214 Films & TV Shows Set In Japan During The 20th Century
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Blood: The Last Vampire
Tokyo Prefecture The 1970sWhere evil grows, she preys. — On the surface, Saya is a stunning 16-year-old, but that youthful exterior hides the tormented soul of a 400-year-old "halfling". Born to a human father and a vampire mother, she has for centuries been a loner obsessed with using her samurai skills to rid the world of vampires, all the while knowing that she herself can survive only on blood like those she hunts.
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Shinjuku Incident
Tokyo Prefecture The 1990sThey destroyed his life... Now he'll destroy them all. — Steelhead is a Chinese laborer who comes to Japan hoping for a better life. Unable to find honest work and bullied into the shadows with his fellow Chinese illegal immigrants, he soon finds himself ascending as the boss of a black market mob. After providing a deadly service to a powerful Yakuza crime boss, Steelhead’s rise to mafia power spirals rapidly out of control as he’s given reign over the dangerous and lucrative Shinjuku district.
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Hachi: A Dog's Tale
Rhode Island 🇯🇵 Japan The 1990s The 2000sA true story of faith, devotion and undying love. — A drama based on the true story of a college professor's bond with the abandoned dog he takes into his home.
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Mai Mai Miracle
Yamaguchi Prefecture The 1950s The 10th CenturyIn 1955 in western Japan, nine-year-old Shinko knows she comes from a family that dates back to over a thousand years. This long genealogy and stories about it feed her daydreams: she invents an imaginary friendship with a young girl in the Japan of a thousand years ago. One day, Kiiko, a timid child from Tokyo, is transferred into Shinko's class at school. Struggling to fit in, she finds a friend in Shinko. They set off together on a magical adventure into a story from ancient history.Adapted from the Takagi Nobuko novel Mai Mai Shinko — winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize —, this animated feature film portrays the relationship of two children linked not only by friendship, but also by that power that transcends eras: imagination. And perhaps it might become reality?
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The Athlete
🇪🇹 Ethiopia Tokyo Prefecture 🇮🇹 Italy The 1960sRunning the streets of Rome in 1960, an unknown, barefooted Ethiopian man stunned the world by winning Olympic gold in the marathon. Overnight, Abebe Bikila became a sports legend. A hero in his own country and to the continent, Bikila was the first African to win a gold medal, and four years later in Tokyo would become the first person in history to win consecutive Olympic gold medals in the marathon.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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5 Centimeters per Second
Tokyo Prefecture Tochigi Prefecture Saitama Prefecture Kagoshima Prefecture The 1990s The 2000sAt what speed must I live to see you again? — Three moments in Takaki's life: his relationship with Akari and their forced separation; his friendship with Kanae, who is secretly in love with him; the demands and disappointments of adulthood, an unhappy life in a cold city.
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JAPAN, Our Homeland
🇯🇵 Japan The 1950sThe 31st year of the Showa Era (1956) marked the tenth year since Japan's defeat in World War II. It was when Japan took its first step out of post-war poverty to rejoin the international community. In old downtown Tokyo, a teacher and her students try to pass down Doyo (Japanese traditional children's songs) as the root of Japanese cultural identity to the future generations.
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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.
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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.
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Letters from Iwo Jima
Okinawa Prefecture The 2000s The 1940sThe battle of Iwo Jima seen through the eyes of the Japanese soldiers. — The story of the battle of Iwo Jima between the United States and Imperial Japan during World War II, as told from the perspective of the Japanese who fought it.
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Gamera the Brave
Mie Prefecture Aichi Prefecture The 1970sGamera for the boys, the boys for Gamera! — A young boy in a peaceful seaside town gets more than he bargained for when he takes home a mysterious egg. When it hatches, out comes a baby turtle that grows into a new version of Gamera. But will it become powerful enough in time to defeat the rampaging monster Zedus?
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Dear Pyongyang
🇯🇵 Japan 🇰🇵 North Korea (DPRK) The 1970sDear Pyongyang is a documentary film by Zainichi Korean director Yang Yong-hi (Korean: 양영희, Hanja: 梁英姬) about her own family. It was shot in Osaka Japan (Yang's hometown) and Pyongyang, North Korea, In the 1970s, Yang's father, an ardent communist and leader of the pro-North movement in Japan, sent his three sons from Japan to North Korea under a repatriation campaign sponsored by ethnic activist organisation and de facto North Korean embassy Chongryon; as the only daughter, Yang herself remained in Japan. However, as the economic situation in the North deteriorated, the brothers became increasingly dependent for survival on the care packages sent by their parents. The film shows Yang's visits to her brothers in Pyongyang, as well as conversations with her father about his ideological faith and his regrets over breaking up his family.
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Ultraman Mebius & Ultra Brothers
Hyōgo Prefecture The 1980s The 2000sIn the beginning of the movie, 20 years ago, on the moon, the 4 Ultra brothers, Ultraman, Seven, Jack, and Ace were fighting a deadly foe known as Yapool, a monster that was several times their size. As they fought, Yapool had a clear advantage and used his several claws to grasp the brothers, although, they managed to clear from the claws through there powers and used a combined Specium Ray to no avail. The monster then flies off to Earth to dodge the attack and the brothers follow. The brothers were barely able to defeat Yapool but the monster still needed to be sealed. However, to seal Yapool away they were forced to give up the ability to transform, and took up jobs to be in the area of Kobe in case the monster ever returned.
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The Tokyo Trial
🇯🇵 Japan The 1940sThis film was directed by Gao Qunshu and is about the International Military Tribunal for the Far East after Japan's surrender in World War II. The movie presents the trial from the point of view of the Chinese judge Mei Ju-ao. The director and his crew spent more than a year doing research to finish the script, which is based on historical data. It cost 18 million yuan (2.25 million U.S. dollars). This film hired actors from 11 countries, including mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan and other places, including actors such as Kenneth Tsang and Damian Lau. They recreated court scenes from the trial in Chinese, English and Japanese. It was shown in cinemas and around 100 universities across mainland China to mark the 75th anniversary of the start of Japan's invasion of China.
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The Ode to Joy
🇯🇵 Japan The 1910sBaruto no Gakuen is a Japanese film released in 2006 and based on the true story of the Bandō prisoner-of-war camp in World War I. It depicts the friendship of the German POWs with the director of the camp and local residents at the stage of Naruto, Tokushima Prefecture in Japan.
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Memoirs of a Geisha
Kyoto Prefecture The 1940s The 1930s The 1920sMy world is as forbidden as it is fragile; without its mysteries, it cannot survive. — A sweeping romantic epic set in Japan in the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.
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Always - Sunset on Third Street
Tokyo Prefecture The 1950sLeaving her provincial home, teenage Mutsuko arrives in Tokyo by train to take a job in a major automotive company but finds that she is employed by a small auto repair shop owned by Norifumi Suzuki. Suzuki's hair-trigger temper is held somewhat in check by the motherly instincts of his wife, Tomoe, and his young son Ippei immediately bonds with Mutsuko as if she were his older sister. The Suzuki shop lies almost in the shadow of the Tokyo Tower as it rises steadily above the skyline during construction in 1958.
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The Place Promised in Our Early Days
Tokyo Prefecture Hokkaido Prefecture Aomori Prefecture The 1990sAgainst all odds, a promise will be kept. — In a post-war alternative timeline, Japan is divided into the North, controlled by the Union, and the South, controlled by the United States. A mysterious high tower rises within the borders of the Union. Three high school students promise to cross the border with a self-built airplane and unravel the secret of the tower.
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The Face of Jizo
Hiroshima Prefecture The 1940sBased on a play by Hisashi Inoue, it focuses on the sufferings of the survivors of Hiroshima. The film takes place during 4 days in the summer of 1948, as the ghost of her father visits Mitsué (Rié Miyama). He had somehow learned that she has fallen in love, and tries to convince her to start her new life. But Mitsué obstinately refuses his warm and humorous encouragements : « People were killed in my place. I do not have the right to find happiness », she says.
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Rikidozan: A Hero Extraordinaire
🇯🇵 Japan The 1960s The 1950sStory of Rikidozan, a sumo wrestler who can only achieve limited success in Japan because he's half Korean. But when Rikidozan goes to the United States and discovers professional wrestling, he becomes a hero back home.
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Women in the Mirror
Hiroshima Prefecture The 1940sThree women who share memories of the Hiroshima disaster try to uncover the hidden family ties that may or may not bind them together.
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Austin Powers in Goldmember
California England Tokyo Prefecture 🇬🇺 Guam The 2000s The 1970sHe's still evil... He's still deadly... and he's still surrounded by frickin' idiots! — The world's most shagadelic spy continues his fight against Dr. Evil. This time, the diabolical doctor and his clone, Mini-Me, team up with a new foe—'70s kingpin Goldmember. While pursuing the team of villains to stop them from world domination, Austin gets help from his dad and an old girlfriend.
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