top 10 Japanese Films

I’ve been thinking about this..

1. Ikiru – Akira Kurosawa

2. Yearning Mikio Naruse

3. Good Morning Yasujiro Ozu

4. Ugetsu Kenji Mizoguchi

5. Harmful Insect Akihiko Shiota

6. The Warped Ones Koreyoshi Kurahara

7. An Inn at Osaka Heinosuke Gosho

8. Throw Away Your Books, Rally in The Streets Shuji Terayama

9. Narita: Peasents of the Second Fortress Shinsuke Ogawa

10. Nanami: The Inferno of First Love Susumu Hani

Really close runner ups Kei Kumai’s The Long Darkness,
Tomu Uchida’s Fugitive From the Past

I’ve been meaning to do a profile list but wanted to see more films, I was itching and thought I’d start here.

This is too difficult so I’ll basically go with a random ten that had an affect on me.

Goyokin – Hideo Gosha
Heaven’s Story – Takahisa Zeze
Left Handed – Laurence Thrush
The Warped Ones – Koreyoshi Kurahara
Hideko the Bus Conductress – Mikio Naruse
The Rickshaw Man – Hiroshi Inagaki
Silence – Masahiro Shinoda
The Masseurs and Woman – Hiroshi Shimizu
Blind Beast – Yasuzo Masumura
Eureka – Shinji Aoyama

Man, this is tough.

An Autumn Afternoon / Ozu Yasujirô

The Sun’s Burial / Ôshima Nagisa

The Assassination of Ryoma / Kuroki Kazuo

Japanese Girls at the Harbor / Shimizu Hiroshi

The Life of Oharu / Mizoguchi Kenji

Floating Clouds / Naruse Mikio

An Inn at Osaka / Gosho Heinosuke

A Japanese Village / Ogawa Shinsuke

Moving / Sômai Shinji

Eros Plus Massacre / Yoshida Yoshishige

nice its cool that you include The Sun’s Burial Arsaib might be my favorite JNW yakuza film

Tokyo Story (Ozu)

Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi)

Vengeance is Mine (Imamura)

High and Low (Kurosawa)

Hana-bi (Kitano)

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Schrader)

Blackmail is My Life (Fukasaku)

Apart From You (Naruse)

The Man Who Left His Will on Film (Oshima)

Funeral Parade of Roses (Matsumoto)

Personal favorites, not all time best:

LICENSE TO LIVE (Kurosawa)
INSECT WOMAN (Imamura)
PATLABOR 2 (Oshii)
THE WATER MAGICIAN (Mizoguchi)
BIG BANG LOVE: JUVENILE A (Miike)
HIMATSURI (Yanigamatchi)
PISTOL OPERA (Suzuki)
SUMMER VACATION 1999 (Kaneko)
PASSING FANCY (Ozu)
AUGUST IN THE WATER (Ishii)

Trying to keep myself to one film per director, otherwise it would be five Imamura and five Kiyoshi Kurosawas…

These lists make a mockery of Sight & Sound’s top 10 Japanese films in its recent poll, with Ozu, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi dominant. F*** Sight & Sound and so many narrow-minded directors and critics.

Taking 1 film per director.

Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi)
Maborosi (Kore-eda)
Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)
Late Spring (Ozu)
Floating Clouds (Naruse)
Ornamental Hairpin (Shimizu)
My Neighbour Totoro (Miyazaki)
After the Rain (Koizumi)
Crazed Fruit (Nakahira)
Eureka (Aoyama)

i would still like to mention Tales of the Taira Clan, Straits of Love and Hate, Story of the Late Chrysanthemums, (never mind the canonical Life of Oharu, Ugetsu Monogatari). The list needs some spicing. My own Japanese horizons are too limited, i must explore a lot more, focus much harder on the national cinema, instead of maybe too much frivolous flitting between countries. I have let things slip. But India calls, and Latin America and..

Really cool lists guys and so much to check out. Naming 10 is too hard and i don’t think it does justice for Japanese Cinema. Don’t want to alter the thread or anything but was wondering if any of you wanted to try something like this for japanese cinema – http://mubi.com/topics/best-films-by-classic-hollywood-directors – in this thread or another. You know so we can have a comprehensive guide with everyone’s preferences in one place.

1. Harakiri (Kobayashi)
2. Revenge of a Kabuki Actor (Ichikawa)
3. Ran (Kurosawa)
4. Woman In The Dunes (Teshigahara)
5. Ugetsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi)
6. Hausu (Obayashi)
7. Pitfall (Teshigahara)
8. Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)
9. Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Tsukamoto)
10. The Human Condition I: No Greater Love (Kobayashi)

A random selection of favourites, not necessarily my favourite of the named director but ones I cherish:

Ozu – Tokyo Twilight (1957)
Naruse – Floating Clouds (1955)
Shimizu – Mr. Thank You (1936)
Mizoguchi – The Lady Of Musashino (1951)
Yamanaka – Humanity And Paper Balloons (1937)
Kurosawa – The Idiot (1951)
Shindô – Kuroneko (1968)
Kinugasa – Gate Of Hell (1953)
Kinoshita – Twenty-Four Eyes (1954)
Ichikawa – The Heart (1955)
Nakahira – Crazed Fruit (1956)
Kobayashi – Black River (1957)
Masumura – Seisaku’s Wife (1965)
Teshigahara – The Face Of Another (1965)
Shinoda – Silence (1971)
Suzuki – Fighting Elegy (1966)
Ôshima – In The Realm Of The Senses (1976)
Imamura – Vengeance Is Mine (1979)
Kitano – Fireworks (1997)

Got a bit carried away there! But it’s impossible for me to just pick 10…

Harakiri(1962,Masaki Kobayashi)
Ran(1985,Akira Kurosawa)
The Human Condition(1959-61,Masaki Kobayashi)
Sansho the Bailiff(1954,Kenji Mizoguchi)
Maborosi(1995,Hirokazu Kore-eda)
Red Angel(1966,Yasuzo Masumura)
Kwaidan(1965,Masaki Kobayashi)
Ugetsu Monogatori(1953,Kenji Mizoguchi)
Throne of Blood(1957,Akira Kurosawa)
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind(1984,Hayao Miyazaki)

LOVE EXPOSURE has got to be my personal favorite. No matter what.

Here is my top ten (at the moment):

Ugetsu (1953) – Kenji Mizoguchi

Harakiri/Seppuku (1962) – dir. Masaki Kobayashi

Humanity and Paper Balloons/Ninjo kami fusen (1937) – dir. Sadao Yamanaka

Kagemusha (1980) – dir. Akira Kurosawa

Death by Hanging/Koshikei (1968) – dir. Nagisa Oshima

Himatsuri: Fire Festival (1985) – dir. Yanagimachi Mitsuo

The Affair/Joen (1967) – dir. Yoshishige Yoshida

A Page of Madness/Kurutta ippêji (1926) – dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa

Tokyo Story/Tôkyô monogatari (1953) – dir. Yasujiro Ozu

Grim (1985) – dir. Takashi Ito

NRH, nice inclusion of Passing Fancy, I absolutely adore that film. Alas, I don’t think I’ve seen enough Japanese film to make a truly worthy list, where I’m omitting a lot. So I’ll save it for the future.

The Fourth Dimension – Trinh T. Minh-ha
Maborosi – Hirokazu Kore-eda
A Japanese Village – Shinsuke Ogawa
Yearning – Mikio Naruse
M/Other – Nubohiro Suwa
Page of Madness – Teinosuke Kinugasa
Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo – Sadao Yamanaka
Violent Cop – Takeshi Kitano
Where Chimneys Are Seen – Heinosuke Gosho
Scattered Clouds – Mikio Naruse

Going with one per director. Makes it more interesting, but more difficult. Leaving off some real favourites.

Ran – Akira Kurosawa
Sansho The Bailiff – Kenji Mizoguchi
The Human Condition – Masaki Kobayashi
Pitfall – Hiroshi Teshigahara
Fires on The Plain – Kon Ichikawa
Vengeance Is Mine – Shohei Imamura
Maborosi – Hirokazu Kore-eda
Tetsuo: The Iron Man – Shin’ya Tsukamoto
Sonatine – Takeshi Kitano
Tokyo Sonata – Kiyoshi Kurosawa

1. Sansho the Bailiff (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954)
2. Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
3. Kagemusha (Akira Kurosawa, 1980)
4. Floating Weeds (Yasujiro Ozu, 1959)
5. Fires on the Plain (Kon Ichikawa, 1959)
6. High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963)
7. Woman in the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964)
8. Harakiri (Masaki Kobayashi, 1962)
9. Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa, 1957)
10. Ugetsu monogatari (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)

Sorry, Miyazaki.

High and Low — A. Kurosawa
Humanity and Paper Balloons — S. Yamanaka
Maborosi — H. Kore-eda
A Page of Madness — T. Kinugasa
The Sound of the Mountain — M. Naruse
Spirited Away — H. Miyazaki
The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums — K. Mizoguchi
Throne of Blood — A. Kurosawa
Tokyo Story — Y. Ozu
Yojimbo — A. Kurosawa

No order

Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu, 1949)
I Was Born, But… (I Was Born, But…, 1932)
Ugetsu monogatari (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)
Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
Suna no onna (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964)
Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (Shuji Terayama, 1971)
Children of the Beehive (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1948)
Shara (Naomi Kawase, 2003)

There’s a lot I haven’t seen yet, but here’s what I like best so far…

I Was Born, But… (1932)
High and Low (1963)
Woman in the Dunes (1964)
The Eel (1997)
An Autumn Afternoon (1962)
The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (1987)
Ghost in the Shell (1995)
All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001)
Noriko’s Dinner Table (2005)
A Scene at the Sea (1991)

1. In the Realm of the Senses (1976)
2. Harakiri (1962)
3. Tetsuo : The Iron Man (1989)
4. Yearning (1964)
5. The Warped Ones (1960)
6. Rashomon (1950)
7. The Hidden Fortress (1958)
8. Drunken Angel (1948)
9. Spirited Away (2001)
10. The whole Lone wolf and Cub film series excluding Shogun Assassin. (1972-74)

Off the top of my head:

A Page of Madness
Woman in the Dunes
Sansho the Bailiff
The Story of Lost Chrysanthemums
Seven Samurai
Stray Dog
I Was Born, But…
Late Spring

And two more recent ones:

United Red Army
Pulse

In order for Miyazaki to make a dent in any list anytime relatively soon we need to settle it once and for all:

My Neighbor Totoro Vs. Spirited Away

i vote totoro

the rest of my list would be something like this:

yearning naruse
seven samurai kurosawa
humanity and paper balloons yamanaka
pale flower shinoda
life of oharu mizoguchi
ugetsu mizoguchi
an inn at osaka gosho
late spring ozu
tokyo story ozu

Ikiru
Late Spring
The Life of Oharu
Sansho the Bailiff
Seven Samurai
Spirited Away
Throne of Blood
Tokyo Story
Ugetsu
Woman in the Dunes

Rashomon – Kurosawa
Kwaidan – Kobayashi
Ugetsu – Mizoguchi
Late Spring – Ozu
Woman in the Dunes – Teshigahara
Eros Plus Massacre – Yoshida
The Burmese Harp (1956 version) – Ichikawa
Ikiru – Kurosawa
Humanity and Paper Balloons – Yamanaka
The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums – Mizoguchi

Maybe my list includes some predictable choices, but many of these are also among my all-time personal favorites. I LOVE Japanese cinema and could include many others, like the many great examples above. I could easily add several more Kurosawas, all of Teshigahara, for example, but trying to keep this to 10. Where’s the love for Kwaidan?

Two unusual films I discovered through the first Directors’ Cup, Heat-Haze Theatre (Suzuki) and Farewell to the Ark (Terayama) deserve some special mention, too. Great variety in Japanese film if one explores a bit.

There are so many Ghibli films that are better than Totoro, honestly. Nausicaa and Whisper of The Heart are, in my opinion, much better films than Totoro. Totoro being the cuddly bastard that he is gets all the attention. (I also think that Mononoke is better than Spirited Away – but only by a fraction)

anyway, why hasn’t anyone mentioned Paprika? or any of Satoshi’s films for that matter?

I also agree with PDR, there are too many films to list and making a top 10 is just unfair to Japanese cinema.

Me too PDR I’d be willing to contribute I’m sure we can muck up a kick ass list of directors off this thread.

Totoro and Whisper of the Heart are my favorites because they are the most “grounded”, that is to say the least fantastic, which imho contrasts really well with Miyazaki’s natural proclivities :)

As usual, I never feel prepared for this. Anyway, here goes in no particular order :

Early Summer – Yasujiro Ozu
Tokyo Chorus – Yasujiro Ozu
Floating Clouds – Mikio Naruse
Every-Night Dreams – Mikio Naruse
Humanity and Paper Balloons – Sadao Yamanaka
An Inn at Osaka – Heinosuke Gosho
Drunken Angel – Akira Kurosawa
Ornamental Hairpin – Hiroshi Shimizu
Samurai Rebellion – Masakai Kobayashi
The Human Condition – Masaki Kobayashi