Directed by Shohei Imamura • Documentary • 1967 • 130 minutes

One of the most important and complex works by two-time Palme d'Or winning director Shohei Imamura, A MAN VANISHES begins as an investigation into one of the thousands of missing persons cases that occur in Japan each year.

The film ...

Directed by Hirokazu Koreeda • Drama • With Makiko Esumi, Tadanobu Asano • 1995 • 110 minutes

One of the finest films of Japanese cinema, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s first feature film Maborosi is a story of love, loss, and ultimately, regeneration.

Haunted by the mysterious loss of her grandmother ma...

Directed by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi • Drama • With Sachie Tanaka, Hazuki Kikuchi, Maiko Mihara • 2017 • 317 minutes

A powerful affirmation of the immersive potential of cinema. HAPPY HOUR is a slow-burning epic chronicling the emotional journey of four thirtysomething women in the misty seaside city o...

Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa • Drama • With Hidetoshi Nishijima, Yûko Takeuchi, Toru Baba • 2017 • 130 minutes

Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who made his name with classics CURE and BRIGHT FUTURE, gets back to his roots by putting the thumbscrews to the audience with his latest, CREEPY. A year after a botch...

Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa • Drama • With Joe Odagiri, Tatsuya Fuji, Tadanobu Asano • 2003 • 115 minutes

"Casts its spell by drawing out the horror of everyday existence bit by bit, and then tossing in some otherworldly weirdness that makes the hair on the back of your neck try to run for cove...

Directed by Kihachiro Kawamoto • Documentary • 2014 • 99 minutes

Kimstim is proud to present this collection of short films from one of the world's greatest stop-motion animators: Kihachiro Kawamoto. Famous for his beautiful, expressive puppets, Kawamoto began his career in the 1950s. Honing his...

Directed by Nagisa Oshima • Documentary • With William B. White, Nagisa Oshima • 1996 • 52 minutes

The forces and themes that have shaped his nation's cinema drive Nagisa Oshima's forceful and erudite essay. Based entirely on archive footage, it considers the rediscovery of Daisuke Ito's Chuji's...

Directed by Tiffany Hsiung • Documentary • 2016 • 104 minutes

THE APOLOGY follows the personal journeys of three former 'comfort women' who were among the 200,000 girls and young women kidnapped and forced into military sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.

Some 70 ...

Directed by Shohei Imamura • Documentary • 1975 • 75 minutes

From the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, Japanese girls and women were trafficked out of Japan and sent to foreign countries like China, Singapore, and beyond to serve as indentured prostitutes. These women were called Karayuki-san.

Shoh...

Directed by Shinsuke Ogawa, Peng Xiaolian • Documentary • 2001 • 90 minutes

The ostensible subject of this remarkably beautiful film is the growing, drying, peeling and packaging of persimmons in the tiny Japanese village of Kaminoyama. The inhabitants explain that it is the perfect combination ...

Directed by Daniel Schmid • Documentary • With Tamasaburo Bando • 1999 • 89 minutes

In Japanese theater women's roles are traditionally played by men. The man playing the woman's role, the Onnagata, does not imitate the woman, as in the West, but tries to capture her significance. He need not st...

Directed by Eric Khoo • Animation • 2014 • 98 minutes

TATSUMI celebrates the life and work of Japanese comics artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi-a manga pioneer who elevated the genre to a new level of creative expression and adult realism. A comics-crazed teenager, Tatsumi began to get published and was ...

Directed by John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson • Documentary • 2013 • 63 minutes

Tokyo is a digital metropolis and wellspring of spectacular pop culture, its commercial crossroads carpeted with people day and night. Above them, watching from perches on buildings and power lines, are more than 20...

Directed by Kyoko Miyake • Documentary • 2017 • 88 minutes

"IDOLS" has fast become a phenomenon in Japan as girl bands and pop music permeate Japanese life. TOKYO IDOLS—an eye-opening film gets at the heart of a cultural phenomenon driven by an obsession with young female sexuality and internet ...

Directed by Jessica Oreck • Documentary • With Takeshi Yoro • 2010 • 90 minutes

Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo delves into the mystery of Japan's age-old love affair with insects. From the first fabled emperor who dubbed Japan the "Isle of the Dragonflies," to the cricket-selling businesses of the ...

Directed by Junichi Suzuki • Documentary • With Noritoshi Kanai, Nobu Matsuhisa, Joel Robuchon • 2015 • 117 minutes

Beginning with sushi, Japanese cuisine is familiar all over the world today. At Japanese restaurants, you can see people, regardless of their ethnicity, enjoying this food culture....

Directed by Jesper Wachtmeister • Documentary • 2003 • 53 minutes

Kochuu is included on the same DVD as Great Expectations KOCHUU is a visually stunning film about modern Japanese architecture, its roots in the Japanese tradition, and its impact on the Nordic building tradition. Winding its way ...

Directed by Ema Ryan Yamazaki • Documentary • 2019 • 94 minutes

Baseball is life for the die-hard competitors in the 100th annual Koshien, Japan's wildly popular national high school baseball championship, whose alumni include U.S. baseball star Shohei Ohtani and former Yankee Hideki Matsui. But...

Directed by Shohei Imamura • Documentary • 2012 • 48 minutes

Shohei Imamura rejoins Fujita, one of the subjects of IN SEARCH OF THE UNRETURNED SOLDIERS IN THAILAND, for the former soldier's first trip home to Japan following his post-war exile.

Fujita's reunion with Japan is not a happy one. He...

Directed by Shohei Imamura • Documentary • 1971 • 45 minutes

In Malaysia, Imamura follows one false lead after another as he tries to locate unreturned Japanese who had given up the culture of their birth to integrate with Malaysian society. These wrong turns take the filmmaker on a tour through...

Directed by Shohei Imamura • Documentary • 1971 • 50 minutes

Imamura has better luck in Thailand, where he brings together three unreturned soldiers to discuss their experiences during the war and after.

The three men—a farmer named Fujita and two doctors: Toshida and Nakayama—have responded ve...

Directed by Soichi Umezawa • Drama • With Ena Fujita, Yuyu Makihara, Momoka Sugimoto • 2017 • 81 minutes

From Japanese special effects master Soichi Umezawa comes a singular horror experience in a wildly hilarious marriage of The Blob and The Evil Dead. After studying in Tokyo, Kaori returns to ...

Directed by Susan Strickler • Documentary • 2020 • 82 minutes

THE VOW FROM HIROSHIMA is an intimate portrait of Setsuko Thurlow, a passionate, 85-year-old survivor of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. Her moving story is told through the lens of her growing friendship with a second generation surviv...