Suzume is a girl born to a family running a small restaurant in Gifu Prefecture. She loses her hearing in one ear from a disease. Encouraged by her loving parents and childhood friend, she lives through an eventful life with a tenacious spirit.
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?
The 97th NHK asadora is about Ten who becomes the first female comedian.
In 1930 and as a young child, Tsuneko Kohashi lives at Enshu in Shizuoka Prefecture. She has a happy life with her parents and two younger sisters. Things change after her father dies from tuberculosis. Her father asked Tsuneko Kohashi to take care of the family in his place. Due to financial difficulties, her mother Kimiko decides to move the family to Tokyo where Tsuneko's grandmother lives.
Born over a tofu shop in Osaka, twin sisters Reiko and Kyoko have very different characters. Reiko is diligent, and longs for a secure, middle class lifestyle. Kyoko is a free spirit, who seeks thrills and adventure.
Teppan is a Japanese television drama that aired on NHK in 2010–2011. It was the 83rd Asadora. It starred a new actress, Miori Takimoto, in the role of a young woman raised by an adopted family in Onomichi who learns of her real grandmother and decides to move to Osaka to start an okonomiyaki restaurant. The title word "teppan" refers to the metal surface on which okonomiyaki are cooked. The series, while interrupted by the Tohoku Earthquake, averaged a 17.2% rating, making it the fourth most popular of the Asadora dramas in the previous five years.
The 82nd NHK Asadora is Gegege no Nyobo. The story is based on a 2008 autobiography by Mura Nunoe, the wife of Gegege no Kitaro mangaka Mizuki Shigeru. The story revolves around the life of the married couple, told from the perspective of Mura. --Tokyograph
Iwakura Mai lives with her parents Kota and Megumi and older brother Haruto. Her father Kota runs a small factory in Higashi Osaka, a district that is known for its craftsmen. Mai is shy and withdrawn. But when she visits her grandmother Shoko who lives on Nagasaki’s Goto Islands which has a rich natural environment, she is entranced by the Baramon kites that catch the wind and soar high in the sky. Wanting to fly high in the sky like these kites, Mai’s longing swells into a dream to become a pilot. Even though she works hard, the path to getting there is tougher than she had imagined. As Mai deepens her ties with the people living in her two hometowns of Higashi Osaka and Goto, her dream eventually takes a new form. She gathers enthusiastic friends to build a small electric plane that can fly to and from the islands. Her dream becomes a wing that carries everyone’s dreams and takes off.
The 3rd NHK Asadora. Starring Shin Saburi as a professor who quits the university to become a painter.
The 2nd NHK Asadora and the first Asadora to be broadcast in 15-minute episodes Monday through Saturday. Starring Fumiko Watanabe in a drama of a poor family after the war.
A television serial that was in turn adapted from a radio series and a novel, My Daughter And I featured a Japanese novelist who is married to a French woman who have one daughter. The man and his daughter begin a new life when the woman dies. Having difficulty spending time with his daughter, the man sends his daughter to a Christian boarding school. He remarries and brings his daughter back home. After the end of the World War his lot improves professionally, yet his second wife dies.
Suenaga Kokoro, an international flight attendant, lives with her mother and grandmother who operate a traditional restaurant in a lively downtown district of Tokyo where customs and traditions run deep and neighbors know each other like a big family.
Set in Hakata, the series is about a young man who wants to play rock music even though his father expects him to follow him in making Hakata ningyou (a traditional Japanese clay doll). One of the few Asadora starring a male character.
A successful screenwriter looks back on her life when she learns her husband has cancer. A year-long series, starring Narumi Yasuda.
The drama about the youngest of four sisters, all raised solely by their father, who wants to write children's books.
A young woman Chiaki whose family runs an old miso company in Nagano Prefecture, the only daughter of old traditional family. For generations, they were making soybean paste for living. Now she needs to take over this business and rebuild it. She lives through the hardships of postwar Japan.
A woman works hard to become a good doctor even though she is separated from her husband.
A woman who lost her memory after experiencing the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
The 13th NHK Asadora. Starring Youko Takahashi in a story about a brother and sister coming of age in Hakodate and Kanazawa.
The 12th NHK Asadora. Set in Amakusa, Kumamoto Prefecture, at the end of the Pacific War. Maki is the heroine, married to Shuichi who must go to war. She stays home and takes on the role of other war widows, managing business and a Chinese restaurant.