20 best movies like Red Beard (1965)

Set in Hokkaido, Japan in the 1880s. Jubei Kamata (Ken Watanabe), who is on the side of the Edo shogunate government, kills many people. His name is infamous in Kyoto. When the battle at Goryoukaku is about to be finished, Jubei disappears. 10 years later, Jubei lives with his kid in relative peace. He is barely able to make a living. Protecting his dead wife's grave, Jubei has decided to never pick up a sword again, but due to poverty he has no choice but to pick the sword again. Jubei becomes a bounty hunter.

A blind master swordsman attempts to lead a quiet life with his wife but he is provoked back into battle.

Japan, 1860. The men of the Mito clan, victims of the Ansei purge, anxiously prowl around the Sakurada Gate of Edo Castle with the intention of assassinating Naosuke Ii of Hikone, tairō of the Tokugawa shogunate and responsible for their misfortune.

Set during Japan's Shogun era, this film looks at life in a samurai compound where young warriors are trained in swordfighting. A number of interpersonal conflicts are brewing in the training room, all centering around a handsome young samurai named Sozaburo Kano. The school's stern master can choose to intervene, or to let Kano decide his own path.

In a small village in a valley everyone who reaches the age of 70 must leave the village and go to a certain mountain top to die. If anyone should refuse he/she would disgrace their family. Old Orin is 69. This winter it is her turn to go to the mountain. But first she must make sure that her eldest son Tatsuhei finds a wife.

Kanichiro Yoshimura is a Samurai and Family man who can no longer support his wife and children on the the low pay he receives from his small town clan, he is forced by the love for his family to leave for the city in search of higher pay to support them.

A ronin desperately seeks a way out of financial straits; he allies with the Tosa clan under the ruthless leader Takechi, who quickly takes advantage.

When feudal lord Itakura Katsuakira decides to prepare his samurai troops for the onslaught of modernization by having them compete in a marathon, his independent-minded daughter Yuki secretly joins the race.

The background to and depiction of a watershed battle in Japanese history, at Sekigahara in 1600, when Tokugawa Ieyasu's Army of the East defeated the Army of the West of Ishida Mitsunari. The story includes the intrigues and shifting loyalties of the various retainers, family members, and samurai.

A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a life of crime. With each step, cop and criminal’s lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination of Murakami’s own dark side.

Based on the best-selling novel by Alessandro Baricco, this visually stunning film tells the story of a French trader who finds unexpected love far away from home.

In the year 1637 in Shimabara of Tokugawa-era Japan, oppressed peasant Christians revolt against the shogunate with the aid of a charismatic Christian rebel leader Shiro Amakusa.

Two historical incidents that deepened the friendship between Japan and Turkey are connected in this story of friendship and compassion: The sinking of the Turkish frigate Ertuğrul off the Japanese coast in 1890, and the evacuation of Japanese nationals from Iran in 1985. Virtuous director Mitsutoshi Tanaka's call for world peace received the VFX-JAPAN Award 2017 for Excellent Motion Picture and the 39th Japan Academy Film Prize in ten categories, including Best Art Direction, Best Sound Recording, Excellent Film and Excellent Director.

Akira Kurosawa's lauded feudal epic presents the tale of a petty thief who is recruited to impersonate Shingen, an aging warlord, in order to avoid attacks by competing clans. When Shingen dies, his generals reluctantly agree to have the impostor take over as the powerful ruler. He soon begins to appreciate life as Shingen, but his commitment to the role is tested when he must lead his troops into battle against the forces of a rival warlord.

Follow the infamous ninja bandit named Ishikawa Goemon (Yosuke Eguchi) in an epic story. One night while looting treasure from Nanban (Southern Barbarians), Goemon finds a mysterious box hidden inside a secret grave. A forgotten relic from the past containing untold powers.

A bravado period action film set at the end of Japan's feudal era in which a group of unemployed samurai are enlisted to bring down a sadistic lord and prevent him from ascending to the throne and plunging the country into a war-torn future.

Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.

Shiba, a wandering ronin, encounters a band of peasants who have kidnapped the daughter of their dictatorial magistrate, in hopes of coercing from him a reduction in taxes. Shiba takes up their fight, joined by two renegades from the magistrate's guard, Sakura and Kikyo. The three outlaws find themselves in a battle to the death.

This is the story of "The Forty-Seven Ronin." Based on historical events in 1701-2, the movie tells the tale of the Asano clan's downfall and the revenge of its former samurai on the perpetrator of the catastrophe. Lord Asano was goaded, or tricked, into drawing his sword inside the Shogun's palace -- a crime which carried the death penalty. The newly installed Shogun was furious at Asano and ordered all his clan's assets seized, meaning some 20,000 samurai and commoners were unemployed and landless at a stroke. Forty-seven of these ronin (masterless samurai) banded together to take attempt revenge on Lord Kira, who had goaded Asano into drawing his sword.

Zatôichi is a 19th century blind nomad who makes his living as a gambler and masseur. However, behind this humble facade, he is a master swordsman gifted with a lightning-fast draw and breathtaking precision. While wandering, Zatôichi discovers a remote mountain village at the mercy of Ginzo, a ruthless gang-leader. Ginzo disposes of anyone who gets in his way, especially after hiring the mighty samurai ronin, Hattori, as a bodyguard. After a raucous night of gambling in town, Zatôichi encounters a pair of geishas--as dangerous as they are beautiful--who've come to avenge their parents' murder. As the paths of these and other colorful characters intertwine, Ginzo's henchmen are soon after Zatôichi. With his legendary cane sword at his side, the stage is set for a riveting showdown.

A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of inter­generational relationships, Good Morning tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after their parents refuse to buy a television set. Ozu weaves a wealth of subtle gags through a family portrait as rich as those of his dramatic films, mocking the foibles of the adult world through the eyes of his child protagonists. Shot in stunning color and set in a suburb of Tokyo where housewives gossip about the neighbors’ new washing machine and unemployed husbands look for work as door-to-door salesmen, this charming comedy refashions Ozu’s own silent classic I Was Born, But . . . to gently satirize consumerism in postwar Japan.

Based on the original 1941 movie from Japan, and from ancient Japan’s most enduring tale, the epic 3D fantasy-adventure 47 Ronin is born. Keanu Reeves leads the cast as Kai, an outcast who joins Oishi (Hiroyuki Sanada), the leader of the 47 outcast samurai. Together they seek vengeance upon the treacherous overlord who killed their master and banished their kind. To restore honor to their homeland, the warriors embark upon a quest that challenges them with a series of trials that would destroy ordinary warriors.

Ichi is a blind entertainer that travels the countryside with her traditional Japanese guitar and walking stick. She’s in search for the kind man that brought her up as a child, but because of her beauty she encounters problems every step of the way. Fortunately for Ichi, she is also a gifted swordswoman and carries a lethal blade within her walking stick.

A guilt-haunted samurai warrior attempts to stop a massacre taking place.

Nathan Algren is an American hired to instruct the Japanese army in the ways of modern warfare, which finds him learning to respect the samurai and the honorable principles that rule them. Pressed to destroy the samurai's way of life in the name of modernization and open trade, Algren decides to become an ultimate warrior himself and to fight for their right to exist.

The story tells of a group of samurai who were left leaderless (becoming ronin) after their daimyo (feudal lord) was forced to commit seppuku (ritual suicide) for assaulting a court official named Kira Yoshinaka, whose title was Kōzuke no suke. The ronin avenged their master's honor after patiently waiting and planning for over a year to kill Kira. In turn, the ronin were themselves forced to commit seppuku for committing the crime of murder.

Rick, a down-and-out American boxer, is hired to transport a sword to Japan, unaware that the whole thing is a set up in a bitter blood-feud between two brothers, one who follows the traditional path of the samurai and the other a businessman. At the behest of the businessman, Rick undertakes samurai training from the other brother, but joins his cause. He also becomes romantically involved with the samurai's daughter.

Ryunosuke, a gifted swordsman plying his trade during the turbulent final days of Shogunate rule, has no moral code and kills without remorse. It’s a way of life that leads to madness.

Follows a woman's fight and survival amid the vicissitudes of life and the cruelty of the society.

The personal tales of various sex workers who occupy a Japanese brothel.

An unusual request for ritual suicide on a feudal lord's property leads to the unwinding of a greater mystery that challenges the clan's integrity.

A young girl is sold into the red-light district Yoshiwara and is put under the care of the oiran (lead prostitute) of the Tamakiku house. The girl is rebellious, but the more experienced people in the household begin to think that she will be one day a great oiran, since an oiran needs not only beauty and talent, but she should also have the tenacity to maintain the position.

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.

A samurai performs a heroic act by rescuing the lovely Kesa during a violent uprising. The warrior falls in love with her, but becomes distraught when he finds out that she is already married.

In this loose adaptation of "Hamlet," illegitimate son Kôichi Nishi climbs to a high position within a Japanese corporation and marries the crippled daughter of company vice president Iwabuchi. At the reception, the wedding cake is a replica of their corporate headquarters, but an aspect of the design reminds the party of the hushed-up death of Nishi's father. It is then that Nishi unleashes his plan to avenge his father's death.

Manji, a highly skilled samurai, becomes cursed with immortality after a legendary battle. Haunted by the brutal murder of his sister, Manji knows that only fighting evil will regain his soul. He promises to help a young girl named Rin avenge her parents, who were killed by a group of master swordsmen led by ruthless warrior Anotsu. The mission will change Manji in ways he could never imagine.

Residents of a rundown boardinghouse in 19th-century Japan, including a mysterious old man and an aging actor, get drawn into a love triangle that turns violent. When amoral thief Sutekichi breaks off his affair with landlady Osugi to romance her younger sister, Okayo, Osugi extracts her revenge by revealing her infidelity to her jealous husband.

A look at the relationship between a young blind samurai (Kimura) and his wife, who will make a sacrifice in order to defend her husband's honor.

A world wide electrical outage occurs. Everything that requires electricity comes to a stop. Tokyo is nearly ruined. Yoshiyuki Suzuki decides to escape from Tokyo with his family.

A lonely, chain-smoking office lady in Tokyo falls for her teacher when she decides to take English lessons. When her teacher disappears, she sets out on a journey to find him.

A story about the disappearance of Kirishima, a star athlete of the volleyball club, and how his disappearance affects every person in school.

A detective probes the brutal murder of a woman in a red light district while a housewife hides her double life as a prostitute from her husband.

Koichi and Atsumi are lovers who have known each other all their lives. A year ago, however, a suicide attempt by Atsumi left her in a coma. Through 'sensing', a type of neurosurgical procedure allowing contact with the intentional aspect of a comatose patient's mind, Koishi tries to find out why Atsumi tried to kill herself, and to bring her back to consciousness. He enters her subconscious, and is told to find a picture of a plesiosaur she drew when she was a child. It turns out that a childhood incident buried in their past will bring their minds together.

Set 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 ...

A Shogun who grew paranoid as he became senile sent his ninjas to kill his samurai. They failed but did kill the samurai’s wife. The samurai swore to avenge the death of his wife and roams the countryside with his toddler son in search of vengeance.

Majime, an eccentric man in publishing company, who has unique ability of words, joins the team that will compile a new dictionary, ‘The Great Passage.’ In the eclectic team, he becomes immersed in the world of dictionaries. But the team is overwhelmed with problems. Will ‘The Great Passage’ ever be completed?

When Kanako, a model daughter and a brilliant student, disappears, her mother asks her ex-husband, a violent former policeman, to find her. As his investigation progresses, his idealized image of Kanako cracks: the girl hides a dark life that her father can not even imagine.

Now a member of Anteiku, Ken Kaneki grows closer to the ghouls around him. Determined to protect his new home against anti-ghoul forces, he trains his powers in secret. But when the infamous gourmet, Shu Tsukiyama, wishes to savour some half-ghoul flavour, Kaneki's training is put to test of a lifetime.

The chaotic worlds of the Yakuza and an alcoholic doctor collide in this film noir classic from Akira Kurosawa. Gangster Toshiro Mifune visits doctor Takashi Shimura, after an unfortunate incident with a bullet. The doctor, who despises the Yakuza, discovers the young man is suffering from tuberculosis, a disease symbolic of what is happening to the doctor and the community he serves. Facing his own anger and fear, the doctor aligns himself with the gangster's world.

Faust inhabits an earthy, 19th-century world of primitive autopsies and medical rituals. He becomes obsessed with the beautiful Margarete and desperately turns to a physically grotesque moneylender to conjure their union.