Shiho Fujimura

When his mother's untimely death quickly follows his father's, a doctor begins to believe a killer may be targeting him and his amnesiac wife.

Two sculptors spend the night in a mountain lodge after being caught in a snowstorm. A female spirit appears and takes the life of one of the men. She spares the other man's life on the condition that he never tell anyone what happened that night.

Akira, a teacher from Tokyo, has just arrived in a small rural town to begin his new job. Soon after arriving, he meets, and begins to fall for, Miki, a papermaker and part of a large and unusual family. When he learns of an ancient legend that the family carries the curse of the Inugami, or Dog God, he brushes it off as silly superstition. After a series of mysterious deaths, however, the townspeople begin to grow restless, and Akira must confront the truth about Miki and her family.

Ushimatsu's father told him never to reveal his lower-caste heritage; years later, he now contemplates confiding in an activist fighting against such discrimination.

As summer gives way to autumn, Matsubara Tatsuhira (played by Yakusho Koji), who runs a wine specialty store in Nagano, feels a mix of emotions as he sends his daughter off to her wedding. Since his wife passed away 20 years ago, Matsubara has dedicated himself to raising his daughter, even sacrificing another chance at love. However, his daughter's marriage seems to have left this strong man feeling a sense of emotional loss and loneliness. Afterward, he temporarily sets aside his work and travels to Kyoto to visit his old friend, the writer Shigeo Shuzuki (played by Iwasaki Ryō), and also reunites with his high school friend Yamabe Kōsuke (played by Ten Ten). At Yamabe's request, Matsubara went to a nightclub to investigate the other man's daughter—who was also Matsubara's daughter's friend—Reiko (played by Nakagawa Noriko). Reiko had secretly loved Matsubara since childhood, and the hidden emotions in this middle-aged man seemed to be awakening once again...

[Period covered: 1595-1600] We last saw ninja Ishikawa Goemon, as he was about to be boiled alive. But a good ninja is both hard to find, and even harder to kill. With the help of the enigmatic Hattori Hanzo, Goemon lives to skulk another day, and sets his sights on bringing down the warlord who tried to turn him into soup – Toyotomi Hideyoshi. And as always, in the background, the suble hand of Tokugawa Ieyasu is pulling strings as he plots to rule all of Japan!

The writer and college professor, Alexandre Fayard, researches and gives lectures about the gruesome literary work of the mysterious Japanese writer Shundei Oe, considered by him to be the master of manipulation.

This is a biographical film about the late Yoko Araki, who was the wife of Japan's leading photographer, Nobuyoshi Araki.