Izumi Hasegawa’s Top 10 Japanese Films Watchlist

by Izumi Hasegawa, Hollywood News Wire Inc.

EXCLUSIVE: Izumi Hasegawa is an entertainment journalist based in Los Angeles. Originally from Japan, Izumi has interviewed more than 5,000 stars and filmmakers, including Steven Spielberg, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and Angelina Jolie. A long-time friend of Screenmancer, Hasegawa has covered innumerable film and television awards, premieres, and press junkets during 20 years as an internationally recognized and highly acclaimed journalist. She won the Los Angeles Press Club’s 51st Annual Southern California Journalist Awards: Columnist or Critic International Journalism, and a nomination for Entertainment Journalist of the Year. Although Izumi Hasegawa is deeply involved with the 80th Anniversary Atomic Bomb Victims Memorial, she took time to curate a list of Japanese films that “I really want young people to watch. I really want them to know what they went through.”

Izumi Hasegawa’s Top 10 Japanese Films for You

1. Barefoot Gen
Director: Mori Masaki (1983)
Hiroshima’s ground zero, showing the stark reality that the war’s carnage is best understood perhaps through the eyes of a child, contextualized by survivors’ testimony.

2. Black Rain
Director: Shōhei Imamura (1989)
Radioactive aftermath sets the scene for the survivors secondary wounds of stigma, survivor guilt and harrowing reality in a society that struggles to reintegrate all the lingering pain and disbelief.

3. Spirited Away
Director: Hayao Miyazaki (2001)
In the Shinto tradition, this spiritual awakening charts the post-war upheaval through the POV of a young girl’s journey into the realm of old gods and corrupted memories.

4. Himeyuri no Tō / The Tower of Himeyuri
Directors: Tadashi Imai (1953), Noriaki Tsuchimoto (1968), Kazuo Kuroki (1995)
Okinawan school girls drafted into wartime roles frame the lost innocence and the completely torn social fabric of a society devastated by national tragedy and its aftermath.

HIROSHIMA 1953 – Full Movie

5. 8:15 – A True Story of Survival and Forgiveness from Hiroshima
Director: J.R. Heffelfinger (2020)
Shinji Mikamo’s life is explored here, as this biopic repurposes trauma as a way to find deep healing, as opposed to blame as a first response in this study of radical empathy.

6. Nagasaki: In the Shadow of the Flash
Director: Jumpei Matsumoto (2025)
Third-generation survivor’s POV tells this story that recounts the unsung sacrifice of unwitting student nurses, who literally ran into the mouth of the beast to save their fellow citizens, while they had no PPP whatsoever in a show of raw bravery, brutal courage.

7. Weathering With You
Director: Makoto Shinkai (2019)
In this film, a teen’s vow to the sky turns into a heart-wrenching metaphor for personal sacrifice and climate sorrow, which echoes the invisible genetic fallout through familial generations.

8. Tomorrow / Ashita
Director: Kazuo Kuroki (1988)
On this the day before Nagasaki scenario, Tomorrow snapshots the tranquil domestic life that will meet hellfire in a heartbeat the next day, as a visual essay on the fragile thing called peace.

9. Hiroshima Piano
Director: Masaaki Tanabe (2020)
Unbelievably a piano has survived the bombing, and is now a symbol for the Nation of Japan, a loadstone and touchstone for memory, cultural history, and the failure of words when music must step in.

10. I Wish You Meet Again on That Blooming Hill
Director: Kōhei Oguri (2023)
Not only a somber meditation on love, loss, and reconnection, Oguri’s film treats remembrance as a living act of courage, acknowledging that The Dead are ever-present in nature itself, but also in ritual.

BONUS: In The Shadow of a Flash to be released in 2025

Critic’s Choice Member Izumi Hasegawa is based in Los Angeles. She is also a practitioner of Shinto.

https://izumihasegawa.com/
https://members.criticschoice.com/members/izumihasegawa/
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