Movies: Tomoko Naraoka

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 ...

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...

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....

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 h...

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....

A tragic love story between a prostitute and a young trainee monk....

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....

Everything goes wrong when Jiro tries to break up his mother's relationship with a business man. The young rebel Jiro has to deal with an environment of crime and prostitution, and the impact of its choices on personal relationships: one with his mot...

A blind traveling musician is abused and oppressed wherever she goes, even as the modern world imposes change around her....

Rokuheita Narumi is fascinated by oriental art and works as the director of the Saho Art Museum in Nara. His wife, Noriko, is unable to leave Tokyo, despite his wishes, and the two live separately. Feeling lonely and neglected by her husband, she imm...

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....

Tetsuo is a young man living in Tokyo, who falls in love with a deaf-mute factory girl. He has always felt jealous of his college-educated brother, but ultimately wins both the girl and his father's acceptance and support in a touching and refreshing...

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....

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....

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 ...

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....

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 ...

Tsutomu lives alone in the mountains, writing essays, cooking Zen food with the vegetables he grows and the mushrooms he picks in the hills. His routine is happily disturbed when Machiko, his editor and love interest, occasionally visits. Tsutomu see...

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 ...

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....