Checklist of Japanese Cinema

Film, Year, Director, Comment

Not just Akira Kurosawa? Maybe. But there’s no doubt that the great director, most well-known to Western audiences, dominates this list. I haven’t seen all of them, not yet anyway.

It’s no accident that most of these films are from the 1950s, the so-called Golden Age of Japanese cinema. One reason was that the movies commanded the largest audiences in Japan in that decade, before television ate away at movie attendance in Japan, which dropped by eighty percent between 1958 and 1970. It may be a simplistic reason, but large audiences meant large budgets, it meant a greater degree of directorial freedom, and it meant that film makers could get the best talented professionals (actors, film editors, cameramen, etc.).

• Akira Kurosawa