Koji Yakusho

Hirayama is content with his life as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Outside of his structured routine, he cherishes music on cassette tapes, books, and taking photos of trees. Through unexpected encounters, he reflects on finding beauty in the world.

In the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.

Suzu is a 17-year-old high-school student living in a rural town with her father. Wounded by the loss of her mother at a young age, Suzu one day discovers the massive online world "U" and dives into this alternate reality as her avatar, Belle. Before long, all of U's eyes are fixed on Belle, when, suddenly, a mysterious, dragon-like figure appears before her.

A frustrated detective deals with the case of several gruesome murders committed by people who have no recollection of what they've done.

Tragedy strikes a married couple vacationing in the Moroccan desert, which jumpstarts an interlocking story involving four different families.

After failing to avenge her father's murder, Princess Scarlet, wakes up in the "Land of the Dead." In this world filled with madness, if she does not achieve her revenge against her nemesis and reach the "No End Place," she will become "Void" and cease to exist. Can Scarlet find a way to live at the end of her endless journey?

Four-year-old Kun struggles with jealousy after his newborn sister, Mirai, begins receiving most of his family’s attention. Retreating to the garden, he encounters Mirai as a teenager from the future and embarks on extraordinary journeys across his family’s past, gradually discovering new perspectives on love, belonging and what it means to become an older brother.

Kyuta, a boy living in Shibuya, and Kumatetsu, a lonesome beast from Jutengai, an imaginary world. One day, Kyuta forays into the imaginary world and, as he's looking for his way back, meets Kumatetsu who becomes his spirit guide. That encounter leads them to many adventures.

In the immense city of Tokyo, the darkness of the afterlife lures some of its inhabitants desperately trying to escape the sadness and isolation of the modern world.

A bravado period action film set at the end of Japan's feudal era in which a group of unemployed samurai are enlisted to bring down a sadistic lord and prevent him from ascending to the throne and plunging the country into a war-torn future.

In this humorous paean to the joys of food, a pair of truck drivers happen onto a decrepit roadside shop selling ramen noodles. The widowed owner, Tampopo, begs them to help her turn her establishment into a paragon of the "art of noodle-soup making". Interspersed are satirical vignettes about the importance of food to different aspects of human life.

A lawyer tasked with defending a robbery-and-murder suspect begins developing doubts about what truly happened.

A businessman kills his adulterous wife and is sent to prison. After his release, he opens a barbershop and meets new people, talking to almost no one except for an eel he befriended while in prison.

Shortly after hearing from a colleague about a woman whose brother committed suicide after seeing his doppelgänger, a Japanese engineer on the verge of a breakthrough in medical technology is confronted by his own.

When a dying friend tells out-of-work salaryman Yosuke about a hidden treasure, he sets off in search of the only clue about its location: a house by a red bridge. What he finds instead is a woman who transcends all his fantasies.

When Kanako, a model daughter and a brilliant student, disappears, her mother asks her ex-husband, a violent former policeman, to find her. As his investigation progresses, his idealized image of Kanako cracks: the girl hides a dark life that her father can not even imagine.

This engaging series of childhood recollections tells of an unconventional school in Tokyo during World War II that combined learning with fun, freedom, and love. The school had old railroad cars for classrooms and was run by an extraordinary man – its founder and headmaster, Sōsaku Kobayashi – who deeply valued children's independence, and who was a firm believer in freedom of expression and activity.

New Year's Eve at a posh hotel and all should be shipshape. It is not. There is the traditional party, an official ceremony, entertainment and a special dinner planned and yet there is trouble everywhere. An Animal is on the loose, a politician to protect, a prostitute to handle, a bellhop to focus and a few things more.

A bored accountant spots a beautiful woman in the window of a ballroom dance studio. He secretly starts taking dancing lessons to be near her, and then over time discovers how much he loves dancing. His wife, meanwhile, has hired a private detective to find out why he has started coming home late smelling of perfume.

A tale of revenge, honor and disgrace, centering on a poverty-stricken samurai who discovers the fate of his ronin son-in-law, setting in motion a tense showdown of vengeance against the house of a feudal lord.

Jonko runs a group of high school girls involved in paid dating. Raku is a street dancer. Togo was brought up in the US, and after being back in Japan for one year, wants to escape to New York. Their contact with the world of talent scouts and yakuza places them in danger over the span of one day and night in the Shibuya district of Tokyo.

The winds of change blow as a family grapples with unemployment, alienation, mistrust and a lack of communication. When a Japanese salaryman loses his job to outsourcing to China, it's simply the beginning of a series of shattering incidents, leading to the implosion of the family unit.

French silkworm trader Hervé is married to the beautiful Hélène. When an outbreak of disease ravages European silkworms, Hervé must travel to Japan to retrieve healthy eggs. After a long journey, Hervé finally arrives at a village where he can buy them. He becomes infatuated with a young concubine and goes to great lengths to see her again. But, when war breaks out in Japan, the concubine flees, forcing Hervé to return home to his wife.

A young man is falsely accused of molesting a high-school girl on a train. He is arrested and charged, and goes through endless court sessions, all the while insisting that he is innocent.

Yusuke Nogi of Ryosho's Energy Development Division said that 10 times the official down payment was mistakenly sent to GFL, a local infrastructure company involved in a solar energy plant to be built in the Balkan Republic in Central Asia. Suspected of involvement, he heads to the Balkan Republic to collect the difference of $90 million. With the cooperation of his CIA friend Sam, Nogi obtained information that the terrorist al-Zaer had laundered the full amount of the contract money into diamonds and brought it out.

The 38th NHK Asadora. Based on the autobiography of Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's mother.

Blamed by some, hailed as heroes by others, those involved with Fukushima Daiichi face a deadly, invisible threat — an unprecedented nuclear disaster.

Traces Japan’s history with the Olympic games and the 1964 Tokyo Olympics for viewers before Tokyo hosts the event again in 2020. The first half tells the story of marathon runner Kanakuri Shiso, who became one of the first Japanese nationals to participate in the Olympics in Stockholm in 1912. The second half features Tabata Masaji, the coach who laid the foundations of Japanese swimming and helped bring the games to Tokyo for the first time in 1964.

A 10-part omnibus drama by 10 different scriptwriters on the theme of fathers and their sons and daughters.

A wandering samurai, ronin, and ninja; meet by chance repeatedly and reluctantly team up to solve the problems of innocent villagers along the way.

The drama begins in August 1945, three days after the end of the Pacific war. A freight train completely jam-packed with passengers heads for Aomori from devastated Tokyo. On the train is Takahara Miki and her sister Sachi. Miki and Sachi are the daughters of a wealthy landlord living in a village in the Tsugaru area in Aomori prefecture, but they have been living in Tokyo since before the war to attend school. After seeing her village does not have a doctor, Miki is determined to become a rural doctor.

A CEO struggling to maintain his small sock business risks the company's future with a new challenge — creating a line of running shoes.

The story takes place during the Muromachi period of Ancient Japan, in the midst of the Ōnin War. The main character in the series is Tomiko Hino, a historical figure with a bad reputation because of her actions to rebuild Kyoto after the Ōnin War.

The story chronicles the life of Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Master swordsman Bangaku Ajigawa is a Ronin with an honest heart, and hates deception. With no family or money, he lives by his own rules. Bangaku’s one treasure and reason to live is his master sword, Hekimitsuhira. But because of it, people around him regularly lie and deceive him. This light-hearted samurai drama follows the comedic life of Bengaku. Produced by Eizou Kyoto, this drama is to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Director Kon Ichikawa.

Tenko runs a pension alone. The pension is located in a forest in Nagano, that is full of the Japanese larch tree. She interacts with her guests, who come from all walks of life.

An epic of love and death that depicts how soldiers and ordinary people lived and fought during the Russo-Japanese War, when Japan's very existence was at stake in the face of the great power of Russia.

The story takes place in a small rural village surrounded by beautiful nature. However, it is about to be destroyed by a waste disposal plant. Something must be done. The villagers rise up. They get a lawyer from Tokyo to help fight alongside them. Only that he's not a real lawyer but a washed-up actor (Yakusho Kōji), who once played a lawyer on TV.

Gen Takasegawa, the first Japanese actor to play the lead role at London's Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, has been unable to return to Japan for some time. After two years, he finally makes his way back home, only to find out that he is suddenly and completely forgotten by the entire world.

During the 16th Century Japan was involved in the Sengoku Period, an era of Civil Wars and the powerful Warlords who fought them. One of the earliest and strongest of these men was the Great Lord TAKEDA Shingen. A tremendous military genius, his battles are the stuff of legend.

A jidaieki drama where a hard-nosed doshin, Shinpachiro Kariya, takes on difficult cases with exquisite teamwork under the supervision of a young magistrate.

~~ Adapted from the novel of the same title by Yamasaki Toyoko (山崎豊子)

Three close friends realize, at the age of 40, that maybe it's time to think seriously about getting married. Employed by an advertising agency, each struggles with his own weakness-one consistently strikes out with women, while the second can't seem to break his attachments to his mother, and the third is an unabashed playboy. This adult comedy exposes the humorous views and sobering misconceptions of marriage by single men today.

Koheita, a newly appointed magistrate, never shows his face in the magistrate's office, instead spending his time in the 'Horisoto', a den of evil where anything goes, from theft to prostitution to murder. However, this man is about to clean up the city in an unconventional way!

A human drama based on the "Date Riots".

Based on novel "Kizuna ~ Aru Jinba no Monogatari~” by Akihiro Shimada (published from June, 2012 to December, 2012 in horse racing portal site ‘netkeiba.com’).