Hirayama seems utterly content with his simple life as a cleaner of toilets in Tokyo. Outside of his very structured everyday routine he enjoys his passion for music and for books. And he loves trees and takes photos of them. A series of unexpected encounters gradually reveal more of his past. A deeply moving and poetic reflection on finding beauty in the everyday world around us.
Makoto Minegishi
A high school girl, Sayaka Kudō was the bottom of the class. After a year, she improved her deviation value from 30 to 70, then passed Keio University that is considered one of the most difficult to enter in Japan.
Public relations department head
A major advertising festival is held each year to determine the best television commercial in the world. A rookie ad man at a big advertising company named Otan is selected as a judge on the festival jury. Meanwhile, a coworker also named Ota (although the Japanese characters are slightly different) poses as his wife so that he can attend an open party which is held nightly. Knowing that he’ll get fired if his company doesn’t win the Grand Prix, he’s forced to resort to a variety of desperate tactics.
Kokyuu
Kouta Fujioka is a 29-year old man who has a good family, including his father who always supports him, his mother who enjoys cooking, and his older sister with her bright personality. He also has a girlfriend named Etsuko Tanebe. Kouta wants people to eat delicious foods made by him and begins a job as an apprentice chef at a restaurant. One day, Kouta suddenly passes out and is sent to the hospital, where he is diagnosed with malignant lymphoma, completely changing his life. Given three months left to live, Kouta makes up his mind, with the support of his family and those he meets at the hospital, to accept his fate and "face a proper death".
Driver
A woman run a store in a tiny seaside hamlet near the cliffs where people come to commit suicide.
Abe
A couple decide to relocate from Tokyo to the northern island of Hokkaido where they settle and establish a bakery and café called Mani. One cooks. The other bakes. Everyone walks out happy.
The bittersweet events in the lives of people in Hakodate, a regional city connected by a streetcar network. A laid-off man and his younger sister go up a mountain to see the first sunrise of the year. Meanwhile, Haruo has inherited his family's gas business, but things aren't going well in his new endeavor and he becomes increasingly frustrated.
Nursing home "Yuyoso". Many lonely old people live there, including botanist Taro Makiso, a physicist, an actor, a bar mom, and a chef. Maki has spent most of his life studying botany, and has lived without regard for entertainment, drinking, women, or everything else in the world. Then came my 80th birthday. He and a young staff member go digging for wild yam and find a mysterious golden flower. It was the flower of immortality, the "Golden Flower", which was said to bloom beside the Himalayan Virgin, which he had been looking for for many years. From that day onwards, fragments of memories from his youth, which he had intentionally sealed off in order to immerse himself in botany, surged into Maki in a whirlpool.
A couple of smugglers don't know what to do when one day their boss gives them a kidnapping job.
Inokuma
Mirume is a 19 year old college student who falls in love with Yuri, an almost 40 year old art teacher at his university. Yuri isn't your typical college professor, having a quirky sense of humor and unpredictable personality. When Yuri invites Murume to her studio, she playfully seduces the still naive 19 year old student. Things become more complicated when Mirume discovers that Yuri is married to a much older man....
Music Director
Uninvolved with the political movements of the time, Ichiro and Sachiko hope for something better, but they’re no revolutionaries; their spare time is spent drinking, smoking, daydreaming, and sleeping—together and at times with others.
30 years of the band, 30 years of Japanese rock. The story of passion toward the band and music.
Miyuki is a single mother with a 10-year old boy Keiji. She is eager to make him a child model. Eventually, Keiji begins to get jobs rather constantly. But Keiji himself doesn't like the job much. He only does it because it pleases his mother, who hates empty pages in the schedule book. One day they attend a big audition. While Keiji wins first stages of the audition, he begins to feel distance from the mother. It makes things worse for him when she has a new boyfriend..
Music
2004 film
Heaven's Bookstore is a 2004 Japanese film directed by Tetsuo Shinohara about a struggling classical pianist who is sent to heaven to work in a bookstore. It is based on two novels, written by Atsushi Matsuhisa and Wataru Tanaka.
ヤブ医者
Jam Films is a 2002 suite of 7 shorts produced by Sega/Amuse.
Original Music Composer
Original Music Composer
Hayashi
Two disaffected hoodlums, one of them of Korean ancestry; his sister, her girlfriend, and a mad scooter girl. The failure of their relationships as a critique of modern Japan.
Narrator (Voice)
A collection of 15 short episodes depicting the magic world of Phantasmagoria.
Yokoyama
Kuki is a veteran newspaper reporter who has been shuffled off to a book-development branch and finds escape in an illicit relationship with Rinko. Together they find the passion no longer present in their marriages.
Coffee-shop waitress Kanako, divorced with a young son, finds herself obliged to honour a rash promise she made to a long-time customer. He always wanted to be buried in the land rather than a cemetery, so that his body would be 'useful' - and now he's dead. Kanako and her boy enlist the help of a friendly florist with a small truck, steal the corpse, and head for the mountains.
Executive Producer
The story of a girl riding a motorcycle and embarking on a journey to meet her distant father.
The story of a girl riding a motorcycle and embarking on a journey to meet her distant father.
Screenplay
The story of a girl riding a motorcycle and embarking on a journey to meet her distant father.
Director
The story of a girl riding a motorcycle and embarking on a journey to meet her distant father.
Biker
The misadventures of Junko, a schoolgirl who unwittingly sets off a catastrophic chain of events after being caught using her friend's train pass.
Producer
Based on the comic Red Colored Elegy by Seiichi Hayashi
Screenplay
Based on the comic Red Colored Elegy by Seiichi Hayashi
Director
Based on the comic Red Colored Elegy by Seiichi Hayashi
Ichiro
Based on the comic Red Colored Elegy by Seiichi Hayashi
Maria's father
Tsugumi, who lives in a small seaside town, has been in delicate health from birth. Her parents spoiled her and she is rough and selfish. However, a few people are attracted by her beauty and unique character.
Producer
An aging silent film actress hires a private eye and his wacky but helpful assistant to track down her missing daughter, Bellflower. The two follow a succession of bizarre, obscure clues, until they track down the location of the kidnappers and the daughter.
An aging silent film actress hires a private eye and his wacky but helpful assistant to track down her missing daughter, Bellflower. The two follow a succession of bizarre, obscure clues, until they track down the location of the kidnappers and the daughter.
Fujishita Kumi is an ordinary office lady. Longing to escape her poor fishing village for a life in the city, she came to Tokyo. One day while alone in the office, she's spotted rolling up her pantyhose by the window cleaner Kurata Katsuo. This was to be their first encounter. Completely enchanted by Kumi, Katsuo does everything he can to get close to her. Katsuo is a man with a terrible past. With the death of his coal miner father, his family was broken up and he was forced to follow in his father's footsteps laboring away in the mud. In spite of this, Katsuo still has dreams. He dreams of living in Resiporuko, a utopian fantasyland that exists only in his imagination. When Katsuo and Kumi finally meet they find themselves unable to communicate. Katsuo spends all his time talking about Resiporuko with a starry look in his eyes, while Kumi dreams of living the high life in the city. One day when the two travel to the seashore, they discover a wounded seagull.
Agata
Miko Sugimoto is the leader of the Red Helmet Gang, a biker girl gang from Shinjuku who wind up in Kyoto and make a bid to take over the local girl gangs there. Successful for a short time in ruling the streets it isn't long before Miko and her crew run afoul of the local Yakuza, and are forced to turn to Reiko Ike, a ronin Yakuza girl, and sister to one of the top Yakuza in Kyoto, for help, leading to a murderous showdown at a small coastal resort.
