List of foreign films set in Japan

Last updated

The following is a list of foreign films set in Japan. Japan has provided an exotic and cosmopolitan backdrop to many international films set mostly or entirely in Japan. A common theme of western films set in Japan is the differences between Japanese and Western culture and how the characters cope with their new surroundings.

#

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keanu Reeves</span> Canadian actor (born 1964)

Keanu Charles Reeves is a Canadian actor. He has received numerous accolades, including four MTV Movie & TV Awards and a Saturn Award. In 2020, The New York Times ranked him as the fourth greatest actor of the 21st century, and in 2022, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Toshiro Mifune</span> Japanese actor (1920–1997)

Toshiro Mifune was a Japanese actor and producer. A winner of numerous awards and accolades over a lengthy career, Mifune is best known for starring in Akira Kurosawa's critically acclaimed jidaigeki films such as Rashomon (1950), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), The Hidden Fortress (1958) and Yojimbo (1961). He also portrayed Miyamoto Musashi in Hiroshi Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy (1954–1956), Lord Toranaga in the NBC television miniseries Shōgun, and Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto in three different films. He is widely considered one of the greatest actors of all time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Takashi Shimura</span> Japanese actor (1905–1982)

Takashi Shimura was a Japanese actor who appeared in over 200 films between 1934 and 1981. He appeared in 21 of Akira Kurosawa's 30 films, including as a lead actor in Drunken Angel (1948), Rashomon (1950), Ikiru (1952) and Seven Samurai (1954). He played Professor Kyohei Yamane in Ishirō Honda's original Godzilla (1954) and its first sequel, Godzilla Raids Again (1955). For his contributions to the arts, the Japanese government decorated Shimura with the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 1974 and the Order of the Rising Sun, 4th Class, Gold Rays with Rosette in 1980.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ken Watanabe</span> Japanese actor (born 1959)

Ken Watanabe is a Japanese actor. To English-speaking audiences, he is known for playing tragic hero characters, such as General Tadamichi Kuribayashi in Letters from Iwo Jima and Lord Katsumoto Moritsugu in The Last Samurai, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Among other awards, he has won the Japan Academy Film Prize for Best Actor twice, in 2007 for Memories of Tomorrow and in 2010 for Shizumanu Taiyō. He is also known for his roles in Christopher Nolan's films Batman Begins and Inception, as well as Memoirs of a Geisha, and Pokémon Detective Pikachu.

<i>Drunken Angel</i> 1948 Japanese film

Drunken Angel is a 1948 Japanese yakuza film noir directed by Akira Kurosawa, who also co-wrote the screenplay. It is notable for being the first of sixteen film collaborations between director Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hiroyuki Sanada</span> Japanese actor, producer, singer and martial artist (born 1960)

Hiroyuki Sanada is a Japanese actor, producer, singer and martial artist. He began his career in the mid-1960s at the age of six, and gained prominence for his roles in Japanese and Hong Kong action films, later establishing himself as a dramatic actor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa</span> American actor

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa is a Japanese-American actor and film producer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yakuza film</span> Film genre

Yakuza film is a popular film genre in Japanese cinema which focuses on the lives and dealings of yakuza, Japanese organized crime syndicates. In the silent film era, depictions of bakuto as sympathetic Robin Hood-like characters were common.

Chūshingura is the title given to fictionalized accounts in Japanese literature, theater, and film that relate to the historical incident involving the forty-seven rōnin and their mission to avenge the death of their master, Asano Naganori. Including the early Kanadehon Chūshingura (仮名手本忠臣蔵), the story has been told in kabuki, bunraku, stage plays, films, novels, television shows and other media. With ten different television productions in the years 1997–2007 alone, Chūshingura ranks among the most familiar of all historical stories in Japan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Teruo Ishii</span> Japanese film director (1924–2005)

Teruo Ishii was a Japanese film director best known in the West for his early films in the Super Giant series, and for his films in the ero guro ("erotic-grotesque") subgenre of sexploitation such as Shogun's Joy of Torture (1968). He also directed the 1965 film Abashiri Prison, which helped to make Ken Takakura a major star in Japan. Referred to in Japan as "The King of Cult", Ishii had a much more prolific and eclectic career than was generally known in the West during his lifetime.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samurai cinema</span> Film genre

Chanbara (チャンバラ), also commonly spelled "chambara", meaning "sword fighting" films, denotes the Japanese film genre called samurai cinema in English and is roughly equivalent to Western and swashbuckler films. Chanbara is a sub-category of jidaigeki, which equates to period drama. Jidaigeki may refer to a story set in a historical period, though not necessarily dealing with a samurai character or depicting swordplay.

<i>The Challenge</i> (1982 film) 1982 American film

The Challenge is a 1982 American action thriller film directed by John Frankenheimer from a screenplay by John Sayles and Richard Maxwell, and starring Scott Glenn and Toshirō Mifune. The plot follows a down-on-his-luck boxer (Glenn) who is hired to transport a valuable katana to Japan, where he becomes embroiled in a blood feud between two martial artist brothers. It was released by Embassy Pictures on July 23, 1982, and received mixed reviews.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shinsuke Mikimoto</span> Japanese actor

Shinsuke Mikimoto was a Japanese actor. His credits include at least fifty films, as well as numerous television appearances, in a career that spanned several decades.His real name is Syuichi Suzuki.The Suzuki family on his father's side is a family that served as the palace doctor of the Kaga Maeda family for generation.

Hossein Amini is an Iranian-born British screenwriter and film director who has worked as a screenwriter since the early 1990s. He was nominated for numerous awards for the 1997 film The Wings of the Dove, including an Academy Award for Best Writing – Adapted Screenplay. He also won a "Best Adapted Screenplay" award from the Austin Film Critics Association for his screenplay adaptation of Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive (2011), based on the novel by James Sallis. For his directorial debut, he both wrote and directed The Two Faces of January, an adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel.

<i>47 Ronin</i> (2013 film) 2013 American film

47 Ronin is a 2013 American historical fantasy action film directed by Carl Rinsch in his sole theatrical directorial effort. Written by Chris Morgan and Hossein Amini from a story conceived by Morgan and Walter Hamada, the film is a work of Chūshingura, a fictionalized account of the forty-seven rōnin, a real-life group of masterless samurai in 18th-century Japan who avenged the death of their daimyō Asano Naganori by battling his rival Kira Yoshinaka. Starring Keanu Reeves in the lead role along with Hiroyuki Sanada, Tadanobu Asano, Rinko Kikuchi and Ko Shibasaki, the film bears little resemblance to its historical basis compared to previous adaptations, and instead serves as a stylized interpretation set "in a world of witches and giants."

Events in the year 1997 in Japan. It corresponds to the year Heisei 9 (平成9年) in the Japanese calendar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miiko Taka</span> American actress (1925–2023)

Miiko Taka was an American actress, popular for her film and television roles from the late 1950s until the early 1980s. Her best known role was as an elegant Japanese dancer starring with Marlon Brando in the drama Sayonara. She also acted in several other films and TV shows with fellow performers such as Miyoshi Umeki, James Garner, Bob Hope, Cary Grant, and Toshirō Mifune.

Mifune: The Last Samurai, also known as Mifune, is a 2015 biographical documentary directed and co-written by Steven Okazaki. It chronicles the life of Toshiro Mifune, a Japanese actor and international star most noted for playing samurai characters in films by Akira Kurosawa.

<i>Jakoman and Tetsu</i> (1964 film) 1964 Japanese film

Jakoman and Tetsu, also known as One-Eyed Captain and Tetsu is a 1964 Japanese film directed by Kinji Fukasaku based on an earlier screenplay by Akira Kurosawa and Senkichi Taniguchi that was based on the novel Nishin gyogyo by Keizo Kajino. The screenplay had previously been filmed by director Senkichi Taniguchi in 1949.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Wada-Marciano, Mitsuo (2018). "4 A Dialogue with "Memory" in Hou Hsiao-hsien's Café Lumière (2003)". In Choi, Jinhee (ed.). Reorienting Ozu: A Master and His Influence. Oxford Academic. doi:10.1093/oso/9780190254971.003.0005.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.