Mieko Suzuki

Eight visually rich vignettes drawn from Kurosawa’s own dreams—fox weddings and vanished orchards, a soldier’s ghosts, a walk through Van Gogh’s canvases, nuclear nightmares, and a water-mill utopia—meditate on childhood, art, mortality, and humanity’s uneasy bond with nature.

An elderly Nagasaki hibakusha spends a summer caring for her four grandchildren, whose curiosity about the 1945 bombing stirs buried memories and moral questions. When an American nephew from Hawaii visits, the family confronts grief, guilt, and the possibility of reconciliation across generations.

In postwar Tokyo, beloved writer-professor Hyakken Uchida retires and is buoyed through hardship by the fierce devotion of his former students, who honor him each year with a raucous “Not yet!” birthday toast. Told in warm, gently comic vignettes, Kurosawa’s farewell celebrates aging, friendship, and the sustaining ritual of teacher and pupils refusing to say goodbye.

A group of travelers is stranded in a small country inn when the river floods during heavy rains. As the bad weather continues, tensions rise amongst the trapped travelers.

A widow who has single-handedly raised her autistic son loses her job and begins attending a technical college to gain new qualifications. She meets others looking for a new start in life, including a former salaryman with whom she begins a furtive romance...

Yumiko returns to work in Hama-chan's department. She had once left the company after getting married, but a dark shadow now seems to loom over her.

Ueto Aya's is Juri Tatematsu. She's blind like her husband. They give birth to a child, despite fears and opposition from their parents. Raising the child, Juri keeps pushing herself towards her dream of becoming a professional musician. She made her dream come true.

Fifteen girls who went on an expedition to an uninhabited island are left behind because their ship sank. The girls' survival begins.