Japanese movie directors: Selected List

JAPANESE MOVIE DIRECTORS: Selected List

From today on, this blog is to provide information of Japanese film directors. Not all directors, of course, but the directors "recognized as important" ones or "my favorite" ones.

"My favorite" directors are ones who directed films which I want to recommend to other Japanese movie fans. I will select them on my own and according to my taste. Forgive me if your favorite director might not be selected.

The "recognized as important" ones cannot be selected according to my taste, but must be selected based on some objective standard. Thus, I select them based on Japanese Top_10_movies from 1926 to 2016 (i.e., based on the number of times their film was ranked in Top_10_movies).

The directors, whose films were ranked in Top_10_movies five times or more, are listed below (note: the number in parentheses is the number of films ranked in Top_10, and the directors whose name is displayed in red are alive and active today).

(6 directors ranked 20 times or more)
Yôji Yamada (27), 

Akira Kurosawa (25),
Tadashi Imai (22),
Yasujirô Ozu (20),
Keisuke Kinoshita (20),
Satsuo Yamamoto (20)

(17 directors ranked 10 times or more)
Kaneto Shindô (19),           Kenji Mizoguchi (18),
Kon Ichikawa (18),             Mikio Naruse (16),
Shôhei Imamura (15),         Daisuke Itô (13),
Tomu Uchida (13),             Tomotaka Tasaka (13),
Heinosuke Gosho (12),      Nagisa Ôshima (12),
Masaki Kobayashi (11),      Shirô Toyoda (11),
Kinji Fukasaku (11),           Kôzaburô Yoshimura (11),
Yasujirô Shimazu (10),      Teinosuke Kinugasa (10),
Junji Sakamoto (10), 

(34 directors ranked 5 times or more)
Hiroshi Inagaki (9),   Takeshi Kitano (9),   Masahiro Shinoda (9),
Nobuhiko Ôbayashi (9),   Sadao Yamanaka (8),   Kei Kumai (8),
Kazuo Kuroki (8),   Hayao Miyazaki (8),   Masahiro Makino (7),
Tatsumi Kumashiro (7),   Jun Ichikawa (7),   Shinji Sômai (7),
Atsuhiro Yamashita (7),   Yutaka Abe (6),   Kihachi Okamoto (6),
Yôichi Sai (6),   Hiroshi Teshigahara (6),   Yoshitarô Nomura (6),
Yôichi Higashi (6),   Yoshishige Yoshida (6),   Hirokazu Koreeda (6),
Minoru Murata (5),   Kiyohiko Ushihara (5),   Hiroshi Shimizu (5),
Minoru Shibuya (5),   Hisatora Kumagai (5),   Kirio (Kirirô) Urayama (5),
Susumu Hani (5),   Toshiya Fujita (5),   Kiyoshi Kurosawa (5),
Yoshimitsu Morita (5),   Kazuyuki Izutsu (5),   Masato Harada (5),
Hideyuki Hirayama (5)

From tomorrow, this blog will provide information of individual directors, including the filmography, DVD availability and/or survival status of the films, and so on.