75 Films & TV Shows Set In Japan During The 1940s
-
Radioactive
Ohio Nevada 🇸🇪 Sweden 🇫🇷 France 🇵🇱 Poland 🇺🇦 Ukraine Hiroshima Prefecture The 1980s The 1960s The 1950s The 1940s The 1930s The 1910s The 1900s The 1890s The 1870sPioneer. Genius. Rebel. — The story of Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie and her extraordinary scientific discoveries—through the prism of her marriage to husband Pierre—and the seismic and transformative effects their discovery of radium had on the 20th century.
-
Wife of a Spy
Hyōgo Prefecture The 1940sWho should I trust? — In the 1940s, a Japanese merchant leaves his wife behind in order to travel to Manchuria, where he witnesses an act of barbarism.
-
Avengers: Endgame
New York New Jersey California 🇳🇴 Norway Tokyo Prefecture Africa - General The 1970s The 1940s The 2010s The 2020s The 2000sPart of the journey is the end. — After the devastating events of Avengers: Infinity War, the universe is in ruins due to the efforts of the Mad Titan, Thanos. With the help of remaining allies, the Avengers must assemble once more in order to undo Thanos' actions and restore order to the universe once and for all, no matter what consequences may be in store.
-
Midway
Hawaii 🇨🇳 China Tokyo Prefecture 🇲🇭 Marshall Islands Pacific Ocean The 1940s The 1930sOne battle turned the tide of war. — The story of the Battle of Midway, and the leaders and soldiers who used their instincts, fortitude and bravery to overcome massive odds.
-
Labyrinth of Cinema
Hiroshima Prefecture The 1940sThe story centers on a group of young people who travel back in time when they are in a movie theater just before closing time. They witness deaths during the closing days of Japan’s feudal times and on the battlefront in China before they are sent to Hiroshima just before the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing of the city.
-
Sakura Guardian in the North
Hokkaido Prefecture The 1940s The 1970sThe film follows the relationship between a mother and her son. In 1945, the mother played by Sayuri Yoshinaga fled with her two sons from the Russians to Hokkaido. In 1972, her son played by Masato Sakai returns to Japan after finding success in the U.S.
-
The Chinese Widow
Zhejiang Province Tokyo Prefecture The 1940s The 1930sIt’s 1941 and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor has destroyed America’s morale. The US President Franklin D. Roosevelt then decides to risk it all by bombing Tokyo and raise more hope for his citizens. After completing its mission, a unit of the US Air Force is forced to make an emergency landing in China. Its commander Jack Turner (Emilie Hirsch) barely survives but gets rescued by Ying (Crystal Liu), a local widow who will stop at nothing to hide him from the Japanese occupant.
-
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
California Florida Wales England Tokyo Prefecture The 2000s The 2010s The 1940sStay peculiar — A teenager finds himself transported to an island where he must help protect a group of orphans with special powers from creatures intent on destroying them.
-
Hacksaw Ridge
Virginia South Carolina Okinawa Prefecture The 1940sOne of the greatest heroes in American history never fired a bullet. — WWII American Army Medic Desmond T. Doss, who served during the Battle of Okinawa, refuses to kill people and becomes the first Conscientious Objector in American history to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.
-
USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage
Okinawa Prefecture Hiroshima Prefecture Pacific Ocean The 1940s1196 men aboard, 5 days in water, 317 survived — The harrowing true story of the crew of the USS Indianapolis, who were stranded in the Philippine Sea for five days after delivering the atomic weapons that would eventually end WWII. As they awaited rescue, they endured extreme thirst, hunger, and relentless shark attacks.
-
In This Corner of the World
Hiroshima Prefecture The 1940s The 1930sTorn apart by war. Brought together by love. — Japan, 1943, during World War II. Young Suzu leaves her village near Hiroshima to marry and live with her in-laws in Kure, a military harbor. Her creativity to overcome deprivation quickly makes her indispensable at home. Inhabited by an ancestral wisdom, Suzu impregnates the simple gestures of everyday life with poetry and beauty. The many hardships, the loss of loved ones, the frequent air raids of the enemy, nothing alters her enthusiasm…
-
Little Boy
California Hiroshima Prefecture The 1940sBelieve the impossible. — An eight-year-old boy is willing to do whatever it takes to end World War II so he can bring his father home. The story reveals the indescribable love a father has for his little boy and the love a son has for his father.
-
Mr. Holmes
England 🇯🇵 Japan The 1940sThe man behind the myth. — The story is set in 1947, following a long-retired Holmes living in a Sussex village with his housekeeper and rising detective son. But then he finds himself haunted by an unsolved 50-year old case. Holmes' memory isn't what it used to be, so he only remembers fragments of the case: a confrontation with an angry husband, a secret bond with his beautiful but unstable wife.
-
The Emperor in August
🇯🇵 Japan The 1940sIn July 1945, during the end of World War II, Japan is forced to accept the Potsdam Declaration. A cabinet meeting has continued through days and nights, but a decision cannot be made. The U.S. drops atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. General Korechika Anami is torn over making the proper decision and the Emperor of Japan worries about his people. Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki leads the cabinet meeting, while Chief Secretary Hisatsune Sakomizu can't do anything, but watch the meeting. At this time, Major Kenji Hatanaka and other young commissioned officers, who are against Japan surrendering, move to occupy the palace and a radio broadcasting station. The radio station is set to broadcast Emperor Hirohito reading out the Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War.
-
The Day the Sun Fell
🇯🇵 Japan The 2010s The 1940sTracing the past of her deceased grandfather who worked as a young doctor in the Red Cross hospital of HirSwiss-Japanese filmmaker Aya Domenig, the granddaughter of a doctor on duty during the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, approaches the experience of her deceased grandfather by tracing the lives of a doctor and of former nurses who once shared the same experience. While gathering the memories and present views of these last survivors, the nuclear disaster in Fukushima strikes and history seems to repeat itself.oshima after the atomic bomb was dropped over the city, the filmmaker encounters doctors and nurses who went through similar experiences to his at the time. Right up until his death in 1991, her grandfather was never able to speak about his experiences, but the formidable stories and openness of her protagonists bring her closer to his past.
-
Unbroken
🇯🇵 Japan 🇩🇪 Germany The 1930s The 1940sSurvival. Resilience. Redemption. — A chronicle of the life of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic runner who was taken prisoner by Japanese forces during World War II.
-
The Wolverine
Yukon Tokyo Prefecture Nagasaki Prefecture Hiroshima Prefecture The 1940sWhen he's most vulnerable, he's most dangerous. — Wolverine faces his ultimate nemesis - and tests of his physical, emotional, and mortal limits - in a life-changing voyage to modern-day Japan.
-
The Wind Rises
🇩🇪 Germany 🇯🇵 Japan The 1940s The 1930s The 1920s The 1910sWe must live. — A lifelong love of flight inspires Japanese aviation engineer Jiro Horikoshi, whose storied career includes the creation of the A-6M World War II fighter plane.
-
Emperor
Tokyo Prefecture The 1940sAfter the war was won, the battle for peace began. — As the Japanese surrender at the end of WWII, Gen. Fellers is tasked with deciding if Emperor Hirohito will be hanged as a war criminal. Influencing his ruling is his quest to find Aya, an exchange student he met years earlier in the U.S.
-
Hibakusha
Hiroshima Prefecture The 1940sKaz Suyeishi, an atomic bomb survivor, revisits her past experiences during her early years in Hiroshima, Japan.
-
K-20: The Fiend with Twenty Faces
Tokyo Prefecture The 1940sIn an alternate version of 1949 Japan in which World War II never happened, the Japanese capital of Teito is home to both an ultra rich upper class and the dirt poor masses. The city is thrown into a state of panic when a phantom thief called “The Kaijin (Fiend) with 20 Faces” (K-20 for short) begins to use his mysterious abilities to steal from the rich and give to the poor. One day a circus acrobat named Heikichi Endo (Takeshi Kaneshiro) is framed for K-20’s crimes and becomes determined to clear his name. He teams up with K-20’s next target, a wealthy duchess named Yoko Hashiba (Takako Matsu) and her detective fiancé (Toru Nakamura), to take K-20 down once and for all.
-
Philosophy of a Knife
🇯🇵 Japan 🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sThe true history of Japanese Unit 731, from its beginnings in the 1930s to its demise in 1945, and the subsequent trials in Khabarovsk, USSR, of many of the Japanese doctors from Unit 731. The facts are told, and previously unknown evidence is revealed by an eyewitness to these events, former doctor and military translator, Anatoly Protasov.
-
Black Belt
🇨🇳 China 🇯🇵 Japan The 1930s The 1940sReal Fight, Real Karate, Real Japan. — Set in 1932, amid the rise of militarism after the establishment of the Manchukuo colony in Northeast China, the story centers on a trio of karateka. Studying under their aging master in a small dojo in the woods of central Kyushu, Choei, Taikan and Giryu face a company of kempeitai military police come to requisition their dojo for use as a military base.
-
Yunagi City, Sakura Country
Tokyo Prefecture Hiroshima Prefecture The 1940sThirteen years afterward, I wonder if those who bombed Hiroshima are looking at me and saying: 'We did it! We were able to kill another person!' They should be," murmurs Minami (played by Kumiko Aso), one of the two leading female characters in Yunagi no Machi, Sakura no Kuni, as she lies dying in 1958, her life brought to a premature end by sickness resulting from her exposure to atomic bomb radiation. This is a story about those who at least initially survived the first U.S. atomic bombing of 1945 and their descendants in contemporary times. The film, based on a comic by Fumiyo Kono, jumps between the two time frames and quietly depicts the sorrow and mortification experienced through the everyday lives of laid-back and soft-spoken Hiroshima people. Only a few scenes of the bombing and the ensuing devastation are featured.
-
Matouqin Nocturne
Hiroshima Prefecture The 1940sThe roundness of the top and bottom is the roundness of reincarnation. — A baby, John, who was abandoned in the church with a horse-headed koto on his side. His grandfather was once a Morin Khuur player and died in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. The brilliantly colored images have an avant-garde charm while hiding the sadness of the war, and will grab the viewer's heart.
- load more
