Beyond the Japanese/Western Canon

A few months ago I participated in Iain Scott's poll of critics of the best 50 films of all time. This time, he has asked us to pick films that were not among the top results in that poll: in other words, films "Beyond the Canon". Iain was hoping for more varied results, but as he seems to lament, the result was still rather US-centered. It was thus good that I decided to make my response center on Japanese films. These, however, were mostly not the movies that tend to reach the top of Western polls of the greatest Japanese films of all time. In a sense, they were "Beyond the Japanese Canon" or "Beyond the Western Canon of the Japanese Canon." I added a bit of annotation this time so as to encourage readers to search out these wonderful films. There were, of course, a ton more I could have added, but there just wasn't time...

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