Japan Travel Guide

If you thought Godzilla and samurai flicks are all there is to Japanese film, think again. The history of cinema in Japan extends over a century, with the first Western-made moving images being shown to rapt audiences in 1896. Within a couple of years, the Japanese had imported equipment and established their own movie industry, which flourished with all things Western in the early decades of the century. Recovering quickly after World War II, Japanese film burst onto the international scene with the innovative Rasho mon, directed by Kurosawa Akira, who along with Ozu Yasujiro, director of the highly respected Tokyo Monogatari (Tokyo Story), is the country's best-known cinema auteur.

Apart from the scandal surrounding rshima Nagisa's explicit Ai-no-Corrida , the movie scene generally languished during the 1970s, while in the 1980s, Japanese corporations were more intent on ploughing bubble-era profits and investment into Hollywood production companies rather than home-grown product. The 1990s saw a minor resurgence with the international popularity of the films of Itami Juzo, Takeshi Kitano and runaway success of Suo Masayuki's Shall We Dance ?, which has become the sixth highest-earning foreign-language film ever at the American box office.