Movies like Mugonkan (2022)
The best movies like Mugonkan (2022) are Blood on the Sun (1945), House of Bamboo (1955) and Tokyo Fist (1995). If Mugonkan hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Human Condition II: Road to Eternity (1959)8.2/10 from 242 votes
- NewestBeast (2026)Released 2026
- In JapaneseTokyo Fist (1995)Also in Japanese
Blood on the Sun (1945)
Nick Condon, an American journalist in 20s Tokyo, publishes the Japanese master plan for world domination. Reaction from the understandably upset Japanese provides the action, but this is overshadowed by the propaganda of the time.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisHouse of Bamboo (1955)
Eddie Kenner is given a special assignment by the Army to get the inside story on Sandy Dawson, a former GI who has formed a gang of fellow servicemen and Japanese locals.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTokyo Fist (1995)
A businessman, Tsuda, runs into a childhood friend, Kojima, on the subway. Kojima is working as a semiprofessional boxer. Tsuda soon begins to suspect that Kojima might be having an affair with his fiancée Hizuru. After an altercation, Tsuda begins training rigorously himself, leading to an extremely bloody, violent confrontation.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWife of a Spy (2020)
It’s 1940, and the population of Japan is divided over its entry into World War II. Satoko, the wife of a fabric merchant, is devoted to her husband but is beginning to suspect he’s up to something. Soon she allows herself to be drawn into a game in which she enigmatically conceals her intentions.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIn This Corner of the World (2016)
Japan, 1943, during World War II. Young Suzu leaves her village near Hiroshima to marry and live with her in-laws in Kure, a military harbor. Her creativity to overcome deprivation quickly makes her indispensable at home. Inhabited by an ancestral wisdom, Suzu impregnates the simple gestures of everyday life with poetry and beauty. The many hardships, the loss of loved ones, the frequent air raids of the enemy, nothing alters her enthusiasm…
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisIntentions of Murder (1964)
The neglected common-law wife of a Japanese librarian is repeatedly harassed by a young man with a heart condition who seduces her with the prospect of a better life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Scarlet and the Black (1983)
Fr. Hugh O'Flaherty is a Vatican official in 1943-45 who has been hiding downed pilots, escaped prisoners of war, and Italian resistance families. His activities become so large that the Nazis decide to assassinate him the next time he leaves the Vatican.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWaiting for Anya (2020)
During the harrows of WWII, Jo, a young shepherd along with the help of the widow Horcada, helps to smuggle Jewish children across the border from southern France into Spain.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBattleground (1949)
Members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division are fighting for their country amidst the rugged terrain of Bastogne, Belgium, in December 1944. Holley and his American compatriots have already seen one of their own, Roderigues, perish under enemy fire. The men try to rebuff another series of Nazi attacks, but what they really need is a change in the weather. Without clear skies, they'll never get the air support they need.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBeast (2026)
MMA legend Patton James, now a commercial fisherman, is pulled back into the cage when his brother is in danger. Reuniting with his old coach Sammy, he commits to one final fight in one championship against the brutal champion Xavier Grau.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFemale Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972)
After being used and betrayed by the detective she had fallen in love with, young Matsu is sent to a female prison full of sadistic guards and disobedient prisoners.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLady Snowblood (1973)
A strikingly beautiful young woman is trained from birth to be a deadly instrument of revenge against the swindlers who destroyed her family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFemale Prisoner #701: Scorpion (1972)
After being cruelly set up and deceived by Sugimi, a detective in cahoots with the mob with whom she was whole-heartedly in love, Matsushima’s desire for revenge knows no bounds.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisEdo Porn (1981)
The world-famous woodblock artist Hokusai (1760-1849), a widower in need of a steady income, lives with his daughter Oei in the house of his friend Bakin.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisJigen Daisuke (2023)
Feeling unhappy with his gun, Jigen is looking for the world’s best gunsmith. He finally finds out that Chiharu, who runs a watch shop, is the person he’s been seeking. Then, Jigen meets Oto, who comes to Chiharu’s shop looking for a gun. Jigen finds out about Oto's secrets and the mysterious organization that’s after her. After Oto is kidnapped, Jigen gets into a desperate battle to save her.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Human Condition II: Road to Eternity (1959)
Kaji, sent to the Japanese army labeled Red, witnesses cruelties in the army and revolts against the abusive treatment against a fellow recruit. He also sees his friend Shinjô defecting to the Russian border, and he ends in the front to fight a lost battle against the Russian tanks division.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisPrizefighter: The Life of Jem Belcher (2022)
At the turn of the 19th century, Pugilism was the sport of kings and a gifted young boxer fought his way to becoming champion of England.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Challenge (1982)
Rick, a down-and-out American boxer, is hired to transport a sword to Japan, unaware that the whole thing is a set up in a bitter blood-feud between two brothers, one who follows the traditional path of the samurai and the other a businessman. At the behest of the businessman, Rick undertakes samurai training from the other brother, but joins his cause. He also becomes romantically involved with the samurai's daughter.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisHarmonium (2016)
Toshio hires Yasaka to work in his workshop. But then this old acquaintance, who has just been released from prison, begins to meddle in Toshio's family life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNinja (2009)
A westerner named Casey, studying Ninjutsu in Japan, is asked by the Sensei to return to New York to protect the legendary Yoroi Bitsu, an armored chest that contains the weapons of the last Koga Ninja.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJohnny Minotaur (1971)
Johnny Minotaur is a lyrical explosion of taboos: incest, intergenerational desire, pansexuality and autoeroticism are a few of the issues Charles Henri Ford grapples with through mythopoeic, sensual imagery, recitations of his diaries and a philosophical debate featuring an impressive narration by such artists as Salvador Dali, Allen Ginsberg, Warren Sonbert and Lynne Tillman.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
When Day Breaks (TBA)
When Day Breaks is a silent, visually driven meditation on loss, memory, and the fragile thread between the living and the dead. Set against the chaos of armed conflict, a daughter killed as a civilian lingers between life and memory as she observes her mother grief from beyond. Her final presence becomes an unspoken act of comfort, reaching across the divide. What does it mean for the living to hold on? And what does it take to keep living?
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (1970)
Zatoichi treks to a village that has always been a favorite spot of his, only to discover that it’s become a living hell, plagued by feuding father and son yakuza as well as the younger crime boss’s bodyguard, scruffy, smart-mouthed, cash-hungry Yojimbo of legend.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Last Valley (1971)
People in a small German village in the last valley to remain untouched by the devastating Thirty Years' War try to exist in peace with a group of soldiers occupying the valley.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNegativ (2023)
A photographer during the Soviet-Afghan war becomes obsessed with a mysterious figure that appears in his images every time the person photographed dies.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
An Impossibly Small Object (2018)
A Dutch photographer (played by David Verbeek himself – also a talented photographer in real life) takes a picture of a girl in a parking lot in nighttime Taipei as she plays with her kite. The photo transports us into her life. She is eight years old and is about to lose her best friend, a boy from a wealthy family who is moving to America. Back in the Netherlands, the photographer is confronted with his own constant loneliness. The photo of the girl evokes memories of his own childhood, when he still felt at home somewhere.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Mysterians (1957)
In Japan, scientifically advanced invaders from the war-destroyed planet Mysteroid cause an entire village to vanish, then send a giant robot out to storm the city by night, after which they request a small patch of land on Earth and the right to marry earthling women, claiming to be pacifists. Mankind must decide whether to capitulate or to resist.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDifference & Repetition, 2020 (2025)
In March 2020, an Argentine woman flees New York with her Peruvian husband for his family’s empty beach house outside of Lima, whereupon an unplanned pregnancy precipitates the destruction of her marriage. In the present, she rips the moments of this narrative from their context, and reconstructs her story to reckon with her profound feeling of loneliness and the experience of time in which it has trapped her.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Old Young Crow (2023)
An Iranian boy befriends an old Japanese woman at a graveyard in Tokyo.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Insect Woman (1963)
A woman, Tome, is born to a lower class family in Japan in 1918. The title refers to an insect, repeating its mistakes, as in an infinite circle. Imamura, with this metaphor, introduces the life of Tome, who keeps trying to change her poor life.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Mugonkan?
The closest matches to Mugonkan are Blood on the Sun (1945), House of Bamboo (1955) and Tokyo Fist (1995). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Mugonkan?
Start with Blood on the Sun (1945), the closest match to Mugonkan.
What is the highest-rated movie like Mugonkan?
The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity (1959), rated 8.2/10 by 242 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Mugonkan?
Beast (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Japanese movies like Mugonkan?
Yes: Tokyo Fist (1995), Wife of a Spy (2020) and In This Corner of the World (2016).
How are movies similar to Mugonkan chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Mugonkan, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.