Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman was released in Japan on 17 May 1997. While Indian parallel cinema, including Satyajit Ray's Bengali films such as The Apu Trilogy, was known in Japan, Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman introduced the commercial masala film style, which was well received by Japanese audiences, with the film becoming a commercial success in the country. This sparked a short-lived boom in Indian films released in Japan, for the next two years, paving the way for the Japanese success of Rajinikanth's Muthu (1995) in 1998.
