Labyrinth

Sabu and Ichi's Detective Stories

Bunsei era, at a time when Edo culture is at its peak, and barely 50 years before the arrival of the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Sabu is a cheerful, honest young man who left his hometown with the dream of becoming a policeman. He is an informant to the policeman Saheiji of Asakusa in Edo and stays with him and his daughter Midori. One day, Sabu encounters the cool master swordsman Ichi, who makes a living giving massages, and they become partners in an unexpected way. Although Sabu is still an informant, he and the blind Ichi collaborate in a way that compensates for each other’s shortcomings. Sabu becomes Ichi’s eyes while Ichi becomes Sabu’s right-hand man and solves cases with his well-honed skills of deduction as they search for the truth in difficult cases in Edo. One case starts with the discovery of two dead bodies in the Sumida River. The bodies have diagonal slashes and were left in boxes.

Door To Door

Based on a true story about about a man who was told for many years that he was not employable, but threw all of his effort into working as a door-to-door salesman. Despite the pain attributed to his cerebral palsy, he walked eight to ten miles a day to meet his customers and achieved the highest sales for his company.

Goodbye Mama

A successful office lady, who has made herself sexually available to a doctor, has her routine disrupted when her former boyfriend's son appears in her life. She is not connected to the boy, but his father has been in an accident.

Ruri's Island

Ruri, having been abandoned by her mother to a foster care facility, lives a life of reckless abandonment. When Nakama Yuzo, a kind man but for a trigger-happy temper, runs into Ruri he realizes that perhaps she's the child he's been looking for. Yuzo lives in Hatomijima, a small insland in Okinawa where the population is 49 and the average age group is 61. There are no children. The island has only one school - a primary school. If a child is not enrolled in the school, it will be closed. As a result, society will abandon the island and in a few years, it will cease to have any inhabitants. To save their island, the locals decide to bring in a foster child. Ruri is their candidate, and with her she brings the hope of the island's survival.

I Will Fly to the Sky on a Wheelchair

(I will Soar to the Skies in my Wheelchair ) Hasebe Yasuyuki is living his life carelessly alone in his apartment, until one day, he jumps from the top of a building escaping a street gang and injures his spinal cord. And the doctor tells him that he can't walk anymore. His mother, Haruko, hurries to the hospital for her son, however Yasuyuki is on bad terms with her, so he asks her to leave him alone. There he meets an ill kid in the hospital named Ishii Daisuke who is living his life positively, and the store staff Katou Kumi, who always smiles even though she had a sad past. He gains confidence and decides to start his rehabilitation. After Yasuyuki is discharged from the hospital, he starts relying on everybody everywhere, so he falls into despair and starts thinking of committing suicide seeing no future for himself.

Teppan

Teppan is a Japanese television drama that aired on NHK in 2010–2011. It was the 83rd Asadora. It starred a new actress, Miori Takimoto, in the role of a young woman raised by an adopted family in Onomichi who learns of her real grandmother and decides to move to Osaka to start an okonomiyaki restaurant. The title word "teppan" refers to the metal surface on which okonomiyaki are cooked. The series, while interrupted by the Tohoku Earthquake, averaged a 17.2% rating, making it the fourth most popular of the Asadora dramas in the previous five years.

The Tragedy of W

"W no Higeki" is an adaptation of a novel by Natsuki Shizuko, which was first published in 1982. It was turned into a theatrical movie in 1984, and has seen numerous adaptions into TV drama in 1983, 1986, 2001 and 2010 respectively. This new version of the story has Takei Emi playing two different characters with the exact same face. One is Mako, the future successor of a billion-dollar pharmaceutical conglomerate. She has always lived in comfort, but yearns for freedom. The other character is Satsuki, a lowly cleaner in a show pub who lives in solitude and destitution, and would do anything to get money, including prostituing her own body. One day, they met and decided to exchange lives.

Always Smiling

Yumi, a 23-year-old office worker, is fired from her job out of the blue. A few days later, coming from a friend's wedding and having no time to change out of her kimono, she is rushing to an interview for a job at a publishing company. Yumi stumbles into the room, looking for somewhere to change out of her kimono, and finds popular comic book writer Reijiro Sakurai is having an editorial meeting with some staff. He is planning to lock himself away at a hot spring for the next three months to concentrate on his next project. Sakurai comments that if Yumi were to join him he wouldn't mind being away for so long..., and so their adventure begins.

IS: Not a Boy and Not a Girl

“IS” stands for “intersexual,” a term referring to people who cannot clearly be classified as male or female, and who may biologically possess characteristics of both sexes. Rokuhana's manga primarily deals with the troubles faced by the young Hoshino Haru (played by Fukuda), an intersexual who was registered as a girl at birth but has been raised as a boy. Goriki plays Aihara Miwako, a mysterious classmate who tries to get close to Haru. Inoue Masahiro has been cast as Ibuki Kenji, a member of the soccer club whom Haru begins having feelings for. Nishida Naomi and Minami Kaho play Miwako's and Haru's mothers, respectively.

Hanaikusa

The tale of hardship, love, determination and life of Mineko, a young maiko (apprentice geisha) in the Gion district of Kyoto.

The Man of the Tokyo Olympics

After the end of the second world war, Fred Wada Isamu (Osawa), an American of Japanese descent who runs a fruit and vegetable shop in Los Angeles. One day, Wada sees a newspaper article on the search for someone of Japanese descent who can look after Japanese athletes coming to the United States to compete in the national swimming championship, and offers his family. Several months later, Kiyokawa (Mitsuishi), the Japanese swimming team’s coach, and the swimmers Hashizume (Katsuji), Furubashi (Nakao) and others arrive in the United States. The Japanese swimming team breaks one world record after another and sets nine world records. It is joyous news for Japan. Several years later, Wada and his wife receive a phone call from Tabata Masaji (Nishida Toshiyuki), the chairman of the Japanese Swimming Federation and general secretary of the Japanese Olympic Committee. Tabata says he would like some form of help from Wada in their bid for the Tokyo Olympics...

Tokyo Air Raid

When Sakuragi Haruko's father's factory is bombed, Oba Hiroto stops Haruko when she tries to rescue her father from the fire. They meet again a few years later when Haruko is working as a nurse and Hiroto is brought in as a patient with a heart condition. The second couple is a Korean man, Boku Hitoshi, and another nurse, Yamada Kazue

Forbidden Practices

Saburo works at a medical office on The Izu Islands, which has seen its population dwindle over the years. Even though Saburo doesn't have a medical license, he performs operations under the instructions of Dr. Muraki. Because of his gifted dexterity and sincerity, people call him the Young Doctor. Saburo becomes conflicted over his position, but he convinces himself that what he is doing is helping people. Saburo becomes is also loved by nurse Akiko Suzuki and Akiko Tasaka, who is the daughter of the director of a general hospital in Tokyo. ~~ Based on the novel "Kumo no Kaidan" by Junichi Watanabe.

Deep Sea of Tree

Sachiko lost her parents at an early age and lived together with her only sister Nobuko who worked for a newspaper. Out of the blue, she is told that Nobuko is killed in an accident, but she simply cannot believe it because her sister had told her she was going to an entirely different place. She begins her investigations on her sister’s mysterious death with the help of Nobuko’s colleague and journalist Ryoichi. And when another colleague, Tomoe commits suicide, Sachiko has a gut feeling that a well-known figure is involved in the death of her sister...

Genius Detective Mitarai: Abstruse Case File

Kiyoshi, a brilliant detective, inquiries on mysterious cases with his childhood friend, Ishioka, a novelist.

The Animal Trail

Animal Trail, a natural path made by traffic of wild animals, can sometimes be helpful for people who are totally lost in the wilderness. One day, a woman who is exhausted with her hopeless life unexpectedly meets a gentleman by chance. Out of genuine hope to escape from her misery, she allows her destiny to blindly follow the mysterious instruction given by this stranger. Would this "Animal Trail" ultimately lead her to happiness, or would it lead her to disaster? The life of Tamiko (Yonekura) was miserable, as she had to give up her dream to become a jewelry designer and work for a Japanese style hotel "Hosenkaku" simply to support her physically handicapped husband. One day, Tamiko was approached by a mysterious gentleman Kotaki (Sato) who offers her a unique proposal, "would you be interested in riding a vehicle without a destination?" His words shook Tamiko's desperate soul wanting for a drastic change in her life. In order to free herself from the depressing reality, she cleverly kills her husband by setting her house on fire. Then, through Kotaki's introduction, she becomes acquainted with Kito, a political fixer, and decides to become Kito's mistress. Although she notices that her decision may not be right, she decides to follow her instincts and go for the "animal trail"….