General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

Always: Sunset on Third Street 2 (ALWAYS 続・三丁目の夕日)

Always: Sunset on Third Street 2 (ALWAYS 続・三丁目の夕日, Ōruweizu Zoku San-chōme no Yūhi) is a 2007 Japanese drama film directed, co-written, and VFX-supervised by Takashi Yamazaki, the sequel to his 2005 hit Always: Sunset on Third Street. It adapts Ryōhei Saigan's long-running manga Sanchōme no Yūhi and follows the residents of a working-class Tokyo neighborhood in the spring of 1959, four months after the events of the first film.¹^•²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Release	November 3, 2007, distributed by Toho; 146 minutes, color, 35 mm⁴^•²
Director and writers	Directed by Takashi Yamazaki, who also handled VFX; screenplay by Yamazaki and Ryōta Kosawa; based on the manga by Ryōhei Saigan²
Setting	Spring of Shōwa 34 (1959) in the fictional Yūhichō Third Street of downtown Tokyo, the year the Tokyo Olympics were awarded and Japan entered its period of high economic growth³
Principal cast	Hidetaka Yoshioka (Chagawa), Shinichi Tsutsumi (Suzuki), Koyuki (Hiromi), Hiroko Yakushimaru (Tomoe), Maki Horikita (Mutsuko), Kenta Suga (Junnosuke)⁵
Box office	Attendance passed 3.7 million, well above the first film's 2.84 million; one database lists revenue of $46,790,160³^•⁶
Awards	12 Excellence Awards (13 people) at the 31st Japan Academy Prizes, including Best Actor for Hidetaka Yoshioka³
Theme song	"Hana no Na" by BUMP OF CHICKEN⁷

Spoilers

Plot

The story begins four months after the first film, in the spring of 1959. The struggling writer Ryunosuke Chagawa lives with the boy Junnosuke while continuing to long for Hiromi, who left without a word. When Junnosuke's real father, Kawabuchi, arrives to take the boy back, Chagawa agrees to a condition that he provide a respectable standard of living; to prove himself, he resumes writing serious literature and takes up the Akutagawa Prize, which he had once abandoned, hoping to secure a stable life and show Hiromi the man he has become.³^•¹

Meanwhile, at the Suzuki auto repair shop, the apprentice Mutsuko has become a capable mechanic and the business is gaining clients. When a relative of Norifumi Suzuki fails in business, his daughter Mika, a seven-year-old accustomed to a wealthier lifestyle, comes to stay with the Suzuki family and initially clashes with their son Ippei.³^•¹⁰ Hiromi, meanwhile, has found success again as the exotic dancer "Betty," a secret career that complicates her relationship with Chagawa.¹⁰^•¹¹

Background and production

The 2005 first film, an adaptation of Saigan's manga about life in 1958 Tokyo as Tokyo Tower rose over the skyline, was a long-running hit that won numerous awards including the Japan Academy Prize for Picture of the Year and helped spark a "Shōwa" nostalgia boom.³^•⁸ The sequel was made in response to calls for a continuation, and it reunited the director and cast of the original: Yamazaki again served as director, screenwriter, and VFX supervisor, with Ryōta Kosawa co-writing the screenplay.³^•²

Period recreation. As in the first film, the production rebuilt the Shōwa-era downtown with detailed period research, large location sets, and upgraded visual effects. The sequel's VFX recreated Tokyo Station, Haneda Airport, Nihonbashi, and the newly introduced Kodama limited-express train of the time.³^•⁹ The production committee included Nippon Television, ROBOT, Shogakukan, VAP, Toho, Dentsu, Yomiuri Telecasting, the Yomiuri Shimbun, Shirogumi, and IMAGICA.⁴

Cast

The film brings back the principal cast of the first installment:⁵

Hidetaka Yoshioka as Ryunosuke Chagawa, the candy-shop owner and aspiring novelist
Shinichi Tsutsumi as Norifumi Suzuki, owner of the auto shop Suzuki Auto
Koyuki as Hiromi Ishizaki
Hiroko Yakushimaru as Tomoe Suzuki
Maki Horikita as Mutsuko Hoshino, the shop's apprentice mechanic
Kenta Suga as Junnosuke Furuyuki, the boy in Chagawa's care
Kazuki Koshimizu as Ippei Suzuki
Fumiyo Kohinata as Yasunari Kawabuchi, Junnosuke's father
Tomokazu Miura as Takuma
Masako Motai as Kin Ohta

Reception and awards

The sequel outperformed its predecessor at the box office, passing 3.7 million admissions against the first film's 2.84 million.³ At the 31st Japan Academy Prizes (2008), it received twelve Excellence Awards across thirteen people, including Excellence Awards for Picture, Director (Yamazaki), and Screenplay (Yamazaki and Kosawa), and the Outstanding Prize for Best Actor, won by Hidetaka Yoshioka for the second consecutive film in the series, described by the distributor as a first in Japan Academy history.³^•¹ The film was also nominated for the Japan Academy Best Film, and received Asian Film Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor (Tsutsumi), Best Supporting Actress (Yakushimaru), and Best Visual Effects (Yamazaki).¹² Tomokazu Miura won the 2008 Kinema Junpo Award for Best Supporting Actor for this film and two others.¹²

The series continued with Always: Sunset on Third Street '64 (2012), for which the VFX studio Shirogumi introduced a color management system to the production pipeline.¹³

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Franchise and series entries as standalone works › Action, thriller, and crime series film entries › Entries released in the 2000s › Released 2005 to 2009

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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