
The 8th NHK Asadora. Starring Yumiko Fujita in a family drama. The first Asadora filmed in color.

In postwar Tokyo, a blunt, alcohol-soaked doctor diagnoses a swaggering young yakuza with tuberculosis, forging an uneasy bond that’s tested when the gangster’s ruthless former boss returns and drags him back toward the swampy underworld he can’t escape.

In post-WWII Osaka, a middle-aged woman is forced to examine her dreary life and marriage when her husband's young and flirtatious cousin arrives for a brief stay to escape an arranged marriage.


Searching for his brother, Ryota stows away on a boat belonging to a criminal alongside two other teenagers. The group shipwrecks on Letchi island and discover the Infant Island natives have been enslaved by a terrorist organization controlling a crustacean monster. Finding a sleeping Godzilla, they decide to awaken him to defeat the terrorists and liberate the natives.

After their lord is tricked into committing ritual suicide, forty-seven samurai warriors await the chance to avenge their master and reclaim their honor.

Five years after the end of the Second World War, Reikichi, a repatriated veteran, translates love letters for Japanese women to American GIs, while searching for his lost love, Michiko.

A young salaryman and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he embarks on an extramarital affair.


A married Japanese forester during WWII is sent to Indochina to manage forests. He meets a young Japanese typist and promises to leave his wife. He doesn't and after the war, she turns up and the affair resumes.

Based on the life and career of novelist Fumiko Hayashi, she bitterly struggles for literary recognition in the first half of the 20th-century – her affairs with feckless men, the jobs she took to survive (peddler, waitress, bar maid), and her arduous, often humiliating attempts to get published in a male-dominated culture.

A young army surgeon, Kyoji Fujisaki, accidentally contracts syphilis during a WWII field operation. Back at his father’s clinic, he treats himself in secret and breaks off his engagement rather than risk his fiancée’s future, even as he confronts the irresponsible patient who infected him—testing his ethics, pride, and capacity for sacrifice.

The legend of the birth of Shintoism. In Fourth Century Japan, the Emperor's son Ouso expects to succeed his father on the throne, but Otomo, the Emperor's vassal, prefers Ouso's stepbrother, and conspires to have Ouso die on a dangerous mission he has contrived. But Ouso prevails in the mission and returns to his father's castle under a new name, Prince Yamato Takeru. Otomo plots to have the Prince sent into even greater danger, but Otomo is unaware that the gods have favored the Prince and the outcome is far from what any of them expected.

Easily bored, but still innocent and naive countryside girl discovers partying in Tokyo is a ton of fun. Yakuza-to-be is an acquaintance who tries to rape her, and the typically bland but very-good-here the first boyfriend.

Two broke sweethearts wander war-scarred Tokyo on a single Sunday, stretching 35 yen as they chase housing, small pleasures, and a little hope.