Movies: Takashi Sasano

Drawing influence from the street musicians of Miyagi, four high school students form a band and spend their free time practicing for their school's upcoming festival. When the festival is abruptly concealed, they come up with a dimwitted strategy of...

Two estranged brothers inherit Marukin Hot Springs, a small-town bathhouse. One sees it as an homage to their late father; the other—a struggling architect—as lucrative real estate for condos. Their eclectic collection of townsfolk customers show the...

A young man fails his company entrance exams and leaves home to work at a run-down cinema in Tokushima, whose owner lives to bring entertaining films to the residents of his small town....

A large monster attacks Japan, but dies suddenly. While the people rejoice and bask in relief, the giant corpse left behind begins to slowly rot and bloat. If it explodes, the nation will be destroyed....

Ryuji tries quitting the yakuza to actively support his wife and daughter; as he's used to easy money, it's a difficult transition....

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....

A lonely young man moves in a 50-year-old apartment building. When he meets the cheerful residents, he finds himself surrounded by small happiness....

A phone conversation occurs between a man and a woman. They both state their love for each other and that they will do this so they can be together. The woman is in a hotel room with a view of the port. The man is inside of a parked car with a view o...

Following the death of the unmarried and childless Taki, Takeshi, a young relative of hers, discovers several pages of closely written lines in which the old lady has recorded her memories. This is how he learns the truth about her youth working as a...

A hardened gangster encounters by chance a woman he hasn't seen since childhood. They are both engulfed in the underground world of intergang warfare....

The Last Ninja Yoshitaka Igasaki sends his disciples the Ninningers on a special mission over summer vacation to Shinobigakure Castle to meet its lord Tatsunosuke Hakkaku. However, Lord Hakkaku has been turned into a strange dinosaur-like creature by...

Set two years after the drama series "Nemesis," Naoki Kazama works for Nemesis Detective Agency and is regarded as a brilliant detective. He is able to solve the most difficult of cases, but he has a secret. He is actually a lousy detective and relie...

Shunzo is a popular greengrocer in a town near Tokyo. His life, and the lives of his wife Michi, and their two children, undergoes a dramatic change when he encounters Li, a poor college student from China....

Toichi is a boatman who ferries the villagers to a town on the other side of the river. Besides rowing a boat for the villagers all day long, he barely communicates with anyone except Genzo, a young neighbour. Upstream, a large bridge is being constr...

Real estate company employee Komachi and steelworks heir Kodama are both train aficionados. Their hobby proves useful for their burgeoning careers, but their romantic fortunes do not go as smoothly. Will the awkward Kodama and the indecisive Komachi ...

National Audit Bureau member Hajime Matsudaira (Shinichi Tsutsumi), Tadako Torii (Haruka Ayase) & Asahi Gainsbourg (Masaki Okada) travel from their homebase of Tokyo to the city of Osaka. Their mission is to discover any financial irregularities & to...

A samurai Sakunosuke gets an order from clan chamberlain to kill another samurai who is married with his own younger sister. As a loyal samurai he has to accept the mission even though he has inner conflicts....

Nami is a young woman with numerous hangups sprouting from a dysfunctional childhood. She inherits a small fortune that allows her to pursue various interests, many of which are abnormal....

A chronicle of the life of Yasui Santetsu, a 17th century master of go who turned his attention to astronomy and created a new calendar for Japan. Based on the life of Santetsu Yasui (December 27, 1639-November 1, 1715), appointed as the first offici...

Yasuo Furuhata directs this romantic yakuza flick based on a book by popular romance novelist Tomiko Miyao. Set in 1932, the film centers on Peony (Yoko Minamino), a geisha who was forced into the business at a young age by her dissipated father....