Best Japanese Films Kinema Junpo (1926-2025)

With Ran, legendary director Akira Kurosawa reimagines Shakespeare's King Lear as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan. Majestic in scope, the film is Kurosawa's late-life masterpiece, a profound examination of the folly of war and the crumbling of one family under the weight of betrayal, greed, and the insatiable thirst for power.

Tatsuo, a reverent lumberjack, seeks to disrupt plans to build a marine park on his family land, instead promoting his traditions in reactionary ways.

1985 film by Shinji Sōmai

Lonely and love-stricken high-school student Hiroki pursues a girl, but another one mysteriously appears in his life. Is she a figment of his psyche, or is she real?

Barbara, a dancer, is coming home to Nagoya after a long absence. She lives above a bar in an area whose inhabitants are mainly from Okinawa. Upon her return, Barbara faces problems beyond her control. Her brother and two friends take one of their teachers hostage to extort money to go on a school trip. Miyazato, the man who loves Barbara is there, but not Aiko, her best friend. Miyazato, a yakuza and manager in a nuclear power plant has forced Aiko into prostitution for the workers of the plant. Barbara plans to help her escape from this hell. Aiko has been sent to Mihama. Without even thinking for a moment, Barbara decided to go see her friend.

Grandfather Fuyukichi Takano, a former university professor, gets fired from his museum job when he is affected by Alzheimer's disease, but his affliction serves to deepen family ties. Japan's submission to the 58th Academy Awards for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

In this humorous paean to the joys of food, a pair of truck drivers happen onto a decrepit roadside shop selling ramen noodles. The widowed owner, Tampopo, begs them to help her turn her establishment into a paragon of the "art of noodle-soup making". Interspersed are satirical vignettes about the importance of food to different aspects of human life.

A man incurs a large debt and goes bankrupt. The yakuza come to collect and rape his wife. Racked with guilt he decides to pick up call girl and commit suicide. He fails and years later as a taxi driver he meets the call girl by chance and they begin a complicated relationship.

One year after the Kidojis' eldest son Otohiko was arrested for his part in a terrorist kidnapping, which resulted in multiple deaths, all the other perpetrators' parents have either resigned from their professional positions or taken their own lives, Nobuyuki Kidoji remains adamant that he is not responsible for his son's actions.

A man returns to his seaside roots to confront a yakuza boss. Along the way, he charms young men, softens a hard woman and busts a few heads.

Rokuheita Narumi is fascinated by oriental art and works as the director of the Saho Art Museum in Nara. His wife, Noriko, is unable to leave Tokyo, despite his wishes, and the two live separately. Feeling lonely and neglected by her husband, she immerses herself in the depraved life of the city and continues to have a loveless relationship with a doctor, Katsumori. One day, Narumi arrives in Tokyo and learns of Noriko's affair, but he cannot divorce her for the sake of their child, so he devotes himself to his work.

When a fugitive begins a romance with the woman hiding him from the law, it becomes uncertain whether he will ever escape the shadow of his heinous crimes--or the detectives hot on his trail.

1985 film by Gisaburō Sugii

Drama about the difficult relationship between a former wrestler, his wife and their adopted children.

1985 film by Seijun Suzuki

Shuji was once a feared member of the Yakuza crime syndicate, but he's reformed his ways, abandoned his old life and left the city for a small coastal fishing town where he's become an honest fisherman.

Filled with guilt over his forbidden desires, a young man leaves home and his studies. He finds a new smaller place to stay, a low-paying but satisfying job and a girlfriend. Then his mother, unable to fight her forbidden desires, shows up.

1985 film by Shinji Sōmai

Country girl Akiko visits a Tokyo college in search of her hometown sweetheart. In the course of finding him, she runs into various odd inhabitants of the college campus–blasé intellectuals, horny co-eds, a psych professor in search of the theory of shame, and of course her beloved Yoshioka, who has become an elusive campus nobody.

Go Takamine's first theatrical feature is a pioneering work of Okinawan cinema, filmed almost entirely in Okinawan dialect. Taking place shortly before the resumption of Japanese sovereignty over Okinawa, Takamine’s film tacitly addresses the island prefecture's complicated history of occupation and feelings of dislocation through the story of a small community and its preparations for a wedding between a local girl and a Japanese teacher. On the periphery of these events is Reishu (Kaoru Kobayashi), who quits his job on a US military base and uses the extra time to catch snakes and play with ants – and get the bride-to-be pregnant. Takamine’s leisurely-paced film is full of uniquely Okinawan touches that mix in aspects of the island's folklore, accompanied by Haruomi Hosono’s spare and evocative score.