Cinema of Japan

Japan’s film industry got its start in the late 1890s and has since grown into one of the world’s oldest and biggest. By 2022, it ranked fourth globally in the number of feature films made (634) and third in box office earnings ($1.5 billion). The 1950s are often called the “Golden Age of Japanese cinema.” During this decade, Akira Kurosawa’s period dramas (jidaigeki) and the science-fiction films of Ishirō Honda and Eiji Tsuburaya earned international acclaim, making these directors famous and highly influential. Several Japanese films from this era are now considered all-time greats: in 2012, Yasujirō Ozu’s Tokyo Story (1953) landed at No. 3 on Sight & Sound’s list of the 100 greatest films and topped the magazine’s directors’ poll of the top 50, pushing Citizen Kane aside.

Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) was named the best foreign-language film in a 2018 BBC survey. Japan has also won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film five times, more than any other Asian country. Anime took off in the 1980s, with new animated features—often based on popular TV series—released every summer and winter. Mamoru Oshii made the landmark Angel’s Egg (1985), Hayao Miyazaki adapted his own manga Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind into a 1984 film, and Katsuhiro Otomo did the same with his manga Akira in 1988.

Anime remains hugely popular worldwide, especially the work of Studio Ghibli, whose top earners include Princess Mononoke (1997), Spirited Away (2001), Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), Ponyo (2008), and The Boy and the Heron (2023). As of 2025, the 16 highest-grossing Japanese films globally are all anime, and the top 10—four of them from Studio Ghibli—were all released in the 21st century. Japanese horror films have existed since the post-war period starting in 1945 and gained early notice with kaiju like Godzilla (1954), but the genre didn’t boom until the late 1990s. Hits like Ringu (1998), Kairo (2001), Dark Water (2002), Ju-On: The Grudge (2002), Yogen (2004), and One Missed Call (2004) brought commercial success.

Japan’s main film studios are Toho, Toei, Shochiku, and Kadokawa. Known as the “Big Four,” they are the only members of the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan (MPPAJ). The Japan Academy Film Prize, hosted annually by the Nippon Academy-shō Association, began in 1978 and is seen as Japan’s version of the Academy Awards. Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope, first shown commercially in the U.S. in 1894, arrived in Japan in November 1896.

Early silent era

The Vitascope and the Lumière Brothers’ Cinematograph followed in early 1897, brought by businessmen like Inabata Katsutaro. Lumière cameramen shot the first films in Japan. Still, moving pictures weren’t entirely new to the Japanese, who had a rich tradition of pre-cinematic devices like gentō (utsushi-e) or magic lanterns. The first successful Japanese film, from late 1897, showed scenes of Tokyo.

In 1898, ghost films appeared, such as Shirō Asano’s shorts Bake Jizo and Shinin no sosei. The first documentary, the short Geisha no teodori, was made in June 1899. Tsunekichi Shibata made several early films, including Momijigari (1899), which recorded two famous actors performing a scene from a kabuki play.

Early films were heavily influenced by traditional theater like kabuki and bunraku. At the start of the 1900s, Japanese theaters hired benshi—storytellers who sat beside the screen and narrated silent movies. They came from kabuki jōruri, kōdan storytelling, theater barking, and other oral traditions. Benshi could be accompanied by music, like Western silent films.

With the arrival of sound in the early 1930s, the benshi gradually faded away. In 1908, Shōzō Makino, considered the pioneering director of Japanese film, began his influential career with Honnōji gassen, made for Yokota Shōkai. He recruited Matsunosuke Onoe, a former kabuki actor, to star in his films. Onoe became Japan’s first film star, appearing in over 1,000 mostly short films between 1909 and 1926.

Together, they pioneered the jidaigeki genre. Tokihiko Okada was a popular romantic lead of the same period. The first Japanese film production studio was built in 1909 by the Yoshizawa Shōten company in Tokyo. The first Japanese woman to appear professionally in a film was dancer and actress Tokuko Nagai Takagi, who performed in four shorts for the American Thanhouser Company between 1911 and 1914.

Among intellectuals, critiques of Japanese cinema grew in the 1910s and eventually sparked a movement that transformed the medium. Film criticism began with early magazines like Katsudō shashinkai (started in 1909) and a full-length book by Yasunosuke Gonda in 1914. Many early critics chastised studios like Nikkatsu and Tenkatsu for being too theatrical—using elements from kabuki and shinpa, such as onnagata—and for relying on benshi instead of more cinematic storytelling techniques. In what became known as the Pure Film Movement, writers in magazines like Kinema Record called for broader use of cinematic techniques.