The Best Japanese Films of All Time

Kurosawa, Ozu, Miyazaki and beyond — Japanese cinema ranked by composite score, including Japan's own Kinema Junpo critics' lists.

The Eel (1997) leads with a composite score of 4.43.

1
The Eel1997 · Shohei Imamura
4.43
Palme d'Or winner 1997 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 1997 #1 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1997 #4
2
Shoplifters2018 · Hirokazu Koreeda
4.21
Palme d'Or winner 2018 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 2018 #1 · Letterboxd Top 250 #155
3
Hana-bi1997 · Takeshi Kitano
4.18
Venice Golden Lion winner 1997 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1997 #1 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 1998 #1
4
Tokyo Story1953 · Yasujirō Ozu
4.01
Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #4 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #4 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 1953 #2
5
Rashomon1950 · Akira Kurosawa
3.92
Venice Golden Lion winner 1951 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #20 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #41
6
Kagemusha1980 · Akira Kurosawa
3.79
Palme d'Or winner 1980 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 1980 #2 · Criterion Collection spine #267
7
Spirited Away2001 · Hayao Miyazaki
3.71
Berlin Golden Bear winner 2002 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 2001 #3 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #75
8
The Ballad of Narayama1983 · Shohei Imamura
3.39
Palme d'Or winner 1983 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 1983 #5
9
Seven Samurai1954 · Akira Kurosawa
3.05
Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #14 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #20 · Letterboxd Top 250 #5
10
Late Spring1949 · Yasujirō Ozu
2.86
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 1949 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #21 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #62
11
Ikiru1952 · Akira Kurosawa
2.78
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 1952 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #72 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #157
12
Ugetsu1953 · Kenji Mizoguchi
2.68
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1959 #1 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 1953 #3 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #90
13
Sansho the Bailiff1954 · Kenji Mizoguchi
2.57
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 1960 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #75 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 1954 #9
14
Drive My Car2021 · Ryusuke Hamaguchi
2.49
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 2021 #1 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 2021 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2021 #4
15
Bushido, Samurai Saga1963 · Tadashi Imai
2.39
Berlin Golden Bear winner 1963 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 1963 #5
16
Rickshaw Man1958 · Hiroshi Inagaki
2.33
Venice Golden Lion winner 1958 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 1958 #7
17
Harakiri1962 · Masaki Kobayashi
2.29
Letterboxd Top 250 #1 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 1962 #3 · Criterion Collection spine #302
18
Oldboy2003 · Park Chan-wook
2.08
Cannes Grand Prix winner 2004 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2004 #6 · Letterboxd Top 250 #102
19
The Sting of Death1990 · Kōhei Oguri
2.00
Cannes Grand Prix winner 1990 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 1990 #3
20
The Works and Days2022 · Anders Edström, C.W. Winter
2.00
Berlin Golden Bear winner 2020
21
Father Mother Sister Brother2025 · Jim Jarmusch
2.00
Venice Golden Lion winner 2025
22
Ran1985 · Akira Kurosawa
1.97
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 1985 #2 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #185 · Letterboxd Top 250 #19
23
The Crying Game1992 · Neil Jordan
1.81
Oscar Best Picture nominee 1992 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 1993 #4 · BFI Top 100 British films #26
24
Yi Yi2000 · Edward Yang
1.81
Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #90 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #93 · Letterboxd Top 250 #13
25
My Neighbor Totoro1988 · Hayao Miyazaki
1.79
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 1988 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #72 · Kurosawa's 100 favorite films
26
Get Out2017 · Jordan Peele
1.79
Oscar Best Picture nominee 2017 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #95 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2017 #4
27
Lost in Translation2003 · Sofia Coppola
1.63
Oscar Best Picture nominee 2003 · BAFTA Best Film nominee 2004 · Roger Ebert's Great Movies
28
The Woman in the Dunes1964 · Hiroshi Teshigahara
1.60
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 1964 #1 · Letterboxd Top 250 #28 · Criterion Collection spine #394
29
Red Beard1965 · Akira Kurosawa
1.56
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 1965 #1 · Letterboxd Top 250 #52 · Criterion Collection spine #159
30
High and Low1963 · Akira Kurosawa
1.55
Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 1963 #2 · Letterboxd Top 250 #6 · Scorsese's 39 essential foreign films

The golden age the West discovered late

Japan built one of the world's great film industries in near-total isolation from Western attention — by the 1930s it was producing more films per year than Hollywood — and the West found out all at once. When Kurosawa's Rashomon won the Golden Lion at Venice in 1951 (submitted, the story goes, without its own studio's confidence), it opened a decade in which Japanese cinema's three masters were revealed to have been working in parallel: Kurosawa the dynamist, whose Seven Samurai (1954) invented the men-on-a-mission template half of Hollywood still uses; Ozu the minimalist, whose Tokyo Story (1953) — low camera, no melodrama, a family quietly failing each other — now trades the #1 spot in directors' polls with the noisiest films ever made; and Mizoguchi the tragedian, whose long takes taught the European art film its patience.

Crucially, Japan kept its own score the whole time. The magazine Kinema Junpo has polled critics annually since 1924 — the world's longest-running critics' list — and this site ingests it as a first-class source. The double bookkeeping is revealing: Tokyo Story placed second in Kinema Junpo's own year (behind a film the West barely knows), Seven Samurai third in its year. Domestic and international canons disagree in detail while converging on the masters — exactly the kind of parallax a composite score is built to capture rather than flatten.

The second empire: animation

Japan's other canonical export took a different route. Studio Ghibli, founded 1985, put animation into the adult canon: My Neighbor Totoro (1988) topped Kinema Junpo's Japanese list in its year — an animated film beating all live-action competition, decades before Western critics would consider such a thing — and Spirited Away (2001) won the Golden Bear at Berlin, still the only animated film to take a major European festival's top prize. Miyazaki's films now anchor community canons worldwide. Meanwhile the live-action tradition renews itself: Kurosawa's late Ran (1985), financed from France when Japan wouldn't fund him; and Hamaguchi's Drive My Car (2021), Kinema Junpo's film of the year and an Oscar Best Picture nominee — the two national canons, domestic and international, finally reading from the same page.