Of all the program sections in this year's 19th Tokyo International Film Festival "Japanese Eyes" must certainly be numbered among the most compelling, and in terms of the future of the festival and cinema in general in Japan, the most important. A showcase category that offers a unique survey of contemporary films being made in Japan, since its inauguration at the 17th TIFF only two years ago "Eyes" has attracted the attention of visitors from abroad who arrive in Tokyo eager to see the latest output of an industry that ranks as one of the most prolific in the world. The category has also proven hugely popular among domestic audiences, which because of the hard reality of the film industry in this country have few chances outside of the context of the festival to see independent films from Japanese directors and producers.

The director of the "Japanese Eyes" section is the soft-spoken banker turned cinema insider Yoshi Yatabe, a man who is all too aware of the particular set of challenges facing independent Japanese films today. Having grown up in Geneva and lived for much of his adult life in France and England Yatabe has a great deal of experience looking at the Japanese film industry from the outside in. He has seen the rise of a new generation of Japanese auteurs, directors like Hirokazu Koreda, Shinji Aoyama and Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who in the last decade have begun to win back some of the bragging rights that belonged to this country in the age of Ozu, Kurosawa and Ichikawa Kon. But while their movies have won praise and accolades on the international festival circuit, by and large they have failed to win big audiences and big box-office sales back home.

"It has long been a situation where filmmakers and films are getting very well known abroad but despite that fact they still aren't connecting with the market here, and they are failing financially," Yatabe said in a recent interview at the TIFF offices in Tokyo's Tskuiji district. "Now the industry is deciding that it just doesn't mean much if the films are famous abroad but their box office results in Japan are awful."

There is a long history of innovative Japanese creators first earning a reputation abroad and then returning home to recognition and esteem that otherwise would have been difficult to achieve in this conservative and cautious society. The fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto the prestigious Bunka Fashion College and showed his first collections in Japan, but he did not win a wide following until the launch of his Paris collection in 1983. The artist Yayoi Kusama, widely regarded as the most important Japanese contemporary artist of her generation found an eager audience in her adopted home of New York City long before Japanese galleries and museums began clamoring for a chance to exhibit her work. Even the novelist Haruki Murakami, whose book "Norwegian Wood" sold millions of copies in Japan, fled his notoriety here to live in the United States where he was soon adopted as the paragon of contemporary Japanese literature, a turn of events that ultimately served only to legitimate and cement his position in Japan as a cultural superstar.

But what has long worked for designers, artists and writers has not meant much to film directors. That may be changing, however. Koreda's 2003 film "Nobody Knows" enjoyed intense international attention, and garnered a Best Actor award for the young lead Yuya Yagira at Cannes in 2004, and upon its release in Japan was a critical and financial success. Nonetheless, up to now "Nobody Knows" has been an exception to the rule.

"You have a situation in Japan where despite the fact that a large number of famous directors are working and the industry looks very active in the new millennia, especially in the last decade, there are still huge challenges when you look at the domestic market," said Yatabe. "You have some huge hits, but 99% of the rest just die. So you have one winner, and 99 losers. That is just not healthy for the market."

Yatabe estimates that over 300 commercial films are made in Japan each year, 100 of which are "pink", or pornographic. The remaining 200 feature film represent an output that dwarfs that of all but a handful of other countries. But despite its size, the Japanese market is wholly dominated by a handful of blockbusters, many of which were originally television shows that were later transformed into successful feature films, like the hugely successful film franchise "Odoru Daisosasen." This is due in large part to the meteoric rise of the television industry, which has had wide-ranging implications for nearly ever aspect of Japanese contemporary culture. But Yatabe also points to the gap between supply and demand that affects the film industry here in particularly egregious ways. Given the costs and risks associated with making and releasing feature films, it is always a battle to convince profit-driven studios and distributors to back projects that might be important but that might be a challenge to market to what is perceived to be the average moviegoer. But despite the widespread aversion to "difficult" fare that is so common among pop-culture purveyors here Yatabe believes that for the most part audiences both want access to more challenging material, and will go to the theatre to see it when it is properly promoted, though perhaps not in the numbers that will show up for the latest episode of "Daisosasen".

"The cinema industry in Japan is hurt by the biased view of the Japanese buyer," Yatabe explained. "They are not really trying. They are not taking risks, and the result is that Japanese audiences think that what they are now seeing in theatres is contemporary cinema, when in fact it is not true. So many films are not shown in Japan because of the prejudice or bias of the buyers."

In a case that seems to confirm Yatabe's suspicions, this summer saw the Japanese premier of "The Sun," directed by the Russian Aleksandr Sokurov. It is the first dramatic portrayal of the reign of the Japanese wartime emperor Hirohito and before it was picked up by a small independent distribution company it was deemed far to controversial for Japanese audiences to accept. Ultimately, however, the opening of "The Sun" was met with a few protests and widespread interest from the general public, and after premiering in just two theaters it is now on screens at over 40 cinemas across the country and counting.

In light of the success of a film like "The Sun," Yatebe's stated goal with the "Japanese Eyes" section of TIFF is to help filmmakers find an audience that they would otherwise never enjoy. Likewise, it is the role of "Eyes" to introduce a handful of films from across the industry's spectrum to audiences that might otherwise never have the chance to encounter them.

The theme of this year's selection is "no theme" according to Yatabe, and he has made a conscious effort to select films that have little in common other than their uniqueness. Among the 13 films that have been included in the category are new works by big-name directors like Shinji Aoyama ("Crickets"), several first-time films by newcomers like Tadakazu Takahashi ("The Bicycle thief was Bad") and Osamu Minorikawa("Life can be so Wonderful"), and even a film by an American director that was shot exclusively in the United States but takes as its subject the life of a Japanese-American artist who lived for many years on the streets of New York, a film that Yatabe calls a must-see highlight of this year's festival ("The Cats of Mirikitani").

With so few films in the category Yatabe can only hope to change things in small ways. But that does not seem to bother him in the slightest, and with obvious enthusiasm he and his team are busy talking to anyone who will listen about the great work that is being done by Japanese filmmakers, and the importance of taking a closer look.

"The role of the festival, in my opinion, is to show as many films as possible that normal Japanese buyers wouldn't dare to buy," he said. "I don't like to use this word, but we also have to kind of 'educate' the audience and let them know that we have so many choices in the world, and at home. And if by chance they come to the festival and discover a film that they would never otherwise see, and they go back to the theatres looking for more interesting cinema and not just mainstream blockbusters that can only help the industry."