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 • With Tetsuya Bessho, Yoshihiro Tatsumi • 2011 • 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...

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 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 ...