What is the best Japanese movie of all time?

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!

1. 1
   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
2. 2
   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.
   789pts
3. 3
   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.
   789pts
4. 4
   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.
   710pts
5. 5
   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.
   710pts
6. 6
   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.
   710pts
7. 7
   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.
   474pts
8. 8
   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.
   474pts
9. 9
   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.
   284pts
10. 10
    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.
    1pts
11. 11
    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.
    1pts
12. 12
    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.
    1pts
13. 13
    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.
    1pts
14. 14
    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.
    1pts
15. 15
    Shoplifters

    Hirokazu Kore-eda's 2018 Palme d'Or winner about a makeshift family of petty thieves in Tokyo, tender and devastating in equal measure.
    1pts