Okatsu is a widow raising five children - adults but still mama-dependent - in mid-eighteenth century Edo, Japan. Her frugality attracts unflattering comment even amid national tough times (the region is in famine) What Okatsu tells no one is that she saves so that a friend can start his own business once he's released from prison.

Produced for Fuji TV in 2000, the film reinterprets the story of a special samurai force - the Shinsengumi - at the end of the Edo period.

Translucent Tree is centered around divorced Chigiri, a suburban middle-aged mother taking care of her teenage daughter, Mayu, and her ailing father Kaho. Her life is mundane and rather hopeless until Go, a TV producer from Tokyo, pays a visit to her town and the tree they shared time under some twenty years back after a TV commercial shoot. His remembrances of her, the tree, and the long unrequited love stir both of their hearts to fumbling action as they re-discover the love between them.

A new magistrate in the town of Horisoto—widely reputed to be the most lawless township in Japan, uses guile and his opponents' own misperceptions and prejudices to defeat his enemies and uproot corruption.

The indolent son of an oil vendor becomes a regular customer of a prostitute, racks up a mountain of debt, and is disowned by his parents.

Rin Jyoshima lost her father to death-by-gambling; years later, she's grown up in the Kosugi household and has fallen victim to gambling herself.