← The Man Who Stole the Sun
The Man Who Stole the Sun poster

The Man Who Stole the Sun · reception & legacy

1979 · Kazuhiko Hasegawa

How The Man Who Stole the Sun has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

A box-office disappointment in 1979 that critics adored from day one — it took #2 in that year's Kinema Junpo poll — and its stature has only grown: by 2009 the same magazine ranked it the seventh-greatest Japanese film ever made, a placement that still startles people who've never had the chance to see it.

What's debated

The perennial fan debate is why a film this beloved in Japan spent decades nearly impossible to see in the West — plus whether its wild tonal swings and 147-minute sprawl are excess or exactly the point.

Its footprint

In Japan it's a genuine touchstone, name-checked by generations of musicians, comedians, and filmmakers, with pop idol Kenji Sawada's bubblegum-chewing science teacher an indelible image; abroad it circulated for years mostly as a bootleg legend, 'the greatest Japanese film you've never seen.'

Where it stands

A cult object turned canon fixture — enshrined near the top of Japan's critical pantheon while remaining a word-of-mouth discovery for everyone else, which is precisely the mystique Letterboxd loves.

★ Did you know? Despite it being eventually ranked among the greatest Japanese films ever, director Kazuhiko Hasegawa never made another feature — this was his second and last film, and he spent the following decades mentoring young filmmakers through the Directors Company instead. (Bonus trivia: it was co-written by Leonard Schrader, Paul Schrader's brother, who was living in Japan at the time.)