Chocchan's Story - Recommendations

• Movie (1 ep x 88 min)
• 1988

With their father serving overseas in the Navy towards the end of the World War 2, Seita and his younger sister Setsuko are living as normally as they can. One day during a firebomb raid on the city their mother suffers fatal wounds and the two siblings' lives are turned upside down as they go to live with a relative. After suffering the cruel treatment of their aunt, who makes it clear that their very presence is a nuisance, Seita and Setsuko decide to leave and go to live in an abandoned bomb shelter. With no one else to rely on, Seita and Setsuko try their hardest to live from day to day. Though when food becomes ever more scarce and no one is willing to sell what little provisions they have, life for the pair is increasingly difficult. Then when Setsuko falls ill, Seita begins to realize just how fragile life is...

• TV Special (2 eps)
• 2001

• TV (26 eps)
• 1981

• Movie (1 ep)
• 1996

• Movie (1 ep)
• 1984

Oshin comes from a family of poor rice farmers. Her father and brother must work in the fields and her grandmother and mother, who is expecting another child, barely have enough to eat. In order to make ends meet for her family, 7-year-old Oshin gives up school and decides to become a servant in the household of a wealthy family, where she faces trials and tribulation beyond her worst fears.

• TV (13 eps)
• 2011

The original story follows the human drama of the Yamazaki family in Tokyo in the Year Showa 39 (1964) — the year that the city hosted the Summer Olympics.

• Movie (1 ep)
• 2009

Hatta Yoichi is a civil engineer who travels to Japanese-ruled Taiwan in 1910 to build a complex irrigation system in the barren southwest. Hatta manages to overcome the initial doubts of local farmers, but a tragic tunnel accident eventually halts the project and shakes his confidence.

• Movie (1 ep)
• 2011

The original story follows the human drama of the Yamazaki family in Tokyo in the Year Showa 39 (1964) — the year that the city hosted the Summer Olympics.

• Movie (1 ep)
• 2007

The year is 1956, and Japan has finally begun to rise from the depths of post-war poverty. In Tokyo, Kiba Elementary School has just welcomed a new staff member, Rieko Sakamoto, a trained vocalist who is eager to work as both a secondary instructor and choir teacher to the students. Under her tutelage, a young group of children including transfer student Shizu, troubled Gonji and sincere Akira will experience the joys and sorrows of youth and learn about the importance of traditional songs.

• Movie (1 ep)
• 2015

As all of Edo flocks to see the work of the revered painter Hokusai, his daughter O-Ei toils diligently inside his studio. Her masterful portraits, dragons and erotic sketches – sold under the name of her father – are coveted by upper crust Lords and journeyman print makers alike. Shy and reserved in public, in the studio O-Ei is as brash and uninhibited as her father, smoking a pipe while sketching drawings that would make contemporary Japanese ladies blush. But despite this fiercely independent spirit, O-Ei struggles under the domineering influence of her father and is ridiculed for lacking the life experience that she is attempting to portray in her art.