Hiyokko
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?
Mampuku
Based on true story of the wife of Ando Momofuku, the businessman who founded Nissin Food Products Co. Ltd. and the inventor of instant ramen, the 99th Asadora follows the life of Tachibana Fukuko, a young woman who tries to survive tough times in Osaka with her husband from before WWII to the rapid economic development era. Together they overcome various setbacks before they succeed in creating instant noodles. (Source: MDL)
Toto Nee-chan
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.
Kids on the Slope
Two different students - a successful but aloof academic and a rebellious but kindhearted delinquent - form a friendship through their love for music.
Honjitsu mo Seiten Nari
Katsuragi Motoko started as an NHK announcer, became a reportage writer after the war, and then an author. This story is about a woman's struggle to find her life's purpose and to survive. The 28th NHK asadora, set in the Showa era and location included Tokyo.
Scarlet
Born in 1937 in Osaka as the eldest daughter, Kawahara Kimiko moves to Shigaraki with her family at the age of 9. She works to support her family from a young age. Eventually, she jumps into the male world of pottery and becomes a pioneer of female ceramic arts. After marrying her husband who is also involved in ceramics and owning her own kiln, she raises her two children while struggling to create unique ware.
Graveyard Kitaro
Mizuki, a low-rung company employee in early 60s Japan, becomes the unwitting caretaker of Kitaro, a mysterious boy who is born of two worlds: the living and the dead. As Kitaro navigates the strange dealings of humanity, the yokai that have been sleeping for time immemorial begin to make their appearance...
Wasted Land
Iki Tadashi is a military leader named who was captured by the Soviets during World War II. Treated as a war criminal, he was sentenced to many years of labor in a harsh Siberian detention camp. After 11 years of imprisonment, he is released. He returns to Japan and begins readjusting to life as a civilian, rejecting an offer from his former colleague to work on a defense project. Tadashi has decided to never involve himself in war again, much to the joy of his family. Instead, he attempts to set off on a new path working at a major trading company. --Tokyograph
Kareinaru ichizoku
Daisuke Manpyō is the owner and president of the successful Hanshin Bank. He also owns several other companies and some real estate. His son-in-law is a bureaucrat at the Ministry of the Treasury, who tips him off that there is a move afoot to reorganize commercial banks. Manpyō is in for difficult times as he attempts to block the merger between his bank and another.
The Family
The Family, the program commemorating the 55th anniversary of the launch of the TBS TV station, is a social drama depicting the inside story between bureaucrats, politicians, and big businesses over a bank merger revolving around the family discord between Daisuke Manpyō, the owner and president of Hanshin Bank, and his eldest son, Teppei.
The Diamond Sleeping in the Sea
Set on Hashima Island in Nagasaki Prefecture during the coal industry's rise in 1955, this story follows themes of family, friendship, and love. It contrasts the post-war era, where people had little but were full of dreams, with present-day Tokyo, where abundance prevails, but young people struggle to find their dreams.
Kurayami Santa
In the midst of Shouwa era Japan, greed runs rampant through the bustling cities and communities of the nation. King of Hell Enma Daiou summons an envoy into his office in the form of a small boy named Kurayami Santa. Through Enma's debriefing, Santa learns that the amount of greed and selfish behavior produced by humans will soon create an enormous wave of souls entering into Hell simultaneously, which would be catastrophic for Hell itself. Santa is given one mission: do something about it. With neither guidelines nor rules, Santa is tasked to handle the situation as he sees fit. In the human world, a rampaging thunderstorm strikes a nearby cemetery with a bolt of lightning, and the envoy of Hell appears. Teleported into the human world, Santa quickly realizes that humans are just as wicked as Enma had described. Without upsetting the balance between light and dark, Santa begins his quest to complete the mission from Hell and restore order to the human world.