I watched 50 Japanese films in 2021, but I admittedly could have cast a wider net. 49/50 were either samurai or crime films, and many were both.

Of course, both those genres have an awful lot of room for variance. I saw samurai films that were vicious, bleak, and humorless, and others that were more-or-less comedies where people carried swords around. One crime film might chronicle a blood-soaked war between two rival yakuza factions, while another might be a suburban wife’s quietly desperate quest to find her missing husband.

I overdid it, sure, but I was rarely bored, and almost everything I saw from Japan had something unique going for it.