Japanese Movie Listing

I was editor for Mensa's Feudal Japan SIG for 12 years. Over that time we did quite a number of movie reviews, including a few special issues which were nothing but movie reviews. We gathered up just about every movie known to mankind that even remotely involved Japan!

Our members wrote in with their impressions of various movies, which we supplemented from a variety of other sources. Note that this means you're getting a person's view of the movie :) If you notice a movie listing missing or incorrect, please Contact Me (Really!! WRITE ME!!!) so I can update the list!

Check out Japanese Movies By Director if you want to see what movies a given director made. Otherwise, use this alphabetical listing to view your movie by title.

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Lisa's Picks

Here are my personal favorites. If you haven't seen one of these, you really owe it to yourself to at least rent it and check it out!

Kagemusha One of my favorite movies of all time, this was directed by Akira Kurosawa and stars Tatsuya Nakadai. It's based on historical fact. A great general hires a body double to be able to cover for him in case he is injured. The perfect body double ends up being a thief. Sure enough, the General gets killed and the double has to cover for him as long as possible. The thief learns to respect what the General stood for, and tries his best to carry on.

Ran This is a LONG movie - be sure to have your popcorn and soda ready before you begin. It is the story of King Lear - an old father who wants his 3 sons to divide up his land and care for him in his old age. Nothing goes as plans and the battle sequences are amazing. There are also long scenes of clouds drifting across the sky, so it is a movie to be patient with. There are MANY memorable lines.

The Seven Samurai The classic movie that most know, even if they don't watch Japanese movies. It's Akira Kurosawa directing Toshiro Mifune and a few others :) It's what The Magnificent Seven was based on. A village is in trouble, and they convince a group of samurai to help them fight off the bandits. Each samurai is distinct, and the movie is great.

Yojimbo Yup, Akira and Toshiro again. This is great. Tohsiro is Yojimbo, a wandering samurai who happens into a town that is torn by feuding clans. This was the basis of Fistful of Dollars and some lines from Fistful were stolen word for word from Yojimbo. Yojimbo ends up setting the two clans against each other quite nicely!

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