Best Japanese Films Kinema Junpo (1926-2025)

While Sakura and Hiroshi struggle to save funds to build a house, Torajiro befriends three young women on vacation during his travels.

Ichijo Sayuri, once the legendary queen of Osaka strippers, has retired to run a sushi shop. She is awaiting her day in court after having been arrested for indecency at her farewell performance. While she was active, she was both the rival and the model for many young strippers. Harumi was one of them. Ichijo Sayuri was the real-life queen of Osaka strippers who was arrested on her final performance.

From his own filmed report about deserters and a civilian organisation supporting peace, sticking to a documentary style, the film-maker looks at the lives of soldiers who deserted the Vietnam war and fled to Japan.. A Puerto-Rican, who deserted eighteen months earlier, is working to make his utopian ideas come true. A black man, who is too scared to leave his room since he escaped, cannot walk any more.

A girl falls for a pickpocketer who gets arrested, so she hooks up with his ex-girlfriend and his ex-cellmate.

14-year-old Sunaoko travels from Tokyo to Naha, Okinawa, with her father’s young fiancée Momoko in search of her half-brother whom she has never met. Their guide, a beer-guzzling ex-soldier, takes them to the locale’s tourist attractions, quickly delving into the underlying scars of the island’s wartime history.

After being cruelly set up and deceived by Sugimi, a detective in cohorts with the mob with whom she was whole-heartedly in love, Matsushima’s desire for revenge knows no bounds.

A prostitute and her lover go on the run after killing her pimp.

Two college buddies try to understand a young woman's suicide through her Super-8 films and clips from their summer trips together.

A militant revolutionary group is torn apart by betrayal as its members descend into paranoia and sexual decadence.

The great Bunta stars as a gangster who is sent to jail for the sake of his gang, but when he’s released he finds everything completely changed and his gang has swept him aside for being too violent. He tries to start a new life with his two ”brothers” but can’t seem to escape old affiliations

While rotting away in jail, Okamoto learns of the death of his beloved sister, Natsuko. Violently assaulted by a group of U.S. military men during a drunken joyride, she was found dead by local authorities. Haunted by the tragedy, Okamoto escapes from jail to hunt down and kill those who destroyed the life of his sister. What he uncovers during his investigation is much more horrifying than he could ever imagine! Fueled by rage, he meets the killers one by one as the film explodes into an unbelievable climax of bloodshed.

A woman takes revenge on her husband after he leaves her for a younger woman by harassing the couple with unwanted phone calls at night.

A young woman undergoes psychiatric treatment after she no longer hears music and develops sexual hang-ups.

A department store girl is robbed of her cash register by a boy, but for some reason she cannot forget the boy's mysterious eyes, and time passes. One day, she accidentally spots those eyes again and relentlessly pursues the boy. And the moment she apprehends him on a beach, her hatred transforms into pleasure, and they find themselves drawn to each other in this New Roman Porno film.

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.

1971 film by Masahiro Shinoda

In feudal Japan, when any commerce with the rest of the world is strictly prohibited, an idealist appears at an isolated inn, headquarters of smugglers with stolen money intended to ransom his loved one forced to work in a brothel.

Taking a message from Hiroshi's father to heart, Torajiro attempts to give up his wandering ways.

1971 film by Shūji Terayama

Several high-school friends spend their final summer together indulging in sex and leisure; their halcyon days are soon coming to an end.