Japanese Film

Three directors dominate the classic canon. Kurosawa Akira combined dynamic action with moral drama in films such as Seven Samurai (1954), which influenced westerns and action cinema worldwide. Ozu Yasujirō told quiet family stories with low, still camera positions and minimal plot; Tokyo Story (1953) regularly appears in lists of the greatest films ever made. Mizoguchi Kenji, known for long takes and his portraits of women, won the Silver Lion in Venice in successive years with The Life of Oharu, Ugetsu and Sanshō the Bailiff.

Other major figures of the period include Naruse Mikio, Kinoshita Keisuke and Kinugasa Teinosuke, whose colour film Gate of Hell won the grand prize at Cannes in 1954. Genres flourished too: jidaigeki period films with samurai heroes, gendaigeki contemporary dramas, and the monster film, launched by Honda Ishirō's Godzilla in 1954, a work shaped by the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

From around 1960 a Japanese New Wave challenged the studio system with politically and sexually provocative films: Ōshima Nagisa, Imamura Shōhei, Shinoda Masahiro and Yoshida Yoshishige among them. Imamura later won the Palme d'Or twice, for The Ballad of Narayama (1983) and The Eel (1997). As television spread, audiences fell and studios turned to genre series: Tōei's yakuza films, the comedy series Otoko wa Tsurai yo, and adult 'roman porno' at Nikkatsu, where many later directors trained.

In the 1990s Kitano Takeshi (Hana-bi, Golden Lion 1997) and a wave of horror directors, led by Nakata Hideo's Ringu (1998), found international audiences; Ringu started a boom of Japanese horror remade in Hollywood. Takita Yōjirō's Departures won the Academy Award for foreign-language film in 2009.

Animated feature films are a pillar of Japanese cinema and include many of the most successful films at the domestic box office. Studio Ghibli, founded in 1985 by Miyazaki Hayao and Takahata Isao with producer Suzuki Toshio, created works such as My Neighbour Totoro (1988), Princess Mononoke (1997) and Spirited Away (2001), which won the Golden Bear in Berlin and the Academy Award for animated feature. Miyazaki won a second Oscar with The Boy and the Heron in 2024.

Other directors such as Ōtomo Katsuhiro (Akira, 1988), Oshii Mamoru (Ghost in the Shell, 1995), Kon Satoshi and Hosoda Mamoru expanded the art form; Shinkai Makoto's Your Name (2016) became a global success. Ghibli's world can be visited at the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Tokyo, and at Ghibli Park in Aichi Prefecture.

Kore-eda Hirokazu has become the leading humanist voice of recent decades, exploring families of blood and of choice; Shoplifters won the Palme d'Or in 2018. Hamaguchi Ryūsuke's Drive My Car, based on a Murakami Haruki story, won the Academy Award for international feature in 2022, and Kawase Naomi, Kurosawa Kiyoshi and Miike Takashi are also regulars at European festivals. Yamazaki Takashi's Godzilla Minus One won the Academy Award for visual effects in 2024.

The domestic market is large and dominated by Japanese productions, many of them adaptations of manga, anime or novels, released by the major studios Tōhō, Shōchiku, Tōei and Kadokawa. The Tokyo International Film Festival is held each autumn.