Etsushi Toyokawa
One day a puppy comes to the house of Akari, who has just turned twelve, and was trying hard to act strong after her mother suddenly fell ill. She immediately falls in love with the puppy and names it “Socks” after the paws which looked like they had white socks on. Akari was together with Socks day and night. However, as Akari grows up, her feelings and interest moves away from Socks. Year by year, their distance grows, which also leads to her physical distance as she moves to a far off city, and must leave Socks behind to a childhood friend.One day Akari remembers the 10 promises that she had made with Socks and her deceased mother…
Suffering from writer’s block and some curious ailments, Reiko (Nakatani Miki) moves to a countryside villa at her editor’s (Nishijima Hidetoshi) beckoning to quietly work on her next novel. Her new environment turns out to be anything but peaceful though when she sights her next door neighbor, professor Minoru Yoshioka (Toyokawa Etsushi), surreptitiously moving a thousand-year-old mummified corpse into his university lab for research. Though Reiko and Yoshioka get off to a bumpy start, the two grow closer over time, enough so that Reiko eventually agrees to hide the mummy in her home. But the mummy isn’t the only unlikely guest in her walls, as a female ghost also lurks disturbingly in the background. At first seemingly a quick trick of the eye, she grows clearer and more distinct by the day.
In 1969, Kenji, an elementary school kid and his friends built a secret base during their summer holidays. They fantasized that they had to fight villains who were out to conquer the world and wrote them in the Book of Prophecies. Years later in 1997, Kenji becomes a convenience store manager and leads a regular life after giving up his dreams to become a rock star. His boring life is suddenly turned upside down when his old classmate dies mysteriously and an entire family in the neighbourhood disappears. At the same time, a religious cult and its mysterious leader, Friend emerges and a strange chain of events duplicating exactly the events described in the Book of Prophecies follow. Is this the beginning of the end of the world? Who is Friend?
Set during Japan’s Taisho Era (1912-1926), “Bluestockings” tells the tale story of a love triangle between wealthy businessman Yuichiro (Etsushi Toyokawa), his wife Akiko (Kyoko Hasegawa), and Kiyoko (Yoshino Kimura).
An environmental analyst is asked by the police to determine if two deaths by hydrogen sulfide poisoning are an accident – or a murder. But when he meets a young woman at both sites, a scientific mystery begins.
Kozo Nakase (Masahiko Tsugawa) attends meetings for single widowers looking to remarry. He meets Sayoko Takeuchi (Shinobu Otake) and eventually marries her. Not longer after their marriage, Kozo Nakase suddenly collapses and dies. Kozo Nakase leaves everything to Sayako. The rest of his family are left out of his will including his daughter Tomomi (Machiko Ono). Tomomi hires a private investigator, Honda (Masatoshi Nagase), to find out more about Sayoko.