Tomoko Tabata

Munezo Katagiri (Nagase), an honest and low ranking samurai is trapped in a state of personal and professional imbalance. Secretly in love with his family's maid, Kie (Tabata), Munezo begins an uneasy courtship with her, knowing that a relationship is impossible. Raised to respect traditions from the past and the demanding moral code of the samurai, circumstances have now forced Munezo to look to the future... (Tartan Films)

Sabu is a simple, straight-forward friendship/love story with few surprises, very unlike Miike's more popular movies...What makes this movie better than just an average movie of the week is the direction. The opening 10 minutes are some of the most beautiful I have ever seen. The movie itself is worth seeing at least once, but the directing gives it replay value several times over. (imdb)

In 1923, the Korean teenager Kim Shun-Pei moves from Cheju Island, in South Korea, to Osaka, in Japan. Along the years, he becomes a cruel, greedy and violent man and builds a factory of kamaboko, processed seafood products, in his poor Korean-Japanese community exploiting his employees. He makes fortune, abuses and destroys the lives of his wife and family, having many mistresses and children and showing no respect to anybody... (imdb)

A rookie primary school teacher suggests his students that they raise a pig and eat it as a way to teach the real connection between life and food..The students name their piglet P-Chan and learn to overcome the problems they face when taking care of it. After a year of love and devotion showered on P-Chan, it has grown big. The deadline of the project is drawing near. They have to decide the fate of P-Chan. Will they follow the initial objective of this project or... (moviexclusive.com)

Renko, a girl in the sixth grade, is at first unperturbed by her parents' decision to separate. With the companionship of her boyfriend, Minoru, and Sally, a classmate in the same boat, Renko gradually realises the practical implications of divorce, and tries repeatedly to get her parents to reconcile. (imdb)

Based on the award-winning novel of the same name, this boldly erotic yet movingly tender portrait of a group of vulnerable, variously wounded people -- a depressed housewife, her high-school-aged lover, and his best friend, who is struggling to provide for himself and his senile grandmother -- whose intersecting lives yield both sorrow and a fragile, yet enduring, hope for a brighter future. (tiff.net)

Based on a well-known Japanese folktale. An old man makes a living by selling bamboo. One day, he finds a princess in a bamboo. The princess is only the size of a finger. Her name is Kaguya. When Kaguya grows up, 5 men from prestigious families propose to her. Kaguya asks the men to find memorable marriage gifts for her, but the 5 men are unable to find what Kaguya wants. Then, the Emperor of Japan proposes to her. (imdb)

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)

As a new wave of deaths and tragedies engulf the Pacific team, it becomes all too clear that someone - or something - has a new future in mind for all human kind. (imdb)

Is it reality or insanity? Are the birds taking over this marine biology teachers mind? The daily conflicts of the sounds lurking in the shadows are beginning to take their toll. (imdb)

Misaki is a popular bar hostess whose policy is to 'live on presents'. She is haughty and wants nothing but the most expensive and exclusive. One night, she finds a rabbit and takes it home, setting off the story of an unimaginable tragedy. It is an 'animal panic horror' film with a new edge presenting an allegory of the worst in the modern materialistic world. (asianwiki)

In Osaka, three troubled young kids, Kanako, Atsushi and Kenji, are hanging out together all the time. One day Kenji who lives in an orphanage is sold to a yakuza and their friendship has to come to an end. 25 years later, Kanako is married to Atsushi who is an incompetent yakuza. They have 3 daughters. Kenji is a competent unbeatable yakuza. Atsushi, who sucks at everything, for the first time gets a dangerous mission to kill a thug who has attacked the office of his yakuza group. (imdb)

Reiko is a mother of two children and works as a cartoonist. She divorces her alcoholic husband, but when she finds out that he's seriously ill, she decides to take him back.

Typical mother, Noguchi Satsuki, spends her days trying to balance her life as a wife to her hard-working husband Kazuhiko and mother to their only son Tomoya, a seemingly withdrawn fifth-grader with whom Satsuki struggles to communicate. Seiko and Ozawa Hideaki, living in the same neighborhood as the Noguchi family, are raising a rebellious junior high school daughter, Mihoko, and their first son, Kiyotaka, a second-grader who is showered with much love and affection by his mother.