Five Japanese Directors You Need to Know About

When most people think of Japanese cinema, the same few names tend to come up: Akira Kurosawa, Hayao Miyazaki, Yasujiro Ozu. These are masters in their own right — titans of the form who have shaped not just Japanese film but world cinema as a whole. But Japanese filmmaking doesn't begin and end with those household names. There is a rich, vibrant world of directors working today — and from decades past — whose work deserves far more attention than it typically gets.

This is a list for the curious. For the cinephile who has exhausted the classics and wants to go deeper. For the casual viewer who stumbled onto a Japanese film one evening and found themselves completely absorbed. Here are five Japanese directors that you genuinely need to know about — and where to start with each of them.

1. Koji Fukada

Koji Fukada is where we begin, and for good reason — he might just be one of the most exciting filmmakers working in Japan right now.

Discovered by many (including this writer) during the pandemic years, Fukada has a singular gift for dissecting human relationships with a kind of quiet surgical precision. His films don't announce themselves loudly. They draw you in gently, and then — almost before you realise what's happening — the ground shifts beneath your feet.

The best entry point into his work is Harmonium (2016). On the surface, it begins as a traditional family drama set among a middle-class Tokyo household. But Fukada does something remarkable: he slowly, methodically introduces almost alien elements into the narrative. The tone shifts. The genre bends. What starts as domestic realism gradually becomes something darker — a thriller saturated with vengeance and dread. It is a masterclass in how to manipulate audience expectations without ever feeling dishonest about it.

His follow-up Love Life (2022) operates similarly. Again, we start with a family drama, and again, a pivotal early event fundamentally changes the story's DNA. Fukada has a way of making you feel the full weight of what his characters carry — their secrets, their guilt, their unspoken histories.

A Girl Missing (2019) is another worth your time, perhaps slightly less striking than the other two, but still a worthy entry in his filmography.

Fukada is frequently compared to Hirokazu Kore-eda — a comparison he apparently isn't too fond of, though it's hard to argue against it entirely. Both directors love the family drama as a form. Both are masters of the slow-burn, the meaningful pause, the unsaid thing. Fukada has earned his place among the very best of modern Japanese cinema, alongside Kore-eda and Ryusuke Hamaguchi — all three of whom, interestingly, competed for the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

2. Hirokazu Kore-eda

There is no way to make this list without including Hirokazu Kore-eda. Yes, he is perhaps the best-known name here. Yes, some cinephiles will already be familiar with him. But the truth is, outside of dedicated film circles, he remains surprisingly under-the-radar — and that needs to change.

Kore-eda is, simply put, one of the greatest filmmakers alive. His films are intimate, slow, and deeply humane. He is a master of the family drama, but to reduce him to a single genre would be a disservice. What defines his work is something harder to pin down — an extraordinary ability to place you inside the lives of ordinary people and make you feel, deeply and completely, the complexity of their inner worlds.

Still Walking (2008) is perhaps the purest expression of his style. Set over a single sweltering summer's day in Yokohama, it follows a family gathering to mark the anniversary of their eldest son's death. Almost nothing dramatic happens, in the conventional sense. And yet by the end, you feel as though you have spent years with these people — understanding their regrets, their resentments, the love they struggle to express. As a viewer, you become less a spectator and more a fly on the wall, or perhaps a quiet, attentive therapist.

Nobody Knows (2004) is the film that cemented his reputation internationally. Based on a true story, it follows a group of children abandoned in a Tokyo apartment, left to survive on their own. It is heartbreaking and essential, and for anyone new to Kore-eda, it might be the ideal starting point.

More recently, Monster (2023) — his most recent masterwork — takes a narrative told through multiple shifting perspectives and uses that structure to ask profound questions about truth, perception, and empathy. At its heart is a quietly unfolding relationship between two young boys, and the film handles it with extraordinary care.

The news that Kore-eda will direct a live-action adaptation of Look Back caused considerable excitement — though many mainstream anime fans who heard the announcement weren't yet familiar with his name. That gap in awareness is exactly what this list exists to address.

3. Rikiya Imaizumi

A more recent discovery, Rikiya Imaizumi is a director whose work rewards patience and attention in equal measure.

The introduction to his filmmaking for many viewers has been Sounds of Winter — a J-drama that, once seen, is difficult to forget. It is a quiet, introspective story about a character navigating their relationship with love, doing so through a series of intimate conversations with the people in their life. Very little "happens" in the conventional, plot-driven sense. And yet it is riveting.

Imaizumi's films feel less like movies and more like plays. They are built almost entirely on dialogue — long, naturalistic scenes in which characters talk, reveal, and withhold. His cameras linger. His scenes breathe. In an interview, he has spoken about the value he places in showing audiences his version of reality — not a heightened or dramatised reality, but something true to life as he understands it. You can feel that commitment in every frame.

Call Me Chihiro (2023), a Netflix original, is another strong example of his approach. It centres on a complex, quietly compelling woman who relocates to a small coastal town and gradually weaves herself into the fabric of its community. It is tender and unhurried, and the lead performance — from Kasumi Arimoto — is exceptional.

If you are someone who finds modern cinema too frantic, too loud, too plot-obsessed, Imaizumi might be exactly the filmmaker you've been looking for.

4. Naoko Yamada

Here is where the list takes a turn — because Naoko Yamada is not a live-action director. She is an animation director. But she belongs on this list precisely because her approach to animation is unlike almost anything else in the medium.

Yamada came up through Kyoto Animation, one of Japan's most celebrated studios, and her sensibility is shaped deeply by that background. But what sets her apart is how grounded her films feel. Her visual language borrows heavily from real-life cinematography — the framing, the composition, the attention to small, fleeting physical details. The way a hand moves. The way two characters stand just slightly too close, or just slightly too far apart.

A Silent Voice (2016) is her most widely seen work, and it arrived in an extraordinary year for anime film. It is a coming-of-age story that addresses bullying and disability with remarkable sensitivity and emotional intelligence. It does not reduce its characters to types. It sits with their complexity, their shame, their capacity for growth.

The Colors Within is another of her projects that exemplifies this approach — a coming-of-age story about a deeply religious girl who perceives colours as emotional auras, associating them with the people around her. Again, it is grounded, character-led, and emotionally precise. These are not stories about spectacle. They are stories about young people figuring out who they are and who they love.

What makes Yamada particularly noteworthy is how rare her perspective is. Female animation directors are uncommon. Animation directors who pursue the kind of intimate, realistic storytelling she favours are rarer still. She is a genuinely distinctive voice — one that deserves to be spoken of alongside the names that typically dominate conversations about Japanese animation.

5. Kazuya Shiraishi

Every list needs a wildcard, and Kazuya Shiraishi is ours.

Where the other directors on this list are largely defined by a consistent style or a signature genre, Shiraishi resists that kind of categorisation. He is, first and foremost, a chameleon — a director who adapts his approach entirely to the demands of whatever story he is telling. Crime thriller, samurai saga, human drama, wrestling documentary: he has done all of it, and done it well.

He is perhaps best known for his crime thrillers, and they are genuinely excellent. The Devil's Path (2013) is an early example of his work in the genre, and if you enjoy the kind of tense, morally murky crime films that South Korean cinema has made its signature, Shiraishi is working in a very similar register. The Blood of Wolves (2018) continues in that vein — gritty, propulsive, and atmospheric.

But the range doesn't stop there. The Queen of Villains — a Netflix original series about female professional wrestling — is gripping entertainment of a completely different kind. Hibana: Spark, also on Netflix, is a drama about the world of manzai comedy duos, the Japanese stand-up tradition built around a straight man and a fool. It is warm, funny, and unexpectedly moving.

In one interview, Shiraishi talked about how he doesn't consider himself a master of any particular style — and rather than seeing that as a limitation, he frames it as a freedom. His job, as he sees it, is to serve the story, not his own aesthetic preferences. That kind of ego-free versatility is actually quite rare, and it makes for an extremely interesting body of work.

Final Thoughts

Japanese cinema is vast, and the names above barely scratch the surface of what's out there beyond the usual canon. What unites most of these directors — Fukada, Kore-eda, Imaizumi, Yamada, and in his own way Shiraishi — is a commitment to human truth. To characters who feel real. To relationships that are complex and messy and not easily resolved.

That is what great cinema does, regardless of where it comes from. And these five filmmakers do it as well as anyone working in the world today.

If you come away from this list with even one new favourite filmmaker, that's a win. Start with Still Walking, or Harmonium, or A Silent Voice. See where it takes you. Japanese cinema has a way of staying with you long after the credits roll — and once it gets under your skin, there is no shortage of places to go next.