Tag: Kinji Nakamura

The Fixer (日本の黒幕, Yasuo Furuhata, 1979)

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Japan was rocked by scandal in 1976 when it came to light that American aviation firm Lockheed had paid the office of then Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka three million dollars funnelled through right-wing fixer Yoshio Kodama to ensure that Japanese airlines such as ANA purchased Lockheed Lockheed L-1011 TriStar passenger jets rather than the McDonnell Douglas DC-10. The disturbing revelations deepened a sense of mistrust in the government which was shown to be inherently corrupt and in constant collusion with nationalist activists and yakuza.

This might be why the figure of the political mastermind hangs heavy over the Japanese paranoia cinema of the 1970s. The Fixer (日本の黒幕 Nihon no Fixer), however, rather ironically began as a vehicle for director Nagisa Oshima. At that time, Toei was struggling as its run of jitsuroku movies began to run out of steam. Producer Goro Kusakabe wanted to make a film about Kodama, who’d been alluded to in the Japanese Godfather series, and thought that getting Oshima to do it would take Toei in a new artistic direction, moving them away from the studio model by bringing in outside auteurist talent. But the problem with that was that an artist like Oshima did not want to work with a typical studio production model and, at the end of the day, what Toei wanted was a commercial film. It also has to be said that as a studio Toei tended to lean towards the right, and the film that was finally produced, directed by action drama specialist Yasuo Furuhata using a script by Koji Takada which Oshima had described as “boring”, was much more sympathetic towards its subject than Oshima would likely have been.

Like the Japanese Godfather, series it’s essentially a Greek tragedy retold as yakuza movie in which Kodama is brought low by a series of betrayals that prevent him realising his dream of an ideal Japan, which in effect means undoing democracy to restore the pre-war militarist regime. The true source of the corruption is then shifted to the prime minister, Hirayama (Ryunosuke Kaneda), a stand-in for Tanaka, who is brought to power by Yamaoka (Shin Saburi), a thinly veiled Kodama, but later betrays him for a shot at a political comeback following a bribery scandal during which Yamaoka is left out to dry. Yamaoka casts himself as the true patriot, and Hirayama as the greedy opportunist who only cares about his own wealth and status. 

Yamaoka’s vision of himself is eventually undercut by a former ally who accuses him of being deluded by his own lust for power, placing a pistol on the table in front of him and suggesting he do the honourable thing. Yamaoka, however, does not want to do that and gives a last speech to his young men explaining that silence is his way of fighting back and that he’ll be vindicated in the end, which he eventually is when Hirayama is arrested. The drama is played out in part by the internal conflict within a young man with a bad leg who first tries to assassinate Yamaoka but is taken in by him and trained up as a potential successor only to be manipulated by his daughter who hands him the dagger Hirayama had returned to Yamaoka when he betrayed him and asks whether he wants to kill a woman or the “real villain”, by which she means Yamaoka but the boy has a different target in mind.

On the other hand, Yamaoka is exposed as having some very weird and cult-like ideas such as breeding a child that has his completely purified blood in his veins by encouraging a relationship between his legitimate daughter and a young man he brought back from China she has no idea is her half-brother born to a Chinese woman Yamaoka murdered to escape Manchuria. Brief mentions are made of Yamaoka’s Manchurian exploits though painted in a more heroic fashion that Kodama’s reality, as in a late speech about how “terrorism” has lost its meaning as some of the young men joining Yamaoka’s militia meditate on his pre-war activities in which he belonged to an organisation that assassinated politicians who advocated for peaceful coexistence with Korea and China. 

That the young assassin, Ikko (Tsutomu Kariba), eventually decides to knife Hirayama as the “real” villain, suggests that the youth of Japan has chosen Yamaoka rather than simply being sick of the political corruption he in effect represents even as others quickly, and perhaps uncritically, leap to his defence buying his claims of having been targeted due to “internal infighting”. While those around him are driven towards their deaths, Yamaoka survives muttering that it’s all for Japan even while finding himself cut loose as rival yakuza factions vie over territory and political influence. Lighting candles at his altar, it’s almost as if these men are human sacrifices designed to bring about his vision of a “better” Japan and chillingly it seems he has no shortage of willing victims.

Trailer (no subtitles)

Kyu-chan, Draw Your Sword (九ちゃん刀を抜いて, Masahiro Makino, 1963)

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Kyu Sakamoto was a hugely popular singing star in the 1960s best known internationally for the smash hit Ue wo Muite Aruko (Sukiyaki) which, somewhat incongruously, features in this jidaigeki comedy, Kyu-chan Draw Your Sword (九ちゃん刀を抜いて, Kyu-chan Katana wo Nuite), directed by one of the masters of the samurai movie, Masahiro Makino. Adapted from the novel by Ippei Okamoto, the film is essentially a vehicle for Sakamoto as indicated by the inclusion of his name in the title even though he plays a character called “Sangoro”.

The joke is that Sangoro is incredibly lazy and can hardly lift his head off the pillow while his ageing parents are struggling to feed themselves. If they don’t find a way to get him working soon, they’ll all starve to death but Sangoro seems incapable of understanding. The parents try to think up various jobs he could do without having to exert himself and eventually come up with Kyokaku, or “town knight”, a man about town of the Edo era somewhere between street tough and vigilante. In fact he even ends up meeting some legendary characters such as Banzuiin Chobe (Eitaro Shindo) who became a kind of Robin Hood figure in later literature standing up for the common man against the abuses of the samurai class. 

When he goes off to the city to become a Kyokaku because he figures starving to death would be too much effort, Sangoro’s father cautions him not to be too lazy to draw his sword even though it’s rusty and unlikely to do much damage. Sengoro does, however, take his ambition seriously and is keen to make a name for himself in Edo which he first does by becoming the blood brother of Gonbei (Chiyonosuke Azuma), one of Banzuiin’s men. Though his clumsy attempts to fight him don’t bode well for Sangoro’s career, Gonbei takes him on precisely because he’s fun to have around even if he is a bit useless and sometimes you need guys like that too. Introducing him to area’s top courtesan Takamado (Yoko Minamida), they hope to set the cat among the pigeons with a local gang that’s been harassing them led by the irritating Mizuno (Fumitake Omura) and Shirogoro (Koshiro Harada).

Though the film may be, in a way, a sort of satire poking fun at aimless post-war youth that lacks ambition in comparison to their parents’ generation who bore the brunt of wartime privation. Naive and childish, Sangoro is a well-meaning bumbler, but Takamado unexpectedly likes him precisely for these qualities. She hates men like Mizuno who are obsessed with proving their masculinity and finds it refreshing that Sangoro is not afraid to show his weakness. Just like Gonbei, she appreciates him not for his command of the sword or imposing air of authority, but simply because he’s an uncomplicated good person and fun to be around.

Mizuno and Shigoro are, by contrast, cruel and abusive Tokugawa vassals, who, it’s implied, have a habit of murdering sex workers during their New Year endurance tests. Sangoro is keen to save a young woman, Omitsu (Yumiko Kokonoe), after her father did him a favour and explained he needed 25 ryo to buy back her contract after she agreed to sacrifice herself to get the money for her mother’s medical treatment. Which is to say, she’s the opposite of Sangoro. It turns out that Takamado has a sad story of her own staged by Makino using kabuki-esque sets and effects to dramatise her flashback as she explains her samurai father took his own life after a prisoner he was watching disappeared. Though in another film this might lead to a violent confrontation challenging the evil samurai, in this version a bizarre misundersanding is revealed to have caused the death of Takamado’s father leading to another act of levelling as the supposed villain agrees to give them his secret recipe for pickles with an exclusive license to manufacture it for three years before it’s essentially made open source for the good of the people. Thus Sangoro essentially becomes a shopkeeper and releases both Omitsu and Takamado from their position as indentured sex workers, restoring both their birthright and their freedom basically by being nice and the right kind of righteous while Mizuno and Shigoro just end up embarrassed when all their posturing and obsession with their samurai status appears to mean little in a world in which the merchant has indeed become king.

Terrifying Girls’ High School: Women’s Violent Classroom (恐怖女子高校　女暴力教室, Norifumi Suzuki, 1972)

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“Society fucking sucks” according to the delinquent teens at the centre of Terrifying Girls’ High School: Women’s Violent Classroom (恐怖女子高校　女暴力教室, Kyofu joshikoko: Onna boryoku kyoshitsu). The first of four in a Toei pinky violence series, the film presents a feminine rebellion against the societal tenets of womanhood, if doing so largely within the realms of male fantasy, but nevertheless kicks back against the corruption and hypocrisy of the older generation otherwise hellbent on controlling them.

Seiko Girls’ High School is, we’re told, both a private institution and a “trash bin” established to handle the “trash” transferred from “normal” schools. Nevertheless, the sign which hangs outside proclaims conservative values playing on the “good wife, wise mother” truism of traditional femininity in insisting the girls must become wise wives and kind mothers. Needless to say, most of the young women are quite uninterested in becoming any such thing. The unruliness of the school is signalled in the opening sequence as an older male teacher gives a boring lesson about curves while the girls all ignore him. Some are putting on makeup, others are eating or talking amongst themselves. After all, what’s the point of their education if the expectation is they’ll all become obedient housewives dependent on their husbands for support and allowed little in the way of free thought or interest?

A teacher later ironically suggests that the school’s reputation will later reflect badly on them when it comes to getting jobs or getting married only for one of the girls to snap back no one here is going to university and their reputations are all ruined anyway. It might be tempting to assume the problem is mostly generational, but the arrival of a young male teacher who has himself been transferred for violent conduct suggests a kind of backlash to the increasing freedoms of the contemporary society. He tells the girls that he won’t be soft on enforcing his three rules for education which are surprisingly gentle, being friendship, companionship, and harmony, but they simply laugh at him. Not only do they pelt the new teacher with pants and condoms but insist that it they who make the rules here and he will have to follow them. 

Then again there don’t seem to be any rules of any sort other than the absurdity of social hierarchy as they girls square off in various factions vying for dominance of the school, The implication is that gang leader Michiko (Miki Sugimoto) turned rebellious after being raped by strangers on her way home and witnessing her father, a politician, actively cover it up while she continues to feel shamed by her family. Another girl, Yoko (Natsuko Miura), otherwise not involved in the school violence, is working as a hostess to support herself as an orphan living with her grandmother but is lusted after by lecherous teacher who eventually forces her into a sexual relationship and then drops her when she becomes pregnant despite giving the implication he would marry her. Takeo tries to force her to have an abortion though she is determined to have the child despite the scandal causing him to hire another delinquent faction to beat her into a miscarriage. When she takes her own life, the school is most concerned about its reputation despite having done nothing when it was discovered the headmistress’ own daughter, the leader of the other gang, was also engaging in sex work. 

Takeo is also the target of a revenge plot at the hands of mysterious transfer student Yuki who avoids taking any categorical side until pulled into the conflict because of her friendship with Yoko and the growing sense of solidarity between the young women oppressed by a corrupt social system that uses shame to control them. “The rapists win in our society,” one sighs in an oddly contemporary moment. To celebrate their liberation, they burn their sailor suits having stripped and bound their teachers before posing before a sign announcing that they have enacted justice on the “three pigs” who financially exploited them through abusing the educational system. Full of ironic details such as the girls introducing themselves through the classic gambler’s pose, Suzuki films with a punkish irony quite clearly fetishising female violence yet also poking fun at lecherous middle-aged men, youthful hard cases, and matronly older women while in the end handing agency back to the girls even if society continues to suck. 

The Fort of Death (五人の賞金稼ぎ, Eiichi Kudo, 1969)

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Shikoro Ichibei (Tomisaburo Wakayama) returns yet this time seemingly on the opposite side in the second in the Bounty Hunter series, The Fort of Death (五人の賞金稼ぎ, Gonin no Shokin Kasegi) this time directed by Eiichi Kudo. If the first film had been an Edo-era take on James Bond, the second is very much Spaghetti Western and feudal tragedy as Ichibei finds himself coming to, if not quite the rescue of the oppressed farmers, then at least moral support in taking stand against corrupt and self-interested lords.

This might be surprising in that in the first film Ichibei had been a shogunate spy and seemingly close friend of the man himself, yet this time around he’s working as a doctor while taking bounty hunter jobs to earn extra money to support the poor people who come to him for help. Like a true western hero, he has a small posse which includes the ninja lady, Kagero (Tomoko Mayama), from the first film only she’s being played by the actress who previously starred as his other love interest. In any case, he’s approached by a young man from a small village which is making a last-ditch appeal to the local lord to lower their tax burdens so they don’t all starve, though so far the lord’s response has been to add additional taxes and kill people for not paying them. 

On his arrival, Ichibei soon realises that the man who recommended him was actually the leader of the government forces during a previous peasant uprising at which Ichibei had also tried to help the farmers. In that case, Bessho (Shin Tokudaiji) had won, but it didn’t do him any good. His clan was dissolved and he became a wanderer, taken in by the village and now indebted to them, hoping Ichibei can help but fully aware of the brutality with which such challenges to the feudal order are put down. 

The lord later suggests it’s not really his fault. He has to curry favour with Edo to protect the domain, which is why he agreed to participate in a construction project that led him to confiscate all of his farmers’ rice and wheat. But then it’s also true that he is vain, and cruel. On realising the village has hired a man like Ichibei, some of the retainers suggest reopening negotiations but others complain that they must now crush the farmers or face ruin themselves while trying to ensure the strife in their domain does not come to the attention of the government in Edo. 

Part of their problem is that Ichibei simply has better technology in the form of gatling guns. Tying into the western themes, Ichibei is well versed in the use of firearms, while the samurai are mostly reliant on traditional weaponry such as arrows and swords. The lord later insists on using some canons, but is oblivious to the risk as the shogun has banned the use of gunpowder and using them may end up bringing him to his attention and thereby landing him in a lot of possible fatal trouble. 

In any case, it’s the villagers who suffer. Ichibei encounters a woman who has lost her mind, refusing to give up her baby who has died of malnutrition while her husband was executed for non payment of taxes. Meanwhile, some of the other ronin they hired attempt to rape a villager, and a young couple are prevented from marrying because the headman is worried that it would send the wrong message in a time so much strife. Then again, a woman basically attempts to rape Ichibei, descending on him while he’s still asleep which otherwise leads into a fairly comic sequence in which Ichibei must fight of a bunch of ninjas intent on stealing the gatling gun while dressed only his underwear.

Darkly comic it may be, but also surprisingly violent with a ninja at one point using a dead body as a Molotov cocktail not to mention the severed heads and limbs of the battle scenes. Ichibei is fully aware that the battle is a forlorn hope, but also that the villagers have no choice and perhaps this is better for them than simply accepting their fate and starving to death. Even so, he reserves his final words for the Edo inspector who arrives only when the battle is done to survey the scene, berating him that he ought to know what happened here from looking at the battlefield and deducing that this domain has not been run particularly well. It’s a tragedy of feudalism that provokes a tearful rage from the compassionate bounty hunter trying his best to heal the sickness in his society, though perhaps like the patient who visits him with a venereal complaint concluding the best solution is to cut it right off.

Roaring Fire (吼えろ鉄拳, Norifumi Suzuki, 1981)

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If Chiba’s karate films and the Sister Streetfighter series had been influenced by Shaw Brother’s kung fu films, Roaring Fire (吼えろ鉄拳, Hoero Tekken) is an homage to contemporary action and in some senses anticipates Jackie Chan and heroic bloodshed though in other ways harking back to the classic serial with its diamond-themed MacGuffin. A vehicle for rising action star Hiroyuki Sanada, the film reflects a new internationalist Japan but also confronts the toxic legacy of the feudal past in the fall of a once noble house.

Joji (Hiroyuki Sanada) has spent his entire life on a ranch in Texas only to discover from a deathbed confession by the man that he thought was his father that he had been kidnapped as an infant and is actually the son of the wealthy Hinohara family. But on travelling there, he immediately finds himself in the middle of a conspiracy. His twin brother Toru has gone missing after going to London to study ophthalmology in order to cure his sister Chihiro’s (Etsuko Shihomi) eye condition. Though his uncle, Ikki (Mikio Narita), welcomes him with open arms, a weird ventriloquist act by a man called Mr. Magic (Shinichi Chiba) that he’s taken to see suggests that the plane crash his parents died in may not have been an accident and his uncle killed them to take over the family business. 

Ikki is mixed up in the drugs trade with Hong Kong Triads and in keeping with Suzuki’s other films, we once again have a new solution to smuggling in hiding drugs in underripe banana skins. Lured to Ikki’s underground lair which has a large photo of Hitler on the wall and other Nazi memorabilia scattered around, Joji is given the “join us or die” speech, but ultimately manages to escape with some help from Abdullah the Butcher who is working as some kind of bodyguard but apparently takes a liking to Joji and declares they will be the best of friends forever after their initial fight. In any case, we soon realise that Ikki’s purpose in life is feudal revenge in that his mother was a geisha who died young because of her poverty and the nature of her work while staring at the Hinohiras’ giant mansion though his father apparently took no responsibility for him until after his mother died. His only goal in life is to take over the estate and otherwise destroy the rest of the family that never fully accepted him. 

Of course, Joji is in his way, but Joji doesn’t really want this legacy either and only wants to save his sister who turns out to be a kung fu ace despite her blindness but is otherwise unable to escape. In his final confrontation with Ikki, he reclaims the name of the man who raised him, Hibiki, and rejects that of Hinohara as if symbolically refusing his feudal inheritance. Mr Magic, really an Interpol agent, makes an executive decision to let him go which is also a representative authority figure setting him, and the younger generation, free from the feudal legacy to live a more international life. 

Nevertheless, Suzuki fills the film with a series of high-impact action sequences and extreme stunt work such as a crazy bus chase through Hong Kong which predates that in Police Story by a few years. The shuttles back and forth between Hong Kong and Japan, but it’s clear here that Ikki and his weird Nazi cohorts are the villains rather than the Hong Kong gangsters who really just exist and otherwise only factor into the story because of their desire for Queen of Sheba diamond that Joji’s birth father hid before he died so Ikki wouldn’t get his hands on it. A possibly poor taste allusion to the holocaust aside, Suzuki sticks to the plucky teen adventure format in which Joji gets into fights with the local guys and is quickly befriended by Chihiro’s teenage friends who all hang out at the mansion, rather than opt for a gloomy sense of paranoia and conspiracy even as Joji finds himself at the centre of a Hamlet-esque plot in which his uncle has usurped the throne and he must return to set it right. Yet rather than restoring the existing order, Joji effectively resets it by ending the family’s influence and then moving on into a freer existence shorn of filial responsibilities. 

Trailer (no subtitles)

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)

Ninja’s Mark (忍びの卍, Norifumi Suzuki, 1968)

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Many have tried to end the Tokugawa line. Few have done so by covering a courtesan’s legs in fish scales to put the Shogun off his stride. Based on a book by Futaro Yamada, Norifumi Suzuki’s Ninja’s Mark (忍びの卍, Shinobi no Manji) is at heart a romantic tale in which love is “part of the game” but also apparently the one trick a ninja can’t escape. Perhaps that’s why Shogun Iemitsu at the comparatively late age of 30 has failed to produce an heir with any of the beautiful yet emotionally distant courtesans of the inner palace many of whom also seem to be ninjas, therefore provoking a constitutional crisis.

Aside from that, it seems the ninja plot is a kind of revenge against the Tokugawa carried out by the last remnants of a house that was dissolved by the Toyotomi. There are in fact three ninja clans all clustering around the palace, Iga, Koga, and Negoro, each of whom have different kinds of skills. Technically, some of them are in the employ of the Shogun’s disinherited younger brother Tadanaga (Shingo Yamashiro), but others of them are working strictly for themselves and their revenge. In any case, their plan is to prevent Iemitsu from fathering an heir by putting him off sex essentially by making it freaky (in a bad way). Thus one of the ninjas uses his ability to transform objects so that the courtesan’s legs are covered in fish scales. Another plan sees a ninja body swap with one of the women so that Iemitsu’s sperm ends up inside him where it obviously has nowhere to go. Meanwhile others hatch a plan to steal some of Tadanaga’s seed to use on the women in the inner palace to cover up Iemitsu’s potential infertility seeing as it is after just as good being of the Tokugawa line. 

This particular ruse is suggested by Toma (Isao Natsuyagi), the disenfranchised former member of the Yagyu school turned ninja ronin they bring in to solve the problem. He quickly homes in on Kageroi (Hiroko Sakuramachi), a female ninja, as the villainess whose special power is poisoning men with love and desire by means of the spider lily plant. But as Toma points out to her, she is also a prisoner of her skill in that if she were to fall in love she would inevitably kill her lover. Of course, he survives her first attempt to kill him, leading her to fall in love with Toma and become conflicted in her mission while he plays on her emotions to escape but eventually realises they may be more genuine than he first realised. 

In this, Suzuki brings some of his trademark romanticism particularly in the colourful art nouveau aesthetics and frequent use of rose imagery. Though the film is clearly designed to lean into the erotic with frequent use of nudity and salacious scenes including a brief moment of lesbian seduction, it eventually heads towards romantic tragedy in which the debauched and nihilistic Toma and the wronged Kageroi discover a love made impossible by their ninja code and the times in which they live. Having been ordered to kill her, Toma declares that he will marry Kageroi in the next life and returns to her the Buddhist Manji that is the “ninja mark” of the title. 

Nevertheless, the dialogue is often suggestive as in Kageroi’s curse that Toma’s “sword” will rot, while it’s also Toma’s “sword” that alerts him to the danger she presents. Toma too claims to derive his ninja powers from his “sword” having apparently concentrated them by repressing his sexual desire and swearing off women. He says that he seals all his “distracting” thoughts into a virgin, closing off all her senses and placing her into a coma until he breaks the spell. Even so, he admits that without his “sword” he is just a man, and as a man claims to love Kageroi, but as long as he has his “sword”, and she her “lily”, their love is impossible. 

But this repressed love seems to pose less threat to the social order than the lack of it in Iemitsu who is bored with his courtesans and cannot conceive an heir. Constitutional crisis is averted only through a little ninja trickery and a convenient ruse to overcome Iemitsu’s infertility so that in time he produces five sons and a daughter, which honestly seems like it might just present another set of problems in about 30 years’ time. Like similarly themed ninja pictures, Suzuki makes good use of surrealist imagery and colour play alongside the kind of onscreen text later used in jitsuroku yakuza films to name each of the ninja’s key skills and which clan they belong to. What he always returns to, however, is the sense of romantic tragedy in a world seemingly poisoned by ambition in which love itself is rendered an impossibility. 

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

Eleven Samurai (十一人の侍, Eiichi Kudo, 1967)

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“If no one denounces the absurdity of this world, then our descendants will keep suffering,” a soon-to-be ronin insists in Eiichi Kudo’s revengers tragedy, Eleven Samurai (十一人の侍, Juichinin no Samurai). It seems clear from the outset that their actions will have little effect no matter whether they succeed or fail because the enemy is feudalism which may be approaching the end of its life but is definitely not dead yet. They can at least attempt to avenge their clan even if they can’t save it while refusing to let an entitled, selfish lord get away doing whatever he likes just because he happens to be the son of the former shogun and brother of the current one.

The opening scenes see Nariatsu (Kantaro Suga) chasing a deer having declared himself a “real hunter”. He ignores the cries of his men to watch where he’s going and sails over the border into the territory of Oshi which amounts to an invasion seeing as he is armed and has no permission to be there. The deer gets away, but Nariatsu shoots an old woodcutter whom he felt to be in his way with his bow and arrow. The Lord of the Abe clan that rules Oshi immediately takes him to task and tells Noriatsu that his behaviour is unbecoming for the son of the former shogun. He’s committed a murder in their territory, but they’re prepared to let it go as long as he leaves as soon as possible. But Nariatsu doesn’t like being told what to do and simply shoots the lord in the eye, potentially sparking a diplomatic incident. 

The Abe clan try to lodge a complaint in Edo, but are shut down by courtier Mizuno (Kei Sato) who fears that to acknowledge an event such as this would damage the moral authority of the Tokugawa regime. He decides to cover the whole thing up by claiming it was the Abe clan who insulted Noriatsu. The Abe clan will then be dissolved, and Oshi essentially gets nationalised. All of which suits Nariatsu just fine because he wants to take control of Oshi and expand his territory anyway. Part of his petulance seems to stem from the fact that he feels hard done by with such a small inheritance when his brother became the Shogun and received multiple fiefdoms. The previous Shogun, Tokugawa Ieyoshi, had produced an unusual number of children which became quite a problem in that he had to find lands for them all and eventually hastened the demise of the shogunate because of the additional strain. 

But Nariatsu is also an overgrown child who has no idea how to do anything for himself and no concern for the feelings or fortunes of others. When instructed to do something he doesn’t want to, Nariatsu petulantly stamps his feet and complains, and when his actions are challenged he simply replies that he’ll be telling his father. In fact, he is so infuriating that it’s likely most of his men secretly want him dead too, including his chief adviser Gyobu (Ryutaro Otomo) who was once the General Inspector but is now expected to babysit this absolute buffoon. Even though Nariatsu knows the Abe clan will be trying to kill him, he still sneaks out to the red light district and gets blind drunk with geisha which in itself is conduct unbecoming for a high ranking samurai such as himself. 

As such, he represents almost everything that’s wrong with the feudal order while Mizuno represents the rest. It’s Mizuno that secretly plots against the plotters, manipulating them into giving up their assassination mission by claiming to have switched sides only to backtrack and reveal he’s actually still working for Nariatsu fearing a reputational loss for the Tokugawa. Chief revenger Hayato (Isao Natsuyagi) is also banking on this fear of reputational damage, certain that the Shogunate won’t be able to bear the humiliation of Nariastsu being killed by a ronin so will instead claim that he died from an illness. Vowing to avenge the clan, Hayato righteously gives up his position to become one so that the Abes won’t be linked to the crime and is joined by 10 more similarly annoyed samurai. Six of them are already “dead” having been asked to commit seppuku for recklessly attacking Nariatsu on their own and blowing the whole operation. 

Hayato at least believes this to be a suicide mission. He leaves his loving wife and home and allows people to think he’s run off with Nui (Eiko Okawa), the younger sister of one of their number who died before he could join them. They do this because they think it must be done, and also because if no one stands up to samurai oppression it will never end. Wandering peasant Daijuro (Ko Nishimura) agrees with them. He wants revenge on the samurai for raping his sister after which his father and brother took their own lives. Nariatsu is as good as anyone else and he does very much need to die. 

But despite Daijuro’s homemade cannons, nothing quite goes to plan. Kudo sets his final battle in an atmospheric, misty valley that is an obvious stand in for the underworld. Hayato may succeed in killing Nariatsu but it’s a pyrrhic victory. Though he vowed “to put an end to this ridiculous world,” a samurai cannot really win this battle. It’s Daijuro who eventually walks off with Nariatsu’s head, symbolically decapitating the shogunate which the closing titles confirm was mortally wounded by this incident. With his striking black and white cinematography, Kudo does indeed paint this samurai world as a hellish place ruled over by an infinitely corrupt and self-interested authority. The nihilistic futility of it all is emphasised by the figure of a grown man sitting like a small child and splashing his sword in a puddle while surrounded by dead bodies. There might be a way out of this, but not for the samurai, only for those who will come after and perhaps finally be free of this world’s absurdity.

Wicked Priest 4: The Killer Priest Comes Back (極悪坊主 念仏三段斬り, Takashi Harada, 1970)

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At the heart of the Wicked Priest series is an idea of rootlessness, the wandering monk Shinkai (Tomisaburo Wakayama), an orphan, often finding himself dragged into familial disputes between fathers and sons for one reason or another often estranged from each other. The aptly named Wicked Priest 4: The Killer Priest Comes Back (極悪坊主 念仏三段斬り, Gokuaku Bozu: Nenbutsu Sandangiri) finds Shinkai returning to his hometown after reencountering a childhood friend who’s found himself on the wrong side of a historical divide.

When Shinkai and Takegoro (Ichiro Nakatani) left their childhood village, they swore to become the best priest and mountain owner in Japan respectively but that obviously hasn’t worked too well for either of them. Takegoro evidently joined the wrong side during Bakumatsu chaos, a fact rammed home when his attempt to use currency issued by a feudal lord is rebuffed in a gambling den whose owner reminds him that it is now worthless. Only official currency issued by the central government is considered legal tender. On top of all that, it seems Takegoro might also have been cheating which signals just how far he has fallen. Running into him by chance, Shinkai ends up saving the day while accidentally humiliating a chastened Takegoro who is given a further dressing down by the old school lady yakuza boss Kuroda (Chieko Naniwa), also known as “the Thunder Woman”, who appears to be in charge, shooting off his little finger as an attempt to save face. 

In any case, the encounter has Shinkai feeling nostalgic and he decides to return to his hometown to hold a proper memorial service for his late mother. Only once there he ends up being drawn into another cycle of local corruption on discovering that the river workers are being exploited by rival yakuza groups who are working them to exhaustion and paying almost nothing. The leader of the Gondawara is quite obviously up to no good as he wears a western suit and has a handlebar moustache, quite clearly an amoral capitalist while his rival Ryuo (Eizo Kitamura) is a violent thug in ominous sunshades. In actuality, however, they are both branches of the yakuza syndicate led by Kuroda who is of the old school and doesn’t approve of their exploitative mindset. Just as she had Takegoro, she gives both men a good telling off reminding them that the river workers are essential for providing a steady supply of coal without which the new industrial economy will flounder. 

It’s also true that this same industry is fuelling militarisation and an eventual eye towards expanding imperialism, but Kuroda does seem to be mainly mindful of the workers welfare immediately insisting they should be paid a fair wage which is five times more than they’re currently getting. Ryuo and Godawara superficially agree but intend on simply exploiting their workers differently by demanding five times as much work for five times as much pay in a fifth of the time. Shinkai does his best to defend the rights of the local people, but is faced with a dilemma on realising that Takegoro is member of Godawara and hellbent on killing him having become cynical and desperate, willing to sell out a childhood friend for a few pennies. 

Part of Shinkai’s mission is winning Takegoro back over the side of right while reuniting him with his mother whom he’d been too ashamed to visit. On the other hand, this is perhaps the first time Shinkai shows a darker side to himself on threatening to rape a lascivious nun who tricked him into a martial arts contest while rebuffing his amorous intentions. He’s also still being pursued by Ryotatsu (Bunta Sugawara) and ironically ends up temporarily losing his sight himself but just as always Ryotatsu decides to come to his rescue mostly because it would be very annoying if someone else killed him first before he’s got his revenge. He also agrees to wait for Shinkai to finish his mother’s memorial service before scheduling their death match, the most patient revenger in jidaigeki history. In any case, it all ends with another massive showdown as a wounded Shinkai purifies the town of corrupt yakuza and liberates the river workers while finally getting to honour his late mother’s memory leaving Ryotatsu to make his exit deciding that vengeance can wait until the mourning’s over.

Sex and Fury (不良姐御伝 猪の鹿お蝶, Norifumi Suzuki,1973)

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An orphaned daughter takes revenge against the corruptions of the late Meiji society in Norifumi Suzuki’s pinky violence classic Sex and Fury (不良姐御伝 猪の鹿お蝶, Furyo anego den: Inoshika Ocho). As the opening voiceover explains, the Japan of the early 1900s is already stoking imperial ambitions closely linked with the ideas of “modernisation” and “civility” it is seeking though in reality it is very much a gangster society as the three villains the heroine searches for have come to dominate the new Japan. 

This moment of schism is depicted in the opening sequence set in 1886 in which the little girl who will later take the name Ocho witnesses the murder of her policeman father by three unseen assassins who steal from him evidence of a scandal they then use for their own gain. The murder takes place in a shrine, the young Ocho rolling her paper ball onto a discarded charm that reads “misfortune”, while the film then jumps on to 1905 through a series of historical images prominently featuring the emperor Meiji along with a host of patriotic symbols that seem to signal the wrong path that is being taken. 

As for Ocho (Reiko Ike), she has survived by living on her wits as an excellent pickpocket and gambler but is otherwise uncorrupted continuing to dress in kimono and giving off an air of refined elegance that belies her toughness. In the course of her revenge, she is met by her opposite number, Shunosuke (Masataka Naruse), whose father was also killed by the same three duplicitous yakuza and is dragged into geopolitical intrigue by means of plot by the British to turn Japan into the site of the second opium wars using a spy disguised as a dancer played by Swedish starlet Christina Lindberg who is really in Japan for Shunosuke with whom she fell in love abroad only to be cruelly abandoned. 

Somewhat contradictorily, it’s these Western intrusions that are being resisted with Ocho the representative of an older Japan, and the gangsters that of a newer, largely amoral society of burgeoning militarism. Arch villain Kurokawa (Seizaburo Kawazu) lives in a huge Western-style mansion and is preparing to transition into national politics in the post-feudal society insisting that he and his organisation will soon control “everything”. His underling Iwakura (Hiroshi Nawa), who travels by motorcar, will also be handling the construction of Tokyo Harbour. When the girls from Ocho’s adopted family are kidnapped, they are taken to dance hall Panorama which is bedecked both with Christmassy tinsel and signs celebrating the victory in the Russo-Japanese conflict, while in an anachronistic touch scenes of the war are projected inside. Just to ram the point home, the man who throws a knife at Ocho is wearing stereotypical Chinese dress, while Kurokawa is later seen to have at his disposal a secret attack squad of nuns armed with switchblades and has Ocho whipped, by British spy Christina, in front of a large mural of Christ in some kind of underground chapel. 

In taking her revenge, Ocho is also in a sense attempting to right a historical wrong in removing these usurping men and their accomplice from power while fighting their perversion with her sexuality over which only she is master going so far as to kill one with poison rubbed on her own skin. In accidentally having exposed the equally duplicitous practices in a gambling hall, she is attacked while in the bath but instantly leaps into action entirely in the nude in a strangely beautiful sequence of elegant violence and poetic bloodletting that echoes the film’s conclusion in finally moving out into the snow. Eventually captured, she is bound tightly with rope and tortured but manages to cut herself free using only one of her trademark hanafuda cards which also symbolise her skill as a gambler even if her climactic game with Christina is played with Western cards for casino chips over a dining table. 

Suzuki signals the chaotic nature of this early 20th century world in his riotous use of colour and frequent anachronisms along with canted angles and a spinning top shot that seems to echo the world spinning out of control as Iwakura breaks a sacred promise between gamblers and rapes a young woman he had agreed to spare if Ocho was victorious in her bout with Christina. He saves his most expressionistic technique for the film’s closing moments in which Ocho singlehandedly puts a stop to Kurokawa’s corruption, another picture of Emperor Meiji looking down at her as she launches her final attack, and then stops to purify herself in the snow before wandering off into a storm of hanafuda cards with only darkness ahead of her.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

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