Your favourite Japanese movie(s)

I didn't get beyond the 60/70s - Akira Kurosawa and Hiroshi Teshigahara.
In the meantine, from that part of the world, there've been quite a few Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, while the Japanese mainly made cars and electronics.

"Battle Royale" is one of my fav films & I love "Zatoichi"!

Two very different genres:

"Ran" (1980) directed by Akira KUROSAWA. It's inspired by the King Lear plot. Don't be put off by the rather static first 20 minutes or so - it builds up and up. (The name translates as "Disorder" or "Chaos".)

"Love Letter" (1995) written anddirected by Shunji IWAI. It sounds like a pretty standard chick-flick, and that's what I expected when I first saw it. But it's engrossing, wry and full of charm, and leaves you feeling both happy and sad at the end. A mix-up concerning her dead fiance's name leads a young woman in Kobe into a complex relationship with another young woman in faraway Hokkaido. They come to understand that their lives are actually far more intimately bound up than either of them would ever have guessed.

Nobody Knows
Toni Takitani
The Twilight Samurai
The Seven Samurai

Tetsuo - The Iron Man and The Body Hammer by Shinya Tsukamoto,
1989, 1992 respectively.

Godzilla

Yojimbo is brilliant...
Akira is excellent, even though there are massive holes in the plot.
Princess Mononoke
The voyage of Chihihuro
I´m not sure if The Pillow Book would be considered a Japanese movie, but it´s central theme is very Japanese, and I like it.

Zatoichi is on tv here tonight so I have a chance to see it.

Btw - I'm curious if it is a remake by Takeshi Kitano. I just read the review - the film is from 2003 and it seems to be the same storyline that I remember from an old Japanese film from the 60s, about the blind swordsman Ichi.

That's the film I'm talking about Fieldgate (i.e. with Takeshi Kitano about the blind swordsman) - I've not seen the original. I saw it at the cinema & love it. Delightfully ott & bizarre!