奈良岡朋子
Birth : 1929-12-01,
History
Tomoko Naraoka (奈良岡 朋子 Naraoka Tomoko, born December 1, 1929) is a Japanese actress and narrator. The daughter of a painter, she was born in Komagome, Hongō (present-day Bunkyo), in the city of Tokyo, Japan. She graduated from Joshibi University of Art and Design.
Naraoka debuted as a cinema actress in the 1949 film Chijin no Ai, based on the novel Naomi. In 1981 she appeared in Rengō Kantai (lit. "Combined Fleet", United States title: The Imperial Navy). She also appeared in Torajirō Sarada Kinenbi (a 1988 movie in the long-running Otoko wa Tsurai yo series) as well as eight films in the Tsuribaka Nisshi series. Naraoka has appeared in several NHK Taiga dramas. Her first was the 1969 Ten to Chi to, in the role of the wife of Uesugi Sadazane. She portrayed Kita no Mandokoro (the wife of Toyotomi Hideyoshi) in Haru no Sakamichi (1971). Her next Taiga drama appearance was in 1976 in Kaze to Kumo to Niji to. She narrated the 1986 Inochi and 1989 Kasuga no Tsubone. She is the narrator of the 2008 drama Atsuhime. Other noteworthy narration roles include the 1983 serialized morning television drama Oshin. She also narrated Onna wa Dokyō (1992) and Haru Yo Koi (1994–1995). A nonfiction voice role was in the series Kiwameru: Nihon no Bi to Kokoro.
A "Goze" is a blind entertainer who travels to various places singing stories while playing the shamisen (Japanese three-stringed lute). Becoming a goze due to her blindness at seven-years-old, Haru was strictly trained with a parent's affection by her once kind mother, Tome.
Set along the river basin of Shimane Prefeture's Takatsu River, a government-protected river, this drama portrays various people living in an area burdened by decreasing population as they carry on the tradition of "Kagura" Shinto music and dance which is said to be the roots of Kabuki. Directing from his own screenplay is Nishikori Yoshinari of Railways. Saito Manabu (Komoto Masahiro) operates a ranch on a mountain and worries his son Tatsuya (Ishikawa Raizo) has been making a habit of skipping Kagura practice. Then Manabu learns his alma mater elementary school will be closed down.
Mizuho
In 16th century Japan, a young man has to choose between becoming a master steel maker like his father and grandfather before him, or becoming a samurai so that he can help protect his village from attacks by the various clans which want the high-quality steel made there.
曾根田菊子
Set within the fictional city of Mahoro, Keisuke Tada runs a "benriya" - a general problem solver for hire. His assistant is his former high school classmate Haruhiko Gyoten. A big crisis then occurs for them.
Yoshiko Takeda
A small, out-of-the-way izakaya in Tokyo has become the favorite hangout of people searching for nourishment…for their bodies and their souls. The proprietor of Izakaya Moheji is Heiji, played by Yutaka Mizutani, star of the popular AIBOU series. Izakaya Moheji is a place where regulars and strangers alike can find comfort and comfort food.
Kinuyo Tsutsui
A heartwarming tale about the turning point in the life of an elite business man in his fifties and a local train that has been running since 1911. Hajime is in line to be the next head of a prominent electronics company. He toils day and night over his work and has no time for his family. But one day, his mother in Shimane falls ill, and his best friend dies in an accident. Grief-stricken, Hajime returns home, where memories of his childhood dream come back to him. He had always wanted to be a train conductor and drive the local "bataden" Ichibata Electric Railway.
Yoshie (voice)
When Sosuke, a young boy who lives on a clifftop overlooking the sea, rescues a stranded goldfish named Ponyo, he discovers more than he bargained for. Ponyo is a curious, energetic young creature who yearns to be human, but even as she causes chaos around the house, her father, a powerful sorcerer, schemes to return Ponyo to the sea.
Hama-chan goes to Okayama to look for Su-san when he goes missing a few days after freezing up during his inaugural speech as the company chairman.
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.
Hama-chan meets a friendly US soldier on a trip to Nagasaki with Su-san. Su-san returns to Tokyo and is informed that Hama-chan has gone missing.
Hama-chan takes a vacation to go fishing in Akita despite warnings from Su-san as his company faces a restructuring process.
Dr. Takaki
Half a Confession introduces itself as a thriller and abruptly changes gears, transforming into a tale of morality with deeper insights into its characters than we had anticipated. It begins when Soichiro Kaji (Terao), a retired detective, walks into police headquarters and confesses to the murder of his wife. We learn that the victim had prematurely developed Alzheimer's after the tragic death of their son, and in her suffering, had asked to die. The police chiefs would be far more content to take him at his word if it were not for a conspicuous hole in his story: 48-hour gap between the alleged murder and his confession. Fearing a public relations nightmare, they are eager to bury the incident and keep the press in the dark.
Hisue Suzuki
Mr. Takano, a company employee, announces plans to take an early retirement so he can return to his home town and spend his days fishing. Su-san and Hama-chan envy his decision, and Hama-chan conspires to visit Takano, even though he has no vacation time left.
Japanese film icon Ken Takakura, who has starred in over 100 films, stars in this elegiac look at war and remembrance. Hideji Yamaoka (Takakura) was a suicide pilot during the war who somehow survived Japan's surrender. After decades of working as a fisherman in Kumamoto, a provincial seaside city in southern Kyushu, Yamaoka remains reluctant to discuss his wartime experiences with anyone, much less an intrusive reporter looking for a feature story. Then a series of events shake Yamaoka to the core, forcing him to re-evaluate his past.
Mune Kato
A railway stationmaster at a dying end-of-the-line village in Hokkaido is haunted by memories of his dead wife and daughter. When the railroad line is scheduled to be closed, he is offered a job at a hotel, but he is emotionally unable to part with his career as a railroader. His life takes a turn when he meets a young woman with an interest in trains who resembles his daughter.
Su-san resigns after getting fed up with corporate life, but he finds himself back in familiar surroundings on his first assignment at a new job.
Hama-chan’s sales department gets a new supervisor, a hard-working taskmaster that’s the very opposite of carefree, irresponsible Hama-chan. The veteran employee decides to find his boss, a divorced father, a new wife. The supervisor loves a bar hostess “mama-san,” but is unable to confess his true feelings until Hama-chan comes to his rescue.
Aunt Sakiko / Lee Soon-ik
An auto repairman's daughter questions him about what happened to her aunt during the war, but the father remains reticent. Finally the man opens up, and the girl is able to piece together her aunt's tragic story.
Aya Gondo
The patriarch of a bickering family announces his retirement, stirring competition about who will succeed him as a leading practitioner of Noh theater, his granddaughter or grandson.
In his travels through Japan, Tora-san meets and falls in love with a female doctor, however he is afraid of committing to a relationship.
During the winter in Toyama in 1962, Tatsuo Mizushima is fretting about his feelings for his classmate Eiko Tsujisawa while agonizing about his upcoming high school examinations. When he was little, he and Eiko had heard that in April of a year when the winter has been very harsh, any couple finding fireflies together needs to get married. However, his family's situation does not allow Tatsuo to continue his worrying about such things for very much longer.
Narumi Rokuheita and his wife Noriko spend their lives separated. Soon they start looking for love elsewhere.
Matsuko
Shuji was once a feared member of the Yakuza crime syndicate, but he's reformed his ways, abandoned his old life and left the city for a small coastal fishing town where he's become an honest fisherman.
Utako Hongo
A lavish retelling of the true story of the final voyage and ultimate destruction and sinking of the battleship Yamato, Japan's greatest flagship during the Second World War.
Narrator (voice)
Masa Kunugida
A tragic love story between a prostitute and a young trainee monk.
Mother
A young man who travels around the world with a camera in his hand finds the circus a fascinating subject. The huge tents and life-threatening acrobatics were filled with dreams, laughter, and excitement. From that moment on, his destiny changes. While living in the circus, the young man becomes fascinated by the art of performing, trains hard, and makes his debut on the big stage. He puts all of his youth into his quest to become a clown, the flower of the circus and the origin of laughter.
Kyoko met Tetsu during her trip to San Francisco. Soon they fell in love but getting married was not in his mind. They were to meet again back in Tokyo but Tetsu didn't turn up. She went to look for him in San Francisco but all she found was him with his new girlfriend. Kyoko went back to Tokyo and eventually married a big corporate CEO...
Teruyo
A blind traveling musician is abused and oppressed wherever she goes, even as the modern world imposes change around her.
Japanese youngsters enduring hard training in Recruit Camp and then going to Iwo Jima in the last days of World War II.
Ochô
This film follows the daily lives of a group of people barely scraping by in a slum on the outskirts of Tokyo. Yet as desperate as their circumstances are, each of them—the homeless father and son envisioning their dream house; the young woman abused by her uncle; the boy who imagines himself a trolley conductor—finds reasons to carry on.
In a small town on the Kasumigaura coast in the early Showa period, the Masukawa clan from Tokyo is trying to take away the interests of the local Isetoku family. Setsuko, the adopted daughter of the Isetoku family, falls in love with Seijiro, a travelling raven she meets on a whim. However, Koide, a businessman connected to the Masukawa clan, wants Setsuko to become his mistress... Setsuko puts aside her love and her regrets and bets on the greatest female challenge of her life!
Mitsuko
A film set in Nagasaki examining prejudice against atom bomb victims.
Kei
The love story between a traveling guest and a geisha who inadvertently becomes the leader of her father's yakuza clan, after his death.
Zensaku's wife
Zensaku, middle-aged and deaf in one ear, learns that his son's fallen for the daughter of a war officer responsible for the maiming.
Romance about student-nurse interns.
The rehabilitation of a delinquent on leaving reformatory. Her redemption comes through a boy in a wheelchair; by his rehabilitation, growing comes in courage along with her patient, she grows by finding meaning in her own existence. She finally sees a new world before her and has the determination to lead a normal life.
Japanese "kayo" film centered around the song "Namida ni naritai" by Teruhiko Saigo.
A film dealing with the trials and tribulations of a primary school before and after the Pacific War, set in Fukashima Prefecture.
Heartwarming story of an ambitious girl who becomes a concert pianist with the help of her musician father.
Michiyo Amemiya
The brother of an up-and-coming kendoka is mysteriously murdered while working on a new model of motorboat.
Murder case and trial.
Mino Hayashi
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.
Ezaki's wife
After her mother runs away from home, Tomoko is raised to be a geisha. One day Tomoko meets her mother in a red-light district in Tokyo and her life deeply gets in trouble.
Natsue Tokuhisa
A suspense drama directed by Mitsuo Wakasugi. Students, gangsters and other young people who couldn't make money were gathering and negotiating at a coffee shop about this. They were told that if you kidnap a child from a rich family, search for him/her, their family would give you about 50,000 yen if you could send the child back.A woman named Motoko disappeared in the midst of evil, but no one noticed it. Shortly after, Kaneda and Chii appeared in a quiet residential area and took a girl about five years old from the Ohara family....
In the city of Yokosuka, Kinta and his lover Haruko, both involved with yakuza, brave the post-occupation period with a goal to be together.
Masayo Sugita
Everything goes wrong when Jiro tries to break up his mother's relationship with a business man.
A lifetime story of a woman who stubbornly lives in a poor mountain village in post-war Japan.
Orin
Following a yearlong attendance upon his shogun in Edo, samurai Hikokuro makes a long-awaited return to his home and doting wife, Dane. Initially greeted by the effusive welcome of his family, spiteful whispers also reach his ear about an adulterous affair carried on, in his long absence, between his wife and a famous drummer. With Hikokuro’s honor imperiled by rumor, his family insists on a formal investigation into the veracity of the gossip. Through the combined testimony of many witnesses, a tale unwinds around the visits of a traveling musician hired to tutor the family heir, the spurned attentions of the man who started the rumor, and the ultimate truth behind the accusations. The conclusion of events prove as much an indictment of bushidō as it is of the reluctant parties involved. Adapted from a 1706 play by Chikamatsu Monzaemon and based on a true case.
Mrs. Komatsu
Two young Japanese schoolboys, one skinny and poor, one fat and well-to-do, become unlikely friends.
Narrator
The history and art of ikebana, a centuries old Japanese art of flower arrangement and a look inside the Sogetsu School of Ikebana, where the director's father Sofu Teshigahara worked as the grand master of the school.
The story of a novelist whose wife is confined in a mental hospital. His love for her drives him to write about her, though he runs into trouble when her parents accuse him of cashing in on her misfortune.
Across the Inagawa River that runs through the center of the village, the children of the two villages scrambled for a swimming pool, and each time a stone battle took place. Takemaru, the only son of the priesthood of Tada Shrine, was weak and was always forced to carry stones. However, neither swimming nor stone-throwing was a secret to his sick mother, Kouko... Seishi Matsumaru, Ryuichi Yoshida, and Ado Matsuyama were adapted from "Tenmangu" and "Ishigassen", directed by Mitsuo Wakasugi of "Waran Hayashi", and photographed by Hanjiro Nakazawa of "The Last Women".
Kume, the maid
In the dying months of the Meiji era, a sympathetic student befriends a married couple, but soon realizes they share a curiously strained relationship stemming from an unknown incident in their past.
Ginko, a poor cobbler's daughter, becomes a geisha to support her family. She passes from one geisha house to the next, trying to find love and hope in the process. No matter how hard she tries, she just can't escape her sad fate.
Shows the devastation caused by the atomic bomb, and by use of a fictional storyline, portrays the struggle of the ordinary Japanese people in dealing with the aftermath.
Hatsuko
