The 1950s
The 1950s were the zenith of Japanese cinema, and three of its films (Rashomon, The Seven Samurai, and Tokyo Story) made the Sight and Sound's 2002 Critics and Directors Poll for the best films of all time.[1] The decade started with Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950), which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and marked the entrance of Japanese cinema onto the world stage. It was also the breakout role for legendary star Toshiro Mifune.[2] 1952 and 1953 saw another Kurosawa film, Ikiru, as well as Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story. The year 1954 saw two of Japan's most influential films released. The first was the Kurosawa epic The Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai), about a band of hired samurai who protect a helpless village from a rapacious gang of thieves, which was remade in the West as The Magnificent Seven. That same year Ishiro Honda released the anti-nuclear horror film Gojira, which was translated in the West as Godzilla. Though it was severely edited for its Western release, Godzilla became an international icon of Japan and spawned an entire industry of Kaiju films. In 1955, Hiroshi Inagaki won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for Part I of his Samurai Trilogy.

Kenji Mizoguchi directs The Life of Oharu (Saikaku Ichidai Onna, 1952), Ugetsu (Ugetsu Monogatari, 1953) and Sansho the Bailiff (Sansho Dayu, 1954).

Mikio Naruse directs Repast (1950), Late Chrysanthemums (1954) and Floating Clouds (1955).

Yasujiro Ozu directs Good Morning (Ohayo, 1959).

The 1960s
Akira Kurosawa directs the 1961 classic Yojimbo, which is considered a huge influence on the Western.

Technicolor makes its mark. Kon Ichikawa captures the watershed 1964 Olympics in his three-hour documentary Tokyo Olympiad (Tokyo Orimpikku; 1965). Nikkatsu fires Suzuki Seijun for "making films that don't make any sense and don't make any money" after his surrealist yakuza flick Branded to Kill (1967).

Osamu Tezuka's Tetsuwan Atomu introduces anime to television and gives the world Astro Boy in 1963.

Nagisa Oshima, Kaneto Shindo, and Shohei Imamura emerge as major filmmakers during the decade.

Hiroshi Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes (1964) takes the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and is nominated for Best Director and Best Foreign Language Film Oscars. Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan (1965) also picks up the Special Jury Prize at Cannes.

The 1970s
Nagisa Oshima directs Ai no koriida (In the Realm of the Senses; 1976), a World War I period piece about Abe Sada. Staunchly anti-censorship, he insists the film contain hardcore pornographic material; as a result the exposed film must be shipped to France for processing, and an uncut version of the film has still, to this day, never been shown in Japan. However, the pink film industry became the stepping stone for young independent filmmakers of Japan.

The 1980s
Hayao Miyazaki adapts his manga Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind (Kaze no tani no Naushika) into a feature film (an anime of the same name) in 1984. Katsuhiro Otomo adapts his manga Akira into a feature-length anime in 1988. New anime movies are run every summer and winter with characters from popular TV anime. Shohei Imamura wins the Golden Palm at Cannes for Narayama Bushiko (1983) (Ballad of Narayama; 1982).

The 1990s
Shohei Imamura again wins the Golden Palm (shared with Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami), this time for Unagi (The Eel; 1997), joining Alf Sjöberg, Francis Ford Coppola and Bille August as only the fourth two-time recipient. Takeshi Kitano emerges as a significant filmmaker with works such as Sonatine (1993), Kids Return (1996) and Hana-Bi (1997), which was given the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Not to forget, Takashi Miike makes up to 50 films in a decade, building up an impressive portfolio with titles such as, Audition (1999), Dead or Alive (1999) and Bird People of China (1998). Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Hirokazu Koreeda both launch acclaimed careers.

2000 and after
Hayao Miyazaki comes out of retirement to direct Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi; 2001), breaking Japanese box office records and winning the U.S. Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. In 2002, Dolls is released, followed by a high-budget remake, Zatoichi in 2003, both directed and written by Takeshi Kitano. The horror films Ringu and Ju-on: The Grudge are remade in English and met with commercial success. In 2005, director Seijun Suzuki made his 56th film, Princess Raccoon. Hirokazu Koreeda proclaims film festival awards around the world with two of his films Distance and Nobody Knows.

From Wikkipedia