Japanese Cinema must-sees

A metaphysical mystery involving a university student's camera getting stolen, and the thief then committing suicide. Looking back upon the event, the situation comes to be questioned if it happened at all.

A street girl gang clashes with racist local gangsters after one of the girls starts dating an Afro-Japanese man.

A collection of four Japanese folk tales with supernatural themes.

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

Yakuza boss Shozo Hirono must choose his alliances carefully as the local gangster family affiliations prove themselves to be wildly unstable, causing gang conflicts to slowly escalate.

A businessman accidentally kills The Metal Fetishist, who gets his revenge by slowly turning the man into a grotesque hybrid of flesh and rusty metal.

University student sax player gets a lesson in the hard-boiled noir life.

A group of girls find themselves immersed in an Osaka gangland war when they escape from a detention transport. They form their own gang called The Gypsies.

The story takes place in feudal Japan, when any commerce with the rest of the world was strictly prohibited. An idealist suddenly appears in an isolated inn (the one that the title refers to), the head-quarters of a group of smugglers, with stolen money intended to ransom his loved one who is forced to work in a brothel.

On the lot of "Warp Station Edo," a popular shooting location for historical jidaigeki (period dramas), a camera crew follows several extras as they prepare for and perform their non-speaking roles as anonymous townspeople behind sword-wielding stars. In particular, they focus on an ambitious sexagenarian who wants to follow in the footsteps of his idol Steve McQueen (specifically as a fireman in The Towering Inferno) and unintentionally causes the crew a lot of grief in the process. An exceedingly clever send-up of the Japanese film industry and a loving tribute to the work of extras, Extro is a cameo-filled mockumentary that derives its title from none other than filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi, who appears as a talking head interviewee to say, "To me, extras are - Maestros."

The film outlines Japanese students movements in the 60s, then shows the formation of the Japanese United Red Army, a communist armed resistance group.

Hijiriko makes off from the bar she works at with money and a car that isn't hers. Meanwhile, Jiro Katagiri is up to no good with his gangster friends and ends up making off with all their ill-gotten gains, much to their disapproval. The two misfits end up meeting after a car crash and soon end up on the road together in (another) stolen car.

A noble young samurai searches for a thief who has stolen a precious treasure and killed one of his clansmen and meets an older samurai who tries to deter him from the violence of revenge.

Kuroda (Jô Shishido) is a mob hitman who turns on his employers after being forced to execute his lover. Joining forces with his similarly wronged brothers, hot-headed Eiji (Tatsuya Fuji) and aspiring boxer Saburô (Jirô Okazaki), the trio escalate their mob retaliation to all-out turf war where no one will stop until one faction emerges victorious.

Fresh out of prison, yakuza lieutenant Jiro Sagae is recruited by a new gang to help defeat a powerful rival family in this bloody, stylish crime film that inspired Japanese yakuza films of the '70s.

An entomologist on vacation is trapped by local villagers into living with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.

Sugata, a young man, struggles to learn the nuance and meaning of judo, and in doing so comes to learn something of the meaning of life.

On a subtropical island, a teenage couple deal with the interwoven cycle of life, death and love.

The Aso family live in the old town of Nara. One Day, Kei, one of the Aso's twin boys suddenly disappears. Five years later seventeen-year old Shun, the remaining twin, is an art student. He now has to move forward with his life, together with his childhood friend, Yu.

After his own gang sets him up to kill a rival mobster, a hit man is forced to flee with his younger brother.

During WWII, a British colonel tries to bridge the cultural divides between a British POW and the Japanese camp commander in order to avoid bloodshed.

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

The struggles of a group of immigrant outcasts living in an alternative-future, xenophobic Japanese metropolis.

Dai Miyamoto, a student from Sendai, receives a saxophone as a gift from his brother, Masayuki. He starts practicing immediately.

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