The best Sayuri Yoshinaga’s movies

2500 years ago, in India, Siddhartha was born as a prince of the Shakya clan, but he gives up his position as a prince to see the world. He meets a strange boy named Assaji, who can predict the future, a monk with only one eye and Depa. Siddhartha continues traveling. Siddhartha is overwhelmed by the sufferings he witnesses around him. Meanwhile, Prince Ruri of Kosara begins his attack on the Shakya clan. Second Buddha movie from Tezuka Productions.

Etsuko's café in her peaceful little seaside town is where everyone gathers to gossip and taste her famous brew. But the winds of change are beginning to blow.

This sensuously beautiful film chronicles the activities of four sisters who gather in Kyoto every year to view the cherry blossoms. It paints a vivid portrait of the pre-war lifestyle of the wealthy Makioka family from Osaka, and draws a parallel between their activities and the seasonal variations in Japan.

From a true incident that happened in 1960s Japan. This drama is contemporary in setting but medieval in its characters and emotions as it focuses on a tangled web of murder and deceit encountered by a beautiful woman, Kayo (Sayuri Yoshinaga) after her abusive husband is murdered.

Patterned after Japanese art and silk screens, Taro, The Dragon Boy is an animated feature about Japanese mythology and cultures, focusing on Taro, a young boy who has to make a voyage to a distant lake to save his mother, who has been turned into a dragon.

Nobuko (Sayuri Yoshinaga) works in Nagasaki, Japan as a midwife. Her son died 3 years earlier from the atomic bomb. On August 9, 1948, her son appears in front of her again. Since that time, Koji (Kazunari Ninomiya) appears in front of her and they reminiscence about pleasant times. These happy, but bizarre moments seem eternal.

Ginko’s younger brother Tetsuro, a failed comedian, is the oddball of the family. Embarrassing, loud and plain inappropriate at times causes Ginko to disown him. The two reunite when she discovers Tetsuro is terminally ill. Tetsuro’s impending death marks the beginning of love and toleration.

Sawako worked as an emergency physician at a university hospital. Due to to a situation, she returns to her father Tatsuro's home in Ishikawa Prefecture. She then begins to work at the local Mahoroba Clinic. She works with the clinic director Toru, Nurse Mayo and staff Seiji. Seiji, who worked with Sawako at the university hospital, followed her and works with her again. Mahoroba Clinic provides home healthcare to patients. Sawako visits the patients' homes and provides treatment there. At first, she has a hard time due to the different system. She becomes acclimated to the different system and finds a way to deal with the patients, their lives, and their families. --asianwiki

The film follows the relationship between a mother and her son. In 1945, the mother played by Sayuri Yoshinaga fled with her two sons from the Russians to Hokkaido. In 1972, her son played by Masato Sakai returns to Japan after finding success in the U.S.

Taking the Chilean coup as an example, a group of young officers plan to overthrow the Japanese government on V-J Day. They aim to abolish the post-war constitution, restore the national army and revive the traditional spirit of Japan. As the conspiracy is exposed, the coup squadrons are wiped out one by one. The remaining squadron takes over a night train bound for Tokyo.

Final part of epic drama about war and its effects upon human beings, follows the fortunes of the Godai family through the Sino-Japanese Waru through the Soviet Union's sudden attack upon Japanese troops at the end of the war.

Jirô wanders the streets with friends committing petty crimes that gradually escalate.

Yukie Kitahara is a housewife and she has devoted her life to her family. Mako Goda is a wealthy woman who runs a business. They are both diagnosed with terminal illnesses and are told they only have a short time left to live. These two women from completely different walks of life meet at the hospital. They both feel emptiness in their lives. They happen to get a 12-year-old's written bucket list. Yukie Kitahara and Mako Goda decide to carry out the girl’s wish list and they begin to feel happiness entering their lives.

A teacher, Kawashima Haru, arrives on a remote island, north of Hokkaido. She has accompanied her husband, Yukio, to become the teacher of six students. Once Haru discovers the children’s beautiful singing voices, she brightens their spirits by leading them in a chorus. Smiles now break out on the faces of the children, who had been bored at school before her arrival. Their angelic voices reverberate across the wilderness, warmly basking the residents’ hearts. One day, Abe, a policeman with a troubled soul, arrives on the island. Haru, who harbors her own secret pain, is increasingly moved by the long shadow cast over Abe’s heart. But one summer’s day, Haru’s husband dies in an accident on a picnic with her students. The terrible wound in Haru’s heart causes her to abandon her worried father and flee the island. Although she has escaped the island, she remains concerned for her students...

Set in Tokyo in 1940, the peaceful life of the Nogami Family suddenly changes when the father, Shigeru, is arrested and accused of being a Communist. His wife Kayo works frantically from morning to night to maintain the household and bring up her two daughters with the support of Shigeru's sister Hisako and Shigeru's ex-student Yamazaki, but her husband does not return. WWII breaks out and casts dark shadows on the entire country, but Kayo still tries to keep her cheerful determination, and sustain the family with her love. This is an emotional drama of a mother and an eternal message for peace.

Set in the Taisho era, which might be regarded as Japan's Hippie Phase, Hana no ran is a story about fashionable people without impulse control. Much of the action centers on a popular woman writer, the real-life poet Akiko Yosano, and her experiences among the literati of early 20th century Japan. Because of her independent, anti-war and often erotic poetry, she was a lightning rod for revolutionaries and other extremists, many of whom were destined to glamorous, yet ultimately pointless, deaths. The closest parallels might be the Byron/Shelley group or the people drawn to the Beat Generation.