Best Japanese Films Kinema Junpo (1926-2025)

Ten years into a marriage, the wife is disappointed by the husband's lack of financial success, meaning she has to work and can't treat herself and the husband finds the wife slovenly and mean-spirited: she neither cooks not cleans particularly well and is generally disagreeable. In turn, he alternately ignores her and treats her as a servant. Neither is particularly happy, not helped by their unsatisfactory lodgers. The husband is easily seduced by an ex-colleague, a widow with a small child who needs some security, and considers leaving his wife.

SINCERE HEART (1953, aka MAGOKORO) was Masaki Kobayashi's second film as a director -- but as with his first, YOUTH OF THE SON, it is something of a hybrid work, influenced heavily by his longtime mentor Keisuke Kinoshita, who wrote the screenplay. The resulting film is a deeply passionate and sentimental drama about a young student (Akira Inshihama) who falls into a hopeless romantic attraction to an invalid girl (Keiko Awaji) whom he can only see from afar.

Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.

The story of Kiyoko, a young woman who has successfully managed to make a break with her dysfunctional family who have been trying to arrange a marriage for her with a disagreeable man whom she has rejected.

Having completed the first year at his new medical practice, a doctor plans to relax on his day off. However, it is not to be: on this hectic day a man just back from the war front visits the doctor with a medical emergency, followed by a woman who claims to have been molested. Then a yakuza arrives to ask the doctor to cut his finger off...

A section chief at the Bureau of Construction is in a shady relationship with a construction company. Then a new, young and honest subordinate is assigned to work under the section chief. Once he learns about the shady relationship, however, the new subordinate skillfully conceals the corruption and joins the corrupt, shady relationship.

Strip dancer Carmen falls in love with Hajime, who is engaged to the daughter of a right-wing politician.

Just before the end of the war, Japanese soldier Kitani is released from prison, having served his term for theft. Told in flashback, viewers learn about Kitani's past and reasons behind his prison sentence.

A teenaged girl witnesses her widowed mother's attempt to sustain her family.

A story of a passionate teacher and his great effort for the children in a poor village.

1952 film by Kenji Mizoguchi

The arranged marriage between a capricious woman from Tokyo high society and a quiet and rustic man is tested by a marital crisis.

Shows the devastation caused by the atomic bomb, and by use of a fictional storyline, portrays the struggle of the ordinary Japanese people in dealing with the aftermath.

Before a young woman can be sold to a geisha, she becomes pregnant.

The film depicts how the work to build the Great Buddha overcame a number of obstacles as proponents and opponents clashed over the construction of the Buddha. This work is based on a play by Hideo Osada, which was performed by the Shin Kyodo Theater Company in 1940.

A fugitive lord and his six retainers disguise themselves as monks to bluff their way through a hostile checkpoint.

A 28-year-old single woman is pressured to marry.

1951 film by Mikio Naruse

1951 film

1951 film