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 ticket (admission), 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 gate, wicket. ...

earnings at

cinemas A movie theater (American English) or cinema (Commonwealth English), also known as a movie house, cinema hall, picture house, picture theater, the movies, the pictures, or simply theater, is a business that contains auditoriums for viewing fi ...

, not other sources of income such as

merchandising Merchandising is any practice which contributes to the sale of Product (business), products ("merch" colloquially) to a retail consumer. At a retail in-store level, merchandising refers to displaying products that are for sale in a creative w ...

home video Home video is recorded media sold or Video rental shop, 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 and Blu-ray. ...

. The lists include both

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

and live-action films produced by Japanese studios, but do not include English-language international co-productions between Japanese and

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood ...

studios. For example, many 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 film '' Manhunt'', which was the first foreign film released in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

following the

Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a Social movement, sociopolitical movement in the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his de ...

, and subsequently sold more than tickets there. According to ''

Nikkan Sports is the first-launched Japanese daily sports newspaper A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background ...

'', the ''

People's Daily The ''People's Daily'' ( zh, s=人民日报, p=Rénmín Rìbào) is the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It provides direct information on the policies and viewpoints of the CCP in multiple lan ...

'' and ', the film attained approximately 800 million viewers in China upon its initial release. Its inflation-adjusted Chinese gross revenue is estimated to be at least () in 2017. However, the amount of nominal box office gross revenue (not adjusted for inflation) it generated in China 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 A home, or domicile, is a space used as a permanent or semi-permanent residence for one or more human occupants, and sometimes various companion animals. Homes provide sheltered spaces, for instance rooms, where domestic activity can be pe ...

merchandise Merchandising is any practice which contributes to the sale of Product (business), products ("merch" colloquially) to a retail consumer. At a retail in-store level, merchandising refers to displaying products that are for sale in a creative w ...

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

film ''

My Neighbor Totoro is a 1988 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten. It stars the voices of Noriko Hidaka, Chika Sakamoto and Hitoshi Takagi, and focuses on two young sisters a ...

'' (1988), for example, grossed about from home video and licensed merchandise sales.

Highest-grossing Japanese films in Japan

The following is a list of highest-grossing Japanese films in Japan. (Over ¥10 billion)

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