Movies can stir up various emotions depending on how they are portrayed. Here are some Japanese movies that are bound to make you cry.
1. The 8-Year Engagement
Hisashi and Mai are a happy couple. Their happiness lasts until one day Mai suddenly falls ill. She was diagnosed with anti-NMDA receptors encephalitis, a rare brain inflammation. After going through a heart attack, Mai fell into a coma. Worried about Hisashi, Mai’s parents ask him not to come back. But Hisashi continued to care for and love her despite it. Everything came crashing down for Hisashi, when Mai finally woke up, but couldn’t remember who Hisashi was.
2. Secret Unrequited Love
Takuma and Mayu have been friends since childhood. Mayu was the daughter of his doctor. When they were 8 years old, Mayu found out that Takuma wouldn’t be able to live beyond the age of 20 due to his heart’s degrading condition. Unaware of how serious his condition is, Takuma promises to marry Mayu when they turn 20. But as time progresses, he realises that he won’t be able to keep his promise. Despite Takuma pushing Mayu away repeatedly, she chose to stay by his side, until the end.
3. Boku No Ita Jikan
Sawada Takuto is a simple university student who has a caring girlfriend, Hongo Megumi. Everything is going well until he gets diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), a disease that weakens and gradually reduced the functionality of the muscles. With not much time to live, Sawada decides to break up with Hongo to keep her unaware of his situation and to let her lead a life without sadness. When Hongo finds out the truth behind the break-up, she refuses to let Sawada go through all the pain alone and decides to stick by his side.
4. Heaven’s Door
With not a lot of time, but many things he wanted to accomplish, Nagase Tomoya is a man with many regrets. He decides to escape from the hospital with Fukuda Mayuko, to try to make something meaningful of his life. Mayuko had been hospitalised her whole life. They set out on a journey going where the road takes them. When Tomoya finds out that Mayuko hasn’t ever seen the sea, he makes it his life’s ultimate mission to take her to the sea, let her see its beauty, even if it might be the last thing he ever does.
5. If Cats Disappeared From The World
A postman gets diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and isn’t given much time to live. When he gets back home after receiving the news, he is greeted by his look-a-like. The look-a-like introduced himself, in essence, as the Devil, and tells the postman that he would be dead the next day. The Devil gives him the option to prolong his life, but in exchange, something will disappear from the world. Scared and upset, the postman takes the Devil up on his offer and tries to live a longer life.
6. Quill
Quill is a sweet little Labrador Retriever who gets sent to ‘training’ school, where he is taught to obey commands and identify various kinds of obstacles. When he finally completed his training and passed all his tests, he was set to train with a human. The man he was meant to guide was an ill-tempered, blind man. In the beginning, Watanabe says that he’d much rather stay at home than agree to be ‘pulled’ around by a dog. But slowly, he grows fond of Quill, when he realized that Quill made his days seem a little better.
7. A Litre Of Tears
Aya is an ordinary 15 years-old girl. She has a loving family and is happy with her life. Things turn upside down for Aya and her family when she starts to walk funny and begins to fall often. Upon receiving a medical diagnosis, they found out that she was suffering from, spinocerebellar degeneration, a disease that causes the cerebellum to gradually deteriorate to the point where the patient can’t talk, write, eat, or walk again.
8. Be With You
Mio died at 28 and left behind a son, Yuji, who feels guilty of being the reason for his mother’s death and a husband, Takumi, with a ‘condition’ that doesn’t allow him to be the father his son deserves. On her deathbed, Mio promises her husband and her son, that she will be back when the rainy season begins and stay only for as long as the rainy seasons remain. One day Takumi and Yuji find a woman sitting in the ruins, a woman who turns out to be Mio, but she seems to have lost all her memories. The father-son duo takes Mio back to their home, where they spend their days trying to help her remember them and the happy days they spent together. But deep down, they harbor the pain of knowing that the person they love the most would leave them once again when the rain stops falling.
9. One Week Friends
Yuki one day randomly bumps into and befriends Kaori. They become good friends, but one week later, Kaori forgets everything about Yuki. Yuki later finds out that Kaori has a special type of amnesia due to which memories of anyone apart from Kaori’s parents will get suppressed after a week. Despite this, Yuki resolves to make friends with Kaori repeatedly, week after week.
10. 26 Years Diary
Lee Soo Hyun is a Korean student studying in Japan. He starts maintaining a diary in which he records his days no matter how good, or how bad they might have been. He records every one of his experiences. Soo Hyun develops a romantic relationship with a Japanese girl, Yuri. Finding out that they both share many common interests, the two of them begin to click well with each other.
