Japanese cinema has been a bit of a mystery. It’s not that it didn’t exist, but what arrived in America was rather specific offerings. When I was a kid, Japanese cinema consisted of large monsters stomping Tokyo. Around college time, things expanded a little bit beyond Godzilla and Gamera with the films of Akira Kurosawa showing up at art houses. Although his movies would get referenced in terms of the movies that were remade from his work such as Seven Samurai into The Hidden Fortress for Star Wars. Even during the era of Mom & Pop VHS shops, the foreign section didn’t contain much from Japan outside of a copy of the erotic classics