214 Films & TV Shows Set In Japan During The 20th Century
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Operation Chromite
🇰🇵 North Korea (DPRK) 🇰🇷 South Korea Tokyo Prefecture The 1950sThe Odds Were 5000 to 1 … One was all They Needed. — A squad of soldiers fight in the Korean War's crucial Battle of Incheon.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Initiation Love
Shizuoka Prefecture The 1980sSet in Shizuoka and Tokyo, Japan in the late 1980's. Takkun is a university student in Shizuoka attempting to find a job. Mayu is a dental hygienist. They meet through a blind date and begin to date, but Takkun finds a job in Tokyo and goes there. They begin a long distance relationship, but their relationship breaks down.
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The Lion Standing in the Wind
🇰🇪 Kenya Nagasaki Prefecture Miyagi Prefecture The 1970s The 1980s The 2010sKoichiro Shimada is sent to a research facility in Kenya, Africa by a teaching hospital in Japan. He encounters a desperate situation and decides to work there as a doctor, treating patients hurt in battles. He struggles with nurses and colleagues at the hospital. Koichiro Shimada then encounters a boy soldier severely wounded mentally. This changes Koichiro Shimada’s fate.
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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.
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Godzilla
Nevada California Hawaii Tokyo Prefecture 🇵🇭 Philippines Pacific Ocean The 1990s The 1950s The 2010sThe world ends, Godzilla begins. — Ford Brody, a Navy bomb expert, has just reunited with his family in San Francisco when he is forced to go to Japan to help his estranged father, Joe. Soon, both men are swept up in an escalating crisis when an ancient alpha predator arises from the sea to combat malevolent adversaries that threaten the survival of humanity. The creatures leave colossal destruction in their wake, as they make their way toward their final battleground: San Francisco.
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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.
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The Little House
🇯🇵 Japan The 1930sFollowing the death of the unmarried and childless Taki, Takeshi, a young relative of hers, discovers several pages of closely written lines in which the old lady has recorded her memories. This is how he learns the truth about her youth working as a housemaid and nanny for the Hirai family in a little house in Tokyo with a red gabled roof.
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Kano
🇹🇼 Taiwan 🇯🇵 Japan The 1930sA Taiwanese high school baseball team travels to Japan in 1931 to compete in a national tournament.
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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.
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Rush
New York England 🇳🇱 Netherlands 🇪🇸 Spain 🇦🇹 Austria 🇮🇹 Italy 🇩🇪 Germany 🇯🇵 Japan 🇿🇦 South Africa 🇧🇷 Brazil The 1970sEveryone's driven by something. — A biographical drama centered on the rivalry between Formula 1 drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda during the 1976 Formula One motor-racing season.
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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.
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Legend No. 17
🇷🇺 Russia Quebec 🇪🇸 Spain Hokkaido Prefecture The 1970s The 1960s The 1950sBiopic of Russian ice hockey legend Valeri Kharlamov from early childhood, rising to the pinnacle of the sport and his untimely death
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For Love's Sake
🇯🇵 Japan The 1970s The 1960sFor Love's Sake is a faith-based drama based on a true story. After the tragic death of her husband, Mary Walker falls into a spiral of suicidal depression and subsequently loses custody of her two boys. Through the intervention of her church community and a caring therapist, Mary regains her faith, experiences emotional healing, and finds the strength to fight a skeptical bureaucracy for custody of her children.
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Always - Sunset on Third Street 3
Tokyo Prefecture The 1960sThe Tokyo Olympics are about to open, and Rynosuke Chagawa is excited to receive a new TV set to watch the upcoming events. His wife Hiromi is pregnant and he has built a second level on his shop to provide his adopted son Junnosuke with a private space to study for entrance to Tokyo University to set up a career with a major company. He dreams of sparing Junnosuke the struggles that he has faced as a writer. The family continues to rely upon Hiromi's income from her bar. Meanwhile a rival story, The Virus, by a new writer has appeared in the periodical that has been publishing his stories "Boy's Adventure Book" and he fears the new competition. Norifumi Suzuki also receives a new TV, but more of a deluxe model. Mutsuko Hoshino (Roku) is still the principal mechanic in the Suzuki family's auto repair shop, but she dresses up some mornings to go to a nearby street with the hope of a "chance" meeting with Dr...
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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.
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The Drudgery Train
🇯🇵 Japan The 1980sIn this offbeat coming-of-age tale, a charming, rebellious high school dropout named Kanta befriends the kind, provincial Shoji. The two bring out the best in each other, each gaining confidence from their friendship - especially regarding pursuit of the opposite sex. The working class Kanta becomes a sort of unruly anti-hero, maintaining his pride, defiance, and self-assurance even as his prospects seem increasingly grim.
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Hibakusha
Hiroshima Prefecture The 1940sKaz Suyeishi, an atomic bomb survivor, revisits her past experiences during her early years in Hiroshima, Japan.
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From Up on Poppy Hill
Kanagawa Prefecture The 1960sI look up as I walk... — A group of Yokohama students fight to save their school's clubhouse from the wrecking ball during preparations for the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. While working there, Umi and Shun gradually become attracted to each other but have to face a sudden trial. Even so, they keep going without fleeing the difficulties of reality.
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The Runaways
California Tokyo Prefecture The 1970sIt's 1975 and they're about to explode. — Joan Jett and Cherie Currie, two rebellious teenagers from Southern California, become the frontwomen for the Runaways -- the now-legendary group that paved the way for future generations of female rockers. Under the Svengali-like influence of impresario Kim Fowley, the band becomes a huge success.
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Norwegian Wood
Tokyo Prefecture The 1960sSet in the 1960s, high school student Toru Watanabe loses his only friend Kizuki after he commits suicide. Toru, now looking for a new life, enters a university in Tokyo. By chance, Toru meets Kizuki's ex-girlfriend Naoko in the university. They grow close because they both share the same loss. As Toru and Naoko grow even closer, Naoko's sense of loss also grows. After Naoko's 20th birthday, she leaves for a sanitarium in Kyoto. Watanabe, devastated by the situation, meets pure-hearted Midori during the spring semester. Midori looks like a small animal that just came into the world ...
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Bandage
Tokyo Prefecture The 1990sSet in Japan in the early 1990s, there's one rising band called LANDS, that is starting to find success amidst a flood of other bands. Asako and Miharu are two Tokyo high school students. When Miharu gives Asako her favorite indie rock band; a LANDS CD, she becomes an overnight fan and sets her heart on the talented guitarist Yukiya. LANDS was formed among friends, but as the band begins to climb the ladder towards major stardom, they get in touch with the dark side of the music industry, discord surfaces, inevitable frictions emerge, and unrequited love strains their friendship, threatening to pull their bonds apart.
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Leonie
California 🇯🇵 Japan The 1910s The 1900s The 1890sA mother's courage and a clash of cultures inspire the artist that transcends both — In the lush tradition of the glorious films of Merchant and Ivory, comes the true life story of Leonie Gilmour (Emily Mortimer), whose life crossed continents, wars and cultures, embodied with courage and passion in search of art and freedom. A tender and inspiring story of a remarkable woman who nurtures the amazing artistic talent of her son who has only one way to succeed and one person to guide him, as he grows into the world renown artist, Isamu Noguchi.
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