihiko Tokiya resumes work as a detective, but he deals with cases differently than in the past.

The Hirata family have a lively household with three generations living under the same roof. One day, the secret stash of money that homemaker Fumie had put aside gets stolen. When her husband Konosuke snidely complains that she was squirreling away his earnings, Fumie loses it and leaves home. Her absence threatens the Hirata household with ruin.

Several years after Shuzo settled his wife’s birthday-surprise divorce proposal (What a Wonderful Family, 40th), the Hirata family faces new problems. Ignoring his family’s worry that he is too old to drive, Shuzo takes his old schoolmate for a spin after carousing. Soon, a new disturbance arises for the Hirata family. Veteran director Yamada Yoji continues his comedy about the “perfect“ Japanese family turned upside down in chaos, laughters and understanding. This time, with an additional taste of death.

Seibei Iguchi leads a difficult life as a low ranking samurai at the turn of the nineteenth century. A widower with a meager income, Seibei struggles to take care of his two daughters and senile mother. New prospects seem to...

In his fiftieth year of marriage to Tomiko, Shuzo decides to buy her a birthday present for a change. However, she tells him she wants his seal on an application for divorce. Their children swiftly convene a family meeting.

A 19th-century samurai tries to protect a battered wife. Seibei Iguchi, a low-ranking samurai, leads a life without glory as a bureaucrat in the mid-XIX century Japan. A widower, he has charge of two daughters (whom he adores) and a senile mother; he must therefore work in the fields and accept piecework to make ends meet. New prospects seem to open up when Tomoe, his long-time love, divorces a brutal husband. However, even as the Japanese feudal system is unraveling, Seibei remains bound by the code of honour of the samurai and by his own sense of social precedences. The consequences are cruel. Written by Eduardo Casais . In the Nineteenth Century, in Unasaka, Province of Yamagata, in the Feudal Japan, the widow samurai Seibei Iguchi works in the warehouse of the local Commissioner during the day and handicraftsman building cages in the night to have an income of 50 koku (meaning "a quantity of rice, historically defined as enough rice to feed one person for one year"wink.gif. Seibei raises alone his two daughters, the five year-old Ito and the ten year-old Kayano and his senile mother in a simple property, and has a debt of 20 koku due to the expensive funeral of his wife, who died of tuberculosis, imposed by her family and can not afford to have another wife. His colleagues in the warehouse pejoratively call him "The Twilight Samurai" to express his life without glory. When Seibei meets Michinojo Iinuma, his childhood friend tells him that his sister Tomoe Iinuma has just divorced from he brutal husband Toyotarou Kouda. Seibei reencounters Tomoe, for whom he has been in love since he was a child, but Tamoe is member of a family of 400 koku and Seibei believes their difference of classes makes their marriage impossible. When Kouda challenges Iinuma to a duel, Seibei accepts to replace his old friend and needs to use his skills of swordsman again.

On the surface, About Her Brother seems very different from Yoji Yamada’s samurai masterpieces that have reached the U.S. in recent years, films like Twilight Samurai and The Hidden Blade. However, consistent with those films, and with Yamada’s service as the regular director of the long-running Tora-san series, About Her Brother is, at heart, a contemplative character study with room for both wry humor and tear-jerking emotion – a gentle portrait of fundamentally decent people under stress. The film follows Ginko, a widowed Tokyo pharmacist dealing with her daughter’s marriage and her ne’er-do-well younger brother Tetsuro, whose drunken antics and stubborn refusal to grow up cause her no end of trouble. The title may be Ototo or “younger brother” in Japanese and Yamada may have packed the cast with ringers - Tsurube Shofukutei (Dear Doctor) as Ginko and Yu Aoi (One Million Yen Girl, Hula Girls) - but the film really belongs to Sayuri Yoshinaga. As Ginko, Yoshinaga simultaneously captures affection, exasperation and embarrassment without ever sliding over the edge into caricature. Rated one of Japan's 10 Best Films of 2010.

Kurogane Shinobu is a roving reporter for the Local News Section of the Kyoto Times. During her time at the Kyoto Shinpo, she wrote numerous hardline exposes and even won awards. Although many reporters have left the Kyoto Times because they hated the change in policy, she stayed. Because Shinobu is tenacious and fearless in interviews, she is not scared of any interview subject and would make a beeline for the person without a thought for the inconvenience she might cause. This is the reason why she is banned from going in and out of many places.

'Subete wa Kimi ni Aeta Kara' follows various different people and couples in 6 loosely connected stories. All of the stories are set at Tokyo Station and take place just before Christmas. The different characters range from a company president who distrusts human beings, to a train driver who just received the shocking diagnosis that he has only half a year left to live. # "Eve no Koibito" ('Christmas Eve Lover') - A company president (Tamaki) meets a woman (Takanashi), who just lost a beloved person, in a restaurant at Tokyo Station. He thinks that all women only like his money and enjoys being alone. She originally moved to Tokyo to become an actress, but now she is planning to go back to her hometown right after her short play at an orphanage. # "Enkyori Renai" ('Long Distance Relationship') - A love-dovey couple that is going through a long distance relationship. She (Kimura) is an aspiring fashion designer in Tokyo and he (Higashide) is a construction worker in Sendai. Will their hectic schedules allow them to at least meet each other on Christmas? # "Christmas Present" - Ichikawa plays a woman who works in an orphanage. That day she is waiting for the new mother of the 7-year-old Akane to come and pick her up. # "Nibun no Ichi Seijin Shiki" ('A Half Coming-Of-Age Ceremony') - A train driver (Tokito) who cannot bring himself to tell his son that he only has half a year left to live. The train driver's wife is played by Otsuka. # "Christmas no Yuuki" ('Christmas Courage') - A part-timer (Honda) at a cake shop has a crush on her senior at work, but she lacks the courage to approach him. # "Okurete Kita Present" ('Belated Present') - The owner of the cake shop at Tokyo Station (Baisho) gets reminded of a promise that she made with a certain someone (Kobayashi) 49 years ago.

Set within an animal shelter, where if the owner of an animal doesn't claim their pet in 7 days, the animal is put to sleep. Himawari is a female dog and a mother. She tries to desperately save her puppies.

Yasujiro Ozu's 1953 masterpiece Tokyo Story is regarded by many as the greatest film in the history of Japanese cinema, a finely wrought tale of human fragility amidst the rampant social upheaval of post-war Japan.

In Tokyo Family, 81-year-old modern master Yôji Yamada transports Ozu's opus to the Japan of today - a country where economic hope has waned and the threat to tradition is more pronounced than ever.

Elderly Shukichi and Tomiko swap their remote island home for Tokyo to spend some time with their three grown-up and very different children. Overcome with the stresses of the city, the kids absently shuffle their parents from one to the other, but when Tomiko has a stroke, everything they thought they valued is thrown into devastating relief...

Sayama Michio is a young and callous beautician who will stop at nothing to fulfill his ambition(s). Coming from an impoverished background, he suddenly becomes the darling of the beauty world. He holds women who desire beauty captive and puts on several different faces when dealing with Murase Minako, the female owner of the place that he works at; Hatano Masako, a woman of leisure; and Fukuchi Fujiko, an editor of a weekly magazine to come out tops. He also gets involved with two detectives who are investigating him for a prior incident.