Best Japanese Films Kinema Junpo (1926-2025)

2002 film by Daisuke Tengan

Husband and wife Michiko and Takao move from their urban existence in Tokyo to the isolated, rural farming village where Takao grew up.

Twelve year old Sei has hit puberty and is quickly becoming sexually aware, sometimes not as privately as he'd like; erections in school and other inopportune times plague him. He talks about it with his school friends, Kinta and Nyanko, in between their feuding over the affections of classmate Yumi, but can't figure out what to do about it.

As children, the introverted Smile was being bullied by a gang of kids until the brash Peco comes by and chases all of them them away. Peco then takes Smile under his wings and teaches him how to play the game of ping pong. From there a life long best friend relationship comes into existence between these two polar opposite kids.

2002 film by Toshiaki Toyoda

2002 film by Takeshi Kitano

In a world where vendettas are officially sanctioned, the people sometimes needed help in carrying out their vengeance. Sanada Hiroyuki stars as Sukeroku the Helper, a ‘cool and rambling yakuza’ that has made a business out of helping victims carry out their revenge. When he returns to his hometown to pay a visit to his mother’s grave he meets a deadly ronin who carries a secret which eventually leads him into a vendetta of his own.

13-year-old Sachiko is about to encounter the most difficult moments in her young life. Her father abandons her and her mother attempts to commit suicide by slashing her wrist. Her teacher, whom she relies on heavily, leaves for northern Japan to take another job. Other students start to gossip about Sachiko and her former teacher. Sachiko then drops out of school and attempts to find herself.

Mitsuko, a thirty-something Japanese secretary, lives a very simple life devoid of ambition. She has an affair with Eiji, a rich, arrogant and newly divorced businessman who is intrigued by her retiring personnality but she quickly breaks up as he repeatedly tries to make her change her lifestyle and values. While Eiji ponders the reasons of the breakup, Mitsuko falls for one of her neighbours, a young slacker who has the same approach to life as her. But Mitsuko's new lover is fascinated by Eiji's power and social status... A triangle that will inevitably leave one of the characters "unloved".

Young film star Ken Mihara is about to fall from stardom. His rise as a celebrity is solely credited to his onscreen counterpart, Keiko, who recently announced her retirement from acting in order to get married. Feeling frustrated and helpless, Ken turns to alcohol as he begins to provoke fights, attempts to lure a girl into bed, and argues with his wife, who came to visit him at the studio. All she says is thank you and leaves Ken puzzled. Ken Mihara, once a budding young star, takes a job as an extra. Although he's past his prime, he still manages to infuse a young filmmaker with the motivation to pursue her dreams as a director.

O-Shin is a young brothel worker who, one night, helps a young samurai escape from his pursuers. Against the warnings of her fellow workers, particularly Kikuno and the brothel's owner, O-Shin falls in love with the samurai.

After his wife leaves him, middle-aged Yusaku contemplates suicide, but receives a call from old friend Kenichiro, whose wife is in a coma.

When radicals from Japan's Red Army took a woman hostage in the resort town of Karuizawa, Nagano in 1972, Officer Atsuyuki Sassa was put in charge of diffusing the situation. But the task had its challenges. Upon arriving in mountainous Nagano, Sassa had to compete with freezing winter temperatures, conflicting opinions between the Tokyo Metropolitan Police and the Nagano Prefectural Police, as well as public opinion to gain entrance to the lodge that held the single woman captive.

Yu Miri is a writer who's just become pregnant by her married lover. When she decides to keep the baby without his help, her ex-boyfriend Yutaka, decides to help raise him.

A2·桥
1995年，日本奥姆真理教的六名成员，在东京地铁中制造了震惊人世的毒气沙林恐怖事件，导致11人死亡，5500余人受伤。六个月后，森达也开始拍摄一部叫《A》的电影，后来又有了《A2》，他试图从内部对奥姆真理教进行观察，他从另一种角度窥视了奥姆教的皈依者，更多的是逮捕他们的警察、暴光他们的媒体和生活在周围的人们，寻找现代日本社会中的人性。

A young man named Teru, mentally altered by a childhood injury, runs a laundry and falls for Mizue, a lonely young woman with internal scars.

When a young man is sent to a prison workhouse for a crime he did not commit his friend on the outside must find evidence to clear his name.

A Japanese film that tells the tale of the birth of VHS. It follows Kagatani Shizuo, an electronics employee who rallies his coworkers to save their jobs by increasing sales. They do this by developing the VHS standard. They battle with Sony and their standard and ultimately prevail.

Film about Sakamoto Ryōma. The focus is on Oryo, the maid who became Ryoma’s wife and lived with him for one year before his death.

2001 Japanese film by Isao Yukisada