Ashura no gotoku

Kind of hard to recommend this one highly. Ashura no Gotoku is a soap opera-ish story covering a couple of years in the lives of four sisters, their parents, and their husbands, fiances, and illicit lovers. Based on a novel by Kuniko Mukouda, one of the most popular female novelists in postwar Japan, and reputedly autobiographical--she is represented by the third sister Takiko, who wears glasses and is socially maladroit at first, but undergoes a dramatic transformation (always a good clue to the authorship of the story).

The plot mostly revolves around how the four women try to cope with the fact that their father, though in his 70's, has taken a lover, despite continuing to live together with their mother. Although the storyline has some overdone and even ludicrous scenes, it does manage to hit some high points, particularly the scenes which underscore how, when all is said and done, it is wonderful to have siblings to confide in and draw strength from, even when you don't always see eye-to-eye with them.