Best Japanese Films Kinema Junpo (1926-2025)

Weaving two storylines together: the first is the story of 18th-century shogunate intrigue and loyalty, and the second is a ghost story about a beautiful woman who falls victim to passion and evil.

A delightful and moving coming-of-age story. One summer, three young boys take an increasing interest in an eccentric old man who lives alone in a house surrounded by an overgrown garden. The boys form a bond with the recluse and set about weeding and replanting the garden.

1994 film by Naoto Takenaka

1994 film directed by Ryuichi Hiroki

The Raccoons of the Tama Hills are being forced from their homes by the rapid development of houses and shopping malls. As it becomes harder to find food and shelter, they decide to band together and fight back. The Raccoons practice and perfect the ancient art of transformation until they are even able to appear as humans in hilarious circumstances.

A look at the lives of two prostitutes in Tokyo: Rei, who works as an S&M dominatrix, and Ayumi, in the more straightforward profession of call girl. In addition to their working life, the film also looks at their private lives. Rei is acting in an amateur theatre company along with the receptionist from Ayumi's escort service, while Ayumi is living with her student-boyfriend as he struggles to finally get accepted to college.

A school bus driver's life is irrevocably altered when his young son is kidnapped and murdered.

A five-part comedy and horror anthology

Kon Ichikawa's retelling of the classic true story of Samurai honor. When a young clan lord is forced to commit seppuku (ritual suicide), his loyal followers (now Ronin, masterless Samurai) dedicate their lives to avenging his death.

An undercover narcotics officer is killed, and after his funeral some yakuza break into his apartment and rape his wife, Nami, while looking for the drugs they claim he stole from them. Afterwards Nami attempts to commit suicide, but after being rescued by a mysterious yakuza she decides to infiltrate the gang and get revenge.

Coffee-shop waitress Kanako, divorced with a young son, finds herself obliged to honour a rash promise she made to a long-time customer. He always wanted to be buried in the land rather than a cemetery, so that his body would be 'useful' - and now he's dead. Kanako and her boy enlist the help of a friendly florist with a small truck, steal the corpse, and head for the mountains.

Maiku Hama is a private detective working in Yokohama. Hama comes to the aid of a Taiwanese waiter named Yang and agrees to track down his missing brother. Through a series of double-crosses Hama gets embroiled in a gang war and a revenge plot between the two brothers

A film like an Impressionist painting; the kind of paintings to have titles like 'urban view from the artist's studio'. The film is largely set in the film-maker's home and the street in the provincial town of Aichi where he lives. Minor everyday incidents are observed poetically; the melancholy mood of the images is boosted by serene electronic music. There is no dialogue; the sound track only comprises streets sounds as well as the music. Loose, almost nonchalant impressions of the street or of cloudy skies are juxtaposed with posed, almost photographic mildly homo-erotic portraits of friends of the film-maker. Tarch Trip is made up of fragments of a cinematographic diary, which are however not edited chronologically. Two periods alternate. One is characterized rain and dark cloudy skies. The other is sunny and repeatedly accompanied by three friends

As famous photographer, Yuta Suzumori's (Tatsuya Fuji) health is worsening he tells a childhood story of when he saw a kappa in his hometown village of Kitagawa.

The story of a ménage à trois between the editor of a magazine, his girlfriend, and his young sister.

A Korean taxi-driver interacts both humorously and tragically with his customers and employers in '90s Tokyo.

Physically separated from her father and at odds with her distraught mother, a girl must negotiate her own passage to maturity.

Filmed in a documentary style, six patients in six wards of different ages and circumstances await death at a hospital in Japan. The sterile and dismal environment is contrasted against the emotional being of the patients, their visitors and relatives and the outside world, which they will never again survey.

Murakawa, an aging Tokyo yakuza tiring of gangster life, is sent by his boss to Okinawa along with a few of his henchmen to help end a gang war, supposedly as mediators between two warring clans. He finds that the dispute between the clans is insignificant and whilst wondering why he was sent to Okinawa at all, his group is attacked in an ambush. The survivors flee and make a decision to lay low at the beach while they await further instructions.

本片榮獲藝學院賞最佳電影、最佳劇本、最佳男主角（西田敏行）最佳助演男配角（田中邦衛）最佳新人（萩原聖人、裕木奈江）暨最佳導演六項大獎！！

《學校》是山田洋次構思了15年的意念。影片的背景是一所夜間中學，負責教學的是已屆中年的黑井先生。

他本來可以有機會調職到另一家正規學校任教，但他卻拒絕了。又一個學期要過去，在畢業禮即將來臨之前，黑井叫每個學生都以過去一年的日子做題材，寫下一些值得回味的事情。班上的同學，有不同年齡的、不同國藉和背景的，不約而同都發現：歲月雖然匆匆，但箇中悲喜，尤其是黑井的關懷，卻教他們永誌難忘。

本片是山田洋次創作生涯上的另一高峰：七年間已拍了四集，是山田繼《男人之苦》後的第二個成功系列。

Directed by the creator of the Tora-san series, Yamada Yoji, "A Class to Remember" unfolds in a night junior high school on the lower east side of Tokyo. Students from their teens to their sixties are enrolled. One of the most beloved teachers, Kuroi, asks each student to write an essay recalling their experience in the night school. In the midst of the class, a piece of tragic news arrives: Inoda, one of Kuroi's students, has passed away, upon which the whole class starts talking about each other's memory of Inoda. Compassionate and extremely poignant, "A Class to Remember", marks the beginning of another film series for Yamada. So far four installments have been made and all are box office hits.