Lone Kanto Yakuza (関東やくざ者) (Kanto yakuza mono) (Japan, 1965)
Dir. Shigehiro Ozawa
Cast: Koji Tsuruta, Tetsuro Tamba, Junko Fuji, Hideo Murata, Saburo Kitajima, Shingo Yamashiro
A standard ninkyo film with honourable yakuza Koji Tsurura going against merciless, but not entirely rotten businessman gangster Tetsuro Tamba. There are too many talking heads scenes and a storyline that isn’t awfully interesting, but also solid filmmaking and drama that sneaks into the film almost unnoticed. Tamba is always interesting, and the bloody final sword duel against him is quite powerful. There’s also some old fashioned charm stemming from an extensive use of songs, which shouldn’t necessarily be surprising since Toei’s prominent enka singer actors Hideo Murata and Saburo Kitajima are both in the film.
This was the 2nd movie in the Kanto series, one of Toei’s early ninkyo series. Shigehiro Ozawa wrote and directed them all five of them. While I have not seen the others, it appears Tsuruta plays the same character only in the first two, and different characters in the rest. That was typical of Toei back then, with many series only connected by title, theme and marketing.
An absolutely astonishing art house ninkyo yakuza film by Masashige Narusawa. Wandering gambler Tatsuo Umemiya runs into a young swindler woman Haruko Wanibuchi working with old man Junzaburo Ban. They are both arrested by detective Ko Nishimura. A year later Umemiya is staying with gangster Tatsuo Endo when he comes across that woman and her partner again. Endo lusts for both her and his own daughter, while Endo’s looney yakuza brother Toru Abe has a thing for Endo’s daughter, who in turn has her eye on Umemiya, and is willing to annihilate people standing on her way. And here lies one of the film’s remarkable departures from the standard ninkyo efforts: it doesn’t have a third party villain, nor a clear distinction between good and evil. It’s bursting with romantic emotion and wrenched with gritty realism, shot with striking black and white compositions, and explodes into shocking carnage. It has lengthier, more detailed gambling scenes than any other yakuza film I’ve seen. And it has a heartbreakingly beautiful score. You could call it the Ashes of Time of ninkyo yakuza films. A masterpiece!
This was probably Toei’s first delinquent girl film. Five minutes into it we’re already treated a massive street brawn between two delinquent girl gangs. Charming chap Ken Takakura is a young intellectual of a modern business oriented yakuza group whose game centre the female delinquents populate. Takakura comes up with a plan: take the gals on a hot springs trip and educate them in arts – could rehabilitate them and turn into a profit in the long run.
Toei’s ninkyo yakuza shot at milking the Zatoichi craze with a blind yakuza monk character. Too bad it isn’s any good. Famed jidai geki veteran Jushiro Konoe (the father of Hiroki Matsukata) plays the role as if he was a loudmouth Osaka punk – quite the contrast to the lovable blind masseur or even the pervert monk played by Tomisaburo Wakayama in the later Wicked Priest series. It simply does not work as the character is irritating and the storyline an incoherently told mess. In brief, it’s about a bad man re-discovering humanity via woman and child while clashing with the yakuza and being hunted by a man called “Death” who has his own dark past, all set against the backdrop of industrialization. I was at the verge of falling asleep when an unexpected sight of a woman running with her boobs out, and the following comment about how it suck to be blind at a time like that, woke me up halfway into the film. Another highlight comes in form of a powerful ending shot accompanied by Toshiaki Tsushima’s (The Street Fighter, Battles Without Honor and Humanity) score. The rest isn’t worth it.
The leaps of development in loosening censorship, and pushing the envelope in terms of what was acceptable in a major studio film, were huge in the late 60s and early 70s Japan. The first Hot Springs Geisha (1968) film, a harmless resort sex comedy and one of Teruo Ishii’s dullest efforts, only managed to sneak in one or two brief topless shots. This sequel, which hit the screens 12 months later, by first time director Misao Arai, manages more in its opening credits scene alone, which consists entirely of a peeping Tom zooming into bathing girls’ breasts for the viewer’s pleasure.
Not exactly a great film overall, and it does have its boring bits here and there, but plenty more fun that you might expect. This is as good if not better than the two Norifumi Suzuki directed instalments (parts 4 and 5) which followed with a bit of delay.
Sketches of Cinema 