Japanese Language Films: Japanese Films in the SFCC Library

JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI is the story of 85-year-old Jiro Ono, considered by many to be the world’s greatest sushi chef. He is the proprietor of Sukiyabashi Jiro, a 10-seat, sushi-only restaurant inauspiciously located in a Tokyo subway station. Despite its humble appearances, it is the first restaurant of its kind to be awarded a prestigious three-star Michelin Guide rating, and sushi lovers from around the globe make repeated pilgrimage, calling months in advance and shelling out top dollar for a coveted seat at Jiro’s sushi bar. JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI is a thoughtful and elegant meditation on work, family, and the art of perfection, chronicling Jiro’s life as both an unparalleled success in the culinary world and as a loving yet complicated father.

---

Eighty-year-old Jimmy Mirikitani survived the trauma of WWII internment camps, Hiroshima, and homelessness by creating art. But when 9/11 threatens his life on the New York City streets and a local filmmaker brings him to her home, the two embark on a journey to confront Jimmy's painful past. An intimate exploration of the lingering wounds of war and the healing powers of community and art (TV documentary : 2008).

---

Leading a lazy life, Fumiya has been a university student for 8 years and owes money to loan sharks. One day, a man named Fukuhara comes to collect the loan, which Fumiya cannot pay. So Fukuhara makes a proposition: He will cancel the debt as long as Fumiya agrees to walk with him across Tokyo to the police station of Kasumigaseki, where he intends to turn himself in for a crime he deeply regrets. Not having much choice, Fumiya accepts the deal. Thus begins their journey which will lead them to various unusual encounters, most of all with themselves. (Motion Picture: 2007). (In Japanese and subtitled in English).

Set in postwar Japan in 1958 during the construction of the Tokyo Tower, the movie begins with the arrival of young Mutsuko in Tokyo from her provincial home. Expecting to find a job in a major automotive company, she finds herself in the employment of a small automotive repair shop. Japanese dialogue with English subtitles. (Motion picture : 2005).

---

A young executive marries the daughter of an industrialist in order to seek justice for his father's killer. A tale about corruption in the boardrooms of postwar corporate Japan (Motion picture : 1960). (Japanese dialogue, with optional English subtitles).

---

This haunting, kabuki-inflected version of a Japanese folk legend is set in a remote mountain village, where food is scarce and tradition dictates that citizens who have reached their seventieth year must be carried to the summit of Mount Narayama and left there to die. The sacrificial elder at the center of the tale is Orin, a dignified and dutiful woman who spends her dwindling days securing the happiness of her loyal widowed son with a respectable new wife. (Motion picture : 1958). (Japanese dialogue; English subtitles).

---

Set in the 1930's in war-torn China and inspired by true events. George Hogg is a young Englishman who leads sixty orphaned boys on an extraordinary journey of almost a thousand miles across the snow-bound Liu Pan Shan mountains to safety on the edge of the Mongolian desert. During his journey, George learns to rely on the support of Chen, the leader of a Chinese partisan group who becomes his closest friend. He soon finds himself falling in love with the Australian adventurer Lee, an unsentimental nurse. Along the way, Hogg befriends Madame Wang, an aristocratic survivor who has also been displaced by war. She helps the young Englishman, his friends and their sixty war orphans make their way to safety near the western end of the Great Wall of China.

---

Soon after buying an expensive cello, Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki) learns that his orchestra is disbanding. Daigo and his wife move back to his hometown in northern Japan, where he answers an ad for what he thinks is a travel agency but is, in actuality, a mortuary. As he learns and carries out the rituals used in preparing the dead for their final rest, Daigo finds his true calling in life.

---

This film follows the lives people living in a Tokyo slum, including a mentally disabled boy obsessed with streetcars; a young woman living with her lecherous uncle; a pair of friends who get drunk and swap wives; a beggar and his son who live in a deserted car; and a man with five children who knows he is not the father of any, but treats them as if they were his own. Based on the novel by Shugoro Yamamoto. (Motion picture : 1970). (In Japanese with optional subtitles in English).

---

Dr. Sanada is an alcoholic who tries to keep the inhabitants of a post-World War II Tokyo slum as healthy as possible. Food and medical supplies are scarce and the only place to buy medicines is the black market-- controlled by the Yakuza. Matsunaga, a young yakuza with a violent temper, seeks Sanada's help to remove a bullet from his hand, but Matsunaga's cough catches the doctor's attention. What follows is a wrestling match for Matsunaga's life. Will he follow Sanada's instructions and make the smart, healthy decision, or will he let the fabled yakuza code of honor destroy him? (Motion picture : 1948). (In Japanese with optional subtitles in English).

---

A man who murdered his cheating wife, returns to civilian life with a pet eel he kept while in prison. (Motion picture : 1996). (In Japanese with English subtitles).

---

As the Empire of the Sun crumbles upon itself and a rain of firebombs falls upon Japan, the final death march of a nation is echoed in millions of smaller tragedies. Seita and his younger sister Setsuko are forced to fend for themselves in the aftermath of fires that swept entire cities from the face of the earth. Based on the novel by Akiyuki Nosaka. (Motion picture : 1988).

---

Princess Yuki escapes the clutches of an enemy clan. She hides in a secret mountain fortress with her loyal retainers, her faithful military commandant, and her clan's precious gold. They try to escape but on their way it's one chase, swordfight, and hair's breadth escape after another (Motion picture : 1958). (In Japanese with optional subtitles in English).

---

A complex crime thriller in which the son of a chauffer is kidnapped, mistaken as the son of the chauffer's employer, a wealthy shoe manufacturer. A moral dilemma. Should the wealthy man pay the ransom anyway and risk losing his financial position? (Motion picture : 1963). (In Japanese with optional subtitles in English).

---

This adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's masterpiece about a wayward, pure soul's reintegration into society captures Japan's postwar aimlessness. A Japanese veteran, driven partially mad from the war, travels to the snowy island of Kameda where he soon enters a love triangle with his best friend and a disgraced woman. (Motion picture in 1951). (In Japanese with optional subtitles in English).

---

Presents an elderly, stubborn businessman, so fearful of a nuclear attack that he resolves to move his reluctant family to South America. Kurosawa depicts a society emerging from the shadows but still terrorized by memories of the past and anxieties for the future (Motion picture : 1955). (In Japanese with optional subtitles in English).

---

Continues the story of Sugata, a hero who uses judo to protect the poor and weak. (Motion picture : 1945). (Japanese dialogue with optional subtitles in English).

---

Akira Kurosawa's dazzling debut as a director is about the rivalry between judo and jujitsu, and it concerns the moral education and enlightenment of Sanshiro. Based on the novel by Tsuneo Tomita. (Motion picture : 1943). (Japanese dialogue with optional subtitles in English).

---

Two families' lives are turned upside down when they learn that the hospital where they each had a child six years ago mistakenly switched the babies. (Motion picture: 2013). (In Japanese with optional English or Spanish subtitles).

---

Working with his most celebrated actor, Toshiro Mifune, Akira Kurosawa faithfully adapts Maxim Gorky's classic proletariat play, keeping the original's focus on the conflict between illusion and reality (Motion picture : 1957). (In Japanese with optional subtitles in English).

---

Set in postwar Japan, the film follows the last two decades in the life of Hyakken Uchida, a free spirited writer and teacher, highlighted by his relationship with his students who venerate him in his old age. (Motion picture : 1993). (Japanese dialogue, English subtitles).

---

Depicts a famous twelfth-century incident in which the lord Yoshitsune and a small group of samurai cross enemy territory disguised as monks and must persuade border guards to let them through. (Motion picture : 1945). (In Japanese with optional subtitles in English).

---

Akira Kurosawa's patriotic World War II morale booster focuses on a volunteer corps of women working at an optics factory to produce lenses for binoculars and targeting scopes, and was shot on location at the Nippon Kogaku factory in Hiratsuka (Motion picture : 1944). (In Japanese with optional subtitles in English).

---

A critically-acclaimed and powerful, heartfelt story about four children who are forced to rely on one another after they are abandoned by their mother. (Japanese dialogue with English subtitles).

---

In Akira Kurosawa's first film after the end of World War II, Setsuko Hara gives an astonishing performance as Yukie, who transforms herself from genteel bourgeois daughter to independent social activist during a tumultuous decade in Japanese history. (In Japanese with optional subtitles in English).

---

During a Sunday trip into war-ravaged Tokyo, Yuzo and Masako look for work and lodging, as well as affordable entertainments to pass the time (Motion picture : 1947). (In Japanese with optional English subtitles).

---

The murder of a man and the rape of his wife in a forest grove, seen from four different perspectives. Akira Kurosawa's meditation on the nature of "truth" transformed narrative cinema as we know it. (Motion picture : 1950). (In Japanese with optional subtitles in English).

---

A vain young doctor learns a valuable lesson from the dedicated director of a clinic for destitute patients. In Japanese with optional subtitles in English. (Motion picture : 1965).

---

A visit from her grandchildren and the discovery of a half-American relative cause an elderly woman to relive her memories of the atomic bomb that fell on Nagasaki.

---

Legendary seventeenth-century samurai Musashi Miyamoto begins his quest for military glory. His dream ends in defeat, but the love of a woman and the cunning of a Buddhist priest set him on the samurai path. Based on the novel by Yoshikawa Eiji (Motion picture : 1954). (Japanese dialogue with English subtitles).

---

Musashi is a wondering samurai swordsman who is honing his skills during a succession of duels. When he defeats a succession of students, he becomes marked for death and is attacked in a series of cowardly ambushes. Romantic threads are further complicated when two women meet and discover their rivalry. Musashi earns himself an archenemy who vows to defeat Musashi to make his name the finest in all of Japan. Based on the novel by Eiji Yoshikawa (Motion picture : 1955). (In Japanese with English subtitles).

---

Musashi is now a legendary swordsman whose latest quest is to save an isolated village from rampaging brigands. He also, remains haunted by his memories of Otsu. Meanwhile, the ruthless and increasingly jealous Kojiro plots his battle royal with Musashi to prove who is the finest swordsman in Japan. Based on the novel by Eiji Yoshikawa (Motion picture : 1956). (Japanese dialogue with optional English subtitles).

---

In Kurosawa's sly companion piece to Yojimbo, the jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out their clan's evil influences, and in the process turns their image of a "proper" samurai on its ear. (Motion picture : 1962). (In Japanese with optional subtitles in English).

---

Portrayal of a sensitive young artist who is dragged through the mud by a tabloid entertainment magazine after an innocent encounter with a pop singer and decides to sue (Motion picture : 1950). (In Japanese with optional English subtitles).

---

The story of a sixteenth-century village whose desperate inhabitants hire seven out-of-work warriors to protect them from invading bandits. (Motion picture : 1954). (In Japanese with optional English subtitles).

---

In his late, color masterpiece, Akira Kurosawa returns to the samurai film and to a primary theme of his career: the play between illusion and reality. Sumptuously reconstructing the splendor of feudal Japan and the pageantry of war, Kurosawa creates a meditation on the nature of power (Motion picture : 1980). (In Japanese with optional subtitles in English).

---

Middle-aged brother and sister and their families visit their aging parents on the fifteenth anniversary of their brother Junpei's death from drowning while saving another boy. Generational conflicts and the consequences of loss are unfolding in real time over a twenty-four hour period. (Motion picture : 2008). (In Japanese with optional English or Japanese subtitles).

---

When a pickpocket steals a rookie detective's gun on a hot, crowded bus, the cop goes undercover in a desperate attempt to right the wrong. Kurosawa's thrilling noir probes the squalid world of postwar Japan and the nature of the criminal mind. (Motion picture : 1949). (In Japanese with optional English subtitles).

---

A young widow who runs a small noodle restaurant in Tokyo and Goro, a cowboy hat wearing truck driver, attempt to devise the perfect bowl of top ramen (Motion picture : 1986). (Japanese dialogue with optional English subtitles).

---

Reimagines Macbeth in feudal Japan. Starring Kurosawa's longtime collaborator Toshiro Mifune and the legendary Isuzu Yamada as his ruthless wife, the film tells of a valiant warrior's savage rise to power and his ignominious fall (Motion picture in 1957). (In Japanese with optional subtitles in English).

---

A touching mother-son relationship is shown amidst the lights of 1970s Tokyo. Born in the coal mining city in Fukuoka, Masaya grows up with inheriting both sides of the genes of his forever hopeless and reckless dad and the gentle and strong mom. After going into a complete downfall, his life suddenly changes when his mother is diagnosed with cancer and she comes to live with him under the bright lights of Tokyo Tower. (In Japanese with optional subtitles in Chinese, Malay, or English.)

---

Story of a contemporary Japanese family torn apart after its patriarch unexpectedly loses his job. Ashamed, he keeps this a secret, but as he grows more despondent, his family resorts to drastic measures to break away from their fractured lives (Motion picture : 2008). (In Japanese with English subtitles).

---

Discovering that he is in the terminal stages of cancer, a clerk spends his last months in search of the meaning to life. After his pursuit of pleasure has failed, he finds self-realization in bringing about the building of a children's playground in the slums and dies quietly fulfilled (In Japanese with optional subtitles in English).

---

Jiro dreams of flying and designing beautiful airplanes, inspired by the famous Italian aeronautical designer Caproni. Nearsighted from a young age and unable to be a pilot, Jiro joins a major Japanese engineering company in 1927 and becomes one of the world's most innovative and accomplished airplane designers. The film chronicles much of his life, depicting key historical events. In English or Japanese language; optional English or French subtitles. Animation. (Motion picture in 2013).

---

To rid a terror-stricken village of corruption, wily masterless samurai Sanjuro (Toshiro Mifune) turns a range war between two evil clans to his own advantage (Motion picture : 1961). (In Japanese with optional subtitles in English).

---