200 1980s Japanese Films for 2026

1980 film by Toru Murakawa

When Ken, the leader of the once-notorious biker gang of Tokyo, falls in love with a barmaid, he quickly loses his rebellious ideals. The rest of the gang feels betrayed, especially the reputedly troubled kid Jin who revolts against his former friend.

The quiet life of a mother and her young son living on a farm in Hokkaido is changed by the arrival of a man who ignites flames of romance in the heart of the mother and shows her boy the importance of grit and kindness, but then he leaves with the autumn wind.

Set in Japan's Tenpyou era (729-749 CE), four young monks are sent to China to study Buddhism and bring a high priest back to Japan with them. The film tells the tale of the four monks' youth and the life and times of the high priest Ganjin.

A Shogun who grew paranoid as he became senile sent his ninjas to kill his samurai. They failed but did kill the samurai’s wife. The samurai swore to avenge the death of his wife and roams the countryside with his toddler son in search of vengeance.

緒方明借卡夫卡《變形記》拍出又狂又cult 的《東京白菜頭阿K》，K 一覺醒來發現自己變白菜頭，朋友不忿：要變都變隻更型的殭屍。阿K 東京狂奔照樣四出嚇人嚇貓嚇狗，一輪砸破常規的虛無狀態後，白菜頭高瞻遠矚去生態保育。
Ogata Akira borrows K from Kafka’s The Castle and has him metamorphosed into a cabbage head. He gets out of bed and terrorizes Tokyo by chasing down every human and animal. Pure chaos and absolute anarchy crowned with an ecological ending way ahead of its times.

At the beginning of the film, we are presented with an ordinary story. It is the story of a student organization's internal struggle. The story begins with the protagonist taking a briefcase and the organization taking it back, along with his woman. The man who brings back the bag faces the woman. The room is somehow symmetrical. The room is somehow left-right symmetrical, with a low angle and fixed screen as in the Ozu style.

A newspaper reporter investigates the lives of juvenile delinquents.

A surreal period film following a university professor and his eerie nomad friend as they go through loose romantic triangles and face death in peculiar ways.

The Kobayashi family finally are able to move out of their tiny, cramped Tokyo apartment to the suburban house of their dreams. But things are not as perfect as they seem: the house is infested by termites and the family starts going crazy. As the Kobayashi's house begins to crumble, so does the sanity of its inhabitants. Father Katsuhiko takes it upon himself to keep them from the asylum… at any cost.

After noticing in the news there was a fire in an old canal town, Eguchi recalls visiting there a decade ago as a university student.

When Wabisuke's father-in-law unexpectedly dies, the family goes through a series of random events and occurrences as the funeral unfolds over three days in their home.

1984 film by Shūji Terayama

A film about the substantial population of Koreans living in Japan, and the love affair between Kayako, a Japanese girl, and Sanjun, a Korean.

Hanasareru Gang actually encapsulates three titles in one, for when written without Kanji characters, it can describe a gang that is “on everyone’s lips”, “flowery” or “separated from one other”. The film plays with these different meanings to tell the not strictly chronological story of a fun-loving young woman who joins up with a pair of petty criminals. After they steal a car containing a suitcase full of bank notes, they must go their separate ways. When the characters comment on the action in voiceover, ask how much more time the film is going to give them, quote from “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” or suddenly jump back and forth between tragedy and slapstick in tune with the music, one might think that Pierrot le fou got lost and ended up in Japan.

From a true incident that happened in 1960s Japan. This drama is contemporary in setting but medieval in its characters and emotions as it focuses on a tangled web of murder and deceit encountered by a beautiful woman, Kayo (Sayuri Yoshinaga) after her abusive husband is murdered.

A journalist. Two photographers. One infamous serial killer on the loose. DARKROOM FANTASIES is directed by 77mi.cc Academy Award Winning Director Yojiro Takita.

A Japanese teenager travels to New Caledonia in search of the fabled "island closest to heaven" that her late father had told her about.

Ogami Itto, framed for treason and surviving a deadly attack, becomes a lone assassin with his son. They face ruthless ruffians, setting the stage for a showdown in his quest for justice.

It is A.D. 2009 and the human race is caught in a war between giant humanoids, male Zentrans and female Meltrans. Returning from the edge of our solar system after making a space fold, the SDF-1 Macross makes the long journey back to Earth with survivors of South Ataria Island.