The best Junko Abe’s movies

Taking place during the full-moon night of traditional dances in August and set on the Japanese island of Amami-Oshima, the drama centers on a 14-year-old boy who finds a dead body floating in the sea. The young man enlists the help of his girlfriend to solve the mystery. The pair will learn to become adults by experiencing the interwoven cycles of life, death and love.

When feudal lord Itakura Katsuakira decides to prepare his samurai troops for the onslaught of modernization by having them compete in a marathon, his independent-minded daughter Yuki secretly joins the race.

Three friends who will soon graduate from high school decide to take one last trip together.

Kazuki Suzumoto is divorced and he lives with his 15-year-old son Kouki. Kouki is in a susceptible time. The father feels guilty about his son. Kouki then fails his high school entrance exam. In the spring of the following year, Kouki barely passes his high school entrance exam. Kouki mentions to Kazuki that he likes his father's lunch box. The father and son make a promise to each other. Kazuki promises that he will make a lunch box everyday for Kouki. Kouki promises that he will never skip school.

Set in 1988 in Hiroshima, Japan, prior to the enactment of the anti-organized crime law. A rumor exists that Detective Shogo Ogami has ties with the yakuza. He is partnered with Detective Shuichi Hioka and they investigate a missing person case involving a financial company employee. Conflicts between opposing yakuza groups become more serious.

Aki is an unsuccessful 29-year-old actress who eventually became a magician's assistant. While pretending to be hypnotised on the stage, Aki finds the boundary between reality and illusion becoming increasingly vague. For Aki, the only beautiful memory she has was the time spent with her lover Kaito.

Two women are flat-mates and friends in Tokyo. One is an event manager and the other works in the world of fashion marketing. The result shows that one is pregnant one day. The woman decides to give birth out of wedlock. It is a major decision, which is the harbinger of not just a change in their lives, but also their relationship.

Eiji Akutsu (Shun Oguri) is a newspaper reporter. He is working on unsolved case that took place 30 years ago.The case involved a group of people extorting several companies for money. The group sent cassette tapes to the companies. Eiji Akutsu comes across a mysterious cassette tape. Meanwhile, Toshiya Sone (Gen Hoshino) lives in Kyoto and runs a tailor shop. He discovers a cassette tape among his late father's possessions. He plays the cassette tape and hears his voice from his childhood days. --asianwiki

A Man With Style is a bittersweet family drama which has at its centre two fifty-something school friends – widower Junichi Miyata, a blue-collar worker and Sanada. Both are rather ordinary middle-aged men, far removed from any association with ‘style.’ Junichi Miyata is the more cantankerous and frustrated of the two in Ishii’s oeuvre. His wife died of cancer ten years ago, leaving him with an overriding memory of a silly but hilariously acted children’s song of bunnies she used to sing and two children who now, aged 18 and 19, hardly engage with him and are keen to move to university in Tokyo. He is short-tempered with them and nags them endlessly to no avail.

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-squid shop in a fishing village at the foot of the Shirakami mountains, decides to take in a large dog with a long, unruly fur that has shown up in town. She names the dog Wasao and showers it with affection, but Wasao at that time doesn't take to Setsuko.

Ines, who wants to change who she is and become someone else in order to cover up her insecurities. When she accompanies her boyfriend Lucas on a business trip to Norway, Ines meets a half-Japanese tourist, Maria, who instantly fascinates her. Suddenly Maria disappears, and Ines seizes the opportunity to replace her – she declares herself dead and travels to Japan in order to take over Maria's identity. There, she will get a job at Miss Osaka, the same nightclub where Maria used to work. A game of broken boundaries, lost identities and the dangerous balance between reality and the past has begun, and Ines must abide by the new rules by avoiding the more obscure paths.

A man is found washed up on a beach in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, suffering from amnesia and speaking in broken Indonesian and Japanese.

With all the unrest and uncertainty in the world today, now feels as good a time as any for a movie portraying good will and love between people from opposing countries. The film is a love story set in the city of Matsuyama in Ehime Prefecture on the Japanese island of Shikoku against the historical backdrop of the Russo-Japanese War. The movie is centered around the romance between a Russian officer, a war prisoner in Matsuyama, and a Japanese nurse who find themselves on opposing sides of the war. It is a kind of "Romeo and Juliet story of the Russo-Japanese War".