Tag: 1970s

Eight Men to Kill (賞金首 一瞬八人斬り, Shigehiro Ozawa, 1972)

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In the first instalment of the Bounty Hunter series, Shikoro Ichibei (Tomisaburo Wakayama) had been a shogunate spy intent on putting down rebellion to their oppression, but by the third, it seems he’s thoroughly fed up with the ills of feudalism and apparently no admirer of the Tokugawa who he feels to have failed in their responsibility to the people along with their personal greed and desire to hold on to their power.

Ichibei’s chief objection is their lack of healthcare provision, seeing as he is a doctor who mainly cares for the poor. That’s one reason he agrees to the job, asking for a large percentage of the gold he’s been asked to retrieve by a worried retainer who explains that the Edo government is relying on it to bridge a gap on their finances. If the gold’s not returned, the entire economy may crash. The government’s heartlessness is further borne out by the retainer’s words that it’s not the time to be concerned about one boy whose importance pales in contrast to that of the Tokugawa Shogunate when a rogue ronin kidnaps the son of the man responsible for the theft of the gold from a local mine. 

In a repeated motif, men attempt to swallow the gold as a means either of stealing or hiding it but it gets stuck in their digestive system and causes them a great deal of pain that could lead to death. The cruel mine owner Kanoke Tatsu (Minoru Oki) forces Ichibei to cut open the man’s stomach to get the gold out, while he insists on sewing him back up again because as a doctor it would be wrong not to. What he’s really performed maybe a kind of gold-ectomy, removing the toxic substance from the men’s stomachs even if he may not be able to save their lives or improve their circumstances.

Ichibei tells the bandit, Yasha the Wolf (Kenji Imai), who is held responsible for the theft of the gold, that he is as bad as him and is only looking for a fast way to make money, yet he wants it to use to build better hospitals for the poor, ironically using the government’s cash to make up for their failing. Meanwhile, he finds himself coming up against a man much like himself only inverted in the form of wandering assassin Yajuro (Shigeru Amachi), a former secret policeman in the rebellious Bishu domain who doubt crosses everyone he comes across in an attempt to get his hands on the gold. Ichibei asks the man who hired him why they don’t want to use government spies but he tells him that it’s because they’d run out. The ones they sent to investigate have all been killed, presumably by the treacherous Yajuro.

All around him, Ichibei discovers only omnipresent greed. A geisha he comes across is working with the mine owner to steal the cash, but simultaneously seducing Ichibei and the apparently won over by his bedroom prowess though it’s difficult to know which is an act, her fondness for Ichibei or pledges to sell him out to Kanoke. Meanwhile, Kanoke vacillates when presented with a binary choice by Yajuro, his adorable three-year-old son, or the gold. As always, it’s the innocent who suffer while personal greed and governmental indifference leave ordinary people little room to manoeuvre. 

This time around, the righteous Ichibei cuts a solitary figure. He no longer has a posse and is supported only by an older gentleman who is mute. As a result of his mission, he even ends up on a wanted poster himself with the shogunate, presumably unwilling recognise him, yet eventually congratulating him on a job well done, much to his shame and embarrassment having witnessed shogunate soldiers committing an atrocity. Very much in the western vein, Ozawa lends the dusty old mining town a sense of dread and decay as it rots from the inside out thanks to the corrupt authority of a weakened shogunate seeking only ways to cement its own power. The red-tinted final taking place during a solar eclipse seems to emphasise the hellishness of the situation even as Ichibei announces that they can all go to hell but he’s sending the money to heaven where it can be put to better use. 

Dirty Ho (爛頭何, Lau Kar-leung, 1979)

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A prince in hiding develops a fondness for a bumbling jewel thief in Lau Kar-leung’s anarchic kung fu comedy, Dirty Ho (爛頭何). The English title is apparently intended as a Dirty Harry reference, though the film obviously has nothing at all to do with the Don Siegel procedural, the Chinese meaning something like “rotten head Ho”, and is in effect a homoerotic buddy movie as the various power balances begin to shift between the two men until they come to function in perfect synchronicity almost in fact as one.

The film opens, however, with a dispute over courtesans and a game of one-upmanship between prince in disguise Wang (Gordon Liu) and cocky jewel thief Ho (Wong Yue). The pair promise ever greater sums of riches in return for female company, eventually ending up in a fight interrupted when the police are called about some stolen treasure. However, at the last second, Wang says both the treasure chests are his and that he is a legitimate jewel seller from Beijing. He saves Ho from arrest, but also takes the stolen treasure chest with him, ensuring Ho will later return to take it back.

Why Wang takes a liking to him isn’t really clear, but even in his clumsy martial arts skills he seems to see something that could be polished if only he could turn him into an upright citizen. He does this partly by means of trickery, injuring Ho on the head with a poisoned sword and then promising him the antidote but only if he agrees to become his disciple and do exactly as he says. For the rest of the film, Ho wears a large black plaster on his head that slowly decreases in size as he begins to reform under Wang’s tutelage. But the power dynamic between them later shifts when Wang is injured and has to use a wheelchair with Ho now dependent on him for care and protection. 

What emerges between them is strangely like a marriage while the two of them are later accosted by the “Seven Agonies” led by a very effeminate man who also causes Ho to take on a camp persona until actively rejecting it. No one is really quite as they seem, Wang actually a prince in disguise hiding out from his 13 brothers, and in particular the fourth one, who really want him dead so they can inherit the kingdom. In true martial arts fashion, Wang isn’t interested in the throne, fame, or fortune, but rather than a commitment to resisting oppression simply wants to be free to enjoy the finer things in life like art, antiques, and strong liquor. 

Meanwhile, the two are also attacked by a gang of bandits faking disabilities and Wang at one point tries to pass off one of the concubines as his bodyguard to conceal the extent of his martial arts skills. Reuniting with Gordon Liu after 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Lau’s choreography has a playful, slapstick sensibility such as in the ongoing duel of swapped tankards with one of the assassins. The hand movements are fast and precise, a maze and flurry of moment culminating in the final showdown with Lo Lieh’s enemy general in which the two men are so perfectly in tune that they move almost as one. 

Lau stages an increasingly surreal sequence of events, including the pair sheltering under umbrellas in the middle of a dilapidated town while targeted by assassins hired by Wang’s brother, but ends in curiously ambiguous fashion with the matter of the court unresolved despite Wang’s desire to live freely as he chooses. Of course, a prince he is but Wang is also constrained by his social status in much the same way Ho is prevented from living his authentic life because of the obligations entailed with being a potential heir to the throne. Meanwhile, it seems the king is doddery and has unwittingly created a vacuum which has pit his 14 sons against each other, destabilising the society in the process. Not wanting the job actually makes Wang an ideal candidate though, he’d have to survive all the assassination attempts first. A riot of colour and witty humour, the film boats some of Lau’s most intricate choreography performed by two actors at the top of their game who are perfectly primed to bounce of each other in a humorous back and for between the shifting sands of master and pupil.

The Black Tavern (黑店, Teddy Yip Wing-Cho, 1972)

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One of the reasons that martial arts films are so popular is that it’s often easy to tell who is good and who is bad. In general, the just hero vanquishes the source of evil and corruption, thereby restoring a sense of moral order to a world that may in other ways be chaotic. But chaotic is probably the best way to describe the world of The Black Tavern (黑店) in which the titular inn becomes a nexus of greed and villainy where it is impossible to tell who, if anyone, is good, while almost everyone is actually bad and the heroine only really intervenes in the closing scenes.

One way you can tell that something is very rotten at the Gao Family Inn is that the cook suddenly emerges from a pit underground carrying someone’s leg, which he then chops up and uses to make buns. No one ever mentions this again. It’s a just symbol of how corrupt and hellish this world has become. The inn is apparently the only staging post on this route, which is presumably how they continue to get custom despite bumping off their guests, taking all their stuff, and then chopping them up to put in buns to serve to the next unfortunate person who arrives in search of a bed for the night. 

But the reason so many venal bandits are drawn here is that a beggar monk (Dean Shek) tells them he saw vast riches fall out of a chest belonging to Hai Gangfeng, a former official returning to his home province with all his ill-gotten gains from accepting bribes. Assuming Gangfeng will be stopping at the inn, everyone who heard the monk is on their way there. Only, as it turns out, the man we thought was Hai Gangfeng is actually a bandit, “Whipmaster” Zheng Shoushan (Ku Feng), who cunningly pretended to be him to take over the inn and wait for the real Gangfeng’s arrival. He does not, however, seem to have anticipated so many other bandit gangs each more outlandish than the last having the same idea.

One turns up with a band of hopping vampires who turn out to be crooks in disguise, while another is wearing a horned helmet that gets stuck in things when he’s trying to fight. Of course, they’re all trying to kill each other so they can be the ones in control when Gangfeng finally arrives. What they don’t realise is that the whole thing’s a honeytrap designed to lure them all to the inn for just this purpose, so that they’ll all kill each other and spare the forces of justice some trouble. Those would be Zhang Caibing (Shih Szu), a disciple of the Lady Hermit making this a kind of extended universe film of the Cheng Pei-Pei classic. Continuing her mentor’s mission, she’s out to skim off the “scum of the martial arts world,” explaining to Shoushan that if he doesn’t like it, he should have thought of that before committing so many “evil deeds”. 

On the other hand, Caibing does seem to be enjoying this quite a lot so perhaps she’s not quite so entitled to the moral high ground as she’d like to think. While taking a leaf out of King Hu’s book, Yip adds an edge of slapstick absurdity in setting up elaborate action sequences with well-deserved pay offs and indulging in goreless yet extreme kills such as a series of surprise decapitations. Shoushan’s bladed whip becomes a versatile weapon but also an extension of his character in his cowardliness and lack of morality. It’s only really any good at long range, which means that he keeps his opponents at arms’ length rather than confront them directly as in the typical tests of skill that define a martial arts battle. He coils it around their necks, snake-like, then either pops their heads off or strangles them to death. Just like the innkeeper he killed off at the start, he seems to have genuine affection for his female companions but eventually meets a similar fate as his trademark whip is ironically turned against him. 

There’s also a genuine, if underplayed, sense of ambiguity in the attraction between the mysterious swordsman (Tung Li ) and Shoushan’s daughter that prevents him from killing her while suggesting that he too was on some level attracted to banditry. Even if he rides off in the end with Caibing, it does not appear that their relationship is romantic. Nor is he allowed to claim victory by swooping in when all seemed lost for Caibing during the final fight, immediately encountering difficulty with Shoushan who puts up a good fight that again seems contrary to his moral character in the amount of skill and effort needed to beat him. Indeed, it often seems as if he will win after all. This world will fall to men like him and turn into one giant Black Tavern. In the end, it’s a team effort that takes him down, including the strange intrusion of the beggar monk who was after all the person who started all this by repeating the rumour in the last rest stop and may or may not actually be working with Caibing. In any case, the incredibly fast-paced action sequences and the dark humour that accompanies them lend the film an epic quality despite its tight duration along with an ironic kind of cynicism that insists this world is simply too silly to be evil but that the scum of the martial arts world will pay all the same.

The Black Tavern screened as part of this year’s Focus Hong Kong.

The Killing Machine (少林寺拳法, Norifumi Suzuki, 1975)

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“As long as somebody like you is around, there’s hope for Japan,” an oddly sympathetic prison warden says to the last patriot standing in post-war Osaka. The title of Norifumi Suzuki’s Sonny Chiba vehicle The Killing Machine (少林寺拳法, Shorinji Kempo) maybe somewhat inappropriate or at least potentially misleading as the film is deliberately constructed as a martial arts parable emphasising the spiritual philosophy of self-improvement and compassion that is inextricable from its practice.

To that extent, the hero, Soh Doushin (Shinichi Chiba), is trying to fight his way out of the miasmas of the immediate post-war era. As may be apparent, Soh has taken a Chinese name, though Soh was apparently his along and belonged to a former samurai family whose nobility has been crushed by militarism. As the film opens, however, he’s a Japanese secret service operative in Manchuria blindsided by the news of Japan’s surrender. Soh is it seems a nationalist and a patriot, but a fairly revisionist one who stands up to the abuses of the Japanese army. He later says that he protested the way that the local Chinese population were often treated and he does indeed raise a fist toward an officer who wants to sell a young Japanese woman to a Chinese soldier in return for a guarantee of their safe passage to a boat heading out of the country. The young woman’s mother protests that she is an innocent virgin, a fact that has some later relevance. Soh refuses to let the officers take her, though evidently separated from her later.

When he meets the young woman again in the bomb-damaged backstreets of Occupation Osaka, she is dressed in Western clothing as opposed to the smart kimono she wore in Manchuria and is about to become a “pan pan” or streetwalking sex worker catering to American servicemen. Of course, Soh can’t let this happen either, but as she later tells him, she was raped by Russian soldiers during the retreat and now feels herself to be despoiled. She never wears kimono again and becomes a kind of symbol for a despoiled nation that Soh is reluctantly forced to accept he cannot save in part because his philosophy, which is still uncomfortably rooted in the philosophy of militarism, only valued strength when it should have valued love. The kind of love that Kiku (Yutaka Nakajima) had for her brother that made her willing to sacrifice herself for his wellbeing. 

Even so, Soh is doing his best to issue a course correction by caring for a small group of war orphans and helping them support themselves by running a rice soup stall so they won’t end up becoming dependent on the yakuza or the black market. It’s the yakuza and their increasingly corporatising nature that become Soh’s chief enemies, though standing right behind them are the Occupation Forces. They are, of course, just the biggest gang, as we can see when one of the kids steals a few tins from the gangster’s crate which is marked with text making it clear it came from the mess hall at the American base. The backstreets are full of sleazy soldiers and pan pans or otherwise the starving and dejected, sometimes violent demobbed soldiers filled with despair. It’s these men that Soh wants to buck up, telling them to rediscover their fighting spirit and giving them the opportunity to do so through learning Shaolin martial arts.

Of course there are those who don’t want to learn Chinese kung fu in the midst of their defeat, but what Soh is advocating is something that has a greater spiritual application even than karate can also have. It’s a kind of humanitarian riposte to the futility of the post-war society that might sometimes fail to recognise the depths of the impossibility faced by many in insisting they can be faced by discipline and moral fortitude but at the same time is not really judgemental except toward those who have deliberately abandoned their humanity, such as the trio of goons who rape a school for amusement (the girl is later seen among the students at Soh’s school along with the children from Osaka). The girl’s father reports it to the police, but the police and the gangsters are in cahoots, so nothing gets done. Soh cuts the guy’s bits off so he won’t be doing that again. Strength without justice is violence, he realises. But justice without strength is inability. Strength and love like body and mind should never be separated. The closing shots show an entire mountain covered in white-clad figures practising Shaolin kung fu and joining the humanitarian revolution rather than the cruel and selfish one represented by the gangsters with their red-light districts and black markets. It may be a simplistic solution, but it is in its way satisfying and at least a rejection both of the militarist past and the capitalistic future.

*Norifumi Suzuki’s name is actually “Noribumi” but he has become known as “Norifumi” to English-speaking audiences.

Festival Champ (お祭り野郎 魚河岸の兄弟分, Norifumi Suzuki, 1976)

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Who doesn’t love a festival? The hero of Norifumi Suzuki’s Festival Champ (お祭り野郎 魚河岸の兄弟分, Omatsuri yaro: Uogashi no Kyodai-bun) loves them so much that he travels all over Japan to help out in places where young men have become thin on the ground thanks to increasing urbanisation and rural depopulation. Following the success of Suzuki’s entries in the Truck Yaro series in 1975 and 1976, the film was part of a new line of comedies and sports movies launched by Toei as well as a vehicle for Hiroki Matsukata who was trying to move on from yakuza movies.

Katsuo (Hiroki Matsukata) is however something of a goodhearted bruiser who is always getting into manly scraps and especially at the festivals he travels to which is a pretty good hook for an ongoing series. But it’s not all that great for his employer who runs a family fishmonger’s at the Uogashi fish market and complains that Katsuo’s always running off and causing trouble. The fish market itself takes on an exoticised quality in the opening sequence which features a voice over from karate queen Etsuko Shihomi, here in a purely dramatic role, who is the daughter of a well-to-do traditional Japanese restaurant and travels there daily by speedboat to pick up the best fresh fish available. Suzuki throws in some documentary-style stock footage and statistics about the market that lend a strangely corporate feel, but then homes in on its capacity as a community hub. Kiyoko says it’s her favourite place precisely because there’s nothing formal about it. Deals are done through body language and you don’t need any kind of resume to work there, everyone’s welcome. 

That may be the implied contrast between Kiyoko’s father, who owns an upscale place and cultivates genuine relationships with local fishermen and brokers, and local boy made good Kurosaki who has supposedly become the CEO of a restaurant chain, itself a symbol of the soulless corporation of ‘70s Japan. Kurosaki rocks up dressed like a yakuza, but everyone treats him as a successful businessman and in part thanks to Katsuo’s boss Zenjiro’s recommendation is eager to make deals with him but predictably he’s running a huge scam that could destroy the local economy. Zenjiro is later faced with the difficult decision of selling his family business to repay all the other fishermen and brokers that have fallen foul of him. 

It’s this societal sense of unfairness that stripper Kumi (Terumi Azuma) hints at when she says she feels “frustrated” and that her long-lost brother Eiji (Toru Emori) probably feels even more frustrated than she does after he slaps her having found out that she’s become a burlesque dancer. As she points out to him, he ran away from home and left her behind with the aunt that was cruel to them so what exactly he expected her to do is a mystery. In the end, it’s his own fault for abandoning her, so he has no leg to stand on in criticising her for the way she’s lived her life. Kumi is well accepted in the local community and walks around in very elegant attire which gives her the air of an “ojosan” or upperclass lady to much greater extent that Kiyoko has in her love of the earthy world of the fish market. The fact that she turns out to be suffering from a tragic terminal illness perhaps only reinforces this sense of unfairness, that the modern world has essentially poisoned her and she can no longer survive in it.

The only things that give her solace are Katsuo and the idea of joining in carrying a shrine festival which would seem to be ways of reconnecting with a more essential Japaneseness. Despite his rowdiness, Katsuo is as she describes him the kindest person she’s ever met and a more positive vision of a still traditional masculinity that looks to protect the community and those around him. He gets into a fight with Eiji, but after exchanging a few blows the men become firm friends, while it’s trying to hook his wimpy friend Kinichi up with a date that brings him to Kumi in the first place. Meanwhile, it seems like Ayuko (Junko Natsu) has a crush on him and despite Zenjiro’s exasperation with Katsuo, everyone expects that he will eventually marry her and take over the family business. 

And so, it’s only a violent, but also quite funny, intervention from Katsuo that can eventually overcome the disruption Kurosaki threatens. Suzuki throws in a lot of his trademark weirdness including all of Zenjiro’s other daughters having fishy names, and a local sex worker who is insatiably aroused by octopuses followed by a gag in which Katsuo is trolled with a suggestive-looking shellfish, but mostly rests on a sense of qualified wholesomeness and community all carried on Katsuo’s broad shoulders as the lone guardian of a more essential Japaneseness otherwise uncorrupted by venal post-war capitalism.

*Norifumi Suzuki’s name is actually “Noribumi” but he has become known as “Norifumi” to English-speaking audiences.

Jeans Blues: No Future (ジーンズブルース　明日なき無頼派, Sadao Nakajima, 1974)

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Nihilistic lovers on the run make a break for the sea only to find their pathway blocked in Sadao Nakajima’s anarchic love tragedy, Jeans Blues: No Future (ジーンズブルース　明日なき無頼派, Jeans Blues: Asu naki Buraiha). As the title suggests, the heroes find themselves devoid of hope, pressing the accelerator as far it’ll go with no clear destination in sight and nothing really left to lose while discovering a twisted kind of salvation in their unlikely connection.

Sensing danger in the air, grave-digging drifter Jiro (Tsunehiko Watase) decides to run off with all the money after his gangster friends off a moneylender on the orders of a businessman. Meanwhile, across town, bar lady Hijiriko (Meiko Kaji) decides to walk out on her unsatisfying life taking some money from the till and her boyfriend’s car for good measure. The pair quite literally collide, but realise that they are much the same in their growing sense of emptiness and impossibility. Nothing really really interests Hijiriko anymore, and watching the car burn after Jiro tossed a cigarette is the only thing that’s made her feel alive in eons. Running through his many and various jobs, Jiro reflects that work is “no fun” either and that the reason he wanted the money was for his sister who he says has run up huge debts paying for medical treatment for a close friend and is now facing the threat of being forced into sex work. 

His sense of impotence is palpable in his desperation and the knowledge that there is no good way to come by large amounts of money especially for a young man from the country with limited prospects. At one point he is beaten by a man with a golf club, a symbol of the class privilege and middle class success that will always elude him. The money, much more than he needs for his sister, gives him a new sense of confidence and possibility even if he remains somewhat frugal, picking up an old banger from a second hand car salesman that immediately blows a tire and apparently belonged to “Koji the murderer” which explains the huge dent in the bonnet. Yet he does at least pay his way, even leaving a collection of notes next to the body of a man he ran over intended to pay for medical treatment which casts him as something of a naive innocent cast adrift in a corrupt society and driven into criminality by desperation.

Trapped inside a shipping container and fearing he may be about to die, Jiro comes to see his fate as karmic retribution for having taken the money that was earned by killing others. Inside the container, the pair are in a sense already dead but also undergo a kind of rebirth if only one fuelled by desperation and the connection that has arisen between them. Hijiriko appears to be suffering from some kind of trauma, experiencing a flashback to the orgy going on at the bar which she had been invited to join but declined much to her customer’s disappointment. He remarks that she always did before, a comment which seems to annoy her though perhaps not as much as the arrival of an older woman a male voice tells her on the phone is a actually quite wealthy and doesn’t need the money but does sex work as a kind of hobby. 

It’s Hijiriko who begins to fight back against the world, dressed in the stylish black leather suit Jiro buys her while he struts around in a cap and three-piece tartan suit. Jiro does not actually kill anyone, but Hijiriko does without a second thought perhaps because she herself is already dead. Using her sexuality as a weapon, she asks a hunter if she can hold his gun and trying his luck he lets her only to end up getting shot when he tries to fight back. The pair rob a petrol station for money but come up with only a few notes and coins while the attendant reveals they’ve already made their daily deposit at the bank signalling just how out of luck these lovers really are. They’re bound for the sea, but travel to the mountains and find there only danger and disappointment. Nakajima lends their flight from a dissatisfying existence a kind of desperation in its breakneck pace and frenetic camera work but equally injects a sense of cosmic irony in the many coincidences and reversals that frustrate the lovers’ escape and in the end leave them only one way out from the society which constrains them.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

The Twilight Years (恍惚の人, Shiro Toyoda, 1973)

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In the early 1970s Japanese society was not as concerned with population slowdown as it would come to be, but Shiro Toyoda’s sympathetic ageing drama The Twilight Years (恍惚の人, Kokotsu no Hito) is evidence of a growing consciousness that traditional ideas about how one cares for the elderly may now be becoming incompatible with the functioning of modern society. Based on a best-selling novel by Sawako Ariyoshi, the film has profound empathy both for the ageing patriarch once apparently a tyrant but now a meek and frightened child, and the daughter-in-law to whom his care largely falls.

In fact, it’s caring for Shigezo (Hisaya Morishige) that some believed shortened the lifespan of his late wife who passes away in the film’s opening scenes. Already somewhat detached from reality, Shigezo simply reports that his wife won’t wake up no matter how much he tries to wake her, much like a child who’s discovered someone no longer living. While his daughter-in-law Akiko (Hideko Takamine) rushes to her room with a sense of foreboding, Shigezo merely stays in the kitchen eating boiled potatoes straight out of the pan. It’s the odd behaviour that seems to irk his son Nobuyoshi (Takahiro Tamura) but it’s only now that the couple seem to be realising that there’s something wrong especially as Shigezo does not appear to understand that his wife has died. Pitiably, he chides her for lounging around so late in the day when she’s already been laid out for her funeral.

When his daughter, Kyoko (Nobuko Otowa), arrives having actually missed the funeral itself due to transport issues and a conflicting responsibility to act as a matchmaker at a wedding, Shigezo doesn’t recognise her. He continues to ask for Akiko and gradually forgets most of the other people in his life, screaming when encountering Nobuyoshi and instructing Akiko to call the police to report a burglar in their home. According to both women, Shigeyoshi had treated Akiko poorly ever since she joined their family, which makes caring for him so much harder. The reason he becomes so attached to Akiko is likely simply that she is the person who is always around him so he has less time to forget her. He may realise on some level that she may not wish to care for him given his previous behaviour which may be why he becomes preoccupied with the idea she may “disappear” and cries out in the night when he can no longer see her.

But Akiko also has other responsibilities including a job outside the home and a teenage son studying for his exams. Nobuyoshi expresses regret that he hasn’t been more help and voluntarily tries to pitch in, but lets himself off the hook given that his father doesn’t recognise him and becomes anxious in his presence. Satoshi (Izumi Ichikawa) meanwhile does try to do his bit but is young and a little resentful of the responsibility. As his dementia becomes more severe, Shigezo begins calling Satoshi “Dad” as if he were a child again. Which is all to say, Shigezo becomes Akiko’s responsibility and the strain of caring for him begins to affect her own mental and physical health leading her to fear that she too may die younger than she otherwise might have. 

Yet in exploring her options, Akiko finds little by way of support. Most nursing homes won’t accept patients with complex needs like Shigezo and conditions such dementia are often regarded as mental illnesses meaning her only option might be to put him in an asylum. Shigezo was attending an old person’s daycare centre, but later says he doesn’t want to go anymore because it’s full of old people and therefore no fun. While the film is sympathetic towards Akiko and the difficulties she is facing in caring for her father-in-law it also has profound empathy for Shigezo for though he has so many people who are doing their best to look after him, his increasing mental confusion quite obviously leaves him isolated and he must be incredibly lonely while trapped within his own reality. He develops a habit of saying “hello, hello,” as if he were answering the telephone which may be his attempt to communicate while he is also fascinated with a caged bird which may reflect his own sense of being constrained by his condition.

Later, the bird seems to symbolise Akiko too, trapped as she is within the domestic environment where all responsibility seemingly falls to her. Even so a young student couple she rents the annex to for a lower price in exchange for keeping an eye on Shigezo during the day remark that he may be in the ideal state for a human being having returned to early childhood in which there are no concerns or responsibilities and he is therefore unburdened by the weight of what is to live. Toyoda often uses handheld camera to symbolise the desperation and destabilisation of Shigezo’s existence in which Akiko has become his only fixed point. One of Nobuyoshi’s friends remarks that perhaps it was better when the average life expectancy was 50 and Nobuyoshi’s mother might have been lucky passing away peacefully while otherwise in good health. Still, as Nobuyoshi says, it comes for us all in the end and we should all try to be kinder to each other while we’re here.

Golden Partners (黄金のパートナー, Kiyoshi Nishimura, 1979)

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Kiyoshi Nishimura began his career in the action genre with a series of paranoid thrillers so it feels particularly odd to see him tackle similar themes in such a breezy, lighthearted way as 1979’s Golden Partners (黄金のパートナー, Ogon no Partner). Though based on a novel by Kyotaro Nishimura, the film seems to have been envisioned as an homage to Robert Enrico’s Les Aventuriers in following two men and a young woman on a quest to track down a missing person and also find a large amount of gold supposedly contained in a downed submarine. 

Kosuke (Tomokazu Miura) is a rather aimless young man who lives on a fishing boat and has a career as a freelance photographer taking photos of things people would rather weren’t photographed, while his best friend Shusaku (Tatsuya Fuji) is a motorcycle-riding policeman who has a strong sense of civic duty yet mostly spends his time giving out tickets to locals traveling slightly over the speed limit. They’re both good friends with the landlord at the Polestar bar whom they affectionately refer to as Pops (Taiji Tonoyama). Pops has let them run up a significant tab even though he doesn’t appear to have any other customers. In any case, their aimless days are interrupted when Kosuke begins hearing a strange SOS message but can’t seem to identify where it’s coming from to be able to help. Meanwhile, a young woman arrives looking for Pops and explains that her father, an old friend of his, has gone missing which may be connected to the mysterious stash of gold bars Pops is fond of talking about every time he has too much to drink. 

Figuring out that the SOS message is using a code employed by the Imperial Navy during the war, the trio embark on trying to solve the mystery partly to help the young woman, Yukibe (Misako Konno), and partly because they want to find the gold. Basically a buddy movie, the film has a childlike quality as it mainly follows the trio hanging out on the beach in Saipan solving puzzles and getting into minor arguments. Things take a slightly darker turn when Shusaku decides to stay on even after his paid leave from the police force ends despite realising it’s unlikely they’re going to find the gold bars or even figure out what’s happened to Yukibe’s father. Having realised that Yukibe likes Kosuke and despite his own feelings for her, he’s beginning to feel like a third wheel but in the end cannot bring himself to leave this unending holiday adventure.

But after making a shocking discovery, what they stumble on is a wartime conspiracy in which a corrupt spy killed the other men assigned to transport the gold and took it for himself. He then used it to become a rich and powerful man in post-war Japan, apparently suffering no consequences for his actions hinting at the essential corruption of the post-war society. Realising he likely can’t be prosecuted nor would justice really be served if he went to prison for a few years, they decide on blackmail as their way of recovering the gold little realising how far someone who has killed before will go to protect their secrets. Nevertheless, despite the conspiratorial overtones the atmosphere remains largely cartoonish rather than dark or threatening right up until another tragedy occurs and brings the whole thing to an end.

This laidback sensibility is aided by the soundtrack provided by Takao Kisugi who briefly appears at the end of the film as his city pop folk songs run constantly throughout. Nishimura’s use of a ghostly zero fighter as the gang investigate the former airbase on Saipan proves slightly uncomfortable though ties in with some ghostly imagery as an evocation of a past that’s apparently still very present and largely unresolved. In any case, like a classic children’s adventure story the film does not particularly engage with its larger themes but concentrates on the trio’s attempts to solve the mystery along with their zany plans and crazy stunts culminating in the guys parachuting out of a private plane after aiming it right at that of the bad guys in a moment of extreme irony. A little bit sad and more tragic than it perhaps ought to be, the film is nevertheless a warmhearted tale of male friendship, the childish glee of solving a mystery, and the satisfaction of getting one over on the bad guys even if it comes at a very high price.

Trailer (no subtitles)

King Boxer (天下第一拳, Jeong Chang-hwa, 1972)

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Legend has it that Shaw Brothers’ main motivation in making King Boxer (天下第一拳) was retaliation against Golden Harvest who’d managed to sign Bruce Lee after he turned them down because they offered him the standard studio contract which was at the very least unattractive. Until that point, the studio had mainly been making wuxia pictures and musicals, but had begun to shift towards unarmed combat with the success of The Chinese Boxer in 1970. 

Released internationally under the title Five Fingers of Death, the film kickstarted the 1970s kung fu craze with its vast success in America and helped to solidify a new genre that was then only just being formed through the use of the trampoline technique pioneered by wuxia master King Hu along with his fast cuts and a surprisingly gory take on violence even having the floor shift and give off puffs of dust for added realism. Otherwise it weaves a fairly standard tale of warring schools each vying to win a top contest which confers on the winner the right to control five territories in the north, though this is not of course the goal of the righteous contenders who desire neither fame nor fortune only to improve their skills. The earnest Zhihao (Lo Lieh) just wants to stay with his master and adopted father, Song (Ku Wen-Chung), with whose daughter Ying-ying (Wang Ping) he has also fallen in love, but when and former pupil Daming (Jin Bong-Jin) returns after training with Master Sun and Song is attacked by bandits which leaves him feeling past his best, he decides Zhihao should be sent away too until he wins the contest and returns to take over the school. 

Meanwhile, the evil Meng (Tien Feng) is scheming to have his son Tianxiong (Tung Lam), who lacks martial arts talent, win the contest so that they can control the territory and oppress everybody in its domain. Meng is fond of talking about honour and the martial arts spirit, but actually plans to win the competition by cheating which is why he had his goons attack Master Song. He plans to take out his rivals ahead of time so Tianxiong will have a clear path to victory. 

Zhihao, however, is floundering, forced to toil in Sun’s kitchen’s for a year training through practical means before even being accepted as pupil. Sun’s top student, Han Long (Nam Seok-hoon), appears to take an instant dislike of him that may just be down to his insecurity and fear of competition but eventually becomes a source of weakness in the Sun school. It’s clear that Han resents Zhihao for stealing the place he feels to have been his by right, especially on learning that Sun has given him the manual for the Iron Palm technique, and is even more annoyed when he runs into singer Yan who asks him about Zhihao though he is obviously interested in her himself. This romantic rivalry seems to further undermine his sense of masculinity and causes him to betray everything he stands for as a martial artist by cutting a deal with Meng in the hope he’ll get rid of Zhihao so he can take his place in the contest even if doing so likely means he’ll have to lose to Tianxiong. 

The romantic subplot has a gentle poignancy as we obviously know that Yan will never end up with Zhihao because he is in love with Ying-ying while Yan also tries to convince him to leave the martial arts world which is something that just isn’t going to happen. In any case, Zhihao remains committed to opposing injustice, facing off against Meng and battling the three karate masters he’s imported from Japan to do his dirty his work as well as the ace up his sleeve, wandering fighter Chen Lang (Kim Ki-Joo) who eventually begins to realise he’s chosen the wrong side on witnessing Meng’s ruthlessness which breaks every rule in the martial arts book. 

Korean director Jeong Chang-hwa, however, slightly wrong foots us denying Zhihao his vengeance against Meng while Han takes him on instead as an act of redemption though he too is eventually denied. This not quite final fight is among the most impressive in the film, fought in near darkness as Han has by this point lost his sight. Zhihao meanwhile takes on Okada (Chao Hsiung), the karate master, demonstrating his “Iron Palm” technique which Jeong lends an eerie supernatural quality through the use of red lighting and the sting of synths. Though the plot plays out like a western, Jeong’s aesthetics otherwise strongly recall the colour of Nikkatsu youth drama of the earlier 1960s most especially in his colour palette and lighting. Unfortunately this would be the last film he made for Shaw Brothers after apparently becoming fed up with Mona Fong’s cost cutting and jumping ship to Golden Harvest where he stayed for the rest of his career, but he did help to create a genre of kung fu cinema and popularise it all over the world.

Wicked Priest 5: Breaking The Commandments (極悪坊主 飲む打つ買う, Buichi Saito, 1971)

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The Wicked Priest returns for his final adventure and once again finds himself tackling the corruptions of the mid-Meiji society. Titled in English “Breaking the Commandments” (極悪坊主 飲む打つ買う, Gokuaku Bozu – Nomu Utsu Kau), the Japanese title refers to something Shinkai (Tomisaburo Wakayama) admits part way through, that his ironically non-buddhistic life revolves around drinking, gambling, and women all vices he seems unable to give up even as he continues to fight justice for the oppressed little guy amid the burgeoning capitalist society of the new Japan.

Indeed the film opens with him in a brothel where he’s exhausting one woman after another and demanding she be replaced with a fresh model while simultaneously covering for petty crook Hideji (Teruo Ishiyama) who is hiding his sex worker girlfriend in the cupboard to save her from a local gangster. In the first few instalment, Shinkai is a lecherous yet lovable rogue who in his own way respects women but in these last two instalments is certainly less kind, treating these sex workers more or less as disposable while later threatening to rape a lady gambler who tried to trick him. In any case, after realising that even Hideji who he went out of his way to help is trying to deceive him, Shinkai ends up getting involved with a local dispute over transportation licences and a nefarious land-sharking plan run by thuggish gangsters with the collusion of the police chief.

The land sharks want to take over the abandoned mansion where Hideji and his family of crooks are currently living in the company of a former samurai lord who seems to be suffering with some kind of delusion that it’s still the Sengoku era. The police chief isn’t up for the idea at first but the gangsters falsely imply that those living in this area of town are merely “jobless people and criminals” that they don’t need to worry about. But their plan depends on bringing on board Wajima who holds the license for running freight carts but Wajima is an honest man who isn’t interested in bribes and has no respect for those who exploit others. He refuses to participate in the project.

Shinkai too refuses to let the gangsters get away with mowing over Hideji and the others and is once again saved by Ryotatsu (Bunta Sugawara) who agrees to put off their final fight until Shinkai is finished cleaning up this dirty little town. He largely does this by donning an elaborate disguise and teaming up with lady gambler Gin to trick conspirator Kawashima into giving back Wajima’s (Takashi Shimura) license after setting him up so he’d lose it. Meanwhile he also tries to repair another broken father-son relationship between Wajima and his errant boy Ryutaro (Kyosuke Machida) whom he’d kicked out some years previously after he became a yakuza and got into trouble with the law. 

What seems clear is that the chaos of Meiji has allowed the greedy to profit over the changing orders of the hierarchical society, no longer bound by traditional notions of good conduct or basic humanity. The police chief first objects to the plan, stating that many people living in the area the gangsters have earmarked for their docks are honest and hardworking and shouldn’t be lumped in with “criminals”, but is soon won over by a bribe and is also supporting a mistress in a separate household. Yet even so, Shinkai turns this same weapon back on Kawashima (Fumio Watanabe) in pretending to be a general from Tokyo who will soon be his father-in-law, leveraging his social advancement to bring him back into line in appealing to his greed and ambition while hinting at a militarist future in reminding him that Wajima’s carts were essential during the Satsuma Rebellion and may be so again should the occasion call.

After seeing off a series of bounty hunters, one sent in via a honey trap that suggests the gangsters really know their enemy, Shinkai has no option but to clear out the corruption himself at the point of a sword culminating in another bloody showdown which is also in its own way a means of protecting Ryutaro from a pointless revenge. “If I die the devil in hell will be in for a big surprise!” Shinkai cooly remarks as he marches off to fight for justice, but then there’s another battle waiting for him in the postponed grudge match with Ryotatsu as the two men tussle atop a sand dune ironically trapped in a co-dependent cycle of vengeance and salvation while Shinkai’s wandering most likely will never end.