Sumie Tanaka

Fumiko, mother of two and wife to an unfaithful man, shares her family life with her budding vocation as a poet. The beginning of her successful literary career coincides with her divorce and her breast cancer diagnosis. In her final stages, Fumiko meets a young journalist from Tokyo who wants to write a story on her experiences.

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.

TV adaptation of the novel "Twenty-Four Eyes", combining animation with a few live-action scenes.

In Kyoto a young kimono maker with traditional ideas gets involved with a married professor.

In the wake of the 1956 Prostitution Prevention Law, a young woman recently released from one of Japan's new rehabilitation centers struggles to build a new life.

A traditional bar mistress in Kyoto clashes with her Tokyo rival.

Anzukko (Little Peach) is the daughter of a successful writer. She turns down each one of her suitors, until she marries a beginning writer named Ryokichi. Their life quickly sinks into despair.

What is the life of a Geisha like once her beauty has faded and she has retired? Kin has saved, and become a wealthy money-lender, spending her days coldly collecting debts. Even her best friends, fellow Geisha Tomi, Nobu, and Tamae, are now indebted to her. For all of them, the glamour of their young lives has passed; Tomi and Tamae have disappointing children. Kin has two former lovers who still pursue her; one she wants to see, and the other she doesn't. But even the one she remembers fondly, when he shows up, proves less than satisfactory.

The story of Kiyoko, a young woman who has successfully managed to make a break with her dysfunctional family who have been trying to arrange a marriage for her with a disagreeable man whom she has rejected.

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.

Otsuta is running the geisha house Tsuta in Tokyo. Her business is heavily in debt. Her daughter Katsuyo doesn't see any future in her mother's trade in the late days of geisha. But Otsuta will not give up. This film portrays the day time life of geisha when not entertaining customers.

After their father quarrels with local military men, Anju and Zushio are forced to flee, but they are captured and sold into slavery. When their mother dies, they are sold to Sansho the Bailiff, a cruel man who subjects them to hideous torments. While Anju falls into a lake and is transformed into a swan, Zushio escapes and after being adopted to a nobleman grows to a young man. He will then fight to defeat the evil Dayu and free all the slaves.

In Asakusa, Tokyo, a couple of a violinist Yamano and a revue dancer Hanae lives in poverty. One day Hanae’s little sister rolls into their apartment and begins to stir things up with her riotousness.

It is 1922 and Fumiko is a high school student. Her family is poor but she loves to study literature. Her father, a peddler, does not return home and Fumiko finds herself in financial trouble, not being able to pay for her schooling and her school excursion trip. Still, she gets a temporary job at a factory and tries to make ends meet. A film about bright side of youth adapted from the television serial of the same name.

A romance between a female student and a young professor, where friendship, temptation, and jealousy intertwine.

When a family has to relocate due to the war, they are ostracized by their new community.

After the death of his parents, railway worker Yuichiro Murofushi returns to his hometown and agrees to an arranged marriage at the insistence of his uncle and aunt. However, the arrangement soon falls through due to various circumstances.

Five women classmates from a college in Tokyo are on the first stretch of a walking tour when one of them, Masako, falls ill at a railway station. Osen, a middle-aged maid from a nearby inn, takes her in and nurses her, assisted by Dr. Minami, a young physician who diagnoses her illness as a mild case of pneumonia. With Masako in good hands and needing a few days to recuperate, her classmates continue their tour. Masako’s recovery, however, is hampered by her spoiled and immature nature and her determination to punish the world for the loss of her mother.

The woman prison has a cast all with a story of their own and with no dull or routine day. There is an employee who is divorced after her husband had an affair. She loves the jailed criminals and almost sees them as family. One day at a workshop someone faints while working hard to make money because she has a poor boyfriend. Another inmate is knocked up Another is a mother and has her child with her.

The Ueki family may not be wealthy, but smiles are never in short supply. The father is awarded prize money for 25 years of service to his workplace, but has it stolen on the way home from the ceremony...

A childless lawyer and his wife take in the quiet daughter of an imprisoned client, whose presence eventually creates romantic tension with the husband. The household dynamic is further disrupted by the arrival of a bold friend from Osaka and the wife's chance encounter with a former flame.

Motoko Fujikawa works in the Seisen Church as an assistant to pastor Maki Inokichi. Motoko falls in love with Inokichi's virtuous character and devotes herself to the rehabilitation of a delinquent girl, gradually finding her job at the institution more worthwhile than the marriage recommended by her parents. Meanwhile, inside Inokichi's heart a flame of unknowing love for the single-minded Motoko begins to burn...

This film stars Tanaka Kinuyo as the mother of the heir to the Hosho name, a famous lineage of Noh actors. The heir, Hosho Yagoro, is played by Hasegawa Kuzuo who went on to become familiar among Ichikawa Kon fans as Yukinojo in An Actor's Revenge, which was also co-written by Ito, adding to the relatedness of An Heir's Place.

The 4th NHK Asadora. Starring Michiko Hayashi as a woman born in poverty who lives a brave life. She lost her husband in war and now must take care of their 5-year-old child alone. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Fumiko Hayashi.

Starring Yōko Minamida as a woman who supported her family during and after World War II. All episodes are missing from the NHK archives, though a brief clip does survive as part of a contemporary news segment documenting the drama's production.