Movies: Shirō Sano

It is 1965. High-school student Takeyoshi Fujiwara hears "Pipeline" by the Ventures, and is mesmerized by their unique sound. With three friends, he forms a band called "The Rocking Horsemen." A warm and comic glimpse into high-school and small-town ...

Eight school friends innocently join together to play a game that, if played well, promised to make their greatest dreams come true. But, they soon discover that mistakes may cost them more than even their dreams could tell....

Maiku Hama is a private detective working in Yokohama. Hama comes to the aid of a Taiwanese waiter named Yang and agrees to track down his missing brother. Through a series of double-crosses Hama gets embroiled in a gang war and a revenge plot betwee...

It may sound cliché, but Japanese people really do love their fish. If Japan has the best and freshest fish in the world, then Tokyo's Tsukiji Fish Market is where you're most likely to find them. It's the home of Japan's biggest daily fish auction, ...

Ayase Shinsuke, a popular writer of a series of girl novels, visits Otaru, the town he grew up in. He meets a strange boy who calls himself by the author's real name....

One day in February, 2005, Metropolitan Police Department Superintendent Muroi (Toshiro Yanagiba) is arrested to take responsibility for a botched murder case he headed. His faithful colleagues, including Arashiro (Toshio Kakei) and Okita (Miki Maya)...

A near-future Tokyo awaits destruction as the city is rocked by a series of foreshocks that predict a larger, more disastrous quake on the horizon. With the anxiety looming over them, a group of teenage best friends and musicians get into typical tee...

A teacher is sexually involved with an underage student. She visits her father's home and discovers a boy who's been kept as a sex slave. The teacher continues harboring the boy out of fear and begins to feel sexually attracted to him....

A year after the celebrated cracking of “The Glorious Team Batista” case, the talented medical staff at Tojo University Hospital once again finds itself embroiled in a web of intrigue and scandal.The scandal occurs this time in the ER when a mysterio...

Fumiya owes 5 million yen to a female load shark for a gambling debt, while having affair an with Mrs. Hosoi who offers him 5 million to murder her husband. Fumiya has no choice but to kill Mr. Hosoi. Unfortunately he's see by a neighbor. In the esca...

In an audacious reworking of the biopic, this ensemble drama sees jazz pianist Minami Hiroshi’s memoir cleverly reinterpreted into a surreal and playful story about chasing dreams, disillusionment and the inner lives of professional artists. Closer t...

Wasao, an Akita dog in Aomori Prefecture that became famous as an ugly-yet-cute dog from a traveller's blog. Heartwarming drama starring Wasao himself turns part of the life of this former stray into an original story. Setsuko, who runs a grilled-squ...

After a convenience store robbery, three unidentified men hold a group of people hostage in a hospital. Inspector Ishida and Captain Tohno handle the negotiations while one of their colleagues, Lt. Ando, tries to find out why the men decided to take ...

The last years of a painter, a tattoo artist, and a man who always pursues beauty regardless of authenticity. Why does the man insist that even his forgeries are true works of art?...

A man and a woman committed double suicide in Kanazawa City. Immediately after the incident, Yoshiko Shiota, a woman living in Tokyo, contacts the local newspaper of Kanazawa, saying she wants to read the novel serialized in it by Ryuji Sugimoto. How...

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....

Koji Wakamatsu adapted Kouhei Tsuka's play of the same name into a human comedy about the members of a traveling acting troupe....

A man must overcome many obstacles as he works his way through the dangerous crime world to the level of yakuza....

On August 9, 1945, the Americans dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. This film, based on a story by Mitsukaru Inoue, describes the daily life of people in Nagasaki the day before that fateful event. It presents the human drama of people's lives, and ...

A young woman is discovered strangled to death at the boat pier in Tokyo. There are no signs of disturbed clothing and assault, and because the body was abandoned at a prominent spot, it shows that this was a premeditated crime by a criminal with the...