Tag: 1976

Operation Plazma in Osaka (実録外伝 大阪電撃作戦, Sadao Nakajima, 1976)

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The precarious balance of the post-war yakuza society begins to crumble in Sadao Nakajima’s jitsuroku eiga, Operation Plazma in Osaka (実録外伝 大阪電撃作戦, Jitsuroku gaiden: Osaka dengeki sakusen). The Japanese title might more accurately be translated as “shock tactics in Osaka” which is a neat encapsulation of the turf war which arises when a larger gang from Kobe decides to muscle in and take over the city while a small upstart continues to agitate contemplating taking the whole prize for themselves. 

Inspired by a real life turf war which took place in Osaka in 1960, the film opens with classic jitsuroku voiceover revealing that a precarious balance had been held in the local underworld since the Meiji era in part because the city is simply too big to be ruled by any one gang. But times are changing, yakuza conglomerates are in style, and so it is that the Kawada gang mounts a largely political campaign to claim the city without bloodshed, as boss Yamaji (Akira Kobayashi) puts it, by convincing the smaller gangs to join up with them. According to the voiceover, however, it wasn’t Kawada that upset the balance but a small upstart group that came out of nowhere, Soryu. 

The screen then cuts to a map of Osaka, while the stills behind the credits feature the Tsuruhashi Market in Korea town. The thing about the Soryu group is that many of its leading members are ethnically Korean which sets them apart from most of the other mobsters in town. Even so, it’s hotheaded Yasuda (Hiroki Matsukata) that first gets them in trouble by getting into a fight with Takayama (Tsunehiko Watase) at a boxing match after climbing into the ring himself when the guy he bet on looks like he’s about to lose. This sets up a conflict between the Soryu and the Nanbara gang who run the boxing hall, but it never takes off because the recently released Daito suddenly announces that he’s bought the “Dance Hall” the ring is being run from and wants to turn it into a cabaret bar. It seems clear that someone’s backing Daito, but no one quite knows who. 

As Yamaji had said it would be, it starts of as a very modern silent war in which he slowly seduces various yakuza gangs convincing them that they’re stronger together with a slight note of join us or die. Yasuda and Takayama are two men who don’t like being told what to do and each end up exiled from their gangs thanks to their opposition to Kawada. Having failed to assassinate Yamaji, boss Nanbara pathetically rolls over and decides to join him instead while the Soryu gang is sent on the run leaving Yasuda and and Takayama to form an unlikely brotherhood brokered by Yasuda’s odd decision to gift his nightclub singer girlfriend to his sometime rival leaving Takayama permanently in his debt and touched by his selfless gesture.

Even by the standards of the jitsuroku, Operation Plazma in Osaka is rabidly misogynistic and often sleazy with an early scene seeing the Soryu gang cause trouble by stripping a hostess naked as one pours alcohol over her body and another drinks it from between her legs. Naked women are repeatedly fondled by fully clothed men, while nightclub singer Yoshiko (Yuko Katagiri) is treated largely as a pawn, a tool used to mediate the latent homoerotic desire between Yasuda and Takayama. Then again, everything in this world is extreme. The conflicted Miyatake (Tatsuo Umemiya) who had once tried to protect Takayama eventually tries to boil a man alive to get him to reveal Takayama’s location while Nakajima’s anarchic handheld camera desperately tries to keep up with the increasingly nihilistic violence. 

The resolution arrives not with death but total defeat, the traditional yakuza forced into submission by the corporatising giant with the survivors realising they will live the rest of their lives in subjugation making an “unconditional surrender” to changing times. Yasuda had claimed that the Soryu gang was a “free democracy” standing in opposition to the latent fascism of traditional gangsterdom which then finds its way into the corporate and the extreme hostile takeover Yamaji has just performed on the city of Osaka. Suddenly all that’s left of traditional yakuza is a pinkie in a jar, a grim a reminder of what happens when those in a position to resist back down in the face of an authoritarian power.

Yakuza Graveyard (やくざの墓場　くちなしの花, Kinji Fukasaku, 1976)

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“We don’t resort to violence. We observe the law.’ The hero of Kinji Fukasaku’s Yakuza Graveyard (やくざの墓場　くちなしの花, Yakuza no Hakaba: Kuchinashi no Hana) is berated by a superior officer for excessive use of force, but his criticism is in some senses ironic because it is the police force itself which becomes a symbol of the societal violence visited on those who can find no place to belong in the contemporary society. By this time the yakuza was already in decline and in the process of transforming itself into a corporatised entity while as a police chief explains increasing desperation has led to escalating gang tensions. 

Recently transferred maverick cop Kuroiwa (Tetsuya Watari) finds himself caught between two worlds in attempting to enforce the law through methods more familiar to yakuza. Soon after he’s had his gun taken away for exercising excessive force on a suspect he’d been independently tailing in the street on whom he’d found bullets designed to be used with a remodelled toy gun, Kuroiwa is pulled aside by another senior officer, Akama (Nobuo Kaneko) who takes him to a meeting with local yakuza boss Sugi (Takuya Fujioka). It seems obvious that Akama has cultivated a relationship with the Nishida gang which may not be strictly ethical for a law enforcement officer and hopes to bring Kuroiwa on board as a potential asset. They attempt to bribe him in return for information on the Yamashiro clan, the dominant organised crime association in the area, which has been hassling Nishida in an attempt to take over their territory. But Kuroiwa ironically tells them that they should “act like yakuza” and sort out their own problems rather than relying on the police before dramatically walking out much to to the consternation of everyone else present. 

Nevertheless, he eventually comes to sympathise with them as a symbol of the little guy increasingly crushed by corporate and authoritarian forces outside of their control. He finds out from a briefing that the police’s goal is the disbandment of the Nishida gang but when he asks why they aren’t going after the Yamashiro too he’s told to mind his own business and begins to realise that the police are in cahoots with organised crime. Whether they justify themselves that managing the Yamashiro to prevent a turf war is the best way to protect the public or are simply corrupt and in the pocket of big business, Kuroiwa can’t help but balk at the blatant hypocrisy of the law enforcement authorities. 

Later Kuroiwa reveals that he became a police officer after being bullied as a child in order to exert power over his life, or perhaps becoming an oppressor in order to avoid being oppressed. He was bullied because he had been born in Manchuria and even years later remains a displaced person at least on a psychological level. It’s this sense of displacement which allows him to bond with the Nishida gang’s accountant, Keiko (Meiko Kaji), whose father was Korean. Kuroiwa agrees to accompany Keiko to visit her husband (Kenji Imai) who is serving a lengthy prison term in order to tell him that the gang want to promote someone else to a position he viewed as his by right. The husband explodes in rage and uses a word some would regard as a slur to reference Keiko’s Korean heritage while she later attempts to walk into the sea feeling that there really is no place for her in the contemporary society. 

Just as she claims that she is neither Korean nor Japanese or much of anything at all, Kuroiwa is neither cop nor thug and similarly excluded from society at large. He ends up bonding with old school Nishida footsoldier Iwata (Tatsuo Umemiya), who is also ethnically Korean, for many of the same reasons and attempts to mount a doomed rebellion against their mutual oppression, but is hamstrung by his otherness which is only deepened when he’s taken prisoner by loan shark Teramitsu (Kei Sato) and given a mysterious truth drug developed by the nazis later becoming a user of heroin. Already marginalised, forced into crime by economic necessity and social prejudice, Iwata and Keiko like Kuroiwa himself struggle to escape their displacement while pushed still further out by systemic corruption and the amoral capitalism of an era of high prosperity. Shot with jitsuroku-esque realism and characteristically canted angles, Fukasaku injects a note of futility even within the hero’s tragic victory as he quite literally sticks two fingers up to the corrupted “brotherhood” that has already betrayed him.

Yakuza Graveyard is released on blu-ray on 16th May courtesy of Radiance Films. On disc extras include an in-depth appreciation of the film and the work of screenwriter Kazuo Kasahara from Blood of Wolves director Kazuya Shiraishi, and an informative video essay from Tom Mes on the collaborations of Meiko Kaji and Kinji Fukasaku. The limited edition also comes with a 32-page booklet featuring new writing by Miko Ko plus translations of a contemporary review and writing by Kasahara.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Insiang (Lino Brocka, 1976)

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“It’s your father’s fault.” the heroine of Lino Brocka’s 1976 realist melodrama Insiang is told, neatly hinting at the destructive patriarchy of the Philippines under Marcos. Like the heroine of a fairytale, Insiang (Hilda Koronel) is a radiant source of light amid the darkness of a Manila slum where jobless men drown their sorrows and burden their wives while proving their masculinity by often violent sexual conquest. Soon even she is consumed by the corruption of the world all around her against which she eventually plots her revenge. 

The chief source of Insiang’s misery is her harridan of a mother, Tonya (Mona Lisa), who has become cruel and embittered in the humiliation of her husband’s abandonment. Tonya has agreed to allow some of her husband’s relatives to stay with them as the father has lost his job, but often insults them and her harsh words weigh heavily on Insiang’s cousin Edong who is old enough to work but cannot find find a job. When Edong gets drunk and gropes Insiang’s best friend Ludy (Nina Lorenzo) who runs the local store, Tonya loses her temper and throws them all out even insisting on the return of some clothes she’d bought the children sending them away not even in rags but naked. 

Isiang confesses that she has come to hate her mother and feels no maternal connection with her at all, knowing that her coldness towards her is motivated by resentment towards her estranged father who left them for another woman. Tonya’s decision to throw out the relatives was in part motivated by her desire to move in Dado (Ruel Vernal), a thuggish man much younger than herself who guts pigs at a local slaughter house. In the end, he will be stuck himself just like one of the animals he and men in general are so often likened to. Dado has a tattoo of his own name on his chest and struts his stuff like a proud alpha male, quickly questioning the masculinity of Insiang’s sometime boyfriend Bebot (Rez Cortez) who has a giant perm and wears an earring in one ear. Insiang dislikes going to the cinema with Bebot because he has a tendency to become handsy, justifying his disregard of her discomfort by insisting that he’s a man and cannot help it. Dado later says something similar after raping an unconscious Insiang, telling the incensed Tonya that it’s not his fault because no man could fail to be “seduced” with a such a beautiful woman in the house. 

At heart, the film is a painful melodrama about the frustrated love between mother and daughter which is made impossible because of male failure. When she finds Insiang sobbing and realises Dado has raped her, Tonya tries to comfort her daughter but is soon seduced again on Dado’s return. As Ludy says, Tonya too has her needs even if her relationship with a much younger man scandalises the local community, but in the end she chooses to maintain her connection to male power rather than the emotional connection to the daughter she has come to resent as a constant reminder of her failure as a woman. To escape her impossible situation, Insiang agrees to sleep with Bebot on the condition that he will rescue her in marriage. But Bebot is also a coward who has already been warned off by Dado. He takes her to a hotel but doesn’t even have the money to pay, asking Insiang to chip in the difference. When morning comes Bebot is gone. “No one can help me with my problem but myself” Insiang tells Ludy’s sympathetic younger brother Nanding (Marlon Ramirez) who tells her that he loves her anyway even if the rumours about her unusual family situation are true and is willing to help her escape the futility of the slums as he is already preparing to do through pursuing education. 

But Insiang has already been transformed, only her revenge will buy her her release. She manipulates Dado through her sexuality and motivates her mother’s jealously to engineer the tragic outcome that will free her. But having achieved her vengeance she has only regrets in the continued absence of maternal love, while Tonya too feels much the same. Insiang takes back some of her own cruelty, though what she said was not wholly untrue, but Tonya turns away from her only to regret her inability to embrace her daughter. Trapped behind bars, she can only watch silently as Insiang walks away and does not look back. The two women are forever divided by the patriarchal society. Insiang has won a temporary victory but only in self-destruction. In Brocka’s bleak depiction of Marcos’ Manila, not even maternal love is safe from the ravages of the contemporary society.  

Insiang screened as part of this year’s Red Lotus Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Terror of Yakuza (沖縄やくざ戦争, AKA Okinawa Yakuza War, Sadao Nakajima, 1976)

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An old-school yakuza finds himself cornered on every side while caught in the confusion of Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in Sadao Nakajima’s jitsuroku gangster movie Terror of the Yakuza (沖縄やくざ戦争, Okinawa Yakuza Senso, AKA Okinawa Yakuza War). Where similarly themed Okinawa-set gangster pictures such as Sympathy for the Underdog had largely presented the islands as an appealing place for mainland gangsters because the conditions of the occupation which had allowed them to prosper were still in place, Sadao reframes the debate in terms colonisation and conquest as the hero finds himself increasingly marginalised as an island boy contending with amoral city elitists. 

Nakazato (Hiroki Matsukata) has just been released from prison after serving seven years for the murders of two rival gang bosses that allowed his boss, Kunigami (Shinichi Chiba), to rule the roost in Koza. But now that Okinawa has reverted to Japan, everything has changed. Kunigami has formed a loose alliance with another regional gang to oppose the incursion of mainland yakuza but behind the scenes the higher-ups are intent on a mutually beneficial alliance with the Japanese perhaps seeing the writing on the wall and assuming that it’s better to work with the new regime that against it. For his part, Nakazato is more loyal to the clan than he is opposed to Japan but he’s also resentful towards to Kunigami for failing to live up to his side of the bargain now that he’s been released while fearing the influence of his new sidekick Ishikawa (Takeo Chii) whom he suspects of murdering one of his former associates while he was inside. 

As such, much of the drama unfolds as in any other yakuza picture with Nakazato, regarded by some of the other bosses as a loose cannon and potential liability, reluctant to move against Kunigami for reasons of loyalty even while Kunigami becomes increasing unhinged and dangerous, deliberately running over an Osakan foot soldier who was apparently just on holiday with no particular business in town. Kunigami’s recklessness in his hatred of the Japanese threatens to start a turf war the Okinawan gangs fear they couldn’t win, sending snivelling yakuza middleman Onaga (Mikio Narita) along with Nakazato to negotiate in Osaka only to be told the price of peace is Kunigami’s head. Inspired by the Fourth Okinawa War which was still going on at the time of the film’s completion (in fact, the release was blocked in Okinawa in fear that it would prove simply too incendiary), the conflict takes on political overtones as the mainland gangsters assume their conquest of Okinawa is a fait accompli while those like Onaga are only too quick to capitulate leaving Kunigami and Nakazato as two very different examples of resistance. 

Yet Nakazato finds himself doubly marginalised because he is from one of the smaller islands with most of his men also hailing from smaller rural communities (one uncomfortably wearing extensive makeup to ram the point home that he is from the southern reaches) with the result that they are often pushed around by the city gangsters who view them as idiot country bumpkins. On his trip to Osaka, Nakazato even describes himself as such in an attempt to curry favour apologising in advance should he make a mistake with proper gangster etiquette. Like a good platoon leader, Nakazato’s primary responsibilities are to his men which is one reason why he takes so strongly against Ishikawa, one of the new breed of entirely amoral yakuza who care nothing at all for the code and think nothing of knocking off his guys for no reason. Consequently he finds himself caught between the invading mainlanders, the unhinged chaos of Kunigami, the coldhearted greed of Ishikawa, and the spineless venality of turncoats like Onaga. 

It’s no wonder that he eventually loses his cool, going all out war and like Kunigami dressing in vests and combats in an internecine quest for vengeance precipitated in part by Kunigami’s attempt to discipline one of his men for encroaching on his territory by removing his manhood with a pair of pliers. “Someone will get to you someday too” Nakazato is reminded though having lost everything including his loyal wife who insisted on selling herself to a brothel to get the money to fund his war of revenge he may no longer care so long as he cleans house in Okinawa to the extent that he is really able to do so. “Okinawa is such a scary place” one of the Japanese guys admits, though showing no signs of backing off in this maddeningly chaotic world which turns stoic veterans and hotheaded farm boys alike into enraged killers fighting on a point of principle in a world which no longer has any. 

Terror of Yakuza screens at Japan Society New York May 20 at 7pm as part of Visions of Okinawa: Cinematic Reflections. 

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Images: Terror of Yakuza © 1976 Toei

Yalkae, a Joker in High School (高校 얄개 / 고교얄개, Seok Rae-myeong, 1976)

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The mid-70s saw a small youth movie craze in South Korea as the boomers came of age and teenagers became a key demographic. It was also a time of increasing prosperity as the economic policies of the repressive Park Chung-hee regime began to bear fruit, but at the same time such films perhaps had a certain responsibility in addition to conforming to the era’s strict censorship requirements. Yalkae, A Joker in High School (高校 얄개 / 고교얄개, Gogyo-yalgae) is a remake of Jeong Seung-moon’s A Legend of Urchins from 1965 which was itself adapted from a serialised novel published in 1954. As such it presents a kind of awakening in a goofy privileged teen after he realises that the prank he played on another boy for fun has had much more serious consequences than he could have imagined partly because he had no idea that his classmate lived in such different conditions to himself. 

We first meet the “yalkae” or joker of the title during a religious assembly at his strict missionary school. While his friend Yong-ho (Jin Yoo-young) snatches crunchy snacks from another boy and sneakily chomps them down, Doo-soo (Lee Seung-hyeon) is caught napping and tries to talk his way out of it by claiming he was merely at prayer before reciting bits of the bible only forget all the names and replace them with those of his own family members. A montage sequence sees him play tricks on his friend in chemistry and set off an alarm clock in class to make the teacher think the lesson’s over. Like many young boys Doo-soo is a class clown. His pranks may be mildly disruptive, but they are never malicious and meant only in fun. 

Nevertheless, he’s got himself a reputation as a troublemaker. Doo-soo’s dad is also a teacher at the school, which is mildly embarrassing for him, and perhaps why he’s given a job to a sympathetic young man, Mr. Baek (Ha Myeong-joong), who was once his own student and will now be teaching Doo-soo. Doo-soo finds this all a bit awkward, especially as it’s quite obvious to him that Mr. Baek has a crush on his grown-up sister Doo-joo (Jeong Yoon-Hee). Meanwhile, Mr. Baek’s errand to fetch something from his room above a greengrocer’s introduces him to the earnest In-sook (Kang Joo-hee), a student at the girls’ high school who works in her family’s shop, with whom he is instantly smitten. 

The major antagonist in his school life, however, is Ho-cheol (Kim Jeong-hoon), a bit of a swot with a tendency to tell tales to teachers. To teach him a lesson, Doo-soo pulls one of his elaborate pranks, colouring the lenses in his glasses red while he sleeps and then waking him up shouting “fire”. Ho-cheol inevitably panics and his glasses get broken in the chaos. Doo-soo pulls another prank on the headmaster which loses him Mr. Baek’s sympathy and nearly gets him expelled, which might be why he ignores Ho-cheol’s small apology for being a tattletale and plea for him to pay for the broken specs. Ho-cheol stops coming to school and a guilty Doo-soo eventually finds out that he’s broken his leg after coming off his bike during his part-time job delivering milk because he didn’t have his glasses and wasn’t able to see. 

Tracking Ho-cheol down takes Dal-soo to an unfamiliar environment on the outskirts of the city where the boy lives in a tiny rooftop room with his older sister who has a job in the factory. To pay for school and help with expenses, Ho-cheol gets up early to deliver milk every morning before classes. A strange but cheerful sort of boy he isn’t afraid of Doo-soo and is actually quite excited to receive a visit, blaming himself for talking too much and apologising for his habit of tattling to the teachers. Up til now, everyone has been trying to “reform” Doo-soo by instilling in him the urge for order and discipline, which he has always resisted. Discovering how Ho-cheol lives and how his silly prank has affected him brings about a real humbling, finally encouraging Doo-soo to start growing up and accepting responsibility which he does by taking over Ho-cheol’s part-time job to raise money for his medical treatment while diligently taking notes in class to bring back to him so he won’t fall too far behind. 

Grateful for the notes, Ho-cheol is perplexed when he tries to ask Dal-soo a question about the lesson only for him to reply that he only wrote down what he heard. Ho-cheol’s confusion prompts him into a reconsideration of his schooling as he asks sensible questions on behalf of his friend and accidentally becomes an earnest student more out of kindness than curiosity. Mr. Baek, with whom he’d fallen out, had asked In-sook to ignore Doo-soo because his crush was getting in the way of his studies so she ended up telling him she didn’t want to hang out with someone who’d been held back, further fuelling his sense of embarrassment in being an educational slacker when education is, according to Ho-cheol who dreams of a top job in one of the many gleaming spires now lining the city, the way forward. 

The “yalkae” is reformed, not quite as serious as the slightly ridiculous pastor, but returned to religion in furiously praying for Ho-cheol’s recovery and pushed towards earnestness in his pure hearted determination to help his friend by working hard in his place. Everyone suddenly sees his goodness rather than his mischief, In-sook starts talking to him again, and the family is repaired with Doo-soo now recognised as a “good son” rather than a problem child. The message is less that being a goof off in class is bad than it is that studying hard for a better future is part of being a good guy, as is being kind and developing an awareness of your social responsibility in acknowledging the consequences of your actions on those around you while remaining aware that not everyone is quite as fortunate as oneself.

Yalkae, a Joker in High School is available on DVD from the Korean Film Archive in a set which also includes a bilingual booklet featuring essays by film critics Kim Jong-won and Park Yoo-hee.

The Village (同胞, Yoji Yamada, 1975)

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The Village posterBest known for the long running Tora-san series, Yoji Yamada has often been disregarded by international critics for a perceived over indulgence in sentimentality. Nevertheless, his films are often at pains to capture a Japan which is changing with a noted ambivalence towards the results of those changes. Home From the Sea had rooted itself in the difficult decision of a young couple in realising that their way of life was no longer sustainable in a rapidly modernising economy. The Village (同胞, Harakara) returns to a similar theme, once again harping on “furusato” while the conflicted younger residents of a farming village struggle with the decision to accept the life passed down to them by their parents or abandon it in favour of the bright lights of an urban future.

Narrated by Takashi (Akira Terao), a young farmer and president of the local youth club, The Village revolves around one heady spring in which the arrival of a sophisticated woman from Tokyo injects additional stimulation into the sometimes stagnant community. Takashi, in many ways a very typical resident of Matsuo and many other rapidly depopulating rural villages like it, has taken over his family dairy farm following the death of his father when he was relatively young. His brother, Hiroshi (Hisashi Igawa), took a factory job to help make ends meet and put Takashi through school but has now become embittered and resentful as the widowed father of two young girls. Trapped by circumstance he berates Takashi for his diffidence in remaining uncommitted to farm life while perhaps dreaming of something better that he is too afraid to pursue.

The arrival of Hideko Konno (Chieko Baisho) seems to give Takashi a new sense of purpose. Hideko works for an itinerant theatre company based out of Tokyo which makes a point of taking shows to remote areas which might not ordinarily get much access to the arts. The snag is that the locality will have to take the responsibility of producing the show and absorbing the shortfall should they fail to sell enough tickets to cover costs. Takashi is tempted but he’s also well aware of the risks – the investment is sizeable given the relative poverty of the rural area and the risks involved with failure extreme.

Yamada places the dilemma surrounding whether or not to produce the show at the forefront, but the questions are bigger than they might at first seem. It has to be said that farming, whatever its rewards, is an extremely hard life. As a character puts it in the emotively titled play “Furusato”, it’s disheartening when you get a bad harvest and all your work goes for nothing but it’s almost worse when the harvest is good and the value of your work drops exponentially. For Takashi and the others, the youth association is a much needed social outlet even if many of them regard it as something of a joke and rarely get around to doing very much with it. The idea of the play is attractive to them for several reasons, having something more interesting to do not the least among them, not to mention offering a valuable break in routine in what can often be an overly ordered and somewhat stagnant existence.

However, the very same reasons the play appeals to the youngsters are the ones their elders find suspicious. Having made their peace with rural life and learned to adapt to its rhythms, the older generation worry that the young ones are being swayed by outside influences and neglecting their work in favour of idle pursuits. Meanwhile, many of the youngsters have already left to try their luck in the cities, some of them returning and bringing new experiences back with them while others resolve to remain where the lights are brighter.

Setting the scene, Yamada reminds us the factories have long been encroaching on farmland and that this “ancient” way of life is becoming ever harder in a rapidly modernising economy, but through their involvement with the play and its extremely close to home themes, the members of the youth association are finally able to look at their village through new eyes, seeing not only its immense visual beauty for the first time but learning to reappreciate the value of community and friendship. Life in the city might be more glamorous but perhaps it’s no less hard and only lonely in a different way. At once a celebration of and lament for a changing rural landscape, The Village asks an accidentally profound series of questions about life and happiness but once again puts its faith in goodhearted people creating meaning from togetherness in a world that might otherwise set them apart.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

The Inugami Family (犬神家の一族, Kon Ichikawa, 1976)

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the inugami family 1976 posterUnlike many of his contemporaries, Kon Ichikawa was able to go on working through the turbulent ‘70s and ‘80s because he was willing to take on purely commercial projects. The phenomenal and hugely unexpected success of 1976’s The Inugami Family (犬神家の一族, Inugami-ke no Ichizoku) set him in good stead for the rest of the decade during which he followed up with another four movies starring Koji Ishizaka as the eccentric detective Kosuke Kindaichi as featured in the novels of Seishi Yokomizo each of which was a bonafide box office success partially thanks to the effect of Haruki Kadokawa’s intensive multimedia marketing strategy then still in its infancy. In fact, Ichikawa would return to the sordid world of the Inugamis for his final picture in which he dared to remake his “greatest hit” with a now much older Koji Ishizaka reprising his role exactly 30 years later. Ichikawa might have been making “commercial” movies, but he never lost his experimental spirit.

Old Sahei Inugami (Rentaro Mikuni) finally drops dead in 1947 after a lifetime of seemingly doing exactly as he pleased. As a 17-year-old orphan he was taken in by a kindly priest and thereafter founded one of the biggest pharmaceuticals companies in Japan which is to say he leaves behind him a vast estate and desirable name. Unfortunately, he also leaves a messy family situation. Sahei was never legally married, but fathered three daughters with three different women who each have a son. In his 50s, he also fathered a son with his maid who would be about the same age as the grandchildren if anyone knew where he was. Sahei’s will, which in dramatic fashion can only be read with everyone present, leaves everything to a young woman, Tamayo (Yoko Shimada), who isn’t even part of the family but was doted on all the same by the elderly patriarch. In order to inherit, Tamayo must consent to marry one of the three grandsons – Suketake (Takeo Chii), Suketomo (Hisashi Kawaguchi), or Sukekiyo (Teruhiko Aoi) with whom she seems to have shared a past attachment. The will stresses that she is free to choose though if she decides to marry someone else entirely, the fortune will be divided in five with one part each to the grandsons and the rest to the maid’s son. As one can imagine, the daughters are furious.

Kindaichi is called in by a clerk (Hajime Nishio) at the solicitor’s office who has seen the will and finds it all decidedly strange (plus he’s in love with Tamayo so it’s very bad news for him). The clerk gets murdered before he can spill the beans, but the solicitor himself, Furudate (Eitaro Ozawa), decides to enlist Kindaichi’s help in figuring all of this out before it claims any more lives. Unfortunately, claim more lives it will.

Greed, as ever, is at the root of all evil but like the other entries in the Kindaichi series the crimes are largely a result of the world which surrounds them. Old Sahei made his money in some dubious ways. Ingratiating himself with the rich and powerful, later becoming a militarist for what seems like opportunistic reasons, he got himself special dispensation to grow poppies for their medicinal properties. Which is to say, he got rich selling opium to the masses. Inugami pharmaceuticals profited hugely from suffering incurred in wars spanning the century – with Russia, with China, through the first world war and the second. There was Inugami, ready to fuel the fire by numbing the pain.

Yet it’s his own unresolved emotional suffering that seems to have sent him such a dark and amoral path. Later we discover that a strange and emotionally difficult set of circumstances involving a quasi-incestuous, bisexual love triangle seem to have left him craving something to numb his own pain but only succeeding in passing it on to those around him. Firstly through the women he kept around to satisfy his carnal desires and then sent away, keeping the children with him but in a loveless, austere home. The sisters – Matsuko (Mieko Takamine), Takeko (Miki Sanjo), and Umeko (Mitsuko Kusabue) share an uneasy sort of camaraderie but are quick to turn on each other when it becomes clear that only one of them will inherit the family fortune and that they are now each rivals for the hand of Tamayo.

Like their grandfather, the Inugami boys are not an especially good catch. Two of them eventually attempt to rape Tamayo in an attempt to force her into marriage through shame (despite the fact that one has already fathered a child with his cousin), while she also has her doubts that Sukekiyo, with whom she has always felt a connection, is really who he says he is. Having gone away to the war, Sukekiyo did not return home after being demobbed because of intense survivor’s guilt. He also sustained severe burns to his face which require him to wear a latex mask over his entire head making positive identification difficult seeing as his voice, which he rarely uses, is also changed.

Rather than submit himself to the necessarily pokerfaced approach common to prestige murder mysteries from across the globe, Ichikawa uses the saleability of the property as an excuse to go all out. His tone varies wildly, almost to the point of parody in his frequent cuts to Kindaichi causing another of his famous anxiety induced dandruff avalanches. The blood eventually flies as do severed heads while upended corpses do handstands in lakes. The story of the Inugami family is a strange one filled with moments of bizarre whimsy but somehow it all works. As in many a Japanese mystery, the past refuses to die and the guilty eventually realise how misguided their enterprise has been, but there is hope for those left behind if they can free themselves from the cycle of guilt and suffering on which the Inugami name was built.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Manhunt (君よ憤怒の河を渉れ, Junya Sato, 1976)

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manhunt 1976 posterMost people, when faced with being framed for a crime they did not commit, become indignant, loudly shouting their innocence to the rooftops and decrying injustice. Prosecutor Morioka (Ken Takakura) reacts differently – could he really be a master criminal and have forgotten all about it? Does he have an evil twin? Is he committing crimes in his sleep? The answer to all of these questions is “no”, but Morioka will have to go on a long, perilous journey in which he pilots his first solo aeroplane flight, fights bears, and escapes a citywide police net via horse, in order to find out. Junya Sato’s adaptation of the Juko Nishimura novel Manhunt (君よ憤怒の河を渉れ, Kimi yo Fundo no Kawa o Watare, AKA Dangerous Chase, Hot Pursuit) is a classic wrong man thriller though it has to be said thrills are a little thin on the ground.

Morioka’s very bad day begins with a woman (Hiroko Isayama) pointing at him and screaming, clutching the arm of a policeman and insisting that Morioka is the man who burgled her a few nights ago and stole her diamond engagement ring. Morioka is very confused but goes calmly to the police station before asking to see an officer he knows, Yamura (Yoshio Harada). Unfortunately, at the police station things only get worse as they dig up another witness (Kunie Tanaka) who says Morioka mugged him in the street for his camera. Beginning to doubt his sanity Morioka is sure things will be sorted out when they search his apartment, only when they get there they do indeed find a camera, the ring hidden in his fish tank, and a whole lot of dodgy money. Realising the game is up and that his prosecutor buddies aren’t interested in helping him, Morioka takes to the road to clear his name, finding himself increasingly compromised every step of the way.

This being Japan Morioka’s options for disappearing are limited – it’s not as if he can dye his hair or radically change his appearance, he’ll have to make do with sunshades and burying his face in the collar of his mac. Looking askance at policemen and trying to avoid people reading newspapers, he tries to investigate his case beginning with his accusers who, predictably, are not quite who they seemed to be. When one of them ends up dead Morioka can add murder suspect to his wanted card but at least he correctly figures out that this all goes back to one particular case his boss was very keen to rule suicide but Morioka was pretty sure wasn’t.

During his quest Morioka picks up an ally – Mayumi (Ryoko Nakano), the daughter of a wealthy horse trader with political ambitions whom he saves during a random bear attack. Mayumi falls instantly in love with him and despite the best efforts of one of her father’s underlings determines to help him clear his name. Morioka is an honest sort of guy but does also pick up another girl in the city (a cameo appearance by Mitsuko Baisho) who rescues him and takes him home to recuperate from an illness. Much to her disappointment he only has eyes for Mayumi who unexpectedly saves the day thanks to her herd of horses, not to mention her father’s “kind offer” of a light aircraft which Morioka will have to learn to pilot “on the fly”.

Eventually Morioka gets himself confined to a dodgy mental hospital to find the final clue during which time he uncovers a corporate conspiracy to manufacture drugs which turn people into living zombies, all their will power removed and compliance to authority upped. Rather than a dig at corporate cultism, enforced conformity, and conspiratorial manipulation, the Big Pharma angle is a just a plot device which provides the catalyst for Morioka’s final realisations – that having experienced life on the run he can never return to the side of authority. For him, the law is now an irrelevance which fails to protect its people and the “hunted” are in a much stronger position than the “hunters”. Accepting his own complicity in the adventure he’s just had, he willingly submits himself to “justice” for the rules he broke as a man on the run but it looks like those sunshades, the anonymous mac, and the beautiful and loyal Mayumi are about to become permanent fixtures in his impermanent life.

Kurutta Yaju (狂った野獣, Sadao Nakajima, 1976)

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Kurutta Yaju dvd coverRobbing a bank is harder than it looks but if it does all go very wrong, escaping by bus is not an ideal solution. Sadao Nakajima is best known for his gritty yakuza movies but Kurutta Yaju ( 狂った野獣, Crazed Beast/Savage Beast Goes Mad) takes him in a slightly different direction with its strangely comic tale of bus hijacking, counter hijacking, inept police, and fretting mothers. If it can go wrong it will go wrong, and for a busload of people in Kyoto one sunny morning, it’s going to be a very strange day indeed.

A young woman receives a phone call at a cafe – the person she’s waiting for is on his way, but the girl seems surprised and irritated to hear he will be arriving via public transport. Meanwhile, ordinary people are seen cheerfully going about their everyday business and boarding a bus headed for Kyoto station while a cool looking man in mac and sunshades clutches a violin case in the back. Suddenly, two shady guys jump on after their bank robbery goes belly up. Trying to escape the police, they threaten the driver with a gun and take the passengers hostage.

This sounds like a serious situation, and it is, but the two bumbling bank robbers haven’t thought any of this through and have no plans other than somehow driving the bus onwards to a land without policemen. Eventually the authorities are made aware of the hijacking but there is another hidden problem – the driver has a heart condition and is supposed to be avoiding “stressful situations”. Neither the bus company or the police has any more idea what to do now than the increasingly panicked criminals and the situation quickly makes its way into the press whereupon the mothers of two little boys presumed to be onboard are forced to dash straight down to the police station to find out exactly what the police are up to as regards rescuing their sons from dangerous criminals.

The atmosphere on the bus is tense but also ripe for comedy as each of these captive passengers gradually reveals an unexpected side of themselves. The “hero”, Shin (Tsunehiko Watase) – the cool looking dude on his way to meet the girl waiting in the cafe, keeps a low profile in the back, hoping this will all blow over. Meanwhile, a woman desperately tries to get off the bus because she’s more worried about missing an appointment than being killed by hijackers, and an adulterous couple on their way back from an illicit visit to a love hotel begin bickering about what will happen if any of this gets into the papers. The two little boys start crying and are comforted by an old lady who takes the time to remind the hijackers that they’re bringing shame on their families as well as exhorting the man next to her who is so engrossed in the racing news that he hasn’t really noticed the hijacking that he ought to be doing something about it. He does, but only gets himself into more trouble whilst further revealing the depths of the highjackers’ ineptitude.

Soon enough the woman from the cafe, Miyoko (Jun Hoshino), jumps on her bike to chase the bus and find out what Shin is playing at. As might be expected, there’s more to Shin than his ice cold exterior, and more to that violin case than a priceless musical instrument. The bus careers onward while the police come up with ever more bizarre attempts to stop it including, at one point, trying to drive right into the side to damage the engine. Bizarre hilarity ensues as a troupe of traditional musicians trolls the hijackers with an impromptu show, a kid pees out the window, and the bus plows straight through a chicken barn like some old time cartoon. Shin becomes the unlikely hero of the hour as he ends up counter hijacking the bus to try and cover up the circumstances which led him to get on in the first place.

Playing out in real time and only 78 minutes in length, Kurutta Yaju is a brilliant mix of absurd comedy and gritty action movie. Shin attempts to ride the situation out, hoping he’ll be able to turn it to his advantage, and, though he plays everything beautifully, eventually becomes disillusioned with what his strange bus odyssey might have cost him. Action packed, hilarious, and ultimately a little bit sad Kurutta Yaju is a lost gem in Toei’s B-movie backlog and another exciting addition to Japan’s long history of bus-centric cinema.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Temple of the Golden Pavilion (金閣寺, Yoichi Takabayashi, 1976)

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temple-of-the-golden-pavilionYukio Mishima’s Temple of the Golden Pavilion has become one of his most representative works and seems to be one of those texts endlessly reinterpreted by each new generation. Previously adapted for the screen by Kon Ichikawa under the title of Enjo in 1958,  Yoichi Takabayashi’s 1976 ATG adaptation Temple of the Golden Pavilion (金閣寺, Kinkakuji) moves away from Ichikawa’s abstract examination of the tragic idealist towards the more heated concerns of the day in its dissection of one man’s continued frustrations and his subsequent literal desire to burn the world.

According to Mizoguchi’s father (Yusaku Terashima), Kinkakuji – the Golden Pavilion, is the purest, most beautiful object the world has ever seen. After his father’s death, Kinkakuji becomes Mizoguchi’s (Saburo Shinoda) touchstone and it’s enough for him simply to be near it. Becoming a monk at a nearby temple, Mizoguchi comes under the care of an older priest who had been a friend of his father’s and is determined to look after his interests.

Interfering with his love for the temple is the spectre of a local girl, Uiko (Yoshie Shimamura), from his home town who spurned his affections due to his ugliness, stammer, and difficulty with communication. Mizoguchi’s resentment grows inside him until he begins to pray for Uiko’s death. Tragically, Uiko is indeed killed by her lover, a deserter from the army, after she first betrayed and then tried to warn him about the encroaching military police. Uiko and Kinkakuji become inextricably linked as each time Mizoguchi finds a woman willing to sleep with him, thoughts of Uiko and the temple cloud his mind, preventing him from fulfilling his sexual desires leading him to become obsessed with the idea of arson. The temple is less something too beautiful for an ugly world, than a too perfect mirror for Mizoguchi’s own faults and inadequacies, a constant reminder of the rest of the world’s baseness to which Mizoguchi would like to drag it down.

Quite clearly mentally disturbed from the outset, Mizoguchi is remains obsessed with the prophecies from his divination sticks and experiences various flashbacks to the often traumatic events of his past, all the while offering glimpses of his strange philosophy through his often poetic voice over. Largely friendless thanks to his unapproachable nature, Mizoguchi bonds with the softening influence of a fellow student at the monastery Tsurukawa (Toshio Shiba), but later falls under the spell of the cynical student Kashiwagi (Katsuhiko Yokomitsu) who uses his own disabilities to manipulate the sympathies of various women in order to sleep with and and then exploit them.

Through Kashiwagi’s tutelage, Mizoguchi begins to have more success with women but his original failure with Uiko and his attachment to the temple prevent him from fully venting his desires. Mizoguchi is also carrying a deeper seated resentment after witnessing his mother having sex with another man, seemingly with his father’s knowledge. Unable to reconcile his sexual desires with his feelings towards women by whom he feels rejected, both by his mother’s betrayal and because of his own internalised consciousness of his lack of looks and strange behaviour, Mizoguchi becomes increasingly frustrated, both sexually and politically.

With the end of the war came a new era, the old gods fell – the Emperor is but a man, but now men rule in this “strange” new democracy. Yet, in real terms, Mizoguchi feels no more empowered than he was before. Trapped inside this closing circle of impotence, Mizoguchi fantasises about murdering his mentor, the temple priest, who has since lost faith in him thanks to his cruel and unthinking behaviour. Killing the priest would change nothing, or so Mizoguchi thinks. The temple is eternal, but if he burns it, does he burn the tyranny of eternity? Calling on the ancestral spirits to destroy this venal world but receiving no reply, Mizogichi invokes Uiko and starts a new revolution born in flames designed to bring power to the powerless, burn the ignorant world away and begin again free of the temple’s tyrannous perfection.

Takabayashi’s approach is a surreal one in which Mizoguchi’s delusions are manefested as reality, climaxing as the creature atop the temple’s ornate apex suddenly begins to beat its wings. Shooting in 4:3 and switching into black and white as Mizoguchi relives painful memories, but remaining in colour for his embellished dreams of them, the atmosphere is an uncertain one which drifts from fantasy to reality without warning. Very much a youth movie of the day, the 1976 The Temple of the Golden Pavillion is less an abstract contemplation of the place of beauty in a world of ugliness, than a story of self destructive male insecurity as sexual and political impotence drive a man to destroy the symbol of his oppression. Dark and cynical as the times which produced it, Takabayashi’s Temple is an ugly tale, but a good lesson in the results of failing to listen to unheard voices.

Original trailer (no subtitles)