Contemporary Cinema & the Streaming Era

Japanese Film & Television

Chapter 9 · Contemporary Cinema & the Streaming Era

Rashomon needed a festival, a skeptical studio talked into submitting it, and a persuasive advocate to reach the world in 1951 (Chapter 3). Seven decades later, a single Netflix release reached ninety countries' own Top 10 lists in the same weekend it premiered.

A Real, Rare International Prize — Shoplifters, 2018

Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters (2018) — a quiet family drama about a group bound less by blood than by shared poverty and petty theft — won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2018, the festival's top prize. It was the first Japanese win in 21 years.

A real callback to Chapter 6 — the last Japanese director to win the Palme d'Or before Kore-eda was Shohei Imamura, for The Eel in 1997 — the same Imamura this course already met as one of the New Wave's own defining figures, working in a genuinely less overtly political register than his contemporary Oshima.

Streaming Reshapes Where Content Actually Reaches an Audience

Where Rashomon's international breakthrough depended on a single festival screening and one advocate's persistence, streaming platforms — Netflix chief among them — now distribute Japanese-produced film and television to a global audience simultaneously with its domestic release, with real, substantial investment behind original Japanese productions rather than simply licensing content after the fact.

Alice in Borderland — A Real Global Number

Netflix's Alice in Borderland Season 2 (2022) racked up 61.2 million viewing hours in its premiere weekend alone, landing at #1 on Netflix's own Global Non-English TV list and reaching the Top 10 in 90 countries — including Japan, the US, Canada, Brazil, France, and Hong Kong. It became the most-watched Japanese series in Netflix's history within four days of release. Combined with Season 1's own continued viewership that same weekend, the show reached 80 million viewing hours — surpassing Squid Game's own real 63 million viewing hours in its first week as a Global Top 10 release.

Questions to Sit With

Reflection 1

Rashomon's international breakthrough took a skeptical studio, a persuasive advocate, and a single festival screening. Alice in Borderland reached 90 countries in one weekend. Does that structural change feel like a genuine improvement for Japanese storytelling reaching the world, or does something real get lost in that shift from festival curation to algorithmic distribution?

Reflection 2

Kore-eda's Palme d'Or came 21 years after Imamura's own win. What do you think a gap that long says about how consistently Japanese cinema's own festival-circuit prestige has actually translated into major international prizes, compared to its real, sustained commercial influence covered elsewhere in this course?

Reflection 3

Having now traced this industry from 1899's Momijigari through to a single Netflix weekend outperforming Squid Game, what do you think has actually stayed consistent about Japanese film and television across more than a century, if anything?

Quick Reference — Chapter 9

  • Kore-eda's Shoplifters (2018) won the Palme d'Or, the first Japanese win in 21 years since Imamura's The Eel (1997)
  • Streaming platforms now distribute Japanese productions to a global audience simultaneously with domestic release, backed by real original investment rather than after-the-fact licensing
  • Alice in Borderland Season 2 (2022) drew 61.2 million viewing hours in its premiere weekend, reaching 90 countries' Top 10 lists and surpassing Squid Game's own first-week numbers
Next chapter: Capstone — Tracing Postwar Trauma & Recovery Across Japan's Own Screen — one continuous thread traced from Chapter 3's own Occupation-era constraints all the way through to this chapter's streaming-era present.