Takashi Sasano

Two young guys work in a plant that manufactures oshibori (those moist hand-towels found in some Japanese restaurants). Their weird bond is based on uncontrollable rage--something neither can articulate or control--and the strange jellyfish that they keep as a pet. (imdb)

Shinnojo, a low level samurai, lives with his pretty, dutiful and loyal wife Kayo. He has come to find his position in a castle as a food-taster for a feudal lord to be boring and pointless, and talks about opening a kendo school open to boys of all castes where he can teach the use of the sword... (imdb)

A set of twins -- one a hard-working student and the other a drifter -- team up with a dropout to unlock the secrets of the universe and to build one of their own. (imdb)

A failed cellist connects with his inner undertaker and his rural hometown in this tonally eccentric, lushly scored, movingly funny drama. Crushed at the breakup of his Tokyo orchestra, Daigo retreats to his picturesque northern Japan hometown, with adoring wife Mika in tow, to find his true calling. (psfilmfest.org)

Gakko tells a simple heartwarming story of a group of students and their teacher, in one of the public night schools in Japan providing them education at the Junior High level. With night schools, you know that the students are working adults, and the narrative takes its time to dwell on the characters' backgrounds, and their interactions with the teacher, how he helped them in their times of need, or simply being the beacon of hope for them. (imdb)

Masahiko Makino's willfully offensive comedy Nezu No Ban concerns a beloved comedian..who from his deathbed asks to see the private parts of a woman. The people he has worked with for years attempt to make that dream a reality, but their success has unintended consequences. Based on a traditional Japanese theatrical style that utilizes exceedingly vulgar language, the film continues onto a series of funerals as the various people who worked with the old man die themselves. (allmovie.com)

To cast away everything, surrendering yourself to the flow of nature and just sitting in meditation. This is the essence of Dogen's Zen Buddhism. In the 13th century, Dogen, a young Japanese monk traveled to China to find his true master. There he found a monk who taught him that sitting in Zen meditation is the true and only path to enlightenment. Returning to Japan, Dogen risked his life to pioneer Zen Buddhism, inspiring millions of Zen Buddhists who practice around the world today. (asianmediawiki.com)

A small town doctor disappears mysteriously after having earned the trust of the locals.

A widow who has raised her autistic son decides to return to school.

After being forced to resign from her publishing company job when her magazine goes out of circulation, Haname Jinchoge (Kumiko Aso) is given the name of her real father when her mother (Keiko Matsuzaka) falls into a coma after nearly drowning in a pond. Unsure if Noburo (Morio Kazama) is her father, Haname decides to visit him but tells him that she is a distant relative. He happens to be the shopkeeper at an odd antiquities shop, and working with him is a punk rocker named Gas (Ryo Kase). (asianmediawiki.com)

A freelance writer is given a bizarre assignment by the sexy editor of "Black Book Monthly": find a bug with the power to bring humans back from the dead, in order to report on the afterlife. With his trusty companion Endo in tow, he sets off on a quest for the elusive insect and along the way meets the mysterious Sayoko, a former dominatrix and habitual wrist-cutter who delights in rubbing wasabi into her wounds. (imdb)

Seeking an honorable end, poverty-stricken samurai Hanshiro(Ebizo Ichikawa) requests to commit hara-kiri in the courtyard of feudal lord Kageyu's estate.Trying to dismiss Hanshiro's wish to save face, Kageyu(Koji Yakusho) recounts the tragic story of a similar plea years ago from young ronin Motome(Eita). But the arrogant lord is unaware of vengeful Hanshiro's bond to Motome. The film is a remake of the 1962 feature directed by Masaki Kobayashi based on the novel by Yasuhiko Takiguchi. (ropeofsilicon.com)

Using stark black-and-white imagery and a raw, digital aesthetic, Cut tells the story of Shuji (Hidetoshi Nishijima), an unknown filmmaker who craves great cinema like a junkie dying for a fix. The only problem, he figures, is that great films are dead -- unless he can find a way to make them himself.

Salesman Shinji (Shinichi Tsutsumi) is at the subway station on his normal daily commute when he receives words that his estranged father has been hospitalized. Shinji's strained relationship with his unscrupulous father goes back many years, and the news awakens some unhappy memories. At that moment, he sees a person resembling his brother, who passed away forty years ago, leaving the platform, and he hurriedly follows. When Shinji steps out of the station, he finds himself in 1964... (asianwiki.com)

Hama-chan takes more paid holidays than anyone else at work, but is friends with the company's president, whom he calls Su-san. Su-san's doctor, concerned for the president's health, suggests that he retire. Su-san becomes depressed, goes fishing and collapses on the beach, but Hama-chan come to his rescue.

Densuke Hamazaki is an office worker at Suzuki Construction and gets transferred to the main Tokyo office. After settling in to his surrounding along with his wife Eri, Densuke befriends an elderly man named Ichinosuke Suzuki. Ichinosuke is a lonely and old man who learns to enjoy life again through his friendship with Densuke. Meanwhile, Densuke is completely unaware that Ichinosuke is the boss of his construction company. The two men become friends through their shared passion for fishing.

Su-san must give a lecture in far-off Iwate, which serves as another excuse for the company president and Hama-chan to go fishing. Once there, however, Hama-chan is mistaken for the company president and Su-san for his chauffeur! But Su-san is delighted at the mix-up: he gets to go fishing with a beautiful woman working at a local inn.

On a fishing trip, Hama-chan and Su-san meet a beautiful lady and the three have a great time. Later, Su-san gets a toothache, and his dentist turns out to be the woman, whom he secretly takes fishing, lying to Hama-chan in the process. When the two men later run into one another, their friendship is threatened.

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.

Su-san has put in the hard yards as president of the Suzuki Construction Company, and he has now been appointed its chairman. Su-san went missing sometime during his daily morning walk one day. Hama-chan fakes an illness in order to be absent from work and heads to Okayama, where the town residents, mainly the young folk have formed a anti-development group to protest the project which they believe will destroy their beautiful coastal waters.

Hama-chan and Michiko's son, Koitaro, is now one year old. When Michiko leaves home to attend a school reunion and Michiko's mother is unable to care for the infant, Hama-chan is forced to take Koitaro to work and the baby soon gets lost, creating all manner of havoc at the construction firm.

Set in the late 1950s, when geisha culture was threatened by moral crusades, it tells the story of Omacha (Miyamoto Maki), a young girl who sees the geisha life as a way to lift her poverty-stricken family from their hand-to-mouth existence. Through her eyes, we see the protocols and complex financial relationships which dictate the running of the geisha house.

Re-make of the Samurai Rebellion (1967). The mother of a feudal lord's only heir is kidnapped away from her husband by the lord. The husband and his samurai father must decide whether to accept the unjust decision, or risk death to get her back. (imdb)

Nami is a young woman with many hangups sprouting from a dysfunctional childhood. She inherits a small fortune that allows her to pursue various interests. For example, she loves to spy on people who, not unlike herself, have gone crazy from loneliness. She calls these people "solitarians." Her favourite spying targets are old men with stiff boners. One fateful day, Nami spies on an elderly gentleman watching porn DVDs at home. (DVD)

Inui Sakunosuke (Noriyuki Higashiyama), a young samurai, is ordered by his clan's chief retainer (Takashi Sasano) to execute one Sakuma Morie (Ainosuke Kataoka), who has been drummed out of the clan for opposing its leaders' policies with a directness judged intolerably rude. But Sakuma is a close friend, as well as the husband of Sakunosuke's sister Tazu (Rinko Kikuchi). (The Japan Times)

At the Hirata home, three generations of their family live together. A crisis ensues when one afternoon, housewife Fumie falls asleep and wakes up to find a thief has stolen her secret money she kept hidden in the refrigerator. (imdb)

Koki Hirota was the only civilian hanged as a Class A war criminal by the Tokyo Tribunal after World War II. His execution remains controversial and this drama makes the case that he always worked for peace. He did not defend himself against the capital charge because he failed to stop the aggression of the Imperial Army.

Ryosuke Hinode moves in with relatives the Hinode family, located at Ishibashi Castle in Lake Biwa, as he enters high school. The Hinode family possesses a special power. Tanjuro s the heir of the Hinode family. He has eccentric tendencies and does odd things to Ryosuke like making him wear a red uniform to go to school. Tanjuro and Ryosuke attends the same high school. Due to an error, they both confront Hiromi Natsume, the first son in the Natsume family... (imdb)

Takuminokami Asano is a lord who is ordered commit harakiri [suicide] due to a scheme by Kozukenosuke Kira. Having no time to mourn his lord's death, Kuranosuke Oishi decides to take revenge on Kozukenosuke Kira. He plans an attack with the help of accountant Chosuke Yato, but they don't have enough in their budget.

An off-beat comedy about 3 'damejin' (useless persons), who don't work and spend their lives doing nothing. They actually don't want to work. When they hear 'in India one can live without working' they take it seriously. They begin to raise the money to go to India by doing anything but working, such as ripping off stamps from others' letters to sell, robbery at the bank which itself went bankrupt, etc. (imdb)

At the age of one, Rie Saito loses her ability to hear. She grows up as a rebellious child, running away from home frequently in her hometown of Aomori. By writing calligraphy in a club Rie starts to open her eyes to the world. She then moves to Tokyo to become Ginza's number-one hostess...

Bored with school, 15-year-old Daisuke Kawashima embarks on a pilgrimage to visit the 7,000-year-old cedar tree on distant Yakushima Island. Through his journey, Daisuke meets a number of interesting people, including friendly truck driver Sumire and a mysterious mountaineer girl. (imdb)

The film is based on true events. It centers around Shunzo, a popular greengrocer who lives in a city near Tokyo. His life, and that of his wife, Michi and their two children, undergoes a dramatic change when he encounters Li, a poor college student from China. (imdb)

Hideyoshi Date (Katsunori Takahashi) is at his wits' end when we first meet him in. Deep in debt, with no job, no prospects, and no family, he's ready to end it all, and tries to do so, but he doesn't even have the nerve to commit suicide. Wacky events are set in motion when Densuke (Roi Hayashi), a grade school boy, gets into Hideyoshi's cab and demands to be taken ...

The legendary gunman Daisuke Jigen comes to Japan to have his pistol examined.

A schoolboy has a crush on his pretty classmate Keiko on the inland island of Awaji. He figures her routine of taking baths at the public one is a good way to get to know her, but he first has to overcome his sensitivity to hot water, the presence of other school-mates and of course his shyness. He has never mustered the courage to speak to her in class after all.

Junji, the protagonist of FM89.3MHz, must become the principal of a nursery school in Kabukicho after the death of the Okawa Clan's boss.

Four seemingly ordinary men—a hairdresser, a doctor, a chef, and an acrobat—secretly fight injustice as elite agents in Edo-era Japan.