Your favourite film set in Japan???

Another, more touristy selection is My Geisha, which admittedly is somewhat dated and naive. It stars Shirley McLain and Yves Montand. It's about a western film company an operatic version of Madame Buttefly (on location and in Technicolor), with Shirley playing the title roles. She poses as a geisha (only a westerner would be fooled), who's cast as the tragic lead Cho-cho san, in the film her (stage) husband (Montand) is directing. Naturally it shows many touristy sights and superficially treats a number of traditional arts. The film's general tone runs the gamut from light comedy to bathos. However, it succeds as eye-candy.

The Japanese films recommended above will give you discrete slices of Japanese life, but unless you're a film buff, who's plumbed the depths of Japanese cinema, you'll get a somewhat distorted view of Japanese society. The same goes for any film about Japan, as seen from the outside [i.e. produced/directed by a non-Japanese].

My best advice is to see as many as you can (to see), and read all you can as well.

The tora san movies are very JApanese -^ made by Japanese for Japanese<BR>depicting very every day life of ordinary Japanese. They have grown on me.<BR><BR>I don't think they have been subtitled into English though.