The Rotten Wheelbarrow

From 1928 to 1946, the lives of 12 young people and their school teacher in a poor Japanese village are profoundly affected by historical events and personal circumstances.

In a small village in a valley everyone who reaches the age of 70 must leave the village and go to a certain mountain top to die. If anyone should refuse they would disgrace their family. Old Orin is 69. This winter it is her turn to go to the mountain. But first she must make sure that her eldest son Tatsuhei finds a wife.

Widower Shuhei Hirayama's caretaker is his 24-year-old daughter, Michiko. Gradually, he comes to realize that Michiko should not be obliged to look after him for the rest of his life, so he arranges a marriage for her.

In a remote village where food is scarce, elders who reach the age of 70 are carried by their children to the top of a nearby mountain to die in solitude. Orin, a vibrant 69-year-old grandmother, has accepted her fate — but struggles to prepare the rest of her family for the ritual.

The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.

The family of an older man who runs a small sake brewery become concerned with his finances and his health after they discover him visiting an old mistress from his youth.

Repeatedly beat to a pulp by gamblers, cops, and gangsters, lone wolf Shoji Yamanaka finally finds a home as a Muraoka family hitman and falls in love with boss Muraoka's niece. Meanwhile, the ambitions of mad dog Katsutoshi Otomo draws our series' hero, Shozo Hirono, and the other yakuza into a new round of bloodshed.

Noriko is perfectly happy living at home with her widowed father, Shukichi, and has no plans to marry -- that is, until her aunt Masa convinces Shukichi that unless he marries off his 27-year-old daughter soon, she will likely remain alone for the rest of her life. When Noriko resists Masa's matchmaking, Shukichi is forced to deceive his daughter and sacrifice his own happiness to do what he believes is right.

A tragedy strikes a young woman's life without warning or reason. She continues living while searching for meaning in a lonely world.

Depicts the life of a family in a remote Japanese timber village. Family head Tahara Kozo lives with his mother Sachiko, wife Yasuyo, nephew Eisuke and young daughter Michiru. Economic recession and failed development plans cause tragedy in the family.

A 21-year-old girl is released from prison, only to deal with the neighborhood gossip about her and family conflicts. She decides to save one million yen, move to where no one knows her and keep repeating the process.

A former American G.I. joins a yakuza family after his release from prison in post-World War II Osaka.

In the teeming black markets of postwar Japan, Shozo Hirono and his buddies find themselves in a new war between factious and ambitious yakuza.

Eddie Kenner is given a special assignment by the Army to get the inside story on Sandy Dawson, a former GI who has formed a gang of fellow servicemen and Japanese locals.

In the outskirts of Tokyo, a poor but close-knit group living on the fringes of society survives through shoplifting and odd jobs. When Osamu and his son take in a neglected young girl, their already fragile existence begins to unravel. As the family grows attached to her, buried secrets surface, forcing them to confront the true meaning of love, belonging, and what makes a family.

A young woman working at a retirement home takes an elderly man living there on an excursion into the countryside, but the two wind up stranded in the titular forest.

In 11th-century feudal Japan, following the exile of an idealistic governor, his wife and children are separated by slave traders; the children, Zushio and Anju, are sold into brutal servitude under the cruel bailiff Sansho.

Based on a real-life story, this drama focuses on a small group of Allied soldiers in Burma who are held captive by the Japanese. Capt. Ernest Gordon, Lt. Jim Reardon and Maj. Ian Campbell are among the military officers kept imprisoned and routinely beaten and deprived of food. While Campbell wants to rebel and attempt an escape, Gordon tries to take a more stoic approach, an attitude that proves to be surprisingly resonant.

When lapsed Jew and former cardiologist Harry suddenly decides to spend his retirement as a pig farmer in Nazareth, Israel, the move deeply shocks his family and his new neighbours. Back in New York, Harry’s ex-wife Monica is trying to manage the lives of their adult children, Annabelle and David, as well as her own.

In a once-scenic village now dominated by a vast trash disposal site, a young man yearns to break free from a cruel fate tying him to the very grounds.

A Yokohama shoe executive faces a wrenching choice when kidnappers mistakenly seize his chauffeur’s son but demand the ransom anyway.

Wataru's outwardly liberal views on marriage are severely tested when his daughter declares her love for a coworker and is adamant to live her own way, instead of agreeing to an arranged marriage. Outwitted by his female relatives, Hirayama stubbornly refuses to admit defeat.

The family of an older man who runs a small sake brewery become concerned with his finances and his health after they discover him visiting an old mistress from his youth.

Two boys beg their parents for a television set, nagging them until all patience is lost. The parents order the boys to be quiet and the boys do exactly that--refusing to utter a word. The boys' silence ultimately puts the whole neighborhood into turmoil.

After a boat accident where he puts his son Flavio’s life at risk, fisherman Capudemazza decides to never go fishing again. Ten years later a discovery about his son awakens a feeling in him that had been buried.

A Japanese intelligence officer faces personal crises in the years preceding the Manchurian conflict.

During a general cleaning weekend in his village house an old cemetery groundskeeper discovers that he is just as much of a burden for his family, as his old mementos they are throwing away in the trash.

In 1958 postwar Tokyo, the residents of a humble Third Street neighbourhood struggle, dream, and grow together as rapid modernisation transforms their lives beneath the shadow of the newly rising Tokyo Tower.

A former communist militant and a "live and let live" man form an unlikely friendship on a park bench, sharing their life stories with humor and heart.

A passionate telling of the story of Sada Abe, a woman whose affair with her master led to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship.

The coming-of-age romance is set during the Nagaoka Festival Grand Fireworks Show, one of Japan's three major fireworks shows that draws several hundred thousand visitors to Niigata Prefecture every year. What connects Makoto (a Tokyo high school boy without social skills or self-confidence) and Aki (a popular high school girl and class president with beauty and talent) is a drawing of a fireworks display. At the mercy of the drawing's mystery and fate itself, the two have to make a choice in a limited amount of time.

Living in a village full of slopes can drive you mad. Those who have climbed them in the old-fashioned way are fully aware of that. What they don’t know is that their souls might have stuck around.

Summoned by his dying father, Miyagi returns to his homeland of Okinawa, with Daniel, after a 40-year exile. There he must confront Yukie, the love of his youth, and Sato, his former best friend turned vengeful rival. Sato is bent on a fight to the death, even if it means the destruction of their village. Daniel finds his own love in Yukia's niece, Kumiko, and his own enemy in Sato's nephew, the vicious Chozen. Now, far away from the tournaments, cheering crowds and safety of home, Daniel will face his greatest challenge ever when the cost of honor is life itself.

Amagi Goe, based on Seicho Matsumoto's novel, has created numerous stars through its visualizations. Erika Ikuta will take on the difficult role of the main character in this adaptation.

A 19th-century widow has to make an impossible choice when, during an especially cruel winter, a foreign ship sinks off the coast of her Icelandic fishing village.

After her mother runs away from home, Tomoko is raised to be a geisha. One day Tomoko meets her mother in a red-light district in Tokyo and her life deeply gets in trouble.

In 1923, 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.

A woman and her daughter are each forced to contend with an increasing pressure to marry, particularly from three men who knew her late husband.