Nobuko Miyamoto

Years after retiring from their formidable ninja lives, a dysfunctional family must return to shadowy missions to counteract a string of looming threats.

Based on the novel of the same name by Jirō Asada. Three adult children visit their mother living in the countryside, each at separate times, but things aren't really what they seem to be.

Set on Hashima Island in Nagasaki Prefecture during the coal industry's rise in 1955, this story follows themes of family, friendship, and love. It contrasts the post-war era, where people had little but were full of dreams, with present-day Tokyo, where abundance prevails, but young people struggle to find their dreams.

Old apartment complexes, rented houses in the suburbs, and cabs running through the cities. These scenes may look ordinary but each has a different story to tell. A daughter who works part-time to support her disabled mother; a woman who has been cut off from her family and continues to work as a cab driver; a granddaughter who lives in a rented house and works at a factory with her grandmother. This is the story of three women, who live far apart from each other and do not know each other's existence until a fateful encounter through a radio program.

18-year-old Urano Suzu marries Hojo Shusaku and moves from Eba City to Kure City in Hiroshima Prefecture in the middle of the Pacific War. As Japan slides into a war it cannot get out of, the townspeople go on with their “ordinary” lives. Supplies are short, and family and friends get sent to the battlefield. Suzu and the Hojo family battle such anxieties as they try to live positively.

Why did an abused solitary boy become a murderer? A sad but powerful gut-wrenching drama portraying the destiny of humans seeking love, starting up-and-coming actor Yuma Nakayama.

The 17-year-old Yatabe Mineko grew up in a family of seven in a mountain village in northeastern Ibaraki Prefecture. Her father Minoru has gone to Tokyo to work in order to earn extra money. However, her life completely changes when her father does not come back for the New Year. Mineko asks her family to let her go to Tokyo to find him and promises to send money home. In the autumn of 1964, she and two childhood friends Tokiko and Mitsuo are hired to start working at a small factory in Tokyo’s working class neighborhood. After work each day, Mineko searches for her father and gets disheartened at times. Mineko overcomes challenges and starts to lay down roots in Tokyo as she experiences many meetings and farewells amid the laughter and tears with regulars, people of the shopping street, friends, and colleagues. But will she be able to find her father?

In 1993, the economy is in the doldrums. Fuyuki Aki works in a big electronics manufacturer as the first female in its main career track. But unlike the male employees, she is not even allowed to test her ability and feels frustrated by her current situation. Meanwhile, Aki learns that her colleague and ex-boyfriend Sato Yasushi is marrying Otsubo Arisa, a junior who works in an administrative position, and she feels unsettled. Aki is favoured by Yasushi’s mother Sachiko, but she tells her that they broke up two years ago. She feels a void for not being able to spread her own wings in the male-dominated world, along with an anger at the male species. So she could not accept the feelings of the straightforward Yasushi. On the morning of the wedding ceremony, Aki receives a letter from Sachiko...

Aki Amano, a high-school girl from Tokyo moves to the Sanriku Coast in the Tohoku region to become a female diver. She becomes a local idol, then returns to Tokyo to try to become a real idol, and finally returns to Tohoku to help revitalize the area after the Great East Japan earthquake.

2012 NHK drama based on the Juzo Itami film "A Taxing Woman" (Marusa no Onna).