Japanese Films of the 1980s

One year after the Kidojis' eldest son Otohiko was arrested for his part in a terrorist kidnapping, which resulted in multiple deaths, all the other perpetrators' parents have either resigned from their professional positions or taken their own lives, Nobuyuki Kidoji remains adamant that he is not responsible for his son's actions.

In a far-future time ruled by the supernatural, a young girl requests the help of a vampire hunter to kill the vampire who has bitten her and thus prevent her from becoming a vampire herself.

A story about the effect of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on a boy's life and the lives of the Japanese people.

Gauche is a diligent but mediocre cellist who plays for a small town orchestra and the local cinema in the early 20th century. He struggles during rehearsals and is often berated by his conductor during preparations for an upcoming performance of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. Over the course of four nights, Gauche is visited at his mill house home by talking animals as he is practicing.

1984 film by Mamoru Oshii

9th-graders Kazuo and Kazumi take a tumble at a temple in a small seacoast town in Japan. Through supernatural intervention, their minds and bodies are switched, and the result is a touching and hilarious coming-of-age comedy as they attempt to survive the pressures of junior high school life.

1987 film

1984 film

A partially-animated documentary about the preservation and restoration of the canal system in Yanagawa, Fukuoka

Two boys, whose parents ply their trade by the mouth of a muddy river in Osaka, become close friends.

1988 film by Jūzō Itami

A talk show hostess takes a camera crew out to an abandoned factory to investigate a purported snuff film that was made there. As she gets closer to the truth, she and her friends are subjected to a brutal nightmare.

Lonely and love-stricken high-school student Hiroki pursues a girl, but another one mysteriously appears in his life. Is she a figment of his psyche, or is she real?

A boy and girl struggle to understand their place in 1980s Japan, retiring to copulate and probe each other for answers.

Catalan architect Antonio Gaudí (1852-1926) designed some of the world's most astonishing buildings, interiors, and parks; Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara constructed some of the most aesthetically audacious films ever made. With camera work as bold and sensual as the curves of his subject's organic structures, Teshigahara immortalizes Gaudí on film.

Six-year-old Ataru steps on Elle's shadow during an impromptu game of shadow-tag; in Elle's culture, this is viewed as a marriage proposal. Eleven years later, Elle returns to Earth in order to marry Ataru — by which time not only had he forgotten the events of his childhood, but he was also going out with Lum. The rest of the plot focuses on Lum's attempts to prevent the marriage.

The film depicts carnivalesque atmosphere summed up by the cry "Ei ja nai ka" ("Why not?") in Japan in 1867 and 1868 in the days leading to the Meiji Restoration. It examines the effects of the political and social upheaval of the time, and culminates in a revelrous march on the Tokyo Imperial Palace, which turns into a massacre. Characteristically, Imamura focuses not on the leaders of the country, but on characters in the lower classes and on the fringes of society.

1983 film by Nagisa Ōshima