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On the surface, About Her Brother seems very different from Yoji Yamada’s samurai masterpieces that have reached the U.S. in recent years, films like Twilight Samurai and The Hidden Blade. However, consistent with those films, and with Yamada’s service as the regular director of the long-running Tora-san series, About Her Brother is, at heart, a contemplative character study with room for both wry humor and tear-jerking emotion – a gentle portrait of fundamentally decent people under stress. The film follows Ginko, a widowed Tokyo pharmacist dealing with her daughter’s marriage and her ne’er-do-well younger brother Tetsuro, whose drunken antics and stubborn refusal to grow up cause her no end of trouble. The title may be Ototo or “younger brother” in Japanese and Yamada may have packed the cast with ringers - Tsurube Shofukutei (Dear Doctor) as Ginko and Yu Aoi (One Million Yen Girl, Hula Girls) - but the film really belongs to Sayuri Yoshinaga. As Ginko, Yoshinaga simultaneously captures affection, exasperation and embarrassment without ever sliding over the edge into caricature. Rated one of Japan's 10 Best Films of 2010.

A super big project commemorating the 25th anniversary of the formation of TEAM NACS and the 30th anniversary of wowow's opening. It was filmed in Hokkaido, the birthplace of TEAM NACS.

“W no Higeki” is an adaptation of a novel by Natsuki Shizuko, which was first published in 1982. It was first dramatized for TV in 1983; turned into a theatrical movie in 1984, then got two separate drama adaptations in 2001 and 2010. In the original W no Higeki book, the main character is a foreigner who has no blood link to the titular W (originally Wada) family; she's just the English teacher and friend of the heiress. Because of this, all film and TV adaptations turned the heroine(s) into Japanese characters, with slight variations in plot. The original title was based on Ellery Queen's 1930s Tragedy of... books which ran from X to Z (translated into Japanese as ...no Higeki respectively). The new version of the story will have Takei playing two different characters. One is Mako, the daughter of the Watsuji (W) family, owners of a major business conglomerate. She has always lived in comfort, and as a result, she yearns to finally grasp life with her own hands. The other character is Satsuki, a show pub dancer who lives a solitary and destitute life in a corner of the city and who desires money and power. The drama appears to follow the concept of two women who exchange lives, leading to various tragic events for both of them. --Tokyograph