Films made in Japan produce revenue through various sources; the lists below only consider

box office A box office or ticket office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through a hole in a wall or window, or at a wicket. By extension, the term is fre ...

earnings at

cinemas A movie theater (American English), cinema (British English), or cinema hall (Indian English), also known as a movie house, picture house, the movies, the pictures, picture theater, the silver screen, the big screen, or simply theater is a ...

, not other sources of income such as

merchandising Merchandising is any practice which contributes to the sale of products to a retail consumer. At a retail in-store level, merchandising refers to displaying products that are for sale in a creative way that entices customers to purchase more ...

home video Home video is prerecorded media sold or rented for home viewing. The term originates from the VHS and Betamax era, when the predominant medium was videotapes, but has carried over to optical disc formats such as DVD, Blu-ray and streaming me ...

. The lists include both

anime is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...

and live-action films produced by Japanese studios, but do not include English-language international co-productions between Japanese and Hollywood studios (for example, a number of Hollywood films based on Japanese source material were co‑produced with Japanese production companies).

Highest-grossing Japanese films worldwide

Due to a lack of available data, some films have incomplete grosses that do not reflect their entire theatrical runs in all markets, and other films are missing altogether. The rankings are consequently only approximate. There is especially a lack of available worldwide box office data for Japanese films released prior to 1997. See '' Highest-grossing Japanese films in Japan'' below for more complete data within the domestic Japanese market and '' Japanese films by number of box office admissions'' for more data on both domestic and overseas performance, especially for films released prior to 1997. The highest-grossing Japanese film in terms of box office ticket sales is the 1976 title ''

Kimi yo Fundo no Kawa o Watare , known as ''Manhunt'', ''Hot Pursuit'' or ''Dangerous Chase'' in some translations, is a 1976 Japanese crime thriller film directed by Junya Satō. It is based on the novel of the same name by Juko Nishimura, and stars Ken Takakura in the lead ...

'' (''Manhunt''), which is estimated to have sold more than tickets in China and the Soviet Union. Its inflation-adjusted gross revenue in China is estimated to be at least () in 2017. However, the amount of nominal box office gross revenue (not adjusted for inflation) it generated from these territories at the time is not known to have been reported, so it is not included on this list. The list also does not include ancillary revenue from other sources such as home entertainment or

merchandise Merchandising is any practice which contributes to the sale of products to a retail consumer. At a retail in-store level, merchandising refers to displaying products that are for sale in a creative way that entices customers to purchase more ...

sales, where a number of Japanese films earn significantly more revenue. The

film ''

My Neighbour Totoro is a 1988 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten. The film—which stars the voice actors Noriko Hidaka, Chika Sakamoto, and Hitoshi Takagi—tells the story ...

'' (1988), for example, grossed about from

and licensed merchandise sales.

Highest-grossing Japanese films in Japan

The following is a list of highest-grossing Japanese films in Japan.

Highest-grossing Japanese films by year

Up until 1999, the Japanese box office was most commonly reported in terms of , which was equivalent to approximately half of the total gross receipts at the Japanese box office. Since 2000, the Japanese box office has been reported in terms of total box office gross receipts. The worldwide gross figures for anime films were also not reported prior to 1997. As such, there are two tables. The first table shows the distributor rentals, gross receipts (if known) and box office admissions in Japan up until 1996, while the second table shows the worldwide gross revenue since 1997. Worldwide box office data prior to 1997 is sparse, thus the table for worldwide gross figures begins in that year. Movies that have been re-released are listed by their total gross, with their original gross noted in parentheses.

Japanese films by number of box office admissions

The following table lists known estimated box office ticket sales for various high-grossing Japanese films that have sold more than 10million tickets worldwide. Note that some of the data are incomplete due to a lack of available admissions data from a number of countries. Therefore, it is not an exhaustive list of all the highest-grossing Japanese films by ticket sales, so no rankings are given.

Notes

References