Yagyu Clan Conspiracy / Shogun’s Samurai/ Yagyu ichizoku no inbô (1978)

After 15 years of modern-dress yakuza related movies, in 1978 Kinji Fukasaku suddenly turned to Japanese historical dramas, with a version of the Chusingura story and Yagyu Clan Conspiracy. The brutal realism and kinetic energy of his yakuza films had revived and redirected an entire genre, but Yagyu Conspiracy looks like the work of a …

True Story of the Secret Ginza Police / Jitsuroku: Shisetsu Ginza keisatsu (1973)

Jitsuroku is usually translated as “true story,” which in the yakuza movies of the seventies meant not so much historical accuracy as it did fights and blood of a new kind. The most famous of the jitsuroku yakuza movies are Kinji Fukasaku’s 5-part Battles Without Honor or Humanity, whose title neatly summarizes the change. The …

Cops vs. Thugs / Kenkei tai soshiki boryoku (1975)

Like Sex and Fury, Cops vs. Thugs is about as clear a title as you’re likely to find for a movie from any country, not just Japan. However, things are not quite as clear as the title indicates in Kinji Fukasaku’s follow-up to his famous five-part Battles Without Honor or Humanity films. The big change …

Wanderers / Matatabi (1973)

If there was any romance or glory left in the matatabi genre of yakuza films, Kon Ichikawa’s Wanderers drove a stake through its heart and exposed it to the dawn. Three young men leave their farms to be matatabi, here called toseinin in the film’s narration. And they are very young, teenagers in appearance (think …

Under the Flag of the Rising Sun / Gunki hatameku motoni (1972)

Twenty-six years after the war ended, the widow Togashi is still trying to find out what really happened to her husband in the war. She has a death notice with no dates and no details, and in 1952 was denied a widow’s pension because the Army said he had been executed for desertion, though there …

Wolves / Prison Release Celebration / Shussho iwai (1971)

Hideo Gosha’s Wolves is one of those rare movies that is extremely difficult to write about. Gosha had burst on the theatrical scene with six chanbara masterpieces, plus arguably Japan’s greatest film noir. Then he followed with Hitokiri, a period jidai-geki that ranks with the finest of all Japanese historical films. After such a run, …

If You Were Young: Rage / Kimi ga wakamono nara (1970)

Two movies about boys sent to Tokyo as part of a government jobs project appeared in 1970, and they could not be more different. Shindo’s Live Today, Die Tomorrow is a bleak study of anomie, while Fukasaku’s If You Were Young: Rage* is wildly energetic and, for most of its length, a quite hopeful movie. …

Sympathy for the Underdog / Gambler: Foreign Opposition / Bakuto gaijin butai (1971)

By 1970, the period yakuza movie genre had about worn itself out through constant repetition, so a modern dress and much more cynical and brutal mutation of the genre began to appear. The Bakuto series actually spans that gap, beginning in the mid sixties with Koji Tsuruta as the traditional honorable yakuza in the pre-war …

Blackmail is my Life / Business // Kyokatsu koso waga jinsei (1968)

Blackmail is My Life gives us an early look at Kinji Fukasaku in the kinetic, some might say frenetic, mode of his seventies yakuza pictures. At least for the first two-thirds of the movie, its playful energy and unpredictable stylistic choices suggests a Richard Lester movie with the Beatles playing gangsters, assuming of course that …

Black Lizard / Kurotokage (1964) & Black Rose / Black Rose Mansion / Kuro bara no yakata (1965)

Black Lizard is a fairly disappointing remake of the earlier Black Lizard starring Machiko Kyo. Despite some high-sixties scenery, it has lost all the theatrical flair of the earlier movie, taking the silly plot rather straight. Gone is the whip wielding, the massive underground lair, and the implausible furniture switch. But it does offer one …