Akio Nojima

Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.

A Yokohama shoe executive faces a wrenching choice when kidnappers mistakenly seize his chauffeur’s son but demand the ransom anyway.

Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed when his first post after medical school takes him to a small country clinic under the gruff doctor Red Beard. Yasumoto rebels in numerous ways, but Red Beard proves a wise and patient teacher. He gradually introduces his student to the unglamorous side of the profession, ultimately assigning him to care for a prostitute rescued from a local brothel.

On a Tokyo dump’s shantytown edge, interwoven vignettes follow residents scraping by: a boy who “drives” an imaginary trolley, a homeless father and son designing a dream house, a young woman brutalized at home, drunks, schemers, and saints of small kindnesses. Kurosawa crafts a ragged mosaic of hardship, fantasy, and flickers of grace that keep people moving forward.

Ayako Kurimura, a new B.G. at Nitto Electric, becomes the object of affection for both her brother's colleague Kazuo Fukami and the flirtatious executive’s son, Hiroshi Tsuzawa. As office romances and corporate ambitions collide, relationships shift: heartbreak leads to new connections, old flames reemerge, and Hiroshi is ultimately disowned. Ayako helps him reunite with former lover Yoko, sending them off to Osaka while those around her find new beginnings.

Narcotics officer Matsumoto’s investigation into a drug smuggling ring leads him from Tokyo to Hong Kong, where personal ties and painful secrets unravel a complex web of betrayal. As love, family, and justice collide, Matsumoto must face a truth too deep to escape—and a loss too great to mend.

As his fashion company rides a wave of post-recession success, President Kurihara seeks to expand into women’s apparel through a deepening partnership with a French firm.

A college football star gets caught in a scandal involving a geisha teacher, endangering his team’s season and his family’s honor—until a last-minute comeback restores both.