Movies Like Akitsu Hot Springs (1962)

Mirror

1975

A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.

7.9

The Small Back Room

1949

As the Germans drop explosive booby-traps on 1943 Britain, the embittered expert who'll have to disarm them fights a private battle with alcohol.

6.7

All Things Fair

1995

Stig is a 15-year-old pupil of 37-year-old teacher Viola. He is attracted by her beauty and maturity while she is drawn to him by his youth and innocence, a relief from her drunk and miserable husband.

6.4

Mudbound

2017

In the post–World War II South, two families are pitted against a barbaric social hierarchy and an unrelenting landscape as they simultaneously fight the battle at home and the battle abroad.

7.4

Floating Clouds

1955

A married Japanese forester during WWII is sent to Indochina to manage forests. He meets a young Japanese typist and promises to leave his wife. He doesn't and after the war, she turns up and the affair resumes.

Early Spring

1956

A young Tokyo salary man and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he has an extramarital affair.

One Wonderful Sunday

1947

Two broke sweethearts wander war-scarred Tokyo on a single Sunday, stretching 35 yen as they chase housing, small pleasures, and a little hope.

7.2

The Idiot

1951

A gentle, war-shattered ex-soldier, Kinji Kameda, arrives in wintry Hokkaidō and is pulled into a volatile tangle of love and pity between the disgraced Taeko Nasu, the proud Ayako, and his possessive friend Akama. Kameda’s saintly compassion exposes everyone’s wounds, steering the quartet toward jealousy, violence, and inexorable tragedy. Adapted from Dostoevsky’s novel.

7.0

#10

Sayonara

1957

Air Force Major Lloyd Gruver is reassigned to a Japanese air base and is confronted with US racial prejudice against the Japanese people. The issue is compounded because a number of the soldiers become romantically involved with Japanese women, in defiance of US military policy. Ordinarily, a by-the-book officer, Gruver must take a position when a buddy of his, an enlisted man, Joe Kelly, falls in love with a Japanese woman, Katsumi, and marries her. Gruver risks his position by serving as best man at the wedding ceremony.

6.7

#11

Cruel Story of Youth

1960

A harsh young man seduces a freeloading young woman and eventually takes advantage of her knack for hitchhiking to rob middle-class men.

6.5

#12

Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

2025

The world is a perplexing, peaceful mystery to Amélie until a miraculous encounter with chocolate ignites her wild sense of curiosity. As she develops a deep attachment to her family's housekeeper, Nishio-san, Amélie discovers the wonders of nature as well as the emotional truths hidden beneath the surface of her family's idyllic life as foreigners in post-war Japan.

7.9

#13

Early Summer

1951

A 28-year-old single woman is pressured to marry.

7.9

#14

Good Morning

1959

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.

#15

Tokyo Twilight

1957

Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot accept the fact that she was abandoned as a child.

#16

Street of Shame

1956

The lives of five sex workers employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation is debating the passage of an anti-prostitution law.

#17

Stray Dog

1949

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.

#18

Repast

1951

Michiyo lives in the small place Osaka and is not happy with her marriage; all she does is cook and clean for her husband.

#19

From Up on Poppy Hill

2011

Yokohama, 1963. Japan is picking itself up from the devastation of World War II and preparing to host the 1964 Olympics—and the mood is one of both optimism and conflict as the young generation struggles to throw off the shackles of a troubled past. Against this backdrop of hope and change, a friendship begins to blossom between high school students Umi and Shun—but a buried secret from their past emerges to cast a shadow on the future and pull them apart.

#20

Floating Weeds

1959

When a theater troupe's master visits his old flame, he unintentionally sets off a chain of unexpected events with devastating consequences.

7.4