Movies: Daichi Watanabe

Asako lives in Osaka. She falls in love with Baku, a free-spirit. One day, Baku suddenly disappears. Two years later, Asako now lives in Tokyo and meets Ryohei. He looks just like Baku, but has a completely different personality....

When Kanako, a model daughter and a brilliant student, disappears, her mother asks her ex-husband, a violent former policeman, to find her. As his investigation progresses, his idealized image of Kanako cracks: the girl hides a dark life that her fat...

A young piano prodigy, Yuri Kashiwagi, returns to her hometown after several years and joins a middle school to mentor the choir group....

The first-person protagonist is a 27-year-old freelance writer who returns to her hometown from Tokyo, and she gets together with high school friend Satsuki and cameraman Suga to see Shiina, who they all admired in high school. Along the way, vivid m...

Yoshika has had a crush on Ichimiya, whom she calls "the One" since she was in middle school. Now, a 24-year-old salarywoman, her all-consuming fixation has prevented her from even considering another candidate for boyfriend until an office colleague...

Mio is 20 years old. Having lost her parents early, she and her grandmother run a traditional inn in Nagano. However, her grandmother gets sick. Mio moves to Tokyo and lives with her father’s best friend, Kyosuke. He runs a public bath. She begins to...

In the turbulent last days of the Edo period, Kawai Tsugunosuke, a Japanese samurai serving the Makino clan of Nagaoka, dreamt of independence from the restraints of vassalship. Despite his progressive views and his desire for his estate to remain ne...

Shishikari is a remote island, which is behind the times. The island suffers from a decreasing population and declining industries. Keita Izumi (Tatsuya Fujiwara) begins to produce black fig on Shishikari Island. Because of his well received product,...

Towards the end of WWII, the Navy gave the Kyoto University's physics lab the secret of a bomb that makes use of nuclear fission energy. While doing research to save Japan, the researchers there wonder if they should promote the development of weapon...

Director Yoshiyuki Kishi and screenwriter Takehito Minato—the team behind acclaimed boxing epic Wilderness—reunite to adapt Ryo Asai's prize-winning novel. A sensitive drama about the aberrant in a society without regard for diversity, the story unit...

Dual timelines explore a Japanese widow's memories spanning post-war Nagasaki in 1950s and England during 1980s Cold War era, unraveling secrets that intertwine her past and present experiences across borders....

Natsume Hamanaka was a police rookie with a promising future until she was in a car crash that killed her brother and took her eyesight. Three years later, she gets around with her seeing-eye dog Pal, but she’s unable to get over her regret and devas...

Saike, Kazuki, and Takeo were abused by their respective parents and did not go to school. They stayed together at a youth detention center. To survive, these three young men commit robbery and burglary against criminal groups. (AsianWiki)...

Trapped in her anemic career and love relationship, a 30-year-old TV commercial director returns to her countryside home in the company of a free-spirited friend. In a bittersweet reunion with an alienated family, her childhood memories of freedom an...

In the face of the misery in his homeland, the artist Masuji Ono was unwilling to devote his art solely to the celebration of physical beauty. Instead, he put his work in the service of the imperialist movement that led Japan into WWII....

An emotional coming-of-age drama centered around Andou Jun, a gay student who is not out. He accepts a confession from his fujoshi classmate Miura Sae and they start dating. However, Jun is also seeing Makoto, but fails to tell Sae about his male lov...

Based on the semibiographical novel by Jun Miura, Oh My Buddha is the classic summer coming-of-age story that is burned to a crisp with teenage angst, youthful dreams and that warm sense of folk zeitgeist of the 70s. The narrator is a first-year stud...

Kato, a scriptwriter, is in love with Miho—but he can never manage to muster up enough courage to make the relationship anything more than a platonic friendship. Seemingly oblivious to Kato's feelings for her, Miho is always calling him up and spilli...

Michitaro Sano’s wife passed away 18 years ago. Since her death, he has lived with his daughter Yumiko at their home. Now, Michitaro retires from his work. Yumiko though tells him to start doing housework. Michitaro is also surprised to learn that Yu...

Hajime asks his friend Yoshi to set him up with his classmate Ann. Yoshi tries to do this for Hajime, but this just upsets Ann. Yoshi's relationship with Ann is now awkward. Yoshi doesn't know exactly why, but Ann becomes absent from school frequentl...