Ranking of Japanese movies by year

Ask ten people for the “best” Japanese movie of a given year and you will get ten different answers. Ask the ticket counters in Japan and you get something colder, and often more revealing: a ranking driven by who actually filled seats.

This page maps the strongest Japanese productions at the Japan box office from 2019 back to 2013. The charts mix theatrical anime, live-action franchise films, and the occasional original hit that punched above expectations. Yen figures are domestic box-office tallies (year-end industry charts and public reports). Totals can shift slightly by source and cut-off date, so treat each table as a practical map of what ruled cinemas that year—not a worldwide ranking and not a critics’ list.

If you want the all-time heavyweights instead of year-by-year charts, start with our list of the highest-grossing Japanese films in Japan.

Contents 8

Top Japanese movies of 2019

2019 closed the decade with Makoto Shinkai back at the summit. Weathering with You led Japanese productions by a clear margin, while Detective Conan, Kingdom, and One Piece showed how franchise calendar releases still own long stretches of the year.

Rank	Title	Japan box office
1	Weathering with You	¥14.06 billion
2	Detective Conan: The Fist of Blue Sapphire	¥9.37 billion
3	Kingdom	¥5.73 billion
4	One Piece: Stampede	¥5.55 billion
5	Doraemon: Nobita's Chronicle of the Moon Exploration	¥5.01 billion
6	Masquerade Hotel	¥4.64 billion
7	Dragon Ball Super: Broly	¥4.00 billion
8	Fly Me to the Saitama	¥3.76 billion
9	Hit Me Anyone One More Time	¥3.60 billion
10	Mewtwo Strikes Back: Evolution	¥2.98 billion

Note the pattern: holiday anime and TV-to-film spin-offs sit beside one Shinkai original that could still outrun the pack. Foreign titles such as Frozen 2 and Aladdin earned more overall that year, but they fall outside this Japanese-production ranking.

Top Japanese movies of 2018

Without a single monster like Your Name, 2018 still looked busy. A medical drama spin-off edged out Detective Conan at the top, Kore-eda’s Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters cracked the domestic top five, and the micro-budget zombie comedy One Cut of the Dead proved that word of mouth can still rewrite a chart.

Rank	Title	Japan box office
1	Code Blue: The Movie	¥9.30 billion
2	Detective Conan: Zero the Enforcer	¥9.18 billion
3	Doraemon the Movie: Nobita's Treasure Island	¥5.37 billion
4	Shoplifters	¥4.55 billion
5	Gintama 2	¥3.70 billion
6	Destiny: The Tale of Kamakura	¥3.21 billion
7	One Cut of the Dead	¥3.12 billion
8	Pokémon the Movie: The Power of Us	¥3.09 billion
9	Killing for the Prosecution	¥2.96 billion
10	Mirai	¥2.88 billion

Together, the top ten Japanese titles of 2018 took roughly ¥47 billion—strong franchise depth even without a once-in-a-decade original.

Top Japanese movies of 2017

After the Your Name surge of 2016, 2017 felt quieter at the top. Detective Conan reclaimed first place among Japanese releases, while franchise anime and a handful of live-action titles filled the rest of the table. No local film approached the scale of Shinkai’s previous peak.

Rank	Title	Japan box office
1	Detective Conan: The Crimson Love Letter	¥6.89 billion
2	Doraemon the Movie 2017: Great Adventure in the Antarctic Kachi Kochi	¥4.43 billion
3	Gintama	¥3.84 billion
4	Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You!	¥3.55 billion
5	Let Me Eat Your Pancreas	¥3.52 billion
6	Mary and the Witch's Flower	¥3.29 billion
7	Yo-kai Watch: Soratobu Kujira to Double no Sekai no Daibōken da Nyan!	¥3.26 billion
8	Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale	¥2.52 billion
9	Mumon: The Land of Stealth	¥2.51 billion
10	Memoirs of a Murderer	¥2.41 billion

Studio Ponoc’s Mary and the Witch's Flower and Hosoda’s Mirai (still climbing on later tallies) matter for anime fans even when franchise titles own pure volume. For more film picks beyond charts, see our list of standout Japanese anime movies.

Top Japanese movies of 2016

2016 is the year the chart still points to when people talk about modern Japanese anime as a mass theatrical event. Your Name (Kimi no Na wa) did not merely win the year—it rewrote the scale of what a non-Ghibli original could do at home, finishing above ¥25 billion in Japan over its full run and landing near ¥23.5 billion already by year-end charts.

Rank	Title	Japan box office
1	Your Name	¥25.2 billion (full Japan run; ~¥23.6B on 2016 year-end charts)
2	Shin Godzilla	¥8.25 billion
3	Detective Conan: The Darkest Nightmare	¥6.33 billion
4	Yo-kai Watch: Enma Daiō to Itsutsu no Monogatari da Nyan!	¥5.53 billion
5	One Piece Film: Gold	¥5.20 billion
6	Nobunaga Concerto: The Movie	¥4.61 billion
7	Doraemon: Nobita and the Birth of Japan 2016	¥4.12 billion
8	Assassination Classroom: Graduation	¥3.52 billion
9	Orange	¥3.25 billion
10	A Silent Voice	≈¥2.3 billion class (year-end top ten)

Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi’s Shin Godzilla was the clear live-action counterweight: a serious kaiju reboot that still pulled more than ¥8 billion. For locations and sightseeing angles around Shinkai’s hit, we also mapped real places tied to Your Name.

Top Japanese movies of 2015

2015 put a kids’ monster-catching franchise on top of domestic cinema. The first Yo-kai Watch film led Japanese titles, Hosoda’s The Boy and the Beast held second, and the usual Conan / Doraemon / Dragon Ball spring–summer releases filled the middle ranks.

Rank	Title	Japan box office
1	Yo-kai Watch: The Movie	¥7.80 billion
2	The Boy and the Beast	¥5.85 billion
3	Hero	¥4.67 billion
4	Detective Conan: Sunflowers of Inferno	¥4.48 billion
5	Doraemon: Nobita's Space Heroes	¥3.93 billion
6	Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F'	¥3.74 billion
7	Attack on Titan (live-action)	¥3.74 billion
8	Flying Colors	¥2.84 billion
8	Love Live! The School Idol Movie	¥2.84 billion
10	Assassination Classroom	¥2.77 billion

For studio context around the animated side of these charts, see our guide to Japanese animation studios.

Top Japanese movies of 2014

2014 split the crown between a wartime drama and a 3DCG Doraemon feature that also traveled hard overseas. Ghibli’s When Marnie Was There still made the domestic top ten even as the studio’s theatrical peak years were winding down.

Rank	Title	Japan box office
1	The Eternal Zero	¥8.76 billion
2	Stand by Me Doraemon	¥8.38 billion
3	Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno	¥5.22 billion
4	Thermae Romae II	¥4.42 billion
5	Rurouni Kenshin: The Legend Ends	¥4.35 billion
6	Lupin the 3rd vs. Detective Conan: The Movie	¥4.26 billion
7	Detective Conan: Dimensional Sniper	¥4.11 billion
8	Doraemon: New Nobita's Great Demon—Peko and the Exploration Party of Five	¥3.58 billion
9	When Marnie Was There	¥3.53 billion
10	Pokémon the Movie: Diancie and the Cocoon of Destruction	¥2.91 billion

The two Rurouni Kenshin finales show how a live-action manga adaptation can hold half a year of attention when both chapters land close together.

Top Japanese movies of 2013

Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises was the clear Japanese champion of 2013, and one of the last Ghibli originals to sit alone at the top of a calendar year. Below it, franchise anime and a few solid live-action titles filled a shorter public list for this page.

Rank	Title	Japan box office
1	The Wind Rises	¥12.0 billion
2	One Piece Film: Z	¥6.87 billion
3	Doraemon: Nobita's Secret Gadget Museum	¥3.98 billion
4	Detective Conan: Private Eye in the Distant Sea	¥3.63 billion
5	Midsummer's Equation	¥3.31 billion

For Ghibli’s longer arc beyond a single year chart, see Studio Ghibli: films, history, and legacy.

How to read these rankings

Three rules keep the tables useful:

• Japanese productions only — Hollywood and other imports can top Japan’s overall yearly charts; they are not mixed into these lists.
• Domestic yen first — Worldwide success (for example Stand by Me Doraemon or later Shinkai titles abroad) is a different story from what Japanese theaters paid for that calendar year.
• “Best” is not the same as “biggest” — A Kore-eda drama or a Ghibli film can matter more to film culture than a mid-table franchise entry, even when the yen column says otherwise.

From 2013 to 2019, the same engines keep showing up: spring Conan, spring Doraemon, summer One Piece or Pokémon when the calendar lines up, TV drama spin-offs from major networks, and the rare original—Your Name, Weathering with You, One Cut of the Dead—that rearranges the room. Use the tables as a timeline of what Japan actually went to see, then follow the titles that match the kind of Japanese cinema you care about.