Best Japanese Films Kinema Junpo (1926-2025)

Aoshima, a police detective working in the Bayside Precinct, is continually frustrated by the hierarchy and red tape that plague the system. His friend Muroi is climbing the ladder of the police bureaucracy. Muroi has made a pact with Aoshima that while Aoshima looks after the streets, Muroi would make life easier for the cops on the beat. One day in Bayside, a series of events turns the small station upside down.

1998 film directed by Tatsuya Mori

Tokyo schoolgirl Hiromi and her friends engage in a practice known as enjo kosai, or "compensated dating", where older men pay young girls for dates. Hiromi plunges deeper into this world to raise money for an expensive ring.

It has been two years since unsuccessful cartoonist Tsube started to live with Kuniko casually in a small apartment.

A mysterious video has been linked to a number of deaths, and when an inquisitive journalist finds the tape and views it herself, she sets in motion a chain of events that puts her own life in danger.

Kenichi is a half-Japanese, half-Chinese man of the underworld. You can sell him anything except children's organs. His domain is in Kabukicho, a gangland controlled by various Shanghai gangs intent on taking control. His former partner-in-crime, Fu-Chun, is rumored to have returned to Kabukicho, having fled years earlier after killing the number two of gangland boss, Yuan. Yuan wants to get even and attempts to do so by using Kenichi.

A dark and strange comedy about a bank robber with bad luck. Bungling a bank robbery turns out to be a profitable mistake for Yamazaki, an amateur crook who ends up with 80 million yen after a string of improbable accidents. But having so much cash doesn't make his life is any easier. In fact, it gets much more complicated when Yamazaki stabs a hairdresser by mistake and instantly becomes a hunted fugitive. He's just one unlucky monkey but can he turn his luck around?

1998 film by Shunji Iwai

Nostalgia is Takashi Miike’s favorite film of his considerable body of work. Including biographical elements, Nostalgia centers around the home and school of a young boy, whose family mix the violent and dysfunctional with the comic and the loveable. Though containing elements of the sudden and shocking brutality that many associate with this director, Young Thugs – Nostalgia is more concerned with a child’s moment of leaving the internalized world of fantasy, and passing on eagerly to the next stage of life. A wonderful, touching, startling vision that is uniquely Miike’s.

1997 film directed by Shōhei Imamura

Ashitaka, a prince of the disappearing Emishi people, is cursed by a demonized boar god and must journey to the west to find a cure. Along the way, he encounters San, a young human woman fighting to protect the forest, and Lady Eboshi, who is trying to destroy it. Ashitaka must find a way to bring balance to this conflict.

A love story written by an ordinary housewife is going to be broadcast as a radio drama and almost everyone among the crew insists on changing various parts of the play to their liking.

When Koichi Hamanaka returns after his mysterious disappearance years earlier, journalist Asakura who befriended Hamanaka's wife during his absence, tries to piece together the reasons for his departure.

After spending over half his life in prison, ex-hitman Kunihiro is determined to go straight. But the shortcomings of the new gangs mean that he is soon having to call on his old-school yakuza talents. And when he falls for Asako, a beautiful piano player, she unknowingly ignites a fire within Kuni that will immolate everything and everybody around him. Regarded by many as his masterpiece, Onibi has all the hallmarks of a Mochizuki film, with the gangster elements tightly compressed and controlled to allow space in which a subdued romance can bloom. Coming from a background in porno cinema, this master of sexual relations injects a fresh passion and tension into the macho world of the yakuza film.

和许多那个年纪的少女一样，丽莎（冈元夕纪子 饰）对美国的生活充满了向往和憧憬，为了筹得前往美国的旅费，她甚至不惜徘徊在涩谷的街头，出卖自己年轻而又富有活力的身体。漂亮又可爱的丽莎很快就攒够了钱，没想到，就在临行的前一天，一次抢劫令她失去了她的全部积蓄，美国梦也随之破灭。
一位名叫乐谷（佐藤康惠 饰）的女孩目睹了抢劫的经过，丽莎不幸的遭遇让她深受感动，她决定要以一己之力帮助这个可怜的女孩，在乐谷的带领下，丽莎结识了干练的纯子（佐藤仁美 饰），为了筹钱，三个女孩可谓是奇招尽出，而她们不知道的是，真正的麻烦和危险正在慢慢逼近。

1997 film by Naoto Takenaka

A journalist reporting on the 1997 Kobe earthquake recalls a boat trip he took as a boy after WWII to bury his brother's ashes, during which his family grapples with life in occupied Japan.

Depicts the life of a family in a remote Japanese timber village. Family head Tahara Kozo lives with his mother Sachiko, wife Yasuyo, nephew Eisuke and young daughter Michiru. Economic recession and failed development plans cause tragedy in the family.

Mitsu works in a factory and has a crush on Tsutomu, a young man she met on the Tokyo streets. One day the two go out, and after some deception, Tsutomu manages to have his way with her. Coming from a broken home, he is frightened by love, so he cruelly allows her to wake up alone. A month passes and a more grown-up Tsutomu returns. The lovers joyously reunite and move in together. All is blissful until both notice a strange sore on Mitsu's arm. The doctors diagnose it as leprosy. Without telling Tsutomu, Mitsu checks into a leper sanitarium. Hanging out with society's pariahs gives her much insight. She discovers the old lepers to be wonderful people. In turn, Mitsu becomes their source of joy and renewed hope. Still, she misses her Tsutomu. One day, the doctors inform her that they erred and that the sore is not leprosy. Happily she heads back to her true love until she realizes with a guilty pang that to return to him would mean unhappiness for her newfound friends

The slow collapse of the relationship between an out-of-work actor and his girlfriend.