Hirokazu Kore-eda Watch Collection - Every Watch He's Been Spotted Wearing
Hirokazu Kore-eda currently has 1 watches in his collection. Check them in our database.
Introduction to Hirokazu Kore-eda
Hirokazu Kore-eda is one of contemporary cinema's most respected voices. The Tokyo-born director built his reputation over three decades with a body of work that centers on family, loss, and the quiet details of everyday Japanese life. His feature films — including 'Nobody Knows' (2004), 'Still Walking' (2008), 'Like Father, Like Son' (2013), and 'Broker' (2022) — have made him a perennial presence in competition at the world's major festivals. The peak of that recognition came in 2018 when 'Shoplifters' won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, the highest prize in film, cementing his place alongside the directors whose work defines world cinema. He has also crossed borders to direct French-language and Korean productions, demonstrating a range that few filmmakers of his generation can match.
Kore-eda's watch choices, at least from what we've been able to document for the Hirokazu Kore-eda watch collection here at Watch Paparazzi, lean toward considered and understated. On the Croisette at Cannes, he was spotted wearing a Chanel J12 in black ceramic — the version of that watch that trades the model's more familiar white ceramic for something considerably more low-key. The J12 launched in 2000 under Jacques Helleu's creative direction, drawing its name and design language from J/12-class offshore racing yachts. In black ceramic, the watch reads as a refined tool watch rather than a fashion piece, which fits a director who tends to find meaning in small, carefully observed details rather than grand gestures.
With only one confirmed sighting in our database so far, it would be premature to draw firm conclusions about the full scope of his taste in watches. What the Chanel J12 does suggest, though, is a preference for pieces with genuine design logic behind them — watches that have earned their form rather than simply inherited it. We will keep watching.
Hirokazu Kore-eda Spotted Wearing Chanel J12 in Black Ceramic at Cannes Film Festival
Inserted 22/05/2023
The Chanel J12 was the first watch to bring high-performance black ceramic into mainstream luxury horology when it debuted in 2000, and its black iteration — launched a year after the original white — remains the more covetable of the two. Palme d'Or-winning Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, known for meditative, emotionally precise cinema, surfaced on the Cannes red carpet wearing the sleek all-black ceramic J12, a choice that reads less as fashion accessory and more as a considered, understated statement from a filmmaker who has long called Cannes his spiritual home.
