Best Japanese Films Kinema Junpo (1926-2025)

The prison guards working in penitentiaries where death row inmates are locked up are forced to spend their daily lives constantly facing death.

Higashigaoka Junior High School is in turmoil as one of the pupils, Noguchi, who had been bullied, attempted suicide last term. On the first day of the new term, a substitute teacher arrives to take the second year class. When the teacher, Murauchi (Hiroshi Abe), introduces himself, the pupils are surprised by his stutter. He has a speech impediment. Unable to speak eloquently, Murauchi faces his pupils with ‘words of truth’. His first instruction to the pupils is to return Noguchi’s desk and chair to the original place in the classroom. Every morning Murauchi greets the empty desk, “Good morning, Noguchi.” This causes a ripple beyond the classroom and among other teachers and parents, but Murauchi will not stop doing it. Eventually the day comes when Murauchi must leave.

17 year-old Hiruma is desperate to get laid and takes out his sexual urges on Anpai, a fat boy who has "boobs." His classmate Tomono, a sickly loner, is in a serious relationship with their married teacher.

A school teacher suggests to his class that they ought to raise a pig together and eat it when it grows up.

Machisu is a painter. He never had the success he thinks he is entitled to. Regardless of this, he always remains trying to be successful. His wife Sachiko keeps supporting him, despite all setbacks.

While researching a story on a school for problem children, Nakahara meets Emi, a college volunteer with a compelling tale of her own. After overcoming her initial reluctance to open up to the writer, Emi talks about her busted leg and her childhood friendship with the chronically ill Yuka.

A 13-year-old girl named Mai refuses to go to school due to her asthma. Her parents send her to to stay with her British grandmother in the countryside. Thinking her grandmother is a witch, Mai asks for witch lessons. Her grandmother plays along, but instead ends up teaching Mai lessons which help her become more responsible and enjoy the simple aspects of life.

Sakiko is a typical teenager in many ways. She hates her divorced father, who chases after every skirt he sees. She does not know, if she will ever be loved by the other sex. When her dad suddenly inherits a lot of money and becomes really lazy, she hates him even more. He finally decides to start his own cafe, where Sakiko, of course has to help. From this moment, strange customers and good-looking waitresses form the center of tension between father and daughter.

Nobuko tried to be successful as an actress in Tokyo (stage name ‘Nonko’), but wasn’t popular. She married her manager and soon divorced. Now a once-divorced woman in her mid-30s, she returns home to the Shinto shrine that her family runs, to help out with domestic chores. Her father is always in a stubborn rage, her mother is always trying to calm things down. However, Nonko’s married sister, who already has a daughter, scathingly says of Nonko, “It’s all over for her.”

Asako, a comic book artist in her early forties, is devastated by the death of her precious cat, Saba, which kept her company for over 15 years, as her assistant Naomi watches on with concern. Naomi is a young woman in her early twenties, who has her set of worries about love and future. Then one day, Asako meets a new cat, Gu Gu, which brings new joy and vitality to her life. What is more, she finds potential for love in a man named Seiji. Like Asako, Naomi, too, embarks on a new life plan.

2008 Japanese anime film directed by Mamoru Oshii

The film looks at the history of Yasukuni Shrine in Chiyoda, Tokyo, where more than 2 million of Japan's war dead are enshrined. More than 1,000 of them are war criminals convicted at the 1946–48 Tokyo tribunal, including 14 Class-A war criminals, Hideki Tōjō among them. The film shows not only the widely reported political incidents associated with the shrine, but also takes an in-depth look at the shrine's sword-making tradition, the Yasukuni sword being the film's underlying motif.

A young man is falsely accused of molesting a high-school girl on a train. He is arrested and charged, and goes through endless court sessions, all the while insisting that he is innocent.

When eighth-grade cool guy Hiromi transfers from Tokyo to a small elementary/middle school with only six kids enrolled, wholesome and honest Soyo becomes enthralled with his sophisticated world.

The movie revolves around Mitsuba, who studies traditional art of rakugo. Rakugo is a form of comical story telling, sometimes referred to as sit-down comedy. Even though Mitsuba is mediocre at best, he ends up teaching three students.

Kenji, abandoned by his mother, scrapes out a meager existence doing odd jobs including driving bar hostesses and their customers home. Besides this he takes care of the sister of an old friend in jail and a young illegal immigrant. Eventually his life reaches a turning point.

A small, lone Kappa miraculously survives over 200 years into modern day Japan, when he is found by young Koichi. Coo, who is secretly adopted by Koichi's family, searches with his new human friend for unpopulated places in hopes of finding any remaining of his kind.

The film begins in the present, with its heroine, Kaoru, a grown-up woman working as a real-estate agent, while helping out the folksy proprietor of a neighborhood fishing pond. There she meets a shy girl who needs her help baiting a hook and reminds her of herself in the fourth grade.

When a gold ingot and a severed human head are discovered in a small provincial town, the rush to solve the curious case wavers between tragic and darkly humorous.

After the unexpected death of her husband a new life begins for Toshiko. 30 years of a happy marriage seem to suddenly vanish as she finds out that her husband had lived a double life. Struggling between her anger and the chance to begin a new chapter for herself, she finds her life moving into unchartered waters as she faces her 60th birthday.