# 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!

*By YPB Team · Published June 3, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-japanese-movie-of-all-time*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Ugetsu** — score 1000/1000
   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.
2. **Tampopo** — score 789/1000
   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.
3. **Perfect Blue** — score 789/1000
   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.
4. **Seven Samurai** — score 710/1000
   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.
5. **Princess Mononoke** — score 710/1000
   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.
6. **Battle Royale** — score 710/1000
   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.
7. **Spirited Away** — score 474/1000
   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.
8. **Ringu** — score 474/1000
   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.
9. **Ran** — score 284/1000
   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.
10. **Rashomon** — score 1/1000
   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.
11. **Grave of the Fireflies** — score 1/1000
   Isao Takahata's 1988 Studio Ghibli anti-war elegy about two orphaned siblings struggling to survive the firebombing of Kobe in 1945 — profoundly devastating.
12. **Harakiri** — score 1/1000
   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.
13. **Late Spring** — score 1/1000
   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.
14. **Tokyo Story** — score 1/1000
   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.
15. **Shoplifters** — score 1/1000
   Hirokazu Kore-eda's 2018 Palme d'Or winner about a makeshift family of petty thieves in Tokyo, tender and devastating in equal measure.

Tags: movies, japan, classics, all-time