Nobuhiko Ôbayashi

Seven girls named after their distinctive traits visit a house in a rural setting. Odd occurrences happen and are ignored, but soon peculiarities begin to accrue.

Experimental short film depicting the life, perhaps real, perhaps a dream, of a young girl named Emi. Emi travels to the city where she encounters her counterpart, Sari, and falls in love with...a vampire? (imdb)

Harada is a successful scenario writer, and his best buddy has just announced an intention to propose to Harada's ex-wife. Recovering from the shock, Harada indulges in melancholy, mainly on his failure as a husband and father, and goes to a 'Rakugo' (sit-down comedy) show, where a friendly man in the audience invites him home. (imdb)

Mitamura Yuka (Hiroko Yakushimaru) is a normal shy middle school student that has psychic powers. When a new student with similar powers begins to show his skills, by stealing the student government election, Yuka and her friends vow to stop him. The election has uncovered something which will put Yuka's powers to the ultimate test! (imdb)

A high school girl discovers that she suddenly has the ability to travel in time. (imdb)

After an earthquake, an entire elementary school disappears, leaving only a hole in the ground. The school has been transported to a barren future. (wikipedia)

9th-graders Kazuo (boy) and Kazumi (girl) take a tumble at a temple in a small seacoast town in Japan. Through supernatural intervention, their minds and bodies are switched, and the result is a touching and hilarious coming-of-age comedy as they attempt to survive the pressures of junior high school life. (imdb)

The film follows the life of Sada Abe, who became a celebrity in 1936 after strangling her lover and slicing off his penis.

Mother and son play games in Nobuhiko Obayashi's first experimental film.

Futari (Two of Us) is about two sisters, one of them the perfect child, the other clumsy and slow. One day, the perfect sister dies, and comes back as a ghost to guide her little sister. (karagarga.net)

It is 1965. High-school student Takeyoshi Fujiwara Yasufumi Hayashi) hears "Pipeline" by the Ventures, and is mesmerized by their unique sound. With three friends, he forms a band called "The Rocking Horsemen." (imdb)

When four unrelated people are murdered in an apartment building a film director sets off to interview the residents in an attempt to solve the mystery.

Two junior high students switch bodies.

Yuichi, a middle-aged businessman who has been down on his luck lately, finds himself lost on the road. Unable to call his home or office from an old roadside phone booth, he tries to contact a friend he has not spoken to for years who works at a hospital in the area. His friend talks about meeting a woman that Yuichi knows died that very day 30 years ago, and he is left perplexed.

In this short film, a painter loses his lover at the same time as her image disappears from the center of the drawing he carries with him. While wandering forlorn in a deserted forest, he encounters a girl who looks just like the woman he once loved. The encounter becomes at once a physical reunion and an attempt to reconstitute his work of art. (midnighteye.com)

A woman and her son visit a grave.

Nobuhiko Obayashi directed this 1986 film based on the novel of the same title by Yoshio Kataoka. His stylish direction uses B/W and colour photography. It stars Kiwako Harada (this marks her movie debut, and she has a nude scene which was quite a sensation when it came out). (poorafilmy.com)

A meditation on eating people and quiet waitresses. (ubu.com)

Kosuke Kindaichi is a popular detective found in Seishi Yokomizo's novels, and this is one of several movies that have been made based on his character. Yokomizo's plots have more twists and turns than Japanese calligraphy and loudly invite parody. This film is not an RSVP to that invitation. Director Nobuhiko Obayashi has not parodied Yokomizo's style so much as imitated it. (nytimes.com)

Obayashi captures the erratic and turbulent but sincere energy of youth with this story of a group of rebellious boys who form an uneasy alliance to save a local girl from being sold into prostitution. The film breaks with the somber and tortured critiques of wartime Japan by previous generations to present a positive and anarchic vision of resistance. (Alexander Zahlten, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard)

A former hospital director runs an antiques shop in Ashibetsu with her family. In that shop cum residence she resides along with her grandfather who unexpectedly dies. Relatives gather from afar in wintery Ashibetsu upon the death of the patriarch, Mitsuo. A mysterious woman named Nobuko suddenly shows up. Her appearance gradually exposes wartime secrets and Mitsuo's unknown past. (Avista)

Komori Chiaki is a budding tennis prodigy, however one day during training her coach hits her in the eye with the ball. She's taken to hospital where she learns that she will never regain the sight in her eye. Her coach learns of a mysterious doctor 'Black Jack' who lives in a secluded house, who might be able to help. 'Black Jack' agrees to do the operation, but for a 'substantial reward'! Her sight is regained, but now she starts to see a mysterious man that is invisible to those around her.. (RMS)

On set making-of documentary about Akira Kurosawa's Dreams. (imdb)

This cartoon, based on a popular manga (Japanese-style comic), centers on an 11-year-old boy who goes to Africa with his father in 1941. Because he is Japanese, the father is detained by...

Fulfilling his filmmaking dream of 40 years, Nobuhiko Obayashi's luminous new feature "Hanagatami" delivers a timeless story of the pureness of youth beset by the chaos of war. (imdb)

When Ryoko was in Europa to study music, her lover died in traffic accident. Ryoko believed that she had psychic power that killed her boyfriend. Ryoko returned to Japan, and was sent to a mental hospital. When she recovered, her brother-in-law Koji decided to look after her. (imdb)

Toshiko does not have long to live. She wants to make the most of her time while she can and takes a sojourn to where her true hometown for which she has so much nostalgia and admiration. With her husband on her side she remains can-do and keeps her chin up, but can only lament the passing of time and what will happen next to everyone and everything she loves. Will she be satisfied when she looks back for the last time? (imdb)

Kyoko met Tetsu during her trip to San Francisco. Soon they fell in love but getting married was not in his mind. They were to meet again back in Tokyo but Tetsu didn't turn up. (imdb)

The story centers on a group of young people who travel back in time when they are in a movie theater just before closing time. They witness deaths during the closing days of Japan's feudal times and on the battlefront in China before they are sent to Hiroshima just before the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing of the city. (imdb)

Hiroki, an aimless high school boy growing up in Onomichi, finds his home life disrupted by the sudden and inexplicable appearances of a mysterious girl who seems to know things about his family that she shouldn't. Meanwhile, he obsesses over a girl from a neighboring school whom he spies practicing piano alone each afternoon.

A high school girl travels to the island of New Caledonia and has magical adventures. (mubi.com)

After reading a newspaper article about a town being destroyed in a fire, Eguchi begins to recall the summer he spent there writing his thesis. It's a beautiful canal town, the "Venice of Japan." As he arrives, he is greeted by the daughter of the Kaibara household, Yasuko. The rest of her family seems mysteriously absent. On his first night, Eguchi hears the stifled sound of crying. He attempts to find the source, and is soon drawn into the conflict that is tearing the family apart. (imdb)

In 2011, a journalist arrives in Nagaoka, a Japanese village that underwent destruction during both World War 2 and the 2004 Chuetsu Earthquake, and is now notable for the fireworks it launches annually in memory of the victims of war. She is there for two reasons: firstly, to learn about the experiences of Nagaoka's inhabitants, and secondly, to watch a stage play written by an enigmatic student of her ex-boyfriend, which depicts the bombing of the city during WWII. (TMDB)

Four half-sisters share an unusually close bond during tumultuous times of post-war Japan.

A special effects filled fantasy adventure, in which an 8 year old boy encounters an ancient samurai warrior who is only six inches tall.

A legendary actress thought to be dead is discovered living in an isolated mansion. A screenwriter is tasked with writing her comeback film, which leads the two to live under the same roof.

The film is based on true events. It centers around Shunzo, a popular greengrocer who lives in a city near Tokyo. His life, and that of his wife, Michi and their two children, undergoes a dramatic change when he encounters Li, a poor college student from China. (imdb)

A Francophile filmmaker in a creative rut tries to pass off a free-spirited young actress as his movie-star wife in order to fool a chief from the South Seas. (imdb)

A heartwarming, based-on-true story of how a hearing-impaired couple, Masahiro and Namiko, knew each other, got married, and began participating in the Triathlon. The story is told in flashbacks as Namiko awaits childbirth.

A story of two men, one recently bereaved, the other with a wife in a coma. From the popular song.

Depicts the life of Nagaharu Yodogawa.

Yuta, an absent-minded 5th-grader, is sent to spend the summer with his grandfather, whom Yuta's parents think is becoming senile and could benefit from Yuta's companionship. At first, Yuta thinks Gramps is a bit addled, too, but as he gets to know the old man better, he finds that his grandfather sees things quite differently from other people. The special bond that ...

It is the 1950s, and the protagonist, identified only as ‘I,’ has come from Tokyo to study, burdened by the high expectations of his poor family in northeastern Japan. He meets a young woman named Shino who works in a small restaurant in the Komagome area of Tokyo. They fall in love, and he takes her to his family home through the heavy snow for their wedding. He introduces Shino to his elderly parents and his sister; they spend their wedding night together listening to...

It is the second work of the Oita trilogy of Obayashi . Following " Nigori Snow ", Ise Masazo draws a song written by composers and songwriter "Farewell of 22 years old " as a motif and draws a story of love that spans two generations of mother and daughter.

Based on the comic book by Jūzō Yamasaki and Kei Sadayasu.

Film director Mario Baba meets a mysterious gentleman and realizes he is an important man from his boyhood. The two chase each other around, causing a lot of commotion.

A detective film by Nobuhiko Ōbayashi. Made for TV.

People from all walks of life all receive mysterious messages from loved ones who were killed 3 months earlier in a shipwreck. They are instructed to go to a small island in the Inland Sea that evening.