# The Family Game (家族ゲーム)
**The Family Game** (家族ゲーム, *Kazoku gēmu*) is a 1983 Japanese black comedy directed by Yoshimitsu Morita (森田芳光), adapted from Honma Yohei's Subaru Literary Prize-winning novel about an eccentric home tutor who disrupts a middle-class family preparing their younger son for high school entrance examinations.[1](https://jfdb.jp/en/title/9856) • [2](https://www.koreafilm.or.kr/movie/PM_009662) It was released in Japan on June 4, 1983, runs 106 minutes, and was ranked the number one Japanese film of the year in Kinema Junpo's 57th Best Ten list.[1](https://jfdb.jp/en/title/9856)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director and screenwriter | Yoshimitsu Morita (森田芳光, 1950–2011), his second commercial feature after *Something Like It* (1981)[1](https://jfdb.jp/en/title/9856) • [3](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/wp-content/uploads/NFAJprogram66.pdf) |
| Original story | Honma Yohei's novel, winner of the 1981 Subaru Literary Prize[2](https://www.koreafilm.or.kr/movie/PM_009662) |
| Release | June 4, 1983; 106 minutes; color; Vista-size widescreen[4](https://www.nikkatsu.com/movie/26029.html) |
| Lead cast | Matsuda Yusaku as the tutor Yoshimoto Sho; Itami Juzo, Yuki Saori, and Miyakawa Ichirota as the Numata family[4](https://www.nikkatsu.com/movie/26029.html) |
| Production and distribution | Produced by Nikkatsu, New Century Producers, and the Art Theatre Guild; distributed by Toho[4](https://www.nikkatsu.com/movie/26029.html) |
| Critical ranking | First place, Japanese film, Kinema Junpo Best Ten 1983 (57th edition)[1](https://jfdb.jp/en/title/9856) |
| Later versions | Television adaptations in 1982 (TV Asahi, starring Kaga Takeshi) and 2013 (Fuji TV, starring Sakurai Sho)[5](https://bunshun.jp/articles/-/39649) |
## Spoilers
### Premise
The Numata household is tense because the second son, Shigeyuki (Miyakawa Ichirota), faces high school entrance examinations. Unlike his diligent older brother Shinichi (Tsujita Junichi), Shigeyuki has poor grades, and a succession of tutors has quit on him. The parents (Itami Juzo and Yuki Saori) hire a new tutor, Yoshimoto Sho (Matsuda Yusaku), a man who has been enrolled at a third-tier college for seven years and who carries a plant encyclopedia with him wherever he goes.[4](https://www.nikkatsu.com/movie/26029.html) • [6](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/pdf/148596)
Yoshimoto's teaching is unorthodox: he threatens and cajoles, teaches fighting as well as study, and accepts a bonus offer from the father contingent on raising the boy's grades. Shigeyuki's marks begin to climb, and as they do, a change comes over the Numata household itself.[4](https://www.nikkatsu.com/movie/26029.html) The tutor succeeds in getting the boy into a good school, but then wreaks havoc on the family's celebration party, exposing the gap between the family's polished surface and its actual relationships.[7](https://analepsis.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/japanesecinema.pdf)
## Style and themes
The film's most cited device is its staging of the family dinner: the four Numatas and the tutor sit in a single line at the table, eating without exchanging glances, an image critics treat as the emblem of the film's portrait of a household that performs family roles without communicating.[8](https://www.momak.go.jp/img/2015/momakFilms/MoMAKFilms2015_08-10front.pdf) • [2](https://www.koreafilm.or.kr/movie/PM_009662) Morita also worked without background music, relying on exaggerated sound effects over everyday domestic noise, and composed scenes with a theatrical, geometric formality that was widely discussed at the time.[9](https://eiga.com/movie/7947/)
Critics read the film as a satire of 1980s Japan's examination-centered, credential-focused society and of the hollowed-out nuclear family. Time Out described it as "a subtly cruel satire on the Japanese obsession with corporate and academic success," contrasting Morita's precise, scalpel-like dissection with the blunter treatment of similar themes in Sogo Ishii's *Crazy Family*.[10](https://www.timeout.com/movies/family-game) The scholar Timothy Iles, of the [University of Victoria](https://www.edgepedia.org/university-of-victoria), later paired the film with Miike Takashi's *[Visitor Q](https://www.edgepedia.org/visitor-q)* (2001) as two portraits of the [Japanese family](https://www.edgepedia.org/japanese-family) in crisis, arguing that both films locate that crisis in the abdication of the salaryman father.[11](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09386491.2008.11826956) Aaron Gerow, a scholar of Japanese cinema at Yale University, has argued against reading the film purely as social criticism, seeing it instead as a playful method of repetition and variation.[12](https://japansociety-cinemastudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/taikai14_a.pdf)
## Reception and awards
The film swept Japanese film honors in 1983 and 1984. It placed first in Kinema Junpo's Best Ten and won that magazine's awards for best director, best screenplay, and best actor (Matsuda), with Itami Juzo taking the supporting actor award.[13](https://ken-1g01a.com/29902) Matsuda also ranked first in Kinema Junpo's 1983 best-actor listing for this film and *Tantei Monogatari*.[14](https://gaffer.jp/actor/) At the 7th Japan Academy Prize ceremony (1984), the film received the Excellence Awards for picture, director, screenplay, lead actor (Matsuda), supporting actor (Itami), supporting actress (Yuki Saori), and sound recording, along with the New Actor award for Miyakawa Ichirota.[9](https://eiga.com/movie/7947/) The Korea Film Archive's program notes add the Blue Ribbon Award and the Mainichi Film Award among the film's honors.[2](https://www.koreafilm.or.kr/movie/PM_009662) Film at [Lincoln Center](https://www.edgepedia.org/lincoln-center), presenting a 2022 retrospective in a 4K remaster, described the film as having won seven Japanese Academy Awards including Best Director and Best Actor, and selected it for the 1984 New Directors/New Films series in New York.[15](https://www.filmlinc.org/films/the-family-game/)
The film established Morita, then a newcomer, as a representative of a new generation of Japanese directors. The Japan Times critic Mark Schilling wrote that it made Morita "temporarily, the Takeshi Kitano of his era," a director with a fresh style and an irreverent attitude toward the pieties of Japanese society and its film industry.[16](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2007/10/05/films/film-reviews/southbound/)
## Adaptations and legacy
Honma's novel has been adapted for the screen four times. A two-hour television special starring Kaga Takeshi aired on [TV Asahi](https://www.edgepedia.org/tv-asahi) in 1982, with a sequel in 1984; the 1983 film followed; and a Fuji TV serial starring Sakurai Sho aired in 2013, 29 years after the previous adaptation.[5](https://bunshun.jp/articles/-/39649) The 2013 version departed substantially from the novel, giving the tutor a defined past and moving the family into a large house with individual bedrooms, whereas the novel and film had used the cramped apartment and the examination-war era as their setting.[5](https://bunshun.jp/articles/-/39649)
The 1983 film remains Morita's most-studied work. It was the centerpiece of a 2023 Japan Foundation retrospective and of a 2025 exhibition and screening series at the National Film Archive of Japan, which displayed the plant encyclopedia prop and a reconstruction of the film's dinner table among the director's effects.[17](https://www.jpf.go.jp/j/about/press/2023/dl/2023-006.pdf) • [18](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/wp-content/uploads/0705web_nyuko-A4_morita-2.pdf) A 4K remaster circulated internationally from 2022.[15](https://www.filmlinc.org/films/the-family-game/)
## References
1. [The Family Game (家族ゲーム), Japanese Film Database (JFDB)](https://jfdb.jp/en/title/9856)
2. [가족게임 (Family Game), Korean Film Archive program notes](https://www.koreafilm.or.kr/movie/PM_009662)
3. [Yoshimitsu Morita retrospective program, National Film Archive of Japan](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/wp-content/uploads/NFAJprogram66.pdf)
4. [家族ゲーム, Nikkatsu official film page](https://www.nikkatsu.com/movie/26029.html)
5. [鹿賀丈史、松田優作、長渕剛、櫻井翔……4度の映像化『家族ゲーム』, Bunshun Online](https://bunshun.jp/articles/-/39649)
6. [家族ゲーム（1983）, allcinema](https://www.allcinema.net/cinema/pdf/148596)
7. [Aaron Gerow, "Playing with Postmodernism: Morita Yoshimitsu's The Family Game"](https://analepsis.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/japanesecinema.pdf)
8. [MoMAK film program notes on 家族ゲーム](https://www.momak.go.jp/img/2015/momakFilms/MoMAKFilms2015_08-10front.pdf)
9. [家族ゲーム, eiga.com (Eiga.com film page and awards)](https://eiga.com/movie/7947/)
10. [Family Game review, Time Out](https://www.timeout.com/movies/family-game)
11. [Timothy Iles, "Families, Fathers, Film: Changing Images from Japanese Cinema," Japanstudien 19 (2008)](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09386491.2008.11826956)
12. [Aaron Gerow conference abstract, Japan Society for Cinema Studies](https://japansociety-cinemastudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/taikai14_a.pdf)
13. [キネマ旬報ベスト・テン歴代受賞結果, 第57回（1983年度）](https://ken-1g01a.com/29902)
14. [キネマ旬報ベストテン 主演男優賞 歴代受賞者](https://gaffer.jp/actor/)
15. [The Family Game, Film at Lincoln Center](https://www.filmlinc.org/films/the-family-game/)
16. [Mark Schilling, "'Southbound': Rousing a rabble in Japan," The Japan Times (2007)](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2007/10/05/films/film-reviews/southbound/)
17. [Japan Foundation press release, Morita Yoshimitsu retrospective (2023)](https://www.jpf.go.jp/j/about/press/2023/dl/2023-006.pdf)
18. [森田芳光 exhibition leaflet, National Film Archive of Japan](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/wp-content/uploads/0705web_nyuko-A4_morita-2.pdf)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Black comedy and satire films › Released 1939 to 1997*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license