Machiko Ono (left) and Shigeki Uda in Naomi Kawase's "The Mourning Forest."
Talking about a new wave of Japanese cinema is somewhat misguided, since no other non-American country, with the possible and debatable exception of France, has contributed so much to the medium in its century-long history. Japanese film certainly did not begin or end with Akira Kurosawa, but for complicated cultural reasons he became far and away its most famous export. (Many Japanese critics and film buffs might consider Kurosawa the second- or third-greatest director in their national cinema; some would place him lower than that.)
Since Kurosawa's death, Japanese film fandom in the West has mainly been devoted to horror, science-fiction, anime and other cultish genres. That's brought international attention to such filmmakers as Hayao Miyazaki, Takashi Miike and Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to his more famous namesake), but it has somewhat obscured the fact that the best of those films and directors belong to a broader cinematic renaissance in East Asia, one that encompasses many cultures and languages from Thailand to Taiwan to Korea and that increasingly blurs the distinctions between art films and genre movies.
If I tried to cover every ethnic or national film festival held in New York I'd never do anything else, and readers in the other 95 percent of the nation might get pretty grumpy. (I promise I'll never become a Yankee fan, no matter how long I live here.) But I'm making an exception for the Japan Cuts festival, presented annually by the Japan Society and overlapping somewhat with the equally worthy New York Asian Film Festival. Many of this year's films will be trickling out to other cities via film festivals or small-scale releases, and many of those that won't are worth seeking out on video, whenever and wherever they become available.