27-year-old Eto Kana lives in Tokyo and has never been out of the city before. She used to work as a designer and stay in a company dormitory but moved back to her family home after resigning due to the stress from interpersonal relationships. Meanwhile, Kana’s family gets a call about an elderly granduncle who got injured. She goes to Kyoto where he lives at the request of her worried mother and stays there for several days to take care of him.
In the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.
Kanichiro Yoshimura is a Samurai and Family man who can no longer support his wife and children on the the low pay he receives from his small town clan, he is forced by the love for his family to leave for the city in search of higher pay to support them.
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.
Kimihiko Onizuka is a salaryman infatuated with maiko (apprentice geisha) and whose greatest goal in life is to play a party game called "yakyuken" with one.
After the closure of a coal mine leaves her husband unemployed, Fumiko travels from Kyushu to Kyoto with her daughter Kimiko, and they become hostesses at a cabaret.
Madoka meets her husband's parents, who run a 450-year-old hand fan shop in the center of Kyoto. Together with her artist friend Anzai, they start an essay manga about the traditional shops in the area. On Madoka's first day minding the store alone, she ends up giving an interview to a TV crew and angering quite a lot of people by being a bit too candid. While Madoka is enamored by Kyoto, she has quite a lot to learn about the unsaid rules and the passive-aggressiveness of the local proprietresses.
Born and raised in Kyoto, 17 years old Takatoyo spends all his summer holidays in his hometown. However, this time will be different. Takatoyo will experience his first love and first challenges, creating memories that will take him out of his ordinary life.
When the wife of a 17th century Kyoto scroll-maker is falsely accused of having an affair with his best employee, the pair flee the city and find themselves falling for one another.
In 1701, Lord Takuminokami Asano has a feud with Lord Kira and he tries to kill Kira in the corridors of the Shogun's palace. The Shogun sentences Lord Asano to commit suppuku and deprives the palace and lands from his clan, but does not punish Lord Kira. Lord Asano's vassals leave the land and his samurais become ronin and want to seek revenge against the dishonor of their Lord. But their leader Kuranosuke Oishi asks the Shogun to restore the Asano clan with his brother Daigaku Asano. One year later, the Shogun refuses his request and Oishi and forty-six ronin revenge their Lord.
Japan, 1137. The Taira family, a samurai clan, becomes involved in the disputes between Emperor Toba and the monks of Mount Hiei.
Fleeing a distressing family situation, Eiko, a very young girl, becomes an apprentice to Miyoharu, a veteran geisha. Both, determined to preserve their professional integrity, must face the selfishness and ambition of several petty people.
After living a traumatic experience in Tokyo, Yukiko returns to Kyoto, where Hatsuko, her mother, runs a brothel, which upsets Yukiko very much.
After her anti-fascist professor father is dismissed, Yukie navigates love, political repression, and wartime upheaval—ultimately forging her own path in pre- and post-WWII Japan.
Kanae's husband disappeared without a trace while on a union trip. Though usually headstrong and independent, the woman becomes plagued with worry over what happened to him, and is unable to move on with her life. Thus, Kanae decides to hire a private investigator, and keeps running the public bathhouse to the best of her abilities. As he tries to figure out the truth about her husband, Kanae must deal with the stress from a work-intensive job, meddlesome neighbors, and recurring nightmares in which she is drowning.
Kyoto during the Heian period (the 10th century) in Japan. Tens of thousands dead, gutters filled with corpses, children abandoned in the mountains, and groups of wild dogs vigilantly watching outside the city. The elegant image of the Heian period has been shown in many literary and artistic works. However, Katabuchi's new work takes us back to Kyoto a thousand years ago, when the city was shrouded in darkness due to repeated epidemics of plague.
Environmental drama set in Asturias, Spain. A Scottish travel writer is forced to stay in a valley town in northern Spain when his camper van breaks down. There he gets to know the different inhabitants, some of them struggling to close down the nearby power station and some trying to make it more prosperous.
A schoolboy has a crush on his pretty class-mate Keiko on the inland island of Awaji. He figures her routine of taking baths at the public one is a good way to get to know her, but he first has to overcome his sensitivity to hot water, the presence of other school-mates and of course his shyness. He has never mustered the courage to speak to her in class after all.
Kazuhiko, a graduate of a prestigious university, wasn't enjoying his life, until he takes a job at a bathhouse. Then he discovers that the baths are used as a space for killing people after closing hours.
Country bumpkin Haruko only ever wanted to become a maiko, an apprentice geisha. Initially rebuffed for lack of references, Haruko's strong accent intrigues a linguistics professor, who undertakes to coach her.