Tag: Keishiro Kojima

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 (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)

The Insatiable (現代ポルノ伝 先天性淫婦, Norifumi Suzuki, 1971)

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History repeats itself in Norifumi Suzuki’s erotic drama The Insatiable (現代ポルノ伝 先天性淫婦, Gendai Porno Den: Sentensei Inpu). The film’s Japanese title, Modern Porno Tale: Inherited Sex Mania, better hints at its true intentions in essentially repurposing a sense of class anxiety and moral conservatism as familiar from classic melodrama to fit Toei’s line of erotically charged movies but eventually offers little judgement of the heroine’s surrender to her fate (after gaining her revenge) in putting on her mother’s kimono to follow the path set down for her.

That was not, however, what Yuki’s (Reiko Ike) mother (Yoko Mihara) originally wanted. Hoping to save her from the life of a bar hostess with terrible taste in men, she sent her to a religious boarding school in Tokyo which has given her a toxic sense of shame in her sexuality. Sharing a bed with a classmate, she relates her fear and horror of sleeping with men which she assumes she is expected to do in time, though goes on to explore herself sexually with the other girl who feels much the same despite the warning from their lesson books that looking at another woman with desire is no different from adultery. 

Nevertheless, on returning to her mother’s home in Kyoto Yuki is later raped by her mother’s latest boyfriend who is for some reason a bowling enthusiast. His sensibility is emblematic of that of most men in the film who see Yuki merely as an object to be conquered. Following this violation, Yuki quits school and spends all her time in clubs in Shibuya unable to reconcile herself with her sexuality and living as good time girl if resenting herself when others see her as a sex worker. Sucked into the world of sleazy clubs, she becomes a kind of pass around for wealthy men while also cared for by a besotted yakuza who has been quite literally emasculated by his love for her, leaving Yuki unable to fully return his affections because he can no longer satisfy her sexually.

Eventually she meets handsome architect Yoichiro (Hiroshi Miyauchi) with whom she falls in a more wholesome love, but continues to believe that she cannot really be with him because of her sordid past. She then realises that not only does he have unfinished business with a French woman he met while studying abroad (Sandra Julien), but that his father, Matsumura (Tatsuo Endo), is the seedy loanshark who’s been trying to get his hands on her through middleman Akihito (Fumio Watanabe) who is connected with her mother’s new partner Tomoguchi, and also Yoichiro’s brother-in-law.

Akihito is really the villain of the piece, though mostly for his attempt to wage class warfare by taking over Matsumura’s business. His wife, Ayano (Miwako Onaya), has turned away from him knowing that her father brought him into the family for his ruthlessness while exclaiming that she hates self-made men. In much the same way that Yuki was attempting to escape her mother’s legacy, Akihito is also trying to overcome his impoverished background to catapult himself into the upper classes though Matsumura himself appears to have earned his wealth in dubious ways. In any case, he rejects Yoichiro’s decision to marry Yuki not only because he wants her himself but because he claims he wants to find a more appropriate wife for his son presumably as he found Ayano a husband who would benefit himself. 

In any case, Yuki is drugged and abused much like her mother turned into a plaything for men. Yuki resents her only momentarily for her role in her rape and sickening attempt to placate her boyfriend after having stood up for Yuki and confronted him about his betrayal. The two women later reconcile and find solidarity in their maternal relationship even if her mother can never escape the pattern of behaviour that keeps her dependent on bad men which is something Yuki may have overcome in the film’s closing moments as she in turn, wearing her mother’s kimono, opens a bar under her own name living as an independent woman. 

To get her revenge, she manipulated the men around her by using her sexuality against them only to be backed into a corner by Akihito’s chilling claim that she was now his slave. Her salvation at the hands of another man who damns himself in her defence and the defence of their love as something pure despite having cruelly rejected Yuki as a “whore” perhaps undercuts the message but also in the film’s eyes redeems her from her wandering life as an insatiable sex addict now free of her sense of shame and the lingering trauma of her rape. In this patriarchal and classist society, all men are animals driven only by destructive influences, while Yuki is even able to bond with Yoichiro’s French former lover with whom she also shares a sexual encounter. Suzuki films with characteristically romantic imagery and a wry sense of humour but nevertheless allows his heroine to find her way out of a world of beasts while refusing to shame her even as she embraces her mother’s legacy. 

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

Bohachi Bushido: Code of the Forgotten Eight (ポルノ時代劇 忘八武士道, Teruo Ishii, 1973)

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A nihilistic ronin falls into the hellish trap of the Yoshiwara in Teruo Ishii’s dazzlingly psychedelic period drama, Bohachi Bushido (ポルノ時代劇 忘八武士道, Porno Jidaigeki: Bohachi Bushido). Adapted from a manga short by Kazuo Koike, the film once again tackles Edo era corruption as a brothel owner with a special connection to the shogun attempts to wipe out the competition presented by an enterprising merchant class only to find himself hoist by his own petard.

Ishii signals his intentions early on with the artfully staged opening scequence in which wandering ronin Shino (Tetsuro Tanba) is attacked on a bridge at dusk. As he turns to slash at an opponent, the blood splatter morphs into the film’s title while the clang of swords gives off little blue sparks that turn into the listings for the cast and crew. By the time the title sequence has concluded, night has descended on the bridge and Shino finds himself engulfed in darkness. “To die is hell, but to live is also hell” he exclaims as he jumps into the water below, hoping to be free of his empty life of killing. 

Unfortunately, he is rescued and brought to the Yoshiwara where they try to persuade him to join the Bohachi clan so called because to do so you must abandon all eight human virtues. The Bohachi’s main line of work is the sexual torture of women until they become docile dolls for their brothel. Shino describes them as “revolting” but then adds “just like me” and agrees to join anyway only to earn their mistrust when he refuses to play along with their games, buying but not sleeping with a woman brought in over a debt. Though Shirakubi, the guy who recruited him, tries to kick Shino out and calls the police on him for good measure, the big boss, Shirobe (Tatsuo Endo), decides he’ll take him in for use as an attack dog taking down anyone who interferes with business be they lords or officials. 

The irony is that the nihilistic Shiro enthusiastically takes to his work because he dislikes the debauchery of the Edo-era society even while working for the “legitimate” brothel owner who is at least “licensed” to exploit women for financial gain. What Shirobe resents is the rise of quasi-brothels in the various teahouses that are obviously selling more than just tea but continue to undercut his business by selling women even cheaper than he does. He also feels betrayed by the various samurai lords who choose to visit the teahouses over his own establishment and therefore seeks to have them frightened into submission by ordering Shino to kill any man found with one of the tea house sex workers. Later he even declares a kind of sex worker amnesty promising to pay five ryo for any of the teahouse women brought to him, no matter by who, and then joking that he’s actually killing two birds with one stone by getting his hands on a high quantity of new stock for a very low price. 

Shino refuses to sleep with the women and is most offended when his male assistant is killed in an attack by the rival brothel owners yet the team of warrior women sent to protect him did nothing to help because their orders were only to protect Shino and Shirobe’s orders must be followed to the letter on the pain of death. He seems to know he’s living on borrowed time and Shirobe probably intends to finish him off once he’s finished his mission of removing all opposition and restoring Shirobe’s power to manipulate the shogun but barely does anything to resist until faced with the rather ironic punishment of being given opium and then forced to participate in a never-ending orgy intended to result in his death in an extraordinary psychedelic sequence from Ishii . 

Of course, what they didn’t reckon on was Shino’s ironic desire to live or at least not to be beaten in which he actively begins stabbing himself to overcome withdrawal symptoms and carry on fighting even when they try to ram him with a giant spear cart. Ears are cut off, flying across the screen followed by arms and then heads. Ishii lends a poetic sheen to the closing moments as Shino is caught in a hero pose alone in the snow but still standing, if barely, and freed at least from one kind of hell if not from many others.