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Artists’ Choice #11: Kanji Furutachi (actor) lists his 10 Favorite Japanese Movies

January 22, 2019
Panos Kotzathanasis

is best known for playing Toshio, one of the leading roles in “Harmonium”, directed by Koji Fukada, which won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.

He has also appeared in numerous plays in Japan, including the title role for the play “The Treasured Son”, which won Japan's most prestigious drama award: The Kishida Drama Award.

His many film appearances include “Hospitalité” and “My Back Page” (for which he won the Best Supporting Actor Award from the Takasaki Film Festival and the Best New Comer Award at the Tama Cinema Forum). He studied acting with Uta Hagen, Carol Rosenfeld, and many others at HB Studio in New York City.

Here are his ten favorite Japanese films, in no particular order

1. Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1952)


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2. High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963)

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3. Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)

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4. Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)

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5. The Yellow Handkerchief (Yoji Yamada, 1977)

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6. Shall We Dance? (Masayuki Suo, 1996)

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7. Bright Future (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2002)

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8. In This Corner of the World (Sunao Katabuchi, 2016)

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9. Typhoon Club (Shinji Sômai, 1985)

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10. The Kirishima Thing (Daihachi Yoshida, 2012)

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Panos Kotzathanasis

My name is Panos Kotzathanasis and I am Greek. Being a fan of Asian cinema and especially of Chinese kung fu and Japanese samurai movies since I was a little kid, I cultivated that love during my adolescence, to extend to the whole of SE Asia.

Starting from my own blog in Greek, I then moved on to write for some of the major publications in Greece, and in a number of websites dealing with (Asian) cinema, such as Taste of Cinema, Hancinema, EasternKicks, Chinese Policy Institute, and of course, Asian Movie Pulse. in which I still continue to contribute.

In the beginning of 2017, I launched my own website, Asian Film Vault, which I merged in 2018 with Asian Movie Pulse, creating the most complete website about the Asian movie industry, as it deals with almost every country from East and South Asia, and definitely all genres.

You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

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