Japanese cinema boasts one of the oldest and most prestigious traditions in global film history, beginning in the late 1890s with the introduction of the Kinetoscope and early documentary shorts. The silent era was uniquely defined by the benshi—live narrators who stood beside the screen to explain the plot, perform dialogue, and provide cultural context, which delayed the adoption of sound-synchronised films well into the 1930s. This early period established a foundational division between jidaigeki (period dramas, often featuring samurai) and gendai-geki (contemporary dramas).

By the 1950s, Japanese cinema entered its Golden Age, exploding onto the international stage when Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. This era was defined by a monumental trio of directors: Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujirō Ozu.

As the studio system weakened in the 1960s, a radical wave of younger filmmakers came through, dubbed the Japanese New Wave, who rejected the humanism of their predecessors, embracing transgressive themes, sexual liberation, and gritty documentary-style aesthetics. Japan continues to reinvent itself cinematically, whether that’s by J-Horror, anime or intimate dramas by the likes of Hirokazu Koreeda.