Directed by Hisayo Saika • Documentary • 2023 • 108 minutes

A group of uniformed Japanese schoolchildren make their way to class. But what they will be taught when they get there is a subject increasingly under government scrutiny.

EDUCATION AND NATIONALISM traces growing government interventio...

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 Kinji Fukasaku • Drama • With Kôji Tsuruta, Tomisaburô Wakayama • 1971 • 93 minutes

Returning from a ten-year prison sentence, former gang leader Gunji (Koji Tsuruta, Big Time Gambling Boss) finds that his turf has been taken over by his former enemy, now a large crime syndicate with...

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 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 Hirokazu Kore-eda • 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 m...

Directed by t.o.L • Animation • With Takeshi Katô, Hisayo Mochizuki • 2002 • 92 minutes

Arguably the only Japanese anime ever made inspired by both Hello Kitty and Thomas Pynchon, TAMALA 2010 is a futuristic techno fever dream that follows the adorable wide-eyed kitty Tamala on her home world of...

Directed by Chie Hayakawa • Drama • With Chieko Baishô, Hayato Isomura • 2022 • 113 minutes

In a near dystopian future, Japan’s government launches PLAN 75, a program encouraging the elderly to terminate their own lives to relieve its rapidly aging population’s social and economic burdens. In Ch...

Directed by Seijun Suzuki • Drama • With Hideki Takahashi, Masako Izumi • 1965 • 87 minutes

Tetsuo (Hideki Takahashi, Fighting Elegy), a low-level yakuza is double-crossed by his boss and attacked. His younger brother Kenji (Kotobuki Hananomoto, This Transient Life), an aspiring artist with no c...

Directed by Eiichi Kudo • Drama • With Yusaku Matsuda, Hyoe Enoki, Mari Hemmi • 1981 • 112 minutes

When his police detective best friend is killed, down-at-heel private eye and part-time blues singer BJ (Yusaku Matsuda, The Game Trilogy) gets the blame. He must start his own investigation to cle...

Directed by Kinji Fukasaku • Drama • With Kôji Tsuruta, Noboru Andô • 1969 • 97 minutes

Two major yakuza factions from Tokyo and Osaka battle over control of Yokohama, using local gangs as their proxies. Amid this violent struggle, Tsukamoto, the head of one of the local gangs, is released from ...

Directed by Erik Shirai • Documentary • 2015 • 93 minutes

A beautiful and immersive portrait of life at the 144-year old Yoshida Brewery, a producer of world class sake. With changing times ahead and new regime led by the 6th generation heir, this is a rarified look at the personal and professio...

Directed by Kenji Misumi • Drama • With Yasuko Nakada, Kazuo Hasegawa, Yoko Uraji • 1959 • 84 minutes

Samurai Iemon (Kazuo Hasegawa, Gate of Hell) has grown distant from his wife Oiwa since she miscarried. Oume falls madly in love with Iemon after he saves her from a group of drunk swordsmen. Wi...

Directed by Yuzo Kawashima • Drama • With Ayako Wakao, Eiji Funakoshi, Yûko Hamada • 1962 • 96 minutes

In their humble two-room apartment, the Maeda family seem ever so self-effacing - but their modest façade hides another truth. Daughter Tomoko is the mistress of a bestselling author with well-...

Directed by Tai Kato • Drama • With Noboru Andô, Shinobu Chihara, Asao Koike • 1967 • 90 minutes

Trying to survive in the ruins of post-war Japan, Kawada (Noboru Ando, By a Man's Face Shall You Know Him) and Tsukada (Asao Koike, Sympathy the Underdog) run afoul of the military police after steal...

Directed by Satsuo Yamamoto • Drama • With Kojiro Hongo, Mayumi Ogawa, Miyoko Akaza • 1968 • 89 minutes

Noble samurai Shinzaburo (Kojiro Hongo, Gamera) is visited one night by the beautiful courtesan Otsuyu (Miyoko Akaza, Lady Snowblood). She pleads with him to marry her and save her from life i...

Directed by Tokuzo Tanaka • Drama • With Akira Ishihama, Shiho Fujimura, Machiko Hasegawa • 1968 • 80 minutes

Two woodcutters spend the night in a mountain lodge after being caught in a snowstorm. A female spirit appears and takes the life of one of the men. She spares the other man's life on th...

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 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 Hirokazu Kore-eda • Drama • With Bae Doona, Arata Iura, Itsuji Itao • 2009 • 116 minutes

A present-day fable for the increasing disconnect we find in urban life, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Air Doll transports the Galatea myth to present day Tokyo.

A life-size sex doll (Bae Doona, The Host)...

Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi • Drama • With Yasuko Matsuyuki, Masahiro Takashima, Natsuki Harada,  • 2012 • 160 minutes

In 2011, a journalist arrives in Nagaoka, a Japanese village that underwent destruction during both World War II and the 2004 Chūetsu earthquakes, and is now notable for the f...

Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi • Drama • With Toru Shinagawa, Takako Tokiwa, Yumi Adachi, Hirona Yamazaki, Shunsuke Kubozuka, Shusaku Uchida, Takehiro Murata, • 2014 • 171 minutes

At 2:46 PM on March 11, 2013, Mitsuo Suzuki takes his last breath at the ripe old age of 92. As the patriarch’s far-...