What is the best Japanese movie of all time?

By YPB Team

From Kurosawa's samurai epics and Mizoguchi's ghost stories to Ghibli's animated worlds, J-horror terrors, and modern humanist dramas — this is a century of cinema in miniature. Cast your vote!

Ugetsu

Kenji Mizoguchi's 1953 ghost-story masterpiece set during civil-war Japan, weaving the supernatural and the mundane into a mournful meditation on greed, ambition, and lost love.

1000pts

Tampopo

Juzo Itami's 1985 food comedy epic weaves the story of a widow perfecting her ramen shop with vignettes celebrating Japan's obsessive relationship with cuisine.

857pts

Perfect Blue

Satoshi Kon's 1997 psychological horror anime following a pop idol whose grip on reality fractures as she pursues an acting career — a profound exploration of identity and obsession.

857pts

Seven Samurai

Akira Kurosawa's 1954 epic about a farming village who hire seven ronin to defend against bandits — the template for countless ensemble action films and one of the greatest films ever made.

803pts

Princess Mononoke

Miyazaki's 1997 epic environmental myth pitting forest gods against an iron-smelting village, a film of thunderous beauty and moral complexity that refuses easy resolution.

803pts

Battle Royale

Kinji Fukasaku's visceral 2000 dystopia in which a class of junior-high students is forced to fight to the death on an island, shocking in its violence and lacerating in its social satire.

803pts

Spirited Away

Hayao Miyazaki's 2001 Oscar-winning fantasy about a girl trapped in a spirit bathhouse, the highest-grossing Japanese film of all time and a masterpiece of imagination.

642pts

Ringu

Hideo Nakata's 1998 J-horror landmark — a cursed videotape and a phone call predicting death in seven days — redefining the horror genre for a generation worldwide.

642pts

Ran

Kurosawa's monumental 1985 reimagining of King Lear set in feudal Japan, with spectacular battle sequences and a late-career masterwork of colour, tragedy, and scale.

514pts

Rashomon

Kurosawa's 1950 puzzle-film in which four witnesses give irreconcilably different accounts of a samurai's death, giving the world the 'Rashomon effect' and rewriting world cinema.

321pts

Grave of the Fireflies

Isao Takahata's 1988 Studio Ghibli anti-war elegy about two orphaned siblings struggling to survive the firebombing of Kobe in 1945 — profoundly devastating.

321pts

Harakiri

Masaki Kobayashi's 1962 samurai deconstruction — a ruined ronin requests an honourable death at a feudal clan's mansion, then systematically exposes the hypocrisy of the samurai code.

321pts

Late Spring

Ozu's 1949 intimate drama about a widowed professor whose daughter refuses to marry and leave him, a delicate study of duty, attachment, and the passage of time.

321pts

Tokyo Story

Yasujirō Ozu's 1953 masterwork of everyday tragedy, following elderly parents visiting their indifferent adult children in Tokyo — a film of heartbreaking stillness and moral precision.

0pts