Tag: Hideto Kagawa

Big Time Gambling Boss (博奕打ち 総長賭博, Kosaku Yamashita, 1968)

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A Shakespearean tragedy of blood and honour, Kosaku Yamashita’s Big Time Gambling Boss (博奕打ち 総長賭博, Bakuchiuci: Socho Tobaku) discovers only fatalism and futility in the nobility of the yakuza code. The tragedy is that at any moment anyone could make a free choice to walk away, to abandon these arbitrary notions that convince them they must kill their friends and let their enemies go free, but they don’t because spiritually they cannot. Abandoning the yakuza code would in its own way a kind of death and mentally unsurvivable. 

There is however a greater tragedy in play. The film opens in the spring of 1934 with a villain remarking that it’s absurd to restrict oneself to one’s home terrified while a sword and the Japanese flag appear behind him. The catalyst for all this drama is Japan’s imperialist expansion. Yakuza fixer Senba (Nobuo Kaneko) and the shady Kawashima have hatched a plan to get all the yakuza clans to unite in a “patriotic” mission to traffic drugs to the frontlines looting as they go. Noble boss of the Tenryu Awakawa refuses, reminding them he’s just a simple gambling man and has no desire to get involved with politics before collapsing with a stroke. With Awakara alive but bedridden and no longer able to communicate effectively, the Tenryu decide to nominate a successor. The ideal candidate, Nakai (Koji Tsuruta), declines the offer on the grounds that he is a transplant from another gang in Osaka and thinks it would be inappropriate for an outsider to lead the clan. He proposes that his sworn brother, Matsuda (Tomisaburo Wakayama), should be appointed, though he is currently surviving a prison sentence so a caretaker should serve in his stead until his release. Most think this sensible though the proposed caretaker, Ishido (Hiroshi Nawa), also declines given the rules of seniority despite the fact that he is Awakawa’s son-in-law and so dynastic succession would also seem permissible. 

It’s during all of this finagling that Senba begins manipulating events to his advantage, gently manoeuvring the other lieutenants towards accepting Ishido as the new boss while he has no idea he’s being used as a pawn in Senba’s nefarious nationalist plotting. When Matsuda is released early, the entire situation kicks into overdrive in his outrage that the codes of rank have not been respected and that a man who is his inferior now sits at the head of the clan in a place he think’s rightfully Nakai’s but in light of his honourable refusal no one’s but his own. Even Matsuda later recognises his hot-headed recklessness in directly challenging Ishido over his decision to accept, insisting that the proper thing to do in his position would have been to persuade Nakai to take the job. Meanwhile, his own righthand man who’d been slumming it as a mere labourer in his absence, is dragged into intrigue in foolishly defending his honour by recklessly attacking Ishido’s men incorrectly believing they had provoked another gang’s attack on Matsuda little knowing it was all part of Senba’s plot. 

Nationalist trappings aside, Senba’s villainy is obvious from the moment he tells Nakai he thinks Matsuda was foolish for going to prison on the clan’s behalf and that he should have just found a scapegoat and put the blame on them, signalling himself a member of the new amoral yakuza who does not believe in giri and has no ninjo. Nakai rather is the opposite, as his old boss confirms in praising him for his correct decision to turn down the succession as it would not be right for him to accept as one who did not originate in their gang. Matsuda meanwhile pays too much attention to the letter of the code and not its spirit, obsessed with Ishido’s transgression and unable to let the matter drop to live a quiet life even as Nakai tries to convince him that the decision has been ratified by the lieutenants and the boss and so he must obey it. In a poignant moment, Nakai brings out the cup they used to seal their friendship and tells him that he will choose the clan, breaking the cup if Matsuda does not agree to accept a minimal degree of humiliation in returning with the intention of lying low and subtly reminding him that if he does not Matsuda will be placing a heavy burden on him that he may be forced to inflict lethal violence on his best friend and in fact brother-in-law. Realising the gravity of the situation, Matsuda immediately backs down, but events are now in motion that neither of them are capable of stopping. 

Of course, they could walk away but they don’t. Nakai offers the opportunity to Matsuda’s remorseful foot soldier Oto, telling him to leave the clan and take the woman he loves far away to live a peaceful life but of course he can’t because of his debt of loyalty to Matsuda. They are all trapped by the code which they follow and the villains ignore, laughing at them all the way. Then again, that’s what men like Nakai are for, born to set things right even if it comes at great personal cost. Even he finally snarls that he’s merely a murderer, rejecting any sense of honour in his actions while throwing a sword at the symbol of the system which has defined his life and submitting himself to the automatic operation of law of the state as a kind of martyr for system in which he may no longer believe. 

Trailer (English subtitles)

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.