Japanese Cinema
Japanese cinema flourished early on and silent films were being made right through the 1930s. Most were accompanied by a 'benshi' or live narrator telling the story as well as live music. Very little survives from this era however; the 1923 earthquake, the bombings of WW2 and the country's high humidity destroyed many of these historical works. Of those that survive, the early works of Kenji Mizoguchi are highly regarded and he went on to make the classic 'The Life of Oharu' in 1952. Of course no discussion on Japanese cinema is possible without mention of their best known son, Akira Kurosawa. With a career spanning 60 years Kurosawa's ground-breaking films (e.g. 'Seven Samurai', 'Kagemusha', 'Ran') influenced film makers around the world. Most recently Japanese cinema hero 'Beat' Takeshi Kitano revitalised the Yakuza genre; and young mavericks like Takashi Miike ('Audition', 'Ichi the Killer) and Hideo Nakata ('Ring', 'Dark Water') have breathed new life into the horror flick, their films often (and promptly!) remade by US production houses.
For Japanime, use the animation link to the left.
Pictured: Kurosawa teamed once more with the incomparable Toshiro Mifune for 'Seven Samurai'
Shinobi (2005)
7/10
Director: Ten Shimoyama
Starring: Yukie Nakama, Minoru Terada, Renji Ishibashi, Tak Sakaguchi
Based on the novel by Futaro Namada set in the 1600s, a powerful shogunate stirs up the feud between two ninja clans in the hopes of consolidating his... Read more
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)
7.9/10
Director: Paul Schrader
Starring: Ken Ogata
Paul Schrader's visually stunning, collage-like portrait of acclaimed Japanese author and playwright Yukio Mishima (played by Ken Ogata) investigates... Read more
Gohatto (1999)
6.9/10
Director: Nagisa Oshima
Starring: Takeshi Kitano, Shinji Takeda, Tadanobu Asano, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Tomoroh Taguchi...
Master filmmaker Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses) returns to the screen with this fascinatingly ambiguous tale of homoerotic desire and jeal... Read more
Twenty-Four Eyes (1954)
8.1/10
Director: Keisuke Kinoshita
Starring: Hideko Takamine
A beautifully made, sensitive drama about a teacher (Hideko Takamine) beginning her long career. As the years pass we follow not only her progress, b... Read more
Ohayo ( aka Good Morning ) (1959)
7.8/10
Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Starring: Chishu Ryu, Koji Shidara, Haruko Sugimura, Kuniko Miyake, Yoshiko Kuga, Masahiko...
Ozu's hilarious Technicolor reworking of his silent "I Was Born, But...", "Ohayo" ("Good Morning") is the story of two young boys in suburban Tokyo wh... Read more
Ocean Waves (1993)
6.9/10
Director: Tomomi Mochizuki
Based upon author, essayist and playwright Saeko Himuro's most popular, best-selling novel, this is one of Studio Ghibli's most poignant and unsung ma... Read more
A Taxing Woman (1987)
7.4/10
Director: Juzo Itami
Starring: Nobuko Miyamoto, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Masahiko Tsugawa
Juzo Itami's hilarious follow-up to 'Tampopo' is a satiric comedy of ambition, greed and the battle of the sexes. A disarming and dedicated woman tax... Read more
Kite (1998)
6.7/10
Director: Yasuomi Umetsu
Starring: Animation
An acclaimed Japanamie adventure with a familiar (but no-less successful) set-up: a young girl, raised by a detective after her parents are murdered,... Read more
The 47 Ronin ( aka Chushingura ) (1962)
7.6/10
Director: Hiroshi Inagaki
Starring: Yuzo Kayama, Koshiro Matsumoto, Toshiro Mifune, Tatsuya Mihashi, Yosuke Natsuki,...
One of the most retold stories in Japanese cinema is this historical samurai saga set at the turn of the 18th century, in which 47 loyal ronin seek ve... Read more
Drive My Car (2021)
7.6/10
Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Starring: Hidetoshi Nishijima
A renowned stage actor and director learns to cope with his wife's unexpected passing when he receives an offer to direct a production of Uncle Vanya... Read more