The has a history that spans more than 100 years.
Japan has one of the oldest and largest film industries in the world; as of 2010, it was the fourth largest by number of feature films produced. In 2011 Japan produced 411 feature films that earned 54.9% of a box office total of US$2.338 billion. Movies have been produced in Japan since 1897, when the first foreign cameramen arrived. In a
Sight & Sound list of the
best films produced in Asia, Japanese works made up eight of the top 12, with
Tokyo Story (1953) ranked number one. Japan has won the
Academy Award for the
Best Foreign Language Film four times, once again more than any other Asian country.