Tag: Hideaki Yamamoto

Wicked Priest 2: Ballad of Murder (極悪坊主 人斬り数え唄, Takashi Harada, 1968)

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The Wicked Priest returns for a second instalment but once again finds himself confronted with imperfect paternity in The Wicked Priest 2: Ballad of Murder (極悪坊主 人斬り数え唄, Gokuaku Bozu: Hitokiri Kazoe Uta). This time directed by Takashi Harada, the series begins to embrace its anarchic nature in the sometimes cartoonish exploits of its hero who largely just wants to have a good time but is inconveniently called to missions of justice while silently stalked by ghosts of the past in the form of spooky monk Ryutatsu (Bunta Sugawara) whom he blinded in a fight at the end of the previous film. 

Now a lonely wanderer, Shinkai (Tomisaburo Wakayama) comes across a fleeing yakuza with a small boy in tow and steps in to help. As he discovers, the man, Rentaro (Asao Koike), is a former gangster whose wife has passed away leaving him the sole parent to Seiichi, a little boy of around six. Rentaro wants to turn himself in to the police so he can fully sever his ties to the underworld and start again along a more honest path to raise his son right, but needs to deliver him to his father, a jujitsu instructor, before he can. Somewhat surprisingly, Rentaro suddenly asks Shinkai, a man he’s never met before, to take Seiichi to his grandfather before rushing off supposedly to give himself over to justice. When Shinkai arrives, however, Iwai (Hideto Kagawa), the grandfather, refuses to let them in having disowned his son over a local scandal some years previously. 


As in the first film the major theme is paternal disconnection, Rentaro caught between wanting to be a good father to his son and seeking his own father’s approval. Fatherless himself, Shinkai cannot understand nor condone Iwai’s stubbornness in refusing even to look at his small grandson but resolves to care for him himself until his grandfather changes his mind or for as long as he is needed. Meanwhile it turns out that Rentaro was once involved with the evil gang, Godo, who have been causing trouble in the town by trying to muscle on the local cockfighting scene. 

Godo have also been force recruiting some of the local men to increase their dominance while schmoozing with a corrupt politician, Kadowaki (Hosei Komatsu), hoping to make cockfighting a local speciality, even going so far as to kidnap a young woman known to Shinkai and gift her to him. Shinkai manages to rescue her after dressing up as a head priest and subtly suggesting to Kadowaki that his election prospects might suffer if any rumours were to get out about untoward goings on in his household. Iwai explains that jujitsu is not meant to be a violent art used to tackle evil gangsters but is anyway posited as a kind of local resistance leader standing up to Godo but with little effect other than making himself a target for their ire while left vulnerable in their ability to use Rentaro against him. 

While getting mixed up in a local dispute trying to stand on the side of the little guy while looking after Seiichi, Shinkai’s exploits are often comedic in nature as he continues to play the part of the ironic monk though with real sincerity. Sneaking into a temple and belatedly discovering it to be a convent he becomes captivated by a Buddhist nun who appears to experience some kind of sexual awakening but then becomes fixated on him, insisting on becoming his wife and causing him to hide in a chicken coop to avoid her. On the other hand, his stalking by Ryutatsu takes on an almost spiritual quality as the near silent monk, now even more gaunt than before, shuffles his way towards him. Yet this Ryutatsu is a little more spiritual than before, agreeing to postpone his quest for vengeance unwilling to fight Shinkai with little Seiichi looking on and even at one point stepping in to protect him himself because all children are Buddha. Nevertheless, the film ends with another bloody battle surprising in its intensity with severed limbs and sudden violence as Shinkai ensures that those in the wrong get what’s coming to them, speeding up the wheel of karma by a turn or two to make sure they face justice, of one sort of another, in this world if not the next.  

Wicked Priest (極悪坊主, Kiyoshi Saeki, 1968)

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A bunch of corrupt monks get a lesson in business ethics from one of their own in the aptly titled Wicked Priest (極悪坊主, Gokuaku Bozu). The first in a series of five films starring Tomisaburo Wakayama as a rogue Buddhist monk who enjoys fighting, drinking, and women but deep down has a powerful sense of moral righteousness, Wicked Priest is in its own way another take on classic ninkyo only this time it’s temples acting like yakuza clans rather than actual gangsters with “wicked priest” Shinkai the ironic symbol of nobility. 

Set in early Taisho, the film opens with a prologue set five years before the main action in which Shinkai breaks up a fight between another violent monk, Ryotatsu (an incredibly gaunt Bunta Sugawara), and some yakuza he challenged while they were hassling a young man for supposedly messing with the wrong girl. Predictably, it’s Shinkai who ends up in trouble. Relieved of his duties, he’s exiled to another temple and sentenced to spend a whole year in isolation thinking about what he’s done. Five years later we can see that the conclusion he’s mostly come to is that the religious world is full of hypocrisy anyway and he might as well live his life to the full while he can.

Indeed, the opening scene sees him ironically reciting a sutra with his head between a woman’s legs and preparing to drink holy water from her belly button. The problem here seems to be one of inter-temple politics that sees Shinkai hassled by officious monk Gyotoku (Hosei Komatsu) who objects to Shinkai’s behaviour and to the leniency which is shown to him by head priest Donen (Kenjiro Ishiyama). Of course Gyotoku is later discovered to be the source of corruption, wanting to depose Donen and take control of the temple in part to facilitate a sex ring he’s running that involves live peep shows literally on temple grounds. Shinkai, meanwhile, has a particular dislike for abusers of women and especially for pimps eventually rescuing some of the women indentured by a local brothel and unfairly kept on after redeeming their contracts with bogus loans, and starting a women’s refuge in the temple where they can find “honest” work and eventually lead “normal lives” as farmers or waitresses free of the abuse and oppression they faced in the “hell” of indentured sex work.

Wandering around the town, he saves one young woman newly arrived in Tokyo from falling victim to a scam and being forced into sex work by getting her a waitressing job at a local restaurant. To keep her safe, he jokes with the cafe owner that he’s already slept with her which in the bro codes of the time makes her his woman and owing to his famously violent nature no one else is going to bother her. For what it’s worth, women young and old come to admire him greatly for his gallantry though he never abuses his position. All of his sex partners are at least of his own age and fully consenting even if he is not exactly faithful in love. 

Meanwhile there’s some minor commentary more familiar from post-war gangster films that sees the temple as a refuge for orphaned men. The fatherless Shinkai finds a beneficent paternal authority in Donen and is, he says, “reformed”, if living to a code that seems to be mostly his own but informed by a kind of moral righteousness not found in others at the temple. Having discovered that a wayward young man Shinkai is attempting to save from his life of petty crime exploiting women for his own gain is a son he never knew existed, Donen would have left the temple to fulfil his familial role but is prevented from doing so by the intrusion of temple politics. Unless undertaking specific vows, Buddhist priests are not necessarily expected to practice celibacy and are permitted to marry yet Donen’s father objected to his choice of bride and she left not wanting to disrupt his temple career. Shinkai entrusts the boy to Donen, talking him into accepting a new paternal authority as a means of returning him to the “proper” path while himself swearing that he will leave the temple in order to ensure justice is served against the true “wicked priest” Gyotoku. Directed by ninkyo specialist Kiyoshi Saeki, the film ends in an outburst of bloody violence as Shinkai takes revenge on institutional corruption but once again leaves its hero a lonely wanderer in an unjust world.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Dissolution Rites (解散式, Kinji Fukasaku, 1967)

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“We’re all legitimate businessmen now” as a former yakuza explains to a recently released foot soldier stepping out into a very different Japan in Kinji Fukasaku’s Dissolution Rites (解散式, Kaisan Shiki, AKA Ceremony of Disbanding). The funereal opening scenes feature the first in a series of dissolution rites as a man dressed in black reads from a scroll and explains that all the local yakuza clans will be disbanding because despite “working day and night for the benefit of the world and humanity in the spirit of democracy” times have changed and they find themselves unnecessary.

There at the beginning of that change, Sawaki (Koji Tsuruta) served eight years in prison for the murder of a rival gang boss to ensure his gang got hold of a local landfill site where they later built an oil complex. While he was inside, his boss died and his clan disbanded leaving him with nowhere to go but thankfully looked out for by an old friend, Shimamura, who has since become a construction magnate. On his arrival at Shimamura’s office, however, he’s ambushed in a suspected case of mistaken identity while the man driving him is killed. 

Shimamura (Fumio Watanabe) tells him he’s gone straight, but it soon becomes clear that even as yakuza forsake the streets for more organised crime they still behave like thugs using the same old tactics to get what they want. Shimamura is in cahoots with a corrupt local politician, Kawashima (Asao Uchida), and is determined to get access to another stretch of bombed out wasteland owned by an egalitarian doctor, Omachi, who refuses to sell because he’s set up a community there of marginalised people, including Sawaki’s former girlfriend Mie (Misako Watanabe), who work on his chicken farm. Meanwhile, Shimamura is targeted by rival “legitimate businessman”, Sakurada (Hosei Komatsu), who pulls a few dirty tricks of his own in an effort to cut Shimamura out of the picture.

Once again Tsuruta plays a man who is out of step with his times, partly because he’s been in prison but also in his fierce commitment to a now outdated code of gangsterdom. “The chivalry that we were taught was just a way for bosses to use their soldiers” Shimumura insists, “you’ll look foolish if you don’t get rid of it”, disingenuously casting his transformation into a legitimate businessman as a way of freeing himself from yakuza oppression. Sawaki turns down his offer to join the business because it seems a bit dodgy while intensely disappointed to discover another former colleague, Kubo (Kyosuke Machida), running a trafficking ring masquerading as a management studio for cabaret singers and strippers by tricking women with the offer of good jobs then getting the hooked on drugs and shipping to them to Okinawa to do sex work near the US bases.  

On his return, Sawaki is also stalked by the man whose arm he severed in killing the rival boss who turn out to be, like him, an old school gangster which is why he insists on his revenge only to find an unexpected kindred spirit as the two men find themselves each adrift in a world in which no one really cares about humanity and honour. Sakai (Tetsuro Tanba) chooses to walk a different path, conducting his disbandment ceremony in protest of yakuza corruption. Like many Tsuruta heroes, Sawaki also has the possibility of walking away and living a conventional family life as a husband and father having been forgiven by Mei but inevitably is pulled in a darker direction by the necessities of his code. The oil complex he helped to create is only a symbol of the duplicities of the post-war society allowing men like Shimamura to get rich while literally choking the life out of those like Mei whom they now want to kick out of her home to add insult to injury. 

There’s no one more tragic than a yakuza Sawaki admits, knowing there is no longer any place for him in an amoral gangster society while unable to simply leave it and enjoy a quiet life with the woman he loves. An indictment both of corporatised yakuza and the equally duplicitous practices of “legitimate” businesses and corrupt authorities, the film ends in another righteous assault filmed handheld with Fukasaku’s characteristically canted angles amid the chaos and confusion of a rapidly changing society. 

Here Because of You (君たちがいて僕がいた, Ryuichi Takamori, 1964)

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“The strength of our modern generation is that we never let anything get us down, and we’ll go after what we want without a moment’s hesitation.” The heroine of Ryuichi Takamori’s cheerful teen comedy Here Because of You (君たちがいて僕がいた, Kimitachi ga Ite Boku ga Ita) encapsulates a sense of post-war youth while trying to convince a sullen friend to join her in standing up to injustice when their teacher is smeared in the press, but he for his own reasons remains indignant and defeatist certain that nothing they do will make any difference. 

Essentially a vehicle for Toei teen stars Chiyoko Honma and Kazuo Funaki, the film is like many similarly themed youth movies of the time a progressive appeal to a new generation intent on rebelling against the social conservatism of their parents along with the injustice and inequality that accompanied it. The villain of the piece is the father of one of the students, Akira (Masaaki Sakai), who has become wealthy and is intent on throwing his weight around. Tanaka (Ken Sudo) wants his son to go to the best university in Japan and does not take kindly to the advice of his teacher, Mr. Yamabuki (Sonny Chiba), that Akira is just not up to it academically and putting so much pressure on him to achieve something which is almost certainly beyond him will only make the boy suffer. 

Akira is one of those kids with his head in the clouds who isn’t particularly good at anything. School is in general a torture for him and he himself knows that Tokyo University is not a possibility though he’s prepared to do his best if only his father would lower his expectations and let him apply to a college that is more within his capabilities. Both Tanaka and Mr. Yamabuki are however partially at fault when Akira is injured during a PE lesson that he was supposed to be excused from, Tanaka having told him not to participate in sports but to spend the lesson doing extra study instead. Mr. Yamabuki had thought that Akira had just not been applying himself, but a combination of a lack of physical agility due to being kept off PE and being encouraged to push himself further than he should lead to him falling from some climbing bars and spraining his ankle.

As might be expected, Tanaka is not happy and even asks for a second opinion on his son’s minor leg injury while deepening his grudge against Yamabuki. Tanaka also has a minor grudge against fellow student Hiroshi (Kazuo Funaki) who threw a bucket of frogs at him (to which he is allergic) for reasons Hiroshi doesn’t fully understand after hearing him kick off about Akira’s college prospects. It’s Hiroshi who fulfils the role of rebellious youth in the angry impulsivity that he often cannot explain. He’s been saying he doesn’t want to go to college but it’s because his older sister was forced to leave education during in middle school because of the family’s poverty and has become a geisha in order to pay for his tuition. Yamabuki and Hiroshi’s sister Yukiko (Junko Miyazono) develop a fondness for each other while discussing Hiroshi’s education, and it’s this suggestion of there being some impropriety in a schoolteacher dating a geisha that Tanaka takes to papers in effort to get Yamabuki fired. 

Meanwhile, Hiroshi’s cheerful classmate Chieko (Chiyoko Honma) has also developed a crush of Yamabuki. Claiming that she intends to marry him, she goes so far as to turn up at his house and insist on doing his laundry but he quite reasonably tells her that as an adult man his wife would have to be an adult woman. Surprisingly, she gets over it quite quickly and realises that Hiroshi is a much better match for her instead, but nevertheless springs into action when Yamabuki is unfairly smeared in the press. Even she is originally scandalised by the suggestion that her long widowed mother (Mieko Takamine) may have feelings for a local doctor (Shuji Sano), but soon comes round to the idea that there’s nothing wrong with it if she has just as there’s no problem with a teacher dating a geisha. She claims she would be more offended if each of them were forced to deny their feelings for each other because of social propriety and is intensely annoyed by the network of local corruption she uncovers in investigating the origins of the false news report which also suggests Yamabuki may have been inappropriately carrying on with a student, presumably herself. 

As chairman of the parent teacher association, Tanaka tries to railroad the headmaster into firing Yamabuki by holding a kangaroo court at which Yamabuki is prevented from speaking in his own defence all while his character is assassinated. But the kids, who previously witnessed a drunken Tanaka harassing Yukiko, aren’t having any of it and abandon their lessons to surround the meeting vowing that they’ll go on hunger strike if they aren’t listened to which won’t look very good in the national papers. What they bring about is a kind of democratic revolution in which the corrupt authority of Tanaka is deposed in favour of the more evenhanded chairpersonship of Chieko’s grandmother who turns out to be the oldest person in the room at 63. The children will not be ordered around or told what to think and will stand up to injustice where they find it, which is very bad news for those like Tanaka who are used to getting their way because of their privilege and social status. It’s all very wholesome and innocent, perfectly in keeping with the zeitgeist while remaining cheerful and upbeat even with Hiroshi’s continued brooding until Chieko finally manages to win him over. A charming teen musical adventure with a handful of songs performed by its idol stars, the film’s infectious energy is difficult to beat.