Awards of The Japanese Academy

Mariko Miyagi's documentary about everyday life at the school she founded, Silktree (Nemunoki).

Two infantry regiments of the Imperial Japanese Army tackled Mount Hakkoda in the winter of 1902 to prepare for war with Russia.

After over 50 years of wandering up and down Japan, finally in the 1970s the rough-hewn blind shamisien player and folk-song collector named Chikuzan became a musical sensation. This biographical drama chronicles his wanderings and his life, with a particular focus on his humble beginnings as a peasant on a remote and arid island.

A blind traveling musician is abused and oppressed while she tours the country, even though the modern world imposes changes on people's behavior.

A married woman and her lover murder her husband and dump his body into a well, but his ghost returns to haunt them as the local gossip intensifies.

The body of Sakai Hatsuko, a woman of 23 who has been slain with a knife, has been found in a forest. Some days later, Ueda Hiroshi, a 19-year-old shipyard worker, is arrested and charged with the murder. At Ueda's trial, a complex story unfolds. "The Incident" is a study in unrestrained passion and jealousy.

This is the story of "The Forty-Seven Ronin." Based on historical events in 1701-2, the movie tells the tale of the Asano clan's downfall and the revenge of its former samurai on the perpetrator of the catastrophe.

A young Japanese-American man arrives at his grandmother's old hometown in Yamaguchi, begins to stay at her family's elite but dysfunctional household, and gets entangled in a sinister plot of murder.

A high school science teacher builds an atomic bomb and uses it to extort the nation, but cannot decide what he wants. Meanwhile, a determined cop is catching up to him, as is radiation poisoning.

The story of the silk industry and the young girls who worked as silk spinners in the early 1900's in Japan. The silk mills were located in Okaya which lies just beyond the Nomugi Pass. The women and girls worked in a hot, humid atmosphere without rest, and endured those conditions and sexual harassment to earn money for their poor families. Across the ocean, it was the great depression in America.

Chronological exploits of Iwao Enokizu, a murderous thief on the run.

A surreal period film following a university professor and his eerie nomad friend as they go through loose romantic triangles and face death in peculiar ways.

After a virus devastates the global human population, survivors in Antarctica desperately try to find a cure and save the human race.

Set in Japan's Tenpyou era, four young monks are sent to China to study Buddhism and bring a high priest back to Japan with them. The film tells the tale of the four monks' youth and the life and times of the high priest Ganjin.

A selfish playboy uses rich women to pay off his debts. Divorcing his wife and marrying the woman he loves throws him into a spiral of destruction.

A five-year-old girl gets a tiny scratch on her finger while playing with mud in a marsh. After that, she suffers all kinds of horrible spasms including biting her tongue.

The lives and battles of soldiers leading up to the 1904 siege of Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War.

In 1949, Mr. Shimoyama, governor of Japan National Railroads, was found dead, run by train, after a mysterious disappearance. Officially it was considered suicide, but many suspected he was killed for some political conspiracy.

Constantly put to the test and faced with tragedy wherever he turns, can a man finally find solace and a modicum of love or rest with what is left of his hometown, his family, love or himself?

A 1920s playwright meets a beautiful woman who may be the ghost of his patron's deceased wife.

Near the turbulent end of the Edo era, a man returning to Japan after exile in America searches for his wife and becomes swept up in the current of revolution in this incisive period drama from the great Shohei Imamura.

In post-War Japan, a boy from a noodle store-owning family befriends a neighboring boy living in poverty.

The story follow a court case of a woman accused of having killed her husband.

A love story between a 29-year-old woman, who has once been a prostitute but is now the mistress of a wealthy jewelry merchant, and a 19-year-old college student.