Haruka Igawa Movies
A typical household secretly teeters on the verge of collapse in this stark drama from director Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Businessman Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) is the principal breadwinner of a seemingly happy family in Tokyo, with Ryuhei looking after his teenage sons, Takashi (Yu Koyanagi) and Kenji (Kai Inowaki), with his wife, Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi). But what Megumi and her children don't know is that Ryuhei is out of a job; his position was outsourced to a company in China, and he's too ashamed to tell his family the truth. Ryuhei leaves home every morning as if he's going to the office, but instead visits employment centers in hopes of landing a new job and eats lunch at a kitchen for the indigent. One day, while waiting for free porridge, Ryuhei meets an old friend who is in a similar predicament, Kurosu (Kanji Tsuda); Kurosu ends up bringing Ryuhei home for dinner so they can discuss their fictive day at work and maintain their subterfuge. Megumi, who is not as well-adjusted as she appears, one day spots her husband in a soup line while running errands, and discovers the truth about his employment status, though she doesn't dare confront him. And as Takashi and Kenji begin drifting away from their emotionally distant parents, Kenji starts to suspect things are not as they should be, and begins spending his lunch money on music lessons in hopes of starting a career as a pianist. Tokyo Sonata was an official entry at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Teruyuki Kagawa, Kyoko Koizumi, (more)
A bout of terminal cancer alters the course of a man's life in completely unexpected ways in Walking My Life (AKA Zo No Senaka), Japanese director Satoshi Isaka's thoughtful domestic drama. At age 48, Yukihiro Fujiyama (Koji Yakusho) has virtually everything a man could want - a respectable job as a project chief at a real estate company, a satisfying marriage and two children. When the said diagnosis hits, however, it prompts Yukihiro to both shun conventional treatment and set about righting past wrongs from his life - he visits his undeclared high school love to inform her of his feelings, reestablishes contact with his estranged brother (Ittoku Kishibe) and re-initiates a friendship with his buddy from high school. Problematically, however, Yukihiro finds that he is somehow unable to inform his wife of the impending disease, even as he struggles with an even graver secret of which she is unaware. When she finally learns of the cancer and questions her husband about his reason for concealing the disease, he declares that, however much time he has left, he would much rather live for today than for the future. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Koji Yakusho, Miki Imai, (more)
Toru Hayahi's period melodrama Oh-Oku, The Women of the Inner Palace concerns the political maneuverings of many people surrounding a five-year-old boy who becomes Shogun upon the passing of his father. The boy's mother (Haruka Igawa) becomes one of the more powerful people in the country, but the wife of the boy's father (Reiko Takahiima) learns of the mother's secret affairs and plots to expose them for all to see. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Yukie Nakama, Hidetoshi Nishijima, (more)
A Christmas Eve power outage provides a collection of troubled Tokyo denizens the opportunity to come clean on the misdeeds of their past in director Takashi Minamoto's snowbound winter drama. Fourteen year-old Shota (Kanata Hongo) longs to get a better look at the winter sky, but upon peering through the lens the youngster is shocked to see a distraught woman (Yu Kashii) leap from the roof of a nearby hospital. When Shota realizes that the suicide attempt failed and the woman landed safely on a rooftop below, he travels to the hospital in hopes of making contact with the woman. Elsewhere in the hospital, a dying father (Tomoyo Harada) longing to see his true love one last time reveals to his son Saeki (Tomorowo Taguchi) that the boy is the product of a marital indiscretion and that his supposedly dead mother is alive and well and living in Tokyo. Already reeling as his wife (Tomoyo Harada) prepares to divorce him and his lover (Haruka Igawa) refuses to acknowledge that fact that he is no longer interested in her, Saeki prepares to meet his mistress in the very same hotel where Chinese bellboy Dong Dong (Tsuyoshi Abe) is preparing to catch a flight to Shanghai to be with his girlfriend for Christmas. In another part of town, lovelorn bar owner Shinichi (Etsushi Toyogawa) laments the loss of his ex-lover as adoring candle shop manager Nozomi (Tomoko Tabata) admires him from afar, and pregnant Reiko (Shinobu Terajima) nervously awaits the arrival over her one-time lover Ginji (Koji Kikkawa), who has just been released after serving a six-year prison sentence. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Etsushi Toyokawa, Tomoko Tabata, (more)
Famed pink eiga turned indie impresario Zeze Takehisa directs this very odd romance yarn between a young lass with a heart of gold and a seeing-eye dog. Shiro is a white dog raised by a kind-hearted family and who is particularly close to their daughter, Haruka. After a few years, Shiro's training begins and he is matched with Gong (Ryo Ishibashi), a blind boxing trainer. One night after knocking back one too many beers, Gong gets hit and killed by a truck. Shiro survives but is so racked by guilt that the dog's health begins to decline. Gong's spirit appears and grants him one wish -- to be human and find the family that loved him as a pup. Suddenly, Shiro is transformed into a hunk cad in white (Etsushi Toyokawa). He learns that the family was killed in a plane crash with the exception of Haruka (Haruka Igawa), who now teaches kindergarten in a remote corner of Japan. Shiro's transition into being a human proves to be awkward: When he tracks down a very suspicious Haruka, she brands him a pervert for sniffing her bicycle seat. Soon however, Shiro manages to win Haruka's heart. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Etsushi Toyokawa, Haruka Igawa, (more)








