Late Spring

Set in 1870's New York, a spinster heiress is courted by a much younger, penniless man, much to the chagrin of her over-protective father, and must decide whether to spend the rest of her life alone, or marry a man who is interested in her only because of her inheritence.

Keiko, whom everyone calls Mama, narrates her story: she's a hostess on the Ginza, 30, a widow. She describes life's vicious cycle: acting cheerful around drunks, dressing and living well to convey confidence, needing money for these expenses and for her demanding mother and brother, and knowing she's growing older. She's of an age when she must choose: to seek marriage (difficult given her tarnished occupation), to be a kept woman, or to borrow money to buy a bar of her own. Each route has dangers, including investors demanding a return on their loans. Keiko has a quiet dignity that attracts men, but are they what they seem? Does she actually have choices?

At the close of the war in Japan, a widowed mother makes every possible sacrifice to bring up her ungrateful son and daughter who are unimpressed with their poor standard of living at home. They gradually reject her in search of the material comforts that working as a maid cannot provide. The mother's despair becomes interminable.

Shuhei Hirayama is a widower with a 24-year-old daughter. Gradually, he comes to realize that she should not be obliged to look after him for the rest of his life, so he arranges a marriage for her.

A 28-year-old single woman is pressured to marry.

Successful middle-aged farmer Samuel Sweetland becomes widowed, then his daughter marries and leaves home. Deciding he wishes to remarry, Sweetland pursues some local women he considers prospects.

Takeo, a capricious wife from Tokyo high society, is bored by her dull husband, a quiet and reliable company executive raised in the country. After a crisis, she understands better his true value. A parallel sub-plot shows her niece rebelling against the tradition of arranged marriages.

Air Force Major Lloyd Gruver (Marlon Brando) is reassigned to a Japanese air base, and is confronted with US racial prejudice against the Japanese people. The issue is compounded because a number of the soldiers become romantically involved with Japanese women, in defiance of US military policy. Ordinarily an officer who is by-the-book, Gruver must take a position when a buddy of his, an enlisted man Joe Kelly (Red Buttons) falls in love with a Japanese woman Katsumi (Miyoshi Umeki) and marries her. Gruver risks his position by serving as best man at the wedding ceremony.

Growing up in a rural town filled with violent delinquents, Jack has learned to do what it takes to survive, despite having an oblivious mother and no father. After his aunt falls ill and a younger cousin comes to stay with him, the hardened 15-year-old discovers the importance of friendship, family, and looking for happiness even in the most desolate of circumstances.

A woman and her daughter are each forced to contend with an increasing pressure to marry, particularly from three men who knew her late husband.

An ingratiating bride develops warm ties to her father-in-law while her cold husband blithely slights her for another woman.

Twelve years after their beloved eldest son, Junpei, drowned while saving a stranger's life, Kyohei and Toshiko welcome their surviving children home for a family reunion. Younger son Ryota still feels that his parents resent that he isn't the one who died; his new wife, Yukari, is awkwardly meeting the rest of the family for the first time. Daughter Chinami strains to fill the uncomfortable pauses with forced cheer.

A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a life of crime. With each step, cop and criminal’s lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination of Murakami’s own dark side.

The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.

Shinnosuke is introduced to Shizu as a prospective marriage partner, but he falls in love with her widowed sister Oyu. Convention forbids Oyu to marry because she has to raise her son as the head of her husband's family. Oyu convinces Shinnosuke and Shizu to marry so that she can remain close to Shinnosuke.

The Andy Griffith Show is an American sitcom first televised on CBS between October 3, 1960 and April 1, 1968. Andy Griffith portrays the widowed sheriff of the fictional small community of Mayberry, North Carolina. His life is complicated by an inept, but well-meaning deputy, Barney Fife, a spinster aunt and housekeeper, Aunt Bee, and a precocious young son, Opie. Local ne'er-do-wells, bumbling pals, and temperamental girlfriends further complicate his life. Andy Griffith stated in a Today Show interview, with respect to the time period of the show: "Well, though we never said it, and though it was shot in the '60s, it had a feeling of the '30s. It was when we were doing it, of a time gone by." The series never placed lower than seventh in the Nielsen ratings and ended its final season at number one. It has been ranked by TV Guide as the 9th-best show in American television history. Though neither Griffith nor the show won awards during its eight-season run, series co-stars Knotts and Bavier accumulated a combined total of six Emmy Awards. The show, a semi-spin-off from an episode of The Danny Thomas Show titled "Danny Meets Andy Griffith", spawned its own spin-off series, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., a sequel series, Mayberry R.F.D., and a reunion telemovie, Return to Mayberry. The show's enduring popularity has generated a good deal of show-related merchandise. Reruns currently air on TV Land, and the complete series is available on DVD. All eight seasons are also now available by streaming video services such as Netflix.

Genie in the House is a British sitcom broadcast on Nickelodeon UK about a widowed father with two teenage daughters who find a dusty old golden lamp while exploring the loft of their new home. A quick rub of the lamp releases Adil, a trainee genie from Balamkadaar who has been confined to life in the lamp for 1000 years. Philip has banned any use of magic in the house, yet the girls and Adil the Genie find ways to get themselves into trouble using Adil's wish granting powers. The mother is never mentioned, except on Adil's birthday when Philip mentions being a widower. As of March 2012, Genie in the House is now airing on the Starz Kids & Family cable network.

Kunimi Hiro is a high school student, who is forced to give up his ambitions as a professional baseball player due to a serious injury. Now at a new high school, Hiro gets involved with Haruko and her goals of reviving that school's baseball team. At first they must overcome the refusal of school principle, who still remembers a dishonorable defeat that the school's baseball suffered some ten years earlier. Even with permission to form a school baseball team, there are still the players to recruit and train, and the challenges of building a reputation of the team within the high school baseball circuit. This is a story of group of high school students and their love of the game of baseball. Hiro is national class pitcher and batter, with his best friend who is a catcher and with Haruko as the team manager, together they struggle to build a baseball team worthy of the national championship.

Kasugano Haruka and his sister Sora have lost both their parents in an accident, and with them all their support. They decide to move out of the city to the rural town where they once spent summers with their late grandfather. At first everything seems familiar and peaceful, but changes come as Haruka starts to remember things from his youth.

After moving into the quiet town of Hinamizawa, Maebara Keiichi spends his days blissfully in school often playing games with his local friends. However, appearances can be deceiving. One fateful day, Keiichi stumbles upon news of a murder that had occurred in Hinamizawa. From this point on, horrific events unfold in front of Keiichi, as he soon learns his close friends may not be all that they seem. Based on the amateur mystery game by 07th Expansion, the story is told in a series of different scenarios.

In 1925 (year 14 of the Taishō period), after being told by a baseball player that women should become housewives instead of going to school, two 14-year-old Japanese high school girls named Koume and Akiko decide to start a baseball team in order to prove him wrong. During this time, when even running was considered too vulgar for women, baseball is known as "what the boys do" and they face many difficulties when searching members, getting permission from their parents and when learning about the sport itself.

Benio Hanamura is a 17-year-old schoolgirl in Tokyo during the Taisho era. Benio lost her mother when she was very young and has been raised by her father, a high-ranking official in the Japanese army. As a result, she has grown into a tomboy—contrary to traditional Japanese notions of femininity, she studies kendo, drinks sake, dresses in often outlandish-looking Western fashions, and isn't as interested in housewife duties as she is in literature. She also rejects the idea of arranged marriages and believes in a woman's right to a career and to marry for love. Benio's best friends are the beautiful Tamaki, who is much more feminine than Benio but equally interested in women's rights, and Ranmaru, a young man who was raised to play female roles in the kabuki theater and as a result has acquired very effeminate mannerisms.

A rich, handsome businessman, Hokuto, proposes marriage to Chiwa, whose father has a large debt. Hokuto apparently has a secret reason for marrying Chiwa. Will this marriage work out?

Kazuya Kagami never goes anywhere without the precious "Sakura Obi" his mother gave him. One day a beautiful, kimono-clad girl named Kiriha appeared before him. Kiriha naturally began to live with Kazuya in his room. Then there's Chisato, Kazuya's childhood friend with glasses and a ponytail, who meddles in his affairs. Soon there's also an overprotective older sister who seems to want to take baths with him. Jumble in a huge-chested priestess, a good-looking sorceress named Kokuyoura, beautiful women, and hot girls, and Kazuya's happy, embarrassing, confusing life begins…

A teenage boy has now moved in the home of his mother's friend, because she had died a while back. It just so happens that the Yakuza family has four beautiful daughters, but one daughter, Hibari, who is more beautiful then the rest of the daughters, is actually a boy. Hibari just can't keep his hands off our hero and so their crazy yet happy lives go on.

Satou Matsuzaka, a girl who has never loved anyone before, falls in love with a girl named Shio Koube. The two girls are drawn to each other, and begin a happy life together. Satou won't let anyone endanger their new life, and would do anything for love, even if it means threatening, confining, or killing someone.

Having a hard time making ends meet after her divorce, Millicent Torkelson moves her three children to Seattle, where she becomes the nanny to the spoiled Morgan children.

Saki and team are a special band of scoundrels. They are out to swindle other scoundrels. They were formed by detective Kazuki to trick swindlers and take back what was stolen from the deceived, the tricked and the downtrodden. At the same Saki is in an all-girl band. Others are unaware that she is a Japanese 'idol' especially because she is in has a day job, has short hair and never lets on. She also uses an alias while performing as a musical idol.

Author Tarō Obika is an obsessed single father who loves his daughter so much, he decides to go to the same college. Nicknamed Gatarō, he was widowed when his wife died of an illness and has raised his only child Sakura all on his own. Things are about to change drastically as Sakura prepares to enter a coeducational university after going to an all-girls school all her life. Worried sick, Gataro enrolls not only in the same school, but also in the same department, and the madness begins! Unable to control his anxiety, he sticks his nose in her every business, from classes to extracurricular activities, parties, dating events, cultural festivals, part-time jobs, and everything else college kids do. But as the 40-year-old middle-aged dad gets involved in the youthful pursuits of Sakura and her colleagues, he finds himself enjoying life even more than them.

In 1969, at the press conference of Nagashima Shigeo who was joining a professional baseball team, Yomiurhi Kyojin, a ball was thrown at him by a boy. He was Hoshi Hyuma, and a thrown ball meant a letter of challenge. His father, Hoshi Ittetsu, had trained Huma since he had been very young to achieve his dream to make him a professional baseball player.