The Best TV Shows on NHK

Aki Amano, a high-school girl from Tokyo moves to the Sanriku Coast in the Tohoku region to become a female diver. She becomes a local idol, then returns to Tokyo to try to become a real idol, and finally returns to Tohoku to help revitalize the area after the Great East Japan earthquake.

The 17-year-old Yatabe Mineko grew up in a family of seven in a mountain village in northeastern Ibaraki Prefecture. Her father Minoru has gone to Tokyo to work in order to earn extra money. However, her life completely changes when her father does not come back for the New Year. Mineko asks her family to let her go to Tokyo to find him and promises to send money home. In the autumn of 1964, she and two childhood friends Tokiko and Mitsuo are hired to start working at a small factory in Tokyo’s working class neighborhood. After work each day, Mineko searches for her father and gets disheartened at times. Mineko overcomes challenges and starts to lay down roots in Tokyo as she experiences many meetings and farewells amid the laughter and tears with regulars, people of the shopping street, friends, and colleagues. But will she be able to find her father?

In wartime Japan, spirited Nobu transforms from a militarist schoolgirl into Kochi’s first female reporter, as she and childhood friend Takashi endure personal loss and struggle to find their own truths amid the upheaval of the Showa era.

NHK Kōhaku Uta-Gassen (NHK紅白歌合戦, "NHK Red and White Song Battle"), more commonly known simply as Kōhaku, is an annual New Year's Eve television special held on December 31 every year, and produced by Japanese public broadcaster NHK. It is broadcast live simultaneously on NHK General TV, BS4K, BS8K, and NHK radio (nationally) and internationally on NHK World Premium and some overseas (mainly cable) broadcasters who buy the program. The program divides the most popular music artists of the year into competing teams of red and white. The "red" team or "akagumi" (紅組) is composed of all female artists (or groups with female vocals), while the "white" team or "shirogumi" (白組) is all male (or groups with male vocals).

The 74th NHK Asadora Drama is Junjo Kirari, which means something along the lines of "pure-hearted Kirari." The story is set in Okazaki City, Aichi Prefecture in the era around the Second World War. When the story opens in 1928, the heroine, Sakurako, is a very active seven-year-old girl. Indeed, even in the first episode she exhibits her confidence and enthusiasm. But above all else, Sakurako is interested in becoming a jazz pianist, and music features extensively in the plot.

Teppan is a Japanese television drama that aired on NHK in 2010–2011. It was the 83rd Asadora. It starred a new actress, Miori Takimoto, in the role of a young woman raised by an adopted family in Onomichi who learns of her real grandmother and decides to move to Osaka to start an okonomiyaki restaurant. The title word "teppan" refers to the metal surface on which okonomiyaki are cooked. The series, while interrupted by the Tohoku Earthquake, averaged a 17.2% rating, making it the fourth most popular of the Asadora dramas in the previous five years.

A Heisei youth graffiti drama, in which the heroine Yoneda Yui (Hashimoto Kanna), born in the first year of the Heisei era, connects people's hearts to the future as a nutritionist. Always cherishing her individuality, she sometimes struggles, but powerfully and joyfully pushes through the turbulent Heisei and Reiwa eras.

Suzume is a girl born to a family running a small restaurant in Gifu Prefecture. She loses her hearing in one ear from a disease. Encouraged by her loving parents and childhood friend, she lives through an eventful life with a tenacious spirit.

Traces Japan’s history with the Olympic games and the 1964 Tokyo Olympics for viewers before Tokyo hosts the event again in 2020. The first half tells the story of marathon runner Kanakuri Shiso, who became one of the first Japanese nationals to participate in the Olympics in Stockholm in 1912. The second half features Tabata Masaji, the coach who laid the foundations of Japanese swimming and helped bring the games to Tokyo for the first time in 1964.

Mare is an elementary school student. She lives with her family in the city, but, right before her father goes bankrupt, they run away and settle down at a fishing village in Noto. The family rents a couple's home who run a salt pond. Mare's father starts a new business, but it also fails. Her mother supports the family by working at the salt pond. 8 years later, Mare, about to graduate from high school, decides to work for the Wajima local government. She wants to have a steady job, unlike her father. Her job is to support people who move to Noto.

Born in September of 1995, Momone Nagaura lived with her parents, grandfather, and sister in Kesennuma City, Miyagi Prefecture. After failing her college entrance exams, she went to live in Tome City with an acquaintance of her grandfather's. Momone's life changes when she meets a popular weather forecaster from Tokyo, who teaches her how weather forecasts can predict the future. She decides to study to become a weather forecaster.

He lost his land, his father, and was torn from his mother. Lonely and wounded, young Takechiyo thought he'd live out his days quietly as a hostage. But fate had other plans. Inspired by Mikawa warriors, he becomes a minor lord and dives into a war-torn world ruled by monsters like Nobunaga and Shingen.Life-or-death moments, miscalculations, and no time to breathe—what will you do, Ieyasu?

As a child Sakura Mamiya mysteriously disappeared in the woods behind her grandma's home. She returned whole and healthy, but since then she has had the power to see ghosts. Now a teenager, she just wishes the ghosts would leave her alone! At school, the desk next to Sakura's has been empty since the start of the school year, then one day her always-absent classmate shows up, and he's far more than what he seems!

Den-noh Coil, Coil — A Circle of Children, is a Japanese science fiction anime television series depicting a near future where semi-immersive augmented reality technology has just begun to enter the mainstream. The series takes place in the fictional city of Daikoku, a hotbed of AR development with an emerging city-wide virtual infrastructure. It follows a group of children as they use AR glasses to unravel the mysteries of the half real, half Internet city, using a variety of illegal software tools, techniques, and virtual pets to manipulate the digital landscape. Den-noh Coil, in development for over a decade, is the series director debut of Japanese animator Mitsuo Iso. It premiered on NHK Educational TV on May 12, 2007. Due to the animators involved in its production and its unusually high-profile television broadcast time slot, Den-noh Coil was highly anticipated.

A Japanese girl from a poor family named Hanako went on an adventure to study in a girl's Christian school in Tokyo. She found her passion in English and step by step made her dream come true.

Oshin is a Japanese serialized morning television drama, which aired on broadcaster NHK from April 4, 1983 to March 31, 1984. The series follows the life of Shin Tanokura during the Meiji period up to the early 1980s. Shin was called "Oshin", which is an archaic Japanese cognomen.

In the end of Meiji era, Takei Chiyo was born in a poor family in Osaka, and was sent to a theatre tea room as a servant when she was 9 years old. There, she was attracted by the world of theatre comedy. She grows up to be an actor and marries to Amami Ippei , but the war broke out and she was forced to stay away from acting for a while. However, when she comes back again, her acting in a radio drama impresses many people and makes herself one of the leading actors in western Japan.

Stories about people, stories about life. Intimate portraits of people from around Japan, each leading diverse lives while enriching lives of others.

Curious young boy Shimajiro learns the importance of family and friendship through his many adventures with his pals Mimi-Lynne, Flappie and Nikki.