A Man With Style is a bittersweet family drama which has at its centre two fifty-something school friends – widower Junichi Miyata (Ken Mitsuishi), a blue-collar worker and Sanada (Tomorowo Taguchi). Both are rather ordinary middle-aged men, far removed from any association with ‘style.’ Junichi Miyata is the more cantankerous and frustrated of the two in Ishii’s oeuvre. His wife died of cancer ten years ago, leaving him with an overriding memory of a silly but hilariously acted children’s song of bunnies she used to sing and two children who now, aged 18 and 19, hardly engage with him and are keen to move to university in Tokyo. He is short-tempered with them and nags them endlessly to no avail.