Important Japanese Films To Watch

In WW2 Manchuria, a prostitute grows to resent an abusive adjutant and falls in love with his aide.

The No. 3 assassin of Japan is given the chance to usurp No. 1 and take their place.

During the 1930s, a teenager yearns for a Catholic girl, whose only desire is to reform his sinful tendencies. Hormones raging, the young man channels his unsatisfied lust into the only outlet available: savage, crazed violence.

An injured thief on the run finds sanctuary within a brothel of united, ruthless women.

The adventures of a blind, gambling masseur who also happens to be a master swordsman.

A Korean man is sentenced to death by hanging, but he survives the execution. For the following two hours, his executioners try to work out how to handle the situation in this black farce.

A doomed love between a paper merchant and a courtesan.

After being robbed by a geisha, a ronin warrior carves a bloody path to seek revenge.

The trials and tribulations of Eddie and other transvestites in Japan.

A young boys' coming of age tale set in a strange, carnivalesque village becomes the recreation of a memory that the director has twenty years later.

An angst-ridden teen dealing with his dysfunctional family hits the streets. The story is inter-cut with various psychedelic, energetic vignettes.

Two interwoven stories. The first is a biography of anarchist Sakae Osugi which follows his relationship with three women in the 1920s. The second centers around two 1960s students researching Osugi's theories.

An ingratiating bride develops warm ties to her father-in-law while her cold husband blithely slights her for another woman.

A tragic social drama set in post war Japan about a lonely woman trying to find purpose and stability in a devastated Tokyo.

A middle-aged bar hostess, constantly in debt, is faced with numerous social constraints and challenges posed to her by her family, customers and friends.

Farmers from a village exploited by bandits hire a veteran samurai for protection, and he gathers six other samurai to join him.

In medieval Japan, a compassionate governor is sent into exile. His wife and children try to join him, but are separated, and the children grow up amid suffering and oppression.

When a ronin requesting seppuku at a feudal lord's palace is told of the brutal suicide of another ronin who previously visited, he reveals how their pasts are intertwined - and in doing so challenges the clan's integrity.

A family chooses a match for their daughter Noriko, but she, surprisingly, has her own plans.

Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot take the truth of being abandoned as a child.

A hit man is hired to kill a mob boss. After the deed is done, he and his driver are wanted dead by rival gangs who joined forces.