Academy Awards announced today - an unusual three films nominated from Japan

The Academy Awards, the highest honor in the American film industry, will be announced on the 11th, Japan time, in Los Angeles, USA.

An unusual three works from Japan have been nominated: ``How Do You Live?'', ``PERFECT DAYS'', and ``Godzilla 1.0'', and it will be interesting to see how they win.

In Los Angeles, home to the movie capital of Hollywood, the 96th Academy Awards announcement and award ceremony was held on the afternoon of the 10th and from 8 a.m. on the 11th Japan time, and an unusual three films from Japan were nominated.

Of these, the Best Animated Feature Award was given to director Hayao Miyazaki's ``How to Live,'' which he spent about seven years retracting his retirement declaration, and ``Spirited Away,'' which won in 2003. It will be interesting to see if it will be the first time since then.

Director Takashi Yamazaki's ``Godzilla-1.0'' is nominated for Best Visual Effects.

This is the 30th live-action Godzilla movie and the first time a Japanese film has been nominated in this category.

Also nominated for the International Feature Film Award is ``PERFECT DAYS,'' a work directed by world-famous film director Wim Wenders, in which Koji Yakusho plays the daily life of a public toilet cleaner in Shibuya, Tokyo.

On the other hand, ``Oppenheimer'', which is based on a scholar who directed the development of the atomic bomb, has been nominated in 13 categories, including Best Picture and Best Director, and there is a lot of interest in how the film will win.

[Three nominated works]

``How do you live?''

is Studio Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki's first feature film in 10 years.

The title is said to be taken from a work by Genzaburo Yoshino, a children's author who Miyazaki read as a child and was moved by, but the story is completely different.

This is an original story by director Miyazaki, set in Japan at the beginning of the Pacific War, where a boy loses his mother in a fire and is evacuated with his father.He is led into a mysterious world by a heron man who goes back and forth between a blue heron and a human. When the movie was released in July last year, it became a hot topic for its unusual policy of not disclosing any information about the movie's content in advance.

Director Miyazaki is 83 years old and is from Tokyo.

Known worldwide as a master animation artist, he has released numerous hit works such as ``Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind'', ``My Neighbor Totoro'', and ``Princess Mononoke'', and in 2003, ``Spirited Away'' was released. It won the American Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film.

If it wins this award, it will be the second time in 21 years that a Japanese full-length animated film has achieved this feat.

Director Miyazaki once announced his retirement from feature animation after the release of ``The Wind Rises'' in 2013, but later retracted his retirement.

He was also in charge of the original story and screenplay for ``How Do You Live?'', which took about seven years to create.

It has received high acclaim internationally, having won the Golden Globe Award in the United States, which is considered a prelude to the Academy Awards, and becoming the first Japanese film to win Best Animated Film at the British Academy Awards.

"Godzilla-1.0"

was released last November, ahead of the 70th anniversary of the release of the first film in the series in 1954.

This is the 30th live-action Godzilla movie, and this time it is set in post-war Japan.

The movie depicts Godzilla, a gigantic monster that suddenly appears and ruthlessly destroys a city that is in the process of being rebuilt, and the people who stand up against Godzilla, using powerful images that make full use of ``visual effects'' (VFX).

Director Takashi Yamazaki, known for hits such as ``ALWAYS Sunset on 3rd Street'' and known for his advanced visual expressions using CG, was in charge of the script and VFX.

Ryunosuke Kamiki plays the lead role, and Minami Hamabe plays the heroine.

The film has become a box office hit in Japan, grossing over 6 billion yen, and is also gaining popularity overseas, with box office revenues in the United States being the highest ever for a Japanese live-action movie.

``PERFECT DAYS''

This is a work by German director Wim Wenders, a world-famous film director who has worked on many masterpieces such as ``Paris, Texas'' and ``Berlin: Angels.''

The movie is in Japanese and producer Takuma Takasaki co-wrote the script with director Wenders.

Set in Shibuya, Tokyo, the film carefully depicts the calm yet satisfying daily life of Hirayama, a public toilet cleaner played by Koji Yakusho.

For this film, Mr. Yakusho received high praise and became the first Japanese person in 19 years to win the Best Actor Award at France's Cannes Film Festival, one of the world's three major film festivals.

The film has been released in more than 80 countries and regions around the world so far, and is the highest-grossing Wenders film in history, and has had an unusually long run in Japan since it was released in December last year. It continues to be screened and has become a hit, earning over 1 billion yen.