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Essential Japanese Cinema

Tokyo Story (1953)
Yasujirō Ozu · 187 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.
Seven Samurai (1954)
Akira Kurosawa · 98 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, Shout! Factory TV, Plex · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
A samurai answers a village's request for protection after he falls on hard times. The town needs protection from bandits, so the samurai gathers six others to help him teach the people how to defend themselves, and the villagers provide the soldiers with food.
Late Spring (1949)
Yasujirō Ozu · 80 critic votes
Free on Plex, Cineverse, Plex Channel · Streaming on Fandor, Fandor Amazon Channel, Criterion Channel
Noriko is perfectly happy living at home with her widowed father, Shukichi, and has no plans to marry -- that is, until her aunt Masa convinces Shukichi that unless he marries off his 27-year-old daughter soon, she will likely remain alone for the rest of her life. When Noriko resists Masa's matchmaking, Shukichi is forced to deceive his daughter and sacrifice his own happiness to do what he believes is right.
Rashomon (1950)
Akira Kurosawa · 75 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, YouTube Free, Plex · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
Four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife.
Spirited Away (2001)
Hayao Miyazaki · 42 critic votes
Streaming on HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A young girl, Chihiro, becomes trapped in a strange new world of spirits. When her parents undergo a mysterious transformation, she must call upon the courage she never knew she had to free her family.
Ugetsu (1953)
Kenji Mizoguchi · 41 critic votes
Free on Darkroom, Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
In 16th century Japan, peasants Genjuro and Tobei sell their earthenware pots to a group of soldiers in a nearby village, in defiance of a local sage's warning against seeking to profit from warfare. Genjuro's pursuit of both riches and the mysterious Lady Wakasa, as well as Tobei's desire to become a samurai, run the risk of destroying both themselves and their wives, Miyagi and Ohama.
My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
Hayao Miyazaki · 40 critic votes
Streaming on HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Two sisters move to the country with their father in order to be closer to their hospitalized mother, and discover the surrounding trees are inhabited by Totoros, magical spirits of the forest. When the youngest runs away from home, the older sister seeks help from the spirits to find her.
Sansho the Bailiff (1954)
Kenji Mizoguchi · 39 critic votes
Free on Darkroom, Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, Fawesome
In 11th-century feudal Japan, following the exile of an idealistic governor, his wife and children are separated by slave traders; the children, Zushio and Anju, are sold into brutal servitude under the cruel bailiff Sansho.
Ikiru (1952)
Akira Kurosawa · 28 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
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.
Ran (1985)
Akira Kurosawa · 21 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Kanopy, BFI Player Amazon Channel, Lionsgate+ Amazon Channels
Shakespeare's King Lear is reimagined as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan where an aging warlord divides his kingdom between his three sons.
An Autumn Afternoon (1962)
Yasujirō Ozu · 20 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Widower Shuhei Hirayama's caretaker is his 24-year-old daughter, Michiko. Gradually, he comes to realize that Michiko should not be obliged to look after him for the rest of his life, so he arranges a marriage for her.
Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
Isao Takahata · 16 critic votes
Streaming on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
In the final months of World War II, 14-year-old Seita and his sister Setsuko are orphaned when their mother is killed during an air raid in Kobe, Japan. After a falling out with their aunt, they move into an abandoned bomb shelter. With no surviving relatives and their emergency rations depleted, Seita and Setsuko struggle to survive.
Princess Mononoke (1997)
Hayao Miyazaki · 15 critic votes
Streaming on HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
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.
The Life of Oharu (1952)
Kenji Mizoguchi · 14 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, Fawesome
During the Edo Period, a noblewoman's banishment for her love affair with a lowly page signals the beginning of her inexorable fall.
The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (1939)
Kenji Mizoguchi · 13 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel
In late 19th-century Tokyo, Kikunosuke Onoue, the adopted son of a legendary actor, himself an actor specializing in female roles, discovers that the praise he receives is only due to his status as his father's heir. Devastated, he turns to Otoku, a servant of his family, for comfort, and they fall in love. Kikunosuke becomes determined to leave home and develop as an actor on his own merits, and Otoku faithfully joins him.
Funeral Parade of Roses (1969)
Toshio Matsumoto · 13 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Night Flight Plus, Eternal Family
In 1960s Tokyo, Gonda owns a bar in which the gay, cross-dresser, and trans scenes meet. Gonda is in a relationship with the madam of the bar, Leda. As the younger Eddie starts a passionate affair with Gonda, she ignites the jealousy of Leda, unaware of another kind of history between them.
After Life (1998)
Hirokazu Koreeda · 12 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
On a cold Monday morning, a group of counselors clock in at an old-fashioned social services office. Their task is to interview the recently deceased, record their personal details, then, over the course of the week, assist them in choosing a single memory to keep for eternity.
Throne of Blood (1957)
Akira Kurosawa · 11 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by a spirit who predicts their futures. When the first part of the spirit's prophecy comes true, Washizu's scheming wife, Asaji, presses him to speed up the rest of the spirit's prophecy by murdering his lord and usurping his place. Director Akira Kurosawa's resetting of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in feudal Japan is one of his most acclaimed films.
Yojimbo (1961)
Akira Kurosawa · 11 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the local gambling trade. Taking the name Sanjuro Kuwabatake, the ronin convinces both silk merchant Tazaemon and sake merchant Tokuemon to hire him as a personal bodyguard, then artfully sets in motion a full-scale gang war between the two ambitious and unscrupulous men.
A Page of Madness (1926)
Teinosuke Kinugasa · 9 critic votes
Free on Darkroom, Tubi TV · Streaming on Fawesome
A man takes a job at an asylum with hopes of freeing his imprisoned wife.
High and Low (1963)
Akira Kurosawa · 9 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, YouTube Free, Shout! Factory TV · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A Yokohama shoe executive faces a wrenching choice when kidnappers mistakenly seize his chauffeur’s son but demand the ransom anyway.
In the Realm of the Senses (1976)
Nagisa Ōshima · 9 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A passionate telling of the story of Sada Abe, a woman whose affair with her master led to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship.
Akira (1988)
Katsuhiro Otomo · 9 critic votes
Streaming on Crunchyroll, Crunchyroll Amazon Channel
A secret military project endangers Neo-Tokyo when it turns a biker gang member into a rampaging psychic psychopath that only two teenagers and a group of psychics can stop.
Cure (1997)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa · 9 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A frustrated detective deals with the case of several gruesome murders committed by people who have no recollection of what they've done.
Still Walking (2008)
Hirokazu Koreeda · 9 critic votes
Streaming on Sundance Now, Kanopy, Criterion Channel
A family gathers together for a commemorative ritual whose nature only gradually becomes clear.
The Eternal Breasts (1955)
Kinuyo Tanaka · 8 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Fumiko, mother of two and wife to an unfaithful man, shares her family life with her budding vocation as a poet. The beginning of her successful literary career coincides with her divorce and her breast cancer diagnosis. In her final stages, Fumiko meets a young journalist from Tokyo who wants to write a story on her experiences.
Good Morning (1959)
Yasujirō Ozu · 8 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of intergenerational relationships, Good Morning tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after their parents refuse to buy a television set. Ozu weaves a wealth of subtle gags through a family portrait as rich as those of his dramatic films, mocking the foibles of the adult world through the eyes of his child protagonists. Shot in stunning color and set in a suburb of Tokyo where housewives gossip about the neighbors’ new washing machine and unemployed husbands look for work as door-to-door salesmen, this charming comedy refashions Ozu’s own silent classic I Was Born, But . . . to gently satirize consumerism in postwar Japan.
I Was Born, But... (1932)
Yasujirō Ozu · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
Brothers Keiji and Ryoichi move to a new neighborhood in the Tokyo suburbs after their father, an office clerk, is promoted. The boys join the local gang as lowly new kids and emerge as natural leaders after defeating a bully. While visiting the home of their father's boss, the brothers witness the ridicule their father endures to please his superior. Angry and embarrassed, the boys find their naive ideas about power being challenged.
Early Summer (1951)
Yasujirō Ozu · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
In postwar Tokyo, Noriko lives with her extended family. Although she enjoys her career and her social life, her more traditional family worries about her single marital status at the advanced age of 28. 40-year-old business associate Takako proposes, Noriko's family press her into accepting, but when her widowed childhood friend Kenkichi returns to the neighborhood, she finds her heart leading in another direction.
Harakiri (1962)
Masaki Kobayashi · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Down-on-his-luck veteran Tsugumo Hanshirō enters the courtyard of the prosperous House of Iyi. Unemployed, and with no family, he hopes to find a place to commit seppuku—and a worthy second to deliver the coup de grâce in his suicide ritual. The senior counselor for the Iyi clan questions the ronin’s resolve and integrity, suspecting Hanshirō of seeking charity rather than an honorable end. What follows is a pair of interlocking stories which lay bare the difference between honor and respect, and promises to examine the legendary foundations of the Samurai code.
The Woman in the Dunes (1964)
Hiroshi Teshigahara · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Darkroom
A vacationing entomologist suffers extreme physical and psychological trauma after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village and made to live with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.
Red Beard (1965)
Akira Kurosawa · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed when his first post after medical school takes him to a small country clinic under the gruff doctor Red Beard. Yasumoto rebels in numerous ways, but Red Beard proves a wise and patient teacher. He gradually introduces his student to the unglamorous side of the profession, ultimately assigning him to care for a prostitute rescued from a local brothel.
The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On (1987)
Kazuo Hara · 7 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Kenzo Okuzaki, a 62-year-old veteran of the New Guinea campaign in World War II, sets out to conduct interviews with survivors and relatives to find the truth behind atrocities committed by Japanese military, in particular the unexplained killing of two Japanese privates in his unit.
Shoplifters (2018)
Hirokazu Koreeda · 7 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, The Roku Channel, Plex · Streaming on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Kanopy
In the outskirts of Tokyo, a poor but close-knit group living on the fringes of society survives through shoplifting and odd jobs. When Osamu and his son take in a neglected young girl, their already fragile existence begins to unravel. As the family grows attached to her, buried secrets surface, forcing them to confront the true meaning of love, belonging, and what makes a family.
Scattered Clouds (1967)
Mikio Naruse · 6 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A man is involved in a fatal car accident, and though he is blameless, his company transfers him to a remote branch in a small town. Before he leaves, he gives the man's widow a large sum of money that she uses to move back to her hometown.
The Ballad of Narayama (1983)
Shohei Imamura · 6 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, ARROW
In a small village in a valley everyone who reaches the age of 70 must leave the village and go to a certain mountain top to die. If anyone should refuse they would disgrace their family. Old Orin is 69. This winter it is her turn to go to the mountain. But first she must make sure that her eldest son Tatsuhei finds a wife.
Happy Hour (2015)
Ryusuke Hamaguchi · 6 critic votes
Four women in their thirties reevaluate their relationships, both shared and private, after a startling revelation concerning one's marriage forces each of them to ask one of life's biggest questions: "Am I who I want to be?"
The Only Son (1936)
Yasujirō Ozu · 5 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A rural widow sends her only son to Tokyo to receive a better education. Years later, she visits him and finds he has become a night school teacher struggling to support his wife and son.
Miss Oyu (1951)
Kenji Mizoguchi · 5 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Fawesome
Shinnosuke is introduced to Shizu as a prospective marriage partner, but he falls in love with her widowed sister Oyu. Convention forbids Oyu to marry because she has to raise her son as the head of her husband's family. Oyu convinces Shinnosuke and Shizu to marry so that she can remain close to Shinnosuke.
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960)
Mikio Naruse · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Keiko, whom everyone calls Mama, narrates her story: she's a hostess on the Ginza, 30, a widow. She describes life's vicious cycle: acting cheerful around drunks, dressing and living well to convey confidence, needing money for these expenses and for her demanding mother and brother, and knowing she's growing older.
Onibaba (1964)
Kaneto Shindō · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
While her son, Kichi, is away at war, a woman and her daughter-in-law survive by killing samurai who stray into their swamp, then selling whatever valuables they find. Both are devastated when they learn that Kichi has died, but his wife soon begins an affair with a neighbor who survived the war, Hachi. The mother disapproves and, when she can't steal Hachi for herself, tries to scare her daughter-in-law with a mysterious mask from a dead samurai.
Dersu Uzala (1975)
Akira Kurosawa · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A military explorer meets and befriends a Goldi man in Russia’s unmapped forests. A deep and abiding bond evolves between the two men, one civilized in the usual sense, the other at home in the glacial Siberian woods.
Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990)
Akira Kurosawa · 5 critic votes
Free on YouTube Free
Eight visually rich vignettes drawn from Kurosawa’s own dreams—fox weddings and vanished orchards, a soldier’s ghosts, a walk through Van Gogh’s canvases, nuclear nightmares, and a water-mill utopia—meditate on childhood, art, mortality, and humanity’s uneasy bond with nature.
Hana-bi (1997)
Takeshi Kitano · 5 critic votes
Beleaguered police detective Nishi takes desperate measures to try and set things right in a world gone wrong. With his wife suffering from leukemia and his business partner paralyzed from a brutal gangster attack, Nishi borrows from a yakuza loan shark and then robs a bank to clear his debt.
The End of Evangelion (1997)
Kazuya Tsurumaki, Hideaki Anno · 5 critic votes
Streaming on Netflix, Criterion Channel, Netflix Standard with Ads
SEELE orders an all-out attack on NERV, aiming to destroy the Evas before Gendo can advance his own plans for the Human Instrumentality Project. Shinji is pushed to the limits of his sanity as he is forced to decide the fate of humanity.
The Crucified Lovers (1954)
Kenji Mizoguchi · 4 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, Fawesome
When the wife of a 17th-century Kyoto scrollmaker is falsely accused of having an affair with his best employee, the pair flee the city and find themselves truly falling for one another.
Sonatine (1993)
Takeshi Kitano · 4 critic votes
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.
Perfect Blue (1997)
Satoshi Kon · 4 critic votes
Streaming on HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Rising pop star Mima quits singing to pursue a career as an actress. After she takes up a role on a popular detective show, her handlers and collaborators begin turning up murdered. Harboring feelings of guilt and haunted by visions of her former self, Mima's reality and fantasy meld into a frenzied paranoia.
Millennium Actress (2001)
Satoshi Kon · 4 critic votes
Free on Plex, Cineverse, Plex Channel · Streaming on Retrocrush, AsianCrush, HBO Max Amazon Channel
Documentary filmmaker Genya Tachibana has tracked down the legendary actress Chiyoko Fujiwara, who mysteriously vanished at the height of her career. When he presents her with a key she had lost and thought was gone forever, the filmmaker could not have imagined that it would not only unlock the long-held secrets of Chiyoko’s life... but also his own.
Paprika (2006)
Satoshi Kon · 4 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, YouTube Free · Streaming on Sony Pictures Core Amazon Channel
When a machine that allows therapists to enter their patient's dreams is stolen, all hell breaks loose. Only a young female therapist can stop it and recover it before damage is done: Paprika.
Drive My Car (2021)
Ryusuke Hamaguchi · 4 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Yusuke Kafuku, a stage actor and director, still unable, after two years, to cope with the loss of his beloved wife, accepts to direct Uncle Vanya at a theater festival in Hiroshima. There he meets Misaki, an introverted young woman, appointed to drive his car. In between rides, secrets from the past and heartfelt confessions will be unveiled.
Humanity and Paper Balloons (1937)
Sadao Yamanaka · 3 critic votes
Free on Plex, Cineverse, Plex Channel · Streaming on Fandor, Fandor Amazon Channel, Criterion Channel
In a slum in Edo Japan, a ronin hopes that his deceased father's former master will hire him while a disgraced hairdresser attempts to regain his pride by kidnapping the daughter of a wealthy pawnbroker, who is set to be married.
Ornamental Hairpin (1941)
Hiroshi Shimizu · 3 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel
A Japanese mountain inn patron's foot is cut by an ornamental hairpin accidentally left behind by a former patron, leading to much curiosity among the other patrons regarding her identity.
Floating Clouds (1955)
Mikio Naruse · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A married Japanese forester during WWII is sent to Indochina to manage forests. He meets a young Japanese typist and promises to leave his wife. He doesn't and after the war, she turns up and the affair resumes.
Flowing (1956)
Mikio Naruse · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Otsuta is running the geisha house Tsuta in Tokyo. Her business is heavily in debt. Her daughter Katsuyo doesn't see any future in her mother's trade in the late days of Geisha. But Otsuta will not give up. This film portraits the day time life of geisha when not entertaining customers.
The Naked Island (1960)
Kaneto Shindō · 3 critic votes
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Criterion Channel
A family of four are the sole inhabitants of a small island, where they struggle each day to irrigate their crops.
Kwaidan (1964)
Masaki Kobayashi · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money with tragic results. A man stranded in a blizzard is saved by Yuki the Snow Maiden, but his rescue comes at a cost. Blind musician Hoichi is forced to perform for an audience of ghosts. An author relates the story of a samurai who sees another warrior's reflection in his teacup.
Yearning (1964)
Mikio Naruse · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
War widow Reiko rebuilds and runs the grocery shop in the house of her husband's family. Many years later, their business is threatened by a newly built supermarket and Reiko's in-laws plan to convert their small shop into a supermarket, to her detriment.
Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (1971)
Shūji Terayama · 3 critic votes
An experimental, psychedelic odyssey through Japanese subculture experienced via the eyes of a disillusioned young man, who must contend with intense familial dysfunction, psychosexual alienation, and existentialist malaise.
Pastoral: To Die in the Country (1974)
Shūji Terayama · 3 critic votes
A director faces creative block while working on his latest film – a reimagination of his adolescence growing up in a mountain village in rural Japan.
Black Rain (1989)
Shohei Imamura · 3 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV · Streaming on Kanopy, Fandor Amazon Channel, ARROW
Shigematsu Shizuma, who lives with his family in a village near Fukuyama, was in Hiroshima with his wife and niece just after the devastating atomic bombing, a tragedy that cruelly took the lives of thousands of people and forever marked the harsh existence of the survivors.
Pulse (2001)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa · 3 critic votes
Streaming on AMC+ Amazon Channel, ARROW, Philo
In the immense city of Tokyo, the darkness of the afterlife lures some of its inhabitants desperately trying to escape the sadness and isolation of the modern world.
Shara (2003)
Naomi Kawase · 3 critic votes
The Aso family live in the old town of Nara. One Day, Kei, one of the Aso's twin boys suddenly disappears. Five years later seventeen-year old Shun, the remaining twin, is an art student. He now has to move forward with his life, together with his childhood friend, Yu.
Howl's Moving Castle (2004)
Hayao Miyazaki · 3 critic votes
Streaming on HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Sophie, a young milliner, is turned into an elderly woman by a witch who enters her shop and curses her. She encounters a wizard named Howl and gets caught up in his resistance to fighting for the king.
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013)
Isao Takahata · 3 critic votes
Streaming on HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Found inside a shining stalk of bamboo by an old bamboo cutter and his wife, a tiny girl grows rapidly into an exquisite young lady. The mysterious young princess enthrals all who encounter her. But, ultimately, she must confront her fate.
Fallen Blossoms (1938)
Tamizō Ishida · 2 critic votes
Set against the backdrop of an imperial victory in the civil war leading up to the Meiji Restoration, Fallen Blossoms tells the story of the sorrows of women in a geisha house in Kyoto by recounting the relationships of its inhabitants.
There Was a Father (1942)
Yasujirō Ozu · 2 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Shuhei Horikawa, a poor schoolteacher, struggles to raise his son Ryohei by himself, despite neither money nor prospects.
Lightning (1952)
Mikio Naruse · 2 critic votes
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.
Godzilla (1954)
Ishirō Honda · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Cinemax Amazon Channel, Shout! Factory Amazon Channel
Japan is thrown into a panic after several ships are sunk near Odo Island. An expedition to the island led by Dr. Kyohei Yamane soon discover something far more devastating than imagined in the form of a 50 meter tall monster whom the natives call Gojira. Now the monster begins a rampage that threatens to destroy not only Japan, but the rest of the world as well.
The Moon Has Risen (1955)
Kinuyo Tanaka · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Mokichi Asai is a widowed father living in Nara with three daughters—Chizuru, Ayako, and Setsuko. The youngest, Setsuko, plays matchmaker for her older sisters, leading to humorous and awkward romantic entanglements.
Street of Shame (1956)
Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasuzō Masumura · 2 critic votes
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, Fawesome
Follows five sex workers employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation debates the passage of an anti-prostitution law.
Floating Weeds (1959)
Yasujirō Ozu · 2 critic votes
Free on Darkroom, Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
A theater troupe master's visit with his old flame unintentionally sets off a chain of unexpected events with devastating consequences.
The Bad Sleep Well (1960)
Akira Kurosawa · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In this loose adaptation of "Hamlet," a young man infiltrates a powerful construction company to uncover the truth behind his father's death, exposing a wider web of corporate corruption and moral decay.
The End of Summer (1961)
Yasujirō Ozu · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
The family of an older man who runs a small sake brewery become concerned with his finances and his health after they discover him visiting an old mistress from his youth.
Pale Flower (1964)
Masahiro Shinoda · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A gangster gets released from prison and has to cope with the recent shifts of power between the gangs, while taking care of a thrill-seeking young woman, who got in bad company while gambling.
Tokyo Olympiad (1965)
Kon Ichikawa · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
This impressionistic portrait of the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics pays as much attention to the crowds and workers as it does to the actual competitive events. Highlights include an epic pole-vaulting match between West Germany and America, and the final marathon race through Tokyo's streets. Two athletes are highlighted: Ethiopian marathon runner Abebe Bikila, who receives his second gold medal, and runner Ahamed Isa from Chad, representing a country younger than he is.
A Man Vanishes (1967)
Shohei Imamura · 2 critic votes
Streaming on OVID
A Man Vanishes examines the concept of Johatsu, tackling the phenomenon of people missing in Japan over the years. It picks one such person from the list, someone who had seemed to disappear from the face of the earth due to embezzlement from his company, and the filmmakers begin an investigative documentary into the reasons behind and attempt at tracking him down.
Branded to Kill (1967)
Seijun Suzuki · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
After botching his latest assignment, a third-ranked Japanese hit man becomes the target of another assassin.
Samurai Rebellion (1967)
Masaki Kobayashi · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
The mother of a feudal lord's only heir is kidnapped by the lord. Her husband and his samurai father must decide whether to accept the unjust decision, or risk death to rescue her.
Kuroneko (1968)
Kaneto Shindō · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In the Sengoku period, a woman and her daughter are raped and murdered by soldiers during a time of civil war. Afterwards, a series of samurai returning from the war through that area are found mysteriously dead with their throats torn out. The governor calls in a wild and fierce young hero to quell what is evidently an Onryō ghost.
Boy (1969)
Nagisa Ōshima · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A family of four lives off of scams in which they pretend to be injured by automobiles.
Dodes'ka-den (1970)
Akira Kurosawa · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel
On a Tokyo dump’s shantytown edge, interwoven vignettes follow residents scraping by: a boy who “drives” an imaginary trolley, a homeless father and son designing a dream house, a young woman brutalized at home, drunks, schemers, and saints of small kindnesses. Kurosawa crafts a ragged mosaic of hardship, fantasy, and flickers of grace that keep people moving forward.
Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 (1974)
Kazuo Hara · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel
When his wife, the outspoken feminist Miyuki Takeda, announced that she was leaving him in order to find herself, Kazuo Hara began this raw, intensely personal documentary as a way to both maintain a connection to the woman he still cared for and to make sense of their complex relationship. Granted at times shockingly intimate access to Miyuki’s personal life, Hara follows her wayward journey toward liberation as she explores her sexuality with both men and women, becomes pregnant and raises a family as a single mother, and grows increasingly disenchanted with the constraints of traditional social structures.
House (1977)
Nobuhiko Obayashi · 2 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, Shout! Factory TV, Plex · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip with her friends to visit her aunt's ancestral house in the countryside. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.
Kagemusha (1980)
Akira Kurosawa · 2 critic votes
Akira Kurosawa's lauded feudal epic presents the tale of a petty thief who is recruited to impersonate Shingen, an aging warlord, in order to avoid attacks by competing clans. When Shingen dies, his generals reluctantly agree to have the impostor take over as the powerful ruler. He soon begins to appreciate life as Shingen, but his commitment to the role is tested when he must lead his troops into battle against the forces of a rival warlord.
Spacy (1981)
Takashi Ito · 2 critic votes
"His films are like a roller-coaster. His way of throwing the act of seeing into utter confusion is an attack on the eyes in their corporeal function, and to attack the eyes is to take on tile body itself as your opponent. The film makes you break out in sweat only by shooting a safe, peaceful gymnasium in the dark." (Koharu Kisaragi)
The Poem of Hayachine Valley (1982)
Haneda Sumiko · 2 critic votes
Shot in the foothills of Iwate Prefecture’s mystical Mt. Hayachine, the film records a year in the life of the area’s villages.
Tampopo (1985)
Jūzō Itami · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
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.
Yama—Attack to Attack (1985)
Mitsuo Sato, Kyoichi Yamaoka · 2 critic votes
This extraordinary documentary is an unflinching record of the workers’ struggle during Japan’s economic rebirth in the 1980s, centered on Tokyo’s Sanya “yoseba”—a slum community dating from the 19th century where day laborers lived in terrible conditions while they sought work.
Castle in the Sky (1986)
Hayao Miyazaki · 2 critic votes
Streaming on HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A young boy and a girl with a magic crystal must race against pirates and foreign agents in a search for a legendary floating castle.
Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)
Shinya Tsukamoto · 2 critic votes
Free on Cineverse · Streaming on Kanopy, Night Flight Plus, AsianCrush
A "metal fetishist", driven mad by the maggots wriggling in the wound he's made to embed metal into his flesh, runs out into the night and is accidentally run down by a Japanese businessman and his girlfriend. The pair dispose of the corpse in hopes of quietly moving on with their lives. However, the businessman soon finds that he is now plagued by a vicious curse that transforms his flesh into iron.
Only Yesterday (1991)
Isao Takahata · 2 critic votes
Streaming on HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
In lyrical switches between the present and the past, Taeko contemplates the arc of her life, and wonders if she has been true to the dreams of her childhood self.
Pom Poko (1994)
Isao Takahata · 2 critic votes
Streaming on HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
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.
August in the Water (1995)
Gakuryū Ishii · 2 critic votes
A teenage girl gains supernatural power after an accident and comes to understand her place in the universe.
Ghost in the Shell (1995)
Mamoru Oshii · 2 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, YouTube Free, Fandango at Home Free · Streaming on Hoopla, MovieSphere+ Amazon Channel, Howdy Amazon Channel
In the year 2029, the barriers of our world have been broken down by the net and by cybernetics, but this brings new vulnerability to humans in the form of brain-hacking. When a highly-wanted hacker known as 'The Puppetmaster' begins involving them in politics, Section 9, a group of cybernetically enhanced cops, are called in to investigate and stop the Puppetmaster.
Maborosi (1995)
Hirokazu Koreeda · 2 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy, OVID
A tragedy strikes a young woman's life without warning or reason. She continues living while searching for meaning in a lonely world.
Love, Be with Humanity (1931)
Yasujirō Shimazu · 1 critic vote
The three-hour Ai yo jinrui to tomo ni are / Love, Be with Humanity (1931) starts as a satire of alienation in the world of money, develops into a lumberland epic with a forest fire on Sakhalin Island, turns into a tragedy of King Lear dimensions, and manages to amaze the blasé audience with a happy end in the Wild West.
Tokyo Chorus (1931)
Yasujirō Ozu · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
During the Depression, a young man struggles to provide for his family after he is sacked for defending an older colleague.
Dragnet Girl (1933)
Yasujirō Ozu · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A gangster tries to find redemption with the inadvertent help of an innocent shop girl and his jealous girlfriend will do anything to keep him.
Japanese Girls at the Harbor (1933)
Hiroshi Shimizu · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Set in the port city of Yokohama, two girls, Sunako and Dora who attend a Christian school, pledge to be friends. But when a youth named Henry appears on his motorcycle and offers to take Sunako for a ride, we know that this friendship won't last and that the lives of both girls will change in ways they are barely able to comprehend, and can do little to change.
The Policeman (1933)
Tomu Uchida · 1 critic vote
Itami, a young policeman, meets his high school friend, Tetsuo, a gangster, at a roadblock. As they rekindled their friendship, a complex relationship is established between them.
Woman of Tokyo (1933)
Yasujirō Ozu · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Ryoichi and Chikako, brother and sister, live together. Chikako toils during the day and, at night, prostitutes herself to fund his college tuition.
Five Men in a Circus (1934)
Mikio Naruse · 1 critic vote
A five member circus runs into problems while touring rural Japan.
The Foghorn (1934)
Minoru Murata · 1 critic vote
Chiyokichi, a young man, hates Cooper, a white man who looks down on the Japanese. Chiyokichi picks Cooper’s pocket and is caught. He is brought to Cooper’s house and becomes his slave, and a riveting tale of passion, hatred, and revenge unfolds.
An Inn in Tokyo (1935)
Yasujirō Ozu · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel
An unemployed Japanese man and his two sons wander the industrial flatlands of Depression-era Tokyo, until he chances upon an old friend and befriends a woman and her daughter, who are in a similar predicament.
The Fallen Sparrow (1935)
Kenji Mizoguchi · 1 critic vote
In Tokyo, Osen is the servant girl of an unscrupulous antiques dealer, Kumazawa, who takes in the penniless Sokichi Hata. Kumazawa mistreats Sokichi and Osen, while swindling some Buddhist monks out of their temple treasures. When Kumazawa is arrested, Osen agrees to help Sokichi finance his dream of going to medical school. They live in a humble room, and eventually the only way Osen can find enough money for them is to prostitute herself during the day, without Sokichi knowing. (Will Gilbert)
Wife! Be Like a Rose! (1935)
Mikio Naruse · 1 critic vote
Kimiko, a Tokyo white-collar working girl, lives with her serious, intellectual, haiku-writing mother. Kimiko seeks to marry her boyfriend but needs her absent father to act as the go-between and negotiate the marriage. Kimiko travels and finds her father living with a second family.
Osaka Elegy (1936)
Kenji Mizoguchi · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, Fawesome
Ayako becomes the mistress of her boss in order to pay her father's debt and prevent him from going to prison for embezzlement.
Sisters of the Gion (1936)
Kenji Mizoguchi · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, Fawesome
A geisha in the Gion district of Kyoto feels obliged to help her lover when he asks to stay with her after going bankrupt and leaving his wife. However, her younger sister opposes this, thinking that they should both find wealthy patrons to support them.
The Straits of Love and Hate (1937)
Kenji Mizoguchi · 1 critic vote
A servant girl is seduced and abandoned by her lover, a man from a higher social class, forcing her to navigate a harsh world as an itinerant performer to survive and raise their child.
The Ghost Cat and the Mysterious Shamisen (1938)
Kiyohiko Ushihara · 1 critic vote
Mitsue is a popular stage actress and the lover of a shamisen player named Seijuro. She jealously murders two other objects of his affection: Okiyo, a young woman from a samurai family, and Kuro, a cat. The spirits of Okiyo and Kuro then merge into a vengeful ghost.
The 47 Ronin (1941)
Kenji Mizoguchi · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Cineverse, Plex Channel · Streaming on Fandor Amazon Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
In the early 18th-century, Lord Takumi-no-kami Asano, feuding with Lord Kira, tries to kill his opponent in the corridors of the Shogun's palace. The Shogun sentences Asano to seppuku and deprives the palace and lands from his clan, but does not punish Kira. Asano's vassals leave the land and his samurais become ronin and want to seek revenge against the Lord's dishonour. But their leader Kuranosuke Oishi seeks to restore the Asano clan with his brother Daigaku Asano. One year later, the Shogun refuses, and Oishi and 46 rōnin are out for revenge.
The Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947)
Yasujirō Ozu · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, Fawesome
A hard-hearted old woman in a bombed-out Tokyo neighborhood reluctantly takes in an abandoned boy, leading to a heartwarming bond between them.
A Hen in the Wind (1948)
Yasujirō Ozu · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Cineverse, Plex Channel · Streaming on Fandor, Fandor Amazon Channel, Criterion Channel
Tokiko patiently awaits her husband's return from WWII when her four-year old son falls ill. She takes him to the doctor but has no means of paying, so she resorts to prostitution. A month later, her husband returns to find his desperate wife, who tells him the truth. Together, they must deal with the consequences.
Children of the Beehive (1948)
Hiroshi Shimizu · 1 critic vote
A group of war orphans initially seen scratching out an existence through black market work, as they are taken under the wing of a nameless soldier, just repatriated after the war.
Stray Dog (1949)
Akira Kurosawa · 1 critic vote
Free on Darkroom, Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on fuboTV, Criterion Channel, Fawesome
A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a life of crime. With each step, cop and criminal’s lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination of Murakami’s own dark side.
Mother (1952)
Mikio Naruse · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A teenaged girl witnesses her widowed mother's attempt to sustain her family.
Gion Festival Music (1953)
Kenji Mizoguchi · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Fawesome
Fleeing a distressing family situation, Eiko, a very young girl, becomes an apprentice to Miyoharu, a veteran geisha. Both, determined to preserve their professional integrity, must face the selfishness and ambition of several petty people.
Love Letter (1953)
Kinuyo Tanaka · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Five years after the end of the Second World War, Reikichi, a repatriated veteran, translates love letters for Japanese women to American GIs, while searching for his lost love, Michiko.
Sound of the Mountain (1954)
Mikio Naruse · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
An ingratiating bride develops warm ties to her father-in-law while her cold husband blithely slights her for another woman.
Princess Yang Kwei-Fei (1955)
Kenji Mizoguchi · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, Fawesome
In 8th-century China, the Emperor grieves the death of his wife. The Yang family wants to provide the Emperor with a consort so that they may consolidate their court influence. General An Lushan finds a distant relative working in their kitchen, whom they groom to present to the Emperor. The Emperor falls in love and she becomes the Princess Yang Kwei-fei. The Yangs are then appointed important ministers, though An Lushan is not given the court position he covets.
She Was Like a Wild Chrysanthemum (1955)
Keisuke Kinoshita · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
On the way back to his childhood home, a septuagenarian man recalls his childhood and adolescence, in particular his love for a young woman.
Children Who Draw (1956)
Susumu Hani · 1 critic vote
Children Who Draw explores the delicate chemistry of school children interacting in an art class through a constant juxtaposition of observational black-and-white portraits of the young children with lyrical passages shot in vivid color exploring their imaginative and expressive paintings. Experimenting with color as an intimate expression of the children’s inner worlds, a tool for deeper psychological investigation, Hani allows his camera to roam freely across the drawings, “de-framing’” and enagaging the artwork in a manner reminiscent of Alain Resnais.
Sound of the Fog (1956)
Hiroshi Shimizu · 1 critic vote
In the heart of the Japanese Alps, in Kamikochi, Nagano Prefecture, botany professor Kazuhiko Onuma spends time with Tsuruko, his lover. One night, Kazuhiko's wife Kazuyo comes to see them and confronts the professor about his extramarital affair, and Tsuruko, an inevitable witness to the confrontation, leaves the professor the following morning. Over the next decade, whenever he visits the mountain cabin every autumn equinox, the memory of Tsuruko will forever haunt Kazuhiko...
The Burmese Harp (1956)
Kon Ichikawa · 1 critic vote
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Criterion Channel
In Burma during the closing days of WWII, a Japanese soldier separated from his unit disguises himself as a Buddhist monk to escape imprisonment as a POW.
Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate (1957)
Yuzo Kawashima · 1 critic vote
Saheji, a man-about-town, gets stuck at a high-class brothel when he can’t pay the bill. He makes the best of his situation by performing various tasks amidst the tumult of the end of the shogunate—but always by making sure to get a “commission” for his troubles.
Tokyo Twilight (1957)
Yasujirō Ozu · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot accept the fact that she was abandoned as a child.
Equinox Flower (1958)
Yasujirō Ozu · 1 critic vote
Free on Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Wataru's outwardly liberal views on marriage are severely tested when his daughter declares her love for a coworker and is adamant to live her own way, instead of agreeing to an arranged marriage. Outwitted by his female relatives, Hirayama stubbornly refuses to admit defeat.
Giants and Toys (1958)
Yasuzō Masumura · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Fandor Amazon Channel, ARROW
Nishi is an advertising executive for a caramel company that is planning to launch a new product, in fierce competition with two other companies.
The Hidden Fortress (1958)
Akira Kurosawa · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, YouTube Free, Shout! Factory TV · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
In feudal Japan, during a bloody war between clans, two cowardly and greedy peasants, soldiers of a defeated army, stumble upon a mysterious man who guides them to a fortress hidden in the mountains.
Fires on the Plain (1959)
Kon Ichikawa · 1 critic vote
Free on Darkroom · Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
In the closing days of WWII, a Japanese soldier afflicted with tuberculosis is abandoned by his company and left to wander the Philippine island of Leyte.
The Human Condition (1959)
Masaki Kobayashi · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
After handing in a report on the treatment of Chinese colonial labor, Kaji is offered the post of labour chief at a large mining operation in Manchuria, which also grants him exemption from military service. He accepts and moves with his newlywed wife Michiko, but when he tries to put his ideas of more humane treatment into practice, he finds himself at odds with scheming officials, cruel foremen, and the military police.
The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity (1959)
Masaki Kobayashi · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Kaji, sent to the Japanese army labeled Red, witnesses cruelties in the army and revolts against the abusive treatment against a fellow recruit. He also sees his friend Shinjô defecting to the Russian border, and he ends in the front to fight a lost battle against the Russian tanks division.
Late Autumn (1960)
Yasujirō Ozu · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A woman and her daughter are each forced to contend with an increasing pressure to marry, particularly from three men who knew her late husband.
Night and Fog in Japan (1960)
Nagisa Ōshima · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Long takes and a highly theatrical visual approach combine to form a tense and confrontational look at the decline of a socialist student activists' movement in Japan.
Kill (1962)
Kenji Misumi · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In Edo-period Japan, Shingo is born the son of an assassin who was executed for murdering her lord’s concubine. Decades later, his adoptive family is massacred for keeping the secret. Armed with an unbeatable swordfighting technique, Shingo embarks on the path of the masterless samurai in search of vengeance and a path beyond his own ignominious origins.
Night of Only Women (1962)
Kinuyo Tanaka · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In the wake of the 1956 Prostitution Prevention Law, a young woman recently released from one of Japan's new rehabilitation centers struggles to build a new life.
An Actor's Revenge (1963)
Kon Ichikawa · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In Edo Japan, a kabuki actor seeks revenge against the three men who drove his parents to their deaths years ago.
The Insect Woman (1963)
Shohei Imamura · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A woman, Tome, is born to a lower class family in Japan in 1918. The title refers to an insect, repeating its mistakes, as in an infinite circle. Imamura, with this metaphor, introduces the life of Tome, who keeps trying to change her poor life.
The Mischievous Prince Slays the Giant Serpent (1963)
Yugo Serikawa · 1 critic vote
Free on The Roku Channel
In this influential cult-classic animated film based on Japanese folklore, Susano is the youngest son of Izanagi and Izanami, the heavenly couple who created the Earth. Still a young boy, Susano is devastated by the passing away of his mother. Determined to find her despite the reprimands of his father, he embarks on a journey to find his brother and his sister for spiritual guidance.
Assassination (1964)
Masahiro Shinoda · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
In 1863, when American warships approach Japan, an enigmatic ronin becomes an important figure in a complex game of power between the Shogunate and the empire.
On the Road: A Document (1964)
Noriaki Tsuchimoto · 1 critic vote
Japanese documentary from 1964 directed by Noriaki Tsuchimoto. The film focuses on the taxi drivers of Tokyo in the year before the Tokyo Olympics and the difficulties they face: construction obstructing traffic, poor working conditions, numerous accidents, and bad pay. It becomes a critique of a changing and modernizing urban Japan.
Straits of Hunger (1964)
Tomu Uchida · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Fandor Amazon Channel, ARROW, Midnight Pulp Amazon Channel
Three robbers escape with loot from a heist before one of them kills the others. Their corpses wash up near the aftermath of a maritime calamity, provoking a policeman's interest.
Silence Has No Wings (1966)
Kazuo Kuroki · 1 critic vote
After a young boy captures a rare butterfly in Nagasaki, a caterpillar begins a relay-trip toward the northern tip of Hokkaido, serving as a silent witness to a series of vignettes featuring people struggling with the psychological and social scars of post-war Japan.
The Pornographers (1966)
Shohei Imamura · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Subu makes pornographic films. He sees nothing wrong with it. They are an aid to a repressed society, and he uses the money to support his landlady, Haru, and her family. From time to time, Haru shares her bed with Subu, though she believes her dead husband, reincarnated as a carp, disapproves. Director Shohei Imamura has always delighted in the kinky exploits of lowlifes, and in this 1966 classic, he finds subversive humor in the bizarre dynamics of Haru, her Oedipal son, and her daughter, the true object of her pornographer-boyfriend’s obsession. Imamura’s comic treatment of such taboos as voyeurism and incest sparked controversy when the film was released, but The Pornographers has outlasted its critics, and now seems frankly ahead of its time.
The Sword of Doom (1966)
Kihachi Okamoto · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Ryunosuke, a gifted swordsman plying his trade during the turbulent final days of Shogunate rule, has no moral code and kills without remorse. It’s a way of life that leads to madness.
Death by Hanging (1968)
Nagisa Ōshima · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A Korean man is sentenced to death in Japan but somehow survives his execution, sending the authorities into a panic about what to do next.
For My Crushed Right Eye (1968)
Toshio Matsumoto · 1 critic vote
Two chaotic series of images, one for each eye. Hipster living, malformed fetuses, war, arts events and pop culture stands for the material.
I (1968)
Tai Kato · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, Xumo Play · Streaming on MUBI, MUBI Amazon Channel, Hoopla
Police detectives investigate the link between a serial killer's machinations and a teenage boy who committed suicide.
The Profound Desire of the Gods (1968)
Shohei Imamura · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
A Tokyo engineer is sent to a remote island to modernize its infrastructure, where he becomes entangled with a deeply isolated family whose customs blur the line between myth and taboo.
A.K.A. Serial Killer (1969)
Masao Adachi · 1 critic vote
AKA Serial Killer documents the social upheaval and political oppression that roiled Japan in the 1960s, profiling a nineteen-year-old serial killer Norio Nagayama. An indictment of media sensationalism, the film humanizes the young man by situating his crimes in the larger context of his environment.
Aido: Slave of Love (1969)
Susumu Hani · 1 critic vote
After wandering into a cemetery, a young man named Shusei is led by the mysterious Madame Enjoji to a secluded mansion. There, he is introduced to Aido, an ethereal woman who seems to be the living embodiment of his most surreal erotic fantasies. Caught between the real world and a haunting dreamscape, Shusei becomes obsessed with Aido.
Blind Beast (1969)
Yasuzō Masumura · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Fandor Amazon Channel, BFI Player Amazon Channel, Night Flight Plus
A blind sculptor kidnaps an artists' model and imprisons her in his warehouse studio – a shadowland of perverse monuments to the female form. Here a deranged passion play of sensual and sexual obsession is acted out in world where sight is replaced by touch.
Cut-Off Movie (1969)
Jun'ichi Okuyama · 1 critic vote
Raw material spliced into projection film, paper, leaves, vinyl, 6mm audio tape. Depending on hair, etc. the film breaks during projection. The film gets shorter with each projection, the author wrote this {Disappearance Movie} and named it.
Eros Plus Massacre (1969)
Yoshishige Yoshida · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Philo
Two interwoven stories. The first is a biography of anarchist Sakae Osugi which follows his relationship with three women in the 1920s. The second centers around two 1960s students researching Osugi's theories.
Heroic Purgatory (1970)
Yoshishige Yoshida · 1 critic vote
Rikiya Shoda is an engineer working for the Atomic Agency in Japan. One day, his wife Nanako returns home with a lost teenager called Ayu. A man, pretending to be the father, comes to get her back; Ayu keeps telling him that Rikiya and Nanako are her parents. Through this disruption, Rikiya suddenly starts remembering his youth as a revolutionary.
Pandemonium (Demons) (1971)
Toshio Matsumoto · 1 critic vote
Tells the story of the samurai Gengobe, who seeks revenge after falling prey to the schemes of a geisha and her husband.
Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War (1971)
Masao Adachi, Kōji Wakamatsu · 1 critic vote
On their way back from the Cannes Film Festival in 1971, filmmakers Wakamatsu Koji and Adachi Masao visited Lebanon to meet Japan's Red Army faction and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to shoot a newsreel film promoting the Palestinian resistance. Conceived as a ‘declaration of world war’ that implicates us all, the directors capture the everyday banality of military training and preparation exercises for imminent battle.
The Ceremony (1971)
Nagisa Ōshima · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Oshima’s magisterial epic, centering on the ambivalent surviving heir of the Sakurada clan, uses ritual and the microcosm of the traditional family to trace the rise and fall of militaristic Japan across several decades.
The Peasants of the Second Fortress (1971)
Shinsuke Ogawa · 1 critic vote
"Narita: The Peasants of the Second Fortress" (1971) chronicles a decisive phase in the struggle against the construction of the Narita International Airport, as farmers in Sanrizuka adopted new defensive tactics, including the construction of fortified towers and underground shelters. As police forces moved to dismantle these structures, confrontations intensified. The film combines scenes of direct conflict with extended conversations between Ogawa and the farmers, documenting both the physical resistance and the sustained community organizing that defined this stage of the protest.
Ecstasy of the Angels (1972)
Kōji Wakamatsu · 1 critic vote
Streaming on FlixFling
A militant revolutionary group is torn apart by betrayal as its members descend into paranoia and sexual decadence.
Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1973)
Kinji Fukasaku · 1 critic vote
Streaming on ARROW, Philo
In the teeming black markets of postwar Japan, Shozo Hirono and his buddies find themselves in a new war between factious and ambitious yakuza.
Belladonna of Sadness (1973)
Eiichi Yamamoto · 1 critic vote
An evil feudal lord rapes a village girl on her wedding night and proceeds to ruin her and her husband's lives. After she's eventually banished from her village, the girl makes a pact with the devil to gain magical ability and take revenge.
Lady Snowblood (1973)
Toshiya Fujita · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, YouTube Free, Plex · Streaming on Criterion Channel, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Yuki's family is nearly wiped out before she is born due to the machinations of a band of criminals. These criminals kidnap and brutalize her mother but leave her alive. Later her mother ends up in prison with only revenge to keep her alive. She creates an instrument for this revenge by purposefully getting pregnant. Yuki never knows the love of a family but only killing and revenge.
Sanrizuka: Heta Buraku (1973)
Ogawa Shinsuke · 1 critic vote
Shinsuke Ogawa documentary about the life of the farmers in Heta Village opposing their resettlement due to the construction of Narita Airport.
Heidi, Girl of the Alps (1975)
Isao Takahata · 1 critic vote
Streaming on FilmBox Live Amazon Channel
Heidi (1974) Japanese anime series by Zuiyo Eizo (now Nippon Animation) based on the Swiss novel Heidi's Years of Wandering and Learning by Johanna Spyri (1880). It was directed by Isao Takahata A feature-length film Heidi in the Mountains, aka The Story of Heidi, was edited from the series by Zuiyo (which by then was a separate entity from Nippon Animation, which employed many of the TV series' animation staff) distributed in 1979. All cast were replaced excluding Heidi and the grandfather. This movie is also the only incarnation of the Heidi anime to have been released commercially in the United States in English (on home video in the 1980s). Isao Takahata remarked "Neither Hayao Miyazaki nor I are completely related to any shortening version" on this work.
Double Suicide (1978)
Yasuzo Masumura · 1 critic vote
Suicide has long been used as a form of social protest in Japan. In this film, set in 1703, samurai culture is being transformed by the emergence of a new merchant class. Elements of the social contract are beginning to unravel, and some unscrupulous people took undue advantage of these changes before the social order was re-created. In this story, a rich merchant gives his clerk an I.O.U. instead of wages. When the impoverished clerk presents the paper to the merchant at the agreed upon time asking for payment, the man flies into a rage and pretends he never wrote it and claims the clerk is trying to defraud him. Then he sets his henchmen on the clerk to administer a beating.
Taiyō o Nusunda Otoko (1979)
Kazuhiko Hasegawa · 1 critic vote
A high school science teacher is the butt of all his students' jokes, until their bus is hijacked on a school trip. But something more sinister lurks beneath the surface: he's building an atomic bomb in his apartment.
Vengeance Is Mine (1979)
Shohei Imamura · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel, Darkroom
A thief, a murderer, and a charming lady-killer, Iwao Enokizu is on the run from the police.
Eijanaika (1981)
Shohei Imamura · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
The film depicts carnivalesque atmosphere summed up by the cry "Ei ja nai ka" ("Why not?") in Japan in 1867 and 1868 in the days leading to the Meiji Restoration. It examines the effects of the political and social upheaval of the time, and culminates in a revelrous march on the Tokyo Imperial Palace, which turns into a massacre. Characteristically, Imamura focuses not on the leaders of the country, but on characters in the lower classes and on the fringes of society.
Something Like It (1981)
Yoshimitsu Morita · 1 critic vote
Life seems to be good for Shintoto, an up-and-coming rakugo artist who has just had his first sexual experience at a local brothel. Lucky for him, he gets to date the beautiful sex worker he meets that day, and a younger high school rakugo aficionado is also vying for his attention. But for clumsy, heart-on-his-sleeve Shintoto, life doesn’t stay rosy for long.
Transfer Student (1982)
Nobuhiko Obayashi · 1 critic vote
9th-graders Kazuo and Kazumi take a tumble at a temple in a small seacoast town in Japan. Through supernatural intervention, their minds and bodies are switched, and the result is a touching and hilarious coming-of-age comedy as they attempt to survive the pressures of junior high school life.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
Hayao Miyazaki · 1 critic vote
Streaming on HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
After a global war, the seaside kingdom known as the Valley of the Wind remains one of the last strongholds on Earth untouched by a poisonous jungle and the powerful insects that guard it. Led by the courageous Princess Nausicaä, the people of the Valley engage in an epic struggle to restore the bond between humanity and Earth.
Kaze: One Minute and Forty Seconds (1985)
Tsutomu Shinozuka · 1 critic vote
Impressionistic silent short film (also known as ‘Kaze. Ippun yonjûbyô’) created by 17-year-old high school student Shinozuka Tsutomu. The animation, which won the Debut Prize at the inaugural Hiroshima International Animation Festival in 1985, shows a group of samurai racing at breathtaking speed across golden meadows. The film stands out for its visceral sense of motion and extraordinary dynamism, as has been confirmed by jury member Kawamoto Kihachirō, who noted that you can almost feel the force of the wind. The focus on ‘wind’, speed and warriors elegantly evokes a famous military maxim by Sun Tzu: ‘Your swiftness shall resemble the wind’. It is the first of four tenets of Fūrinkazan (風林火山, lit. ‘Wind, Forest, Fire, Mountain’), a legendary Japanese battle standard drawn from Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’. Warriors should also be ‘as calm and orderly as forests, as fierce as fire, and as steadfast as mountains’.
Love Hotel (1985)
Shinji Sōmai · 1 critic vote
A call-girl named Yumi and Tetsuro, a married man with a debt to the yakuza, have a violent rendezvous in a cheap love hotel. Years later, haunted by the memory of that night, they reconnect and begin a strange love affair. Determined to finish what they started, they return to the scene of their first macabre passion.
The Sea and Poison (1986)
Kei Kumai · 1 critic vote
Two interns and a nurse are interrogated by American MPs for their involvement in an atrocity during the war: the vivisections of a downed American air crew.
Magino Village: A Tale (1987)
Ogawa Shinsuke · 1 critic vote
The movie compiles footage taken by Ogawa Production for a period of more than ten years after the collective moved to Magino village. Unique to this film are fictional reenactments of the history of the village in the sections titled "The Tale of Horikiri Goddess" and "The Origins of Itsutsudomoe Shrine". Ogawa combines all the techniques that were developed in his previous films to simultaneously express multiple layers of time—the temporality of rice growing and of human life, personal life histories, the history of the village, the time of the Gods, and new time created through theatrical reenactment—bring them into a unified whole. The faces of the Magino villagers appear in numerous roles transcending time and space—sometimes as individuals, sometimes as people who carry the history of the village in their memories, sometimes as storytellers reciting myths, and even as members of the crowd in the fictional sequences.
Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)
Hayao Miyazaki · 1 critic vote
Streaming on HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A young witch, on her mandatory year of independent life, finds fitting into a new community difficult while she supports herself by running an air courier service.
Living on the River Agano (1992)
Makoto Satô · 1 critic vote
In 1964, a chemical factory in Niigata Prefecture dumped mercury into the Agano River, the beginning of a manmade tragedy that would affect locals for years to come. Mercury poisoning led to high occurrences of Minamata disease, a neurological syndrome that causes severe physical and psychological ailments and death. Sato Makoto and his crew of seven spent three years in Niigata documenting the life and thoughts of locals.
Porco Rosso (1992)
Hayao Miyazaki · 1 critic vote
Streaming on HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
In Italy in the 1930s, sky pirates in biplanes terrorize wealthy cruise ships as they sail the Adriatic Sea. The only pilot brave enough to stop the scourge is the mysterious Porco Rosso, a former World War I flying ace who was somehow turned into a pig during the war. As he prepares to battle the pirate crew's American ace, Porco Rosso enlists the help of spunky girl mechanic Fio Piccolo and his longtime friend Madame Gina.
Moving (1993)
Shinji Sōmai · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
Physically separated from her father and at odds with her distraught mother, a girl must negotiate her own passage to maturity.
Katatsumori (1994)
Naomi Kawase · 1 critic vote
Filmmaker Naomi Kawase captures the love, loss, and loneliness felt as she prepares to move out of her foster mother's home.
Gonin (1995)
Takashi Ishii · 1 critic vote
Five men plot to steal a large sum of money from the local yakuza, but everything does not go as planned and the men find themselves hunted down by contract killers.
Like Grains of Sand (1995)
Ryōsuke Hashiguchi · 1 critic vote
A coming-of-age story. Shuji, a Japanese teen, is falling in love with his friend Hiroyuki, however, Hiroyuki is attracted to Kasane, the new girl in their class.
Marks (1995)
Yoichi Sai · 1 critic vote
Assistant police inspector Aida is assigned to investigate the murder of a former gang member. When a justice ministry official is killed days later in a similar manner, he begins to suspect that something bigger is going on...
Whisper of the Heart (1995)
Yoshifumi Kondō · 1 critic vote
Free on Xumo Play · Streaming on HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Shizuku lives a simple life, dominated by her love for stories and writing. One day she notices that all the library books she has have been previously checked out by the same person: "Seiji Amasawa."
Ring (1998)
Hideo Nakata · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, Cineverse · Streaming on Kanopy, Shudder Amazon Channel, Criterion Channel
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.
Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1999)
Hiroyuki Okiura · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV · Streaming on Crunchyroll
A member of an elite paramilitary counter-terrorism unit becomes traumatized after witnessing the suicide bombing of a young girl and is forced to undergo retraining. However, unbeknownst to him, he becomes a key player in a dispute between rival police divisions, as he finds himself increasingly involved with the sister of the girl he saw die.
Battle Royale (2000)
Kinji Fukasaku · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, The CW, Plex · Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, BFI Player Amazon Channel
In the future, the Japanese government captures a class of ninth-grade students and forces them to kill each other under the revolutionary "Battle Royale" act.
Avalon (2001)
Mamoru Oshii · 1 critic vote
In a future world, young people are increasingly becoming addicted to an illegal (and potentially deadly) battle simulation game called Avalon. When Ash, a star player, hears of rumors that a more advanced level of the game exists somewhere, she gives up her loner ways and joins a gang of explorers. Even if she finds the gateway to the next level, will she ever be able to come back to reality?
Visitor Q (2001)
Takashi Miike · 1 critic vote
In a dysfunctional family where the mother is a heroin addict and prostitute, beaten by her son, and the father is an ex-TV reporter, sleeping with his daughter and filming his son being beaten up, ‘Q’, a complete stranger enters the bizarre family, changing their lives for the better, finding a balance in their disturbing natures.
Dark Water (2002)
Hideo Nakata · 1 critic vote
Streaming on BFI Player Amazon Channel, Night Flight Plus, ARROW
A woman in the midst of an unpleasant divorce moves to an eerie apartment building with her young daughter. The ceiling of their apartment has a dark and active leak.
Bright Future (2003)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa · 1 critic vote
Free on Cineverse · Streaming on Fandor, Fandor Amazon Channel, Hoopla
Buddies working at an oshibori factory bond over an uncontrollable rage neither can control, as well as a strange jellyfish they keep as a pet.
Hana and Alice (2004)
Shunji Iwai · 1 critic vote
Two teenage best pals attracted to the same boy end up scrambling his life after he walks into a door and is knocked unconscious.
Nobody Knows (2004)
Hirokazu Koreeda · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Sundance Now, Kanopy, AMC+
In a small Tokyo apartment, twelve-year-old Akira must care for his younger siblings after their mother leaves them and shows no sign of returning.
Linda Linda Linda (2005)
Nobuhiro Yamashita · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
Only three days before their high school festival, guitarist Kei, drummer Kyoko, and bassist Nozomi are forced to recruit a new lead vocalist for their band. They choose Korean exchange student Son, though her comprehension of Japanese is a bit rough! It's a race against time as the group struggles to learn three songs for the festival's rock concert—including a classic '80s song by the Japanese punk rock band The Blue Hearts called "Linda Linda".
Princess Raccoon (2005)
Seijun Suzuki · 1 critic vote
Amechiyo (the banished prince) falls in love with Tanukihime (a princess of raccoon dog disguised as human). This is an operetta which includes comedy, singing and dancing, and a love story.
The Mourning Forest (2007)
Naomi Kawase · 1 critic vote
A young woman working at a retirement home takes an elderly man living there on an excursion into the countryside, but the two wind up stranded in the titular forest.
Gururi no koto (2008)
Ryōsuke Hashiguchi · 1 critic vote
Streaming on AMC+ Amazon Channel, Philo
Kanao, a courtroom portrait artist, observes crimes, scandals and the decline of Japanese values without passing judgement. As he and his wife endure the tragedy of their first child’s death, hope slowly unfolds and their love story flickers to life once again.
Love Exposure (2008)
Sion Sono · 1 critic vote
The story of a teenage boy called Yu, who falls for Yoko, a girl he runs into while working as an upskirt photographer in an offshoot of the porn industry. His attempts to woo her are complicated by a spot of cross-dressing – which convinces Yoko that she is lesbian – dalliances with kung-fu and crime, and a constant struggle with Catholic guilt.
Redline (2009)
Takeshi Koike · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV · Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla
A daredevil driver is determined to compete in Redline, the most popular race in the galaxy. The race only occurs every five years, but in order to participate he must overcome the mafia, the government and even love.
Confessions (2010)
Tetsuya Nakashima · 1 critic vote
Devastated at the death of her four-year-old daughter, a grieving middle school teacher is horrified to discover that her students aren't as innocent as she thinks.
Genpin (2010)
Naomi Kawase · 1 critic vote
About Tadashi Yoshimura's maternity clinic where he practice "natural births" deep in the forest of Okazaki (Japan).
Casting Blossoms to the Sky (2012)
Nobuhiko Obayashi · 1 critic vote
Free on Cineverse · Streaming on Fandor, Fandor Amazon Channel, OVID
In the aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, a journalist arrives in Nagaoka, a city decimated during a WWII air raid and by the 2004 Chūetsu earthquakes, to report on the disaster; there, she learns about the experiences of its inhabitants and stumbles upon a stage play written by an enigmatic student of her ex-boyfriend.
Wolf Children Ame and Yuki (2012)
Mamoru Hosoda · 1 critic vote
Streaming on HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
After her werewolf lover unexpectedly dies in an accident, a woman must find a way to raise the son and daughter that she had with him. However, their inheritance of their father's traits prove to be a challenge for her.
The Wind Rises (2013)
Hayao Miyazaki · 1 critic vote
Streaming on HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
A lifelong love of flight inspires Japanese aviation engineer Jiro Horikoshi, whose storied career includes the creation of the A-6M World War II fighter plane.
Still the Water (2014)
Naomi Kawase · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, Film Movement Plus
On the Japanese island of Amami, despite lacking parental guidance, Kaito and his girlfriend Kyoko try to find their place in the world. While Kaito suffers from the absence of his father, who moved to Tokyo after his birth, Kyoko must come to grips with her mother’s terminal illness.
Our Little Sister (2015)
Hirokazu Koreeda · 1 critic vote
After the death of their estranged father, 3 adult sisters invite their teenaged half-sister to live with them.
Bangkok Nites (2016)
Katsuya Tomita · 1 critic vote
Bangkok, 2015. Ozawa, a Japanese man who had nowhere to go, meets Luck, a woman has reached the height of her glory on Thaniya Street, a place that flourishes by servicing only Japanese men. Through a trip to trace the scars of colonialism, they look for paradise that we had lost.
Asako I & II (2018)
Ryusuke Hamaguchi · 1 critic vote
Free on Cineverse · Streaming on MUBI, Fandor, Fandor Amazon Channel
Asako lives in Osaka. She falls in love with Baku, a free-spirit. One day, Baku suddenly disappears. Two years later, Asako now lives in Tokyo and meets Ryohei. He looks just like Baku, but has a completely different personality.
Inland Sea (2018)
Kazuhiro Soda · 1 critic vote
Free on Fandango at Home Free · Streaming on DocAlliance Films
Wai-chan is one of the last remaining fishermen in Ushimado, a small village in Seto Inland Sea, Japan. At the age of 86, he still fishes alone on a small boat to make a living, dreaming about his retirement. Kumi-san is an 84 year old villager who wanders around the shore everyday. She believes a social welfare facility “stole” her disabled son to receive subsidy from the government. A “late - stage elderly” Koso-san runs a small seafood store left by her deceased husband. She sells fish to local villagers and provides leftovers to stray cats. Foresaken by the modernization of post-war Japan, the town Ushimado's rich, ancient culture and tight-knit community are on on the verge of disappearing.
Amor Omnia (2020)
Yohei Yamakado · 1 critic vote
In France, in a contemporary city, a circle of friends practices the recitation of Virgil’s Bucolic text. Omnia vincit Amor; et nos cedamus Amori. Love conquers all; let us surrender to Love.
Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020)
Junta Yamaguchi · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, Fandango at Home Free · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Kanopy, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
A cafe owner discovers that the TV in his cafe suddenly shows images from the future, but only two minutes into the future.
Belle (2021)
Mamoru Hosoda · 1 critic vote
Streaming on HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max, Philo
Suzu is a 17-year-old high-school student living in a rural town with her father. Wounded by the loss of her mother at a young age, Suzu one day discovers the massive online world "U" and dives into this alternate reality as her avatar, Belle. Before long, all of U's eyes are fixed on Belle, when, suddenly, a mysterious, dragon-like figure appears before her.
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021)
Ryusuke Hamaguchi · 1 critic vote
Streaming on MUBI, MUBI Amazon Channel, Hoopla
An unexpected love triangle, a seduction trap, and a random encounter are the three episodes, told in three movements to depict three female characters and trace the trajectories between their choices and regrets.
Evil Does Not Exist (2023)
Ryusuke Hamaguchi · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
Takumi and his daughter Hana live in Mizubiki Village, close to Tokyo. One day, the village inhabitants become aware of a plan to build a camping site near Takumi's house offering city residents a comfortable "escape" to nature.
Perfect Days (2023)
Wim Wenders · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy
Hirayama is content with his life as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Outside of his structured routine, he cherishes music on cassette tapes, books, and taking photos of trees. Through unexpected encounters, he reflects on finding beauty in the world.
The Boy and the Heron (2023)
Hayao Miyazaki · 1 critic vote
Streaming on HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
While the Second World War rages, the teenage Mahito, haunted by his mother's tragic death, is relocated from Tokyo to the serene rural home of his new stepmother Natsuko, a woman who bears a striking resemblance to the boy's mother. As he tries to adjust, this strange new world grows even stranger following the appearance of a persistent gray heron, who perplexes and bedevils Mahito, dubbing him the "long-awaited one."
Cloud (2024)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy, Criterion Channel
Ryōsuke Yoshii, an ordinary reseller, carelessly earns grudges by people and becomes entangled in a life-threatening struggle.

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