Tag: Masaru Shiga

Eight Men to Kill (賞金首 一瞬八人斬り, Shigehiro Ozawa, 1972)

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In the first instalment of the Bounty Hunter series, Shikoro Ichibei (Tomisaburo Wakayama) had been a shogunate spy intent on putting down rebellion to their oppression, but by the third, it seems he’s thoroughly fed up with the ills of feudalism and apparently no admirer of the Tokugawa who he feels to have failed in their responsibility to the people along with their personal greed and desire to hold on to their power.

Ichibei’s chief objection is their lack of healthcare provision, seeing as he is a doctor who mainly cares for the poor. That’s one reason he agrees to the job, asking for a large percentage of the gold he’s been asked to retrieve by a worried retainer who explains that the Edo government is relying on it to bridge a gap on their finances. If the gold’s not returned, the entire economy may crash. The government’s heartlessness is further borne out by the retainer’s words that it’s not the time to be concerned about one boy whose importance pales in contrast to that of the Tokugawa Shogunate when a rogue ronin kidnaps the son of the man responsible for the theft of the gold from a local mine. 

In a repeated motif, men attempt to swallow the gold as a means either of stealing or hiding it but it gets stuck in their digestive system and causes them a great deal of pain that could lead to death. The cruel mine owner Kanoke Tatsu (Minoru Oki) forces Ichibei to cut open the man’s stomach to get the gold out, while he insists on sewing him back up again because as a doctor it would be wrong not to. What he’s really performed maybe a kind of gold-ectomy, removing the toxic substance from the men’s stomachs even if he may not be able to save their lives or improve their circumstances.

Ichibei tells the bandit, Yasha the Wolf (Kenji Imai), who is held responsible for the theft of the gold, that he is as bad as him and is only looking for a fast way to make money, yet he wants it to use to build better hospitals for the poor, ironically using the government’s cash to make up for their failing. Meanwhile, he finds himself coming up against a man much like himself only inverted in the form of wandering assassin Yajuro (Shigeru Amachi), a former secret policeman in the rebellious Bishu domain who doubt crosses everyone he comes across in an attempt to get his hands on the gold. Ichibei asks the man who hired him why they don’t want to use government spies but he tells him that it’s because they’d run out. The ones they sent to investigate have all been killed, presumably by the treacherous Yajuro.

All around him, Ichibei discovers only omnipresent greed. A geisha he comes across is working with the mine owner to steal the cash, but simultaneously seducing Ichibei and the apparently won over by his bedroom prowess though it’s difficult to know which is an act, her fondness for Ichibei or pledges to sell him out to Kanoke. Meanwhile, Kanoke vacillates when presented with a binary choice by Yajuro, his adorable three-year-old son, or the gold. As always, it’s the innocent who suffer while personal greed and governmental indifference leave ordinary people little room to manoeuvre. 

This time around, the righteous Ichibei cuts a solitary figure. He no longer has a posse and is supported only by an older gentleman who is mute. As a result of his mission, he even ends up on a wanted poster himself with the shogunate, presumably unwilling recognise him, yet eventually congratulating him on a job well done, much to his shame and embarrassment having witnessed shogunate soldiers committing an atrocity. Very much in the western vein, Ozawa lends the dusty old mining town a sense of dread and decay as it rots from the inside out thanks to the corrupt authority of a weakened shogunate seeking only ways to cement its own power. The red-tinted final taking place during a solar eclipse seems to emphasise the hellishness of the situation even as Ichibei announces that they can all go to hell but he’s sending the money to heaven where it can be put to better use. 

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.

Killer’s Mission (賞金稼ぎ, Shigehiro Ozawa, 1969)

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According to the title card at the beginning of Shigehiro Ozawa’s Killer’s Mission (賞金稼ぎ, Shokin Kasegi), none of the events it depicts have been recorded in history because the shogunate decided to erase them all in fear of the effect they may have on the nation’s geopolitical stability. Nevertheless, it gives some very concrete dates for its historical action, even if they may not make complete sense while foreshadowing the political turbulence of the following century. 

What it essentially attempts to do is tell a James Bond-style tale of political intrigue in a feudal Japan in which perpetual peace has begun to create its own problems. Here played in a cameo appearance from Koji Tsuruta, the Shogun Ieshige was weak in part because he was in poor health and had a speech impediment which led him to be rejected by his retainers. The problem here, however, is with Satsuma which has been on bad terms with the Tokugawa shogunate since the Battle of Sekigahara after which they took power. Satsuma will in fact be at the centre of the conspiracy to overthrow the government in the following century, but for the purposes of the film have fallen foul of a rumour that the plan to do an arms deal with some Dutch sailors who sailed South to Kyushu after being rebuffed in Edo. 

A civil war is feared and in the interests of maintaining peace, Ieshige sends his trusted spy Ichibei (Tomisaburo Wakayama) to protect Satsuma official Ijuin Ukiyo (Chiezo Kataoka) in the hope that he will be able to talk his young and naive lord out of doing the deal. Ostensibly a doctor by trade, Ichibei has a series of spy gadgets such as hidden blades and collapsible guns stored in a secret room at his surgery which he then carries in a black leather utility belt. He keeps the nature of his mission close to his chest, but often double bluffs by simply telling people he is a shogunate spy or otherwise adopting a disguise as he does in a moment of meta comedy impersonating the signature role of his brother Shintaro Katsu by posing as a Zatoichi-style blind masseur. 

As if to signal the cruelty of the feudal world, Ichibei comes across the corpses of suspected spies abandoned outside Satsuma territory while his enemies meditate on their ancient slight and consider taking the deal in the hope of avenging their defeat and overthrowing the Tokugawa. They are warned that creating unrest and sowing division may be exactly what foreign powers like the Dutch crave, but aren’t particularly bothered, preferring to take their chances with them rather than curry favour with the Shogun and possibly destabilising the entire society along with it. 

Of course, much of this is anachronistic with the Dutch sailors appearing in a distinctly 19th century fashion carrying weapons which are also too advanced for the era as are Ichibei’s folding pistols. Through his travels, he runs into a female Iga spy who too can do some nifty ninja tricks and has a gadget of her own in a comb which can shoot poison darts, though luckily it’s one of the poisons Ichibei has already developed an immunity to. Ichibei is fond of crying that you kill him he’ll simply come back to life, barrelling through the air with feats of improbable human agility and generally behaving like some kind of supernatural entity with a secondary talent for violent seduction. 

Though ironic and often darkly comic, there is an unavoidable poignancy in the inner conflict of Ijuin who knows his clan is about to do something very foolish but is torn between his duty to obey them and that to act in their best interests, eventually backed into a corner and left with no real way out of his predicament. As Ichibei points out, it’s difficult to keep the peace, especially when restless young samurai spot opportunities to cause chaos and the outside world knocks on the door of a closed community. Even so, Ozawa ends on a romantic image of a beach at sunset somehow undercutting the violence and tragedy with the restoration of an order that might itself be imperfect in its peacefulness.

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 5: Breaking The Commandments (極悪坊主 飲む打つ買う, Buichi Saito, 1971)

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The Wicked Priest returns for his final adventure and once again finds himself tackling the corruptions of the mid-Meiji society. Titled in English “Breaking the Commandments” (極悪坊主 飲む打つ買う, Gokuaku Bozu – Nomu Utsu Kau), the Japanese title refers to something Shinkai (Tomisaburo Wakayama) admits part way through, that his ironically non-buddhistic life revolves around drinking, gambling, and women all vices he seems unable to give up even as he continues to fight justice for the oppressed little guy amid the burgeoning capitalist society of the new Japan.

Indeed the film opens with him in a brothel where he’s exhausting one woman after another and demanding she be replaced with a fresh model while simultaneously covering for petty crook Hideji (Teruo Ishiyama) who is hiding his sex worker girlfriend in the cupboard to save her from a local gangster. In the first few instalment, Shinkai is a lecherous yet lovable rogue who in his own way respects women but in these last two instalments is certainly less kind, treating these sex workers more or less as disposable while later threatening to rape a lady gambler who tried to trick him. In any case, after realising that even Hideji who he went out of his way to help is trying to deceive him, Shinkai ends up getting involved with a local dispute over transportation licences and a nefarious land-sharking plan run by thuggish gangsters with the collusion of the police chief.

The land sharks want to take over the abandoned mansion where Hideji and his family of crooks are currently living in the company of a former samurai lord who seems to be suffering with some kind of delusion that it’s still the Sengoku era. The police chief isn’t up for the idea at first but the gangsters falsely imply that those living in this area of town are merely “jobless people and criminals” that they don’t need to worry about. But their plan depends on bringing on board Wajima who holds the license for running freight carts but Wajima is an honest man who isn’t interested in bribes and has no respect for those who exploit others. He refuses to participate in the project.

Shinkai too refuses to let the gangsters get away with mowing over Hideji and the others and is once again saved by Ryotatsu (Bunta Sugawara) who agrees to put off their final fight until Shinkai is finished cleaning up this dirty little town. He largely does this by donning an elaborate disguise and teaming up with lady gambler Gin to trick conspirator Kawashima into giving back Wajima’s (Takashi Shimura) license after setting him up so he’d lose it. Meanwhile he also tries to repair another broken father-son relationship between Wajima and his errant boy Ryutaro (Kyosuke Machida) whom he’d kicked out some years previously after he became a yakuza and got into trouble with the law. 

What seems clear is that the chaos of Meiji has allowed the greedy to profit over the changing orders of the hierarchical society, no longer bound by traditional notions of good conduct or basic humanity. The police chief first objects to the plan, stating that many people living in the area the gangsters have earmarked for their docks are honest and hardworking and shouldn’t be lumped in with “criminals”, but is soon won over by a bribe and is also supporting a mistress in a separate household. Yet even so, Shinkai turns this same weapon back on Kawashima (Fumio Watanabe) in pretending to be a general from Tokyo who will soon be his father-in-law, leveraging his social advancement to bring him back into line in appealing to his greed and ambition while hinting at a militarist future in reminding him that Wajima’s carts were essential during the Satsuma Rebellion and may be so again should the occasion call.

After seeing off a series of bounty hunters, one sent in via a honey trap that suggests the gangsters really know their enemy, Shinkai has no option but to clear out the corruption himself at the point of a sword culminating in another bloody showdown which is also in its own way a means of protecting Ryutaro from a pointless revenge. “If I die the devil in hell will be in for a big surprise!” Shinkai cooly remarks as he marches off to fight for justice, but then there’s another battle waiting for him in the postponed grudge match with Ryotatsu as the two men tussle atop a sand dune ironically trapped in a co-dependent cycle of vengeance and salvation while Shinkai’s wandering most likely will never end.

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.

Wicked Priest 3: A Killer’s Pilgrimage (極悪坊主 念仏人斬り旅, Takashi Harada, 1969)

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Three years on from his arrest at the end of the previous film, Shinkai (Tomisaburo Wakayama) returns for more lecherous adventures across Japan in Wicked Priest 3: Killer’s Pilgrimage (極悪坊主 念仏人斬り旅, Gokuaku Bozu: Nenbutsu Hitokiri Tabi). This time he finds himself mixed up with revolutionary pirates planning to overthrow the government with weapons smuggled in from Singapore, but it isn’t so much politics that bothers Shinkai as injustice as he tries to help the townspeople defend themselves against politicised bandits and a weird new religion while dealing with the fallout from the last time he found himself enacting justice. 

As usual however the film opens with an odd prologue in which a randy Shinkai is invited to the home of a man who tells him there’s a strange local custom in which women soon to be married think it good luck to be deflowered by a passing stranger and even better if he’s a monk. Of course, Shinkai nearly gets a little more than he bargained for before heading off towards the central fishing village which is at this time of the year home to only women and old men with all the husbands and sons off chasing tuna for the foreseeable future. Taking a liking to a widow named Omine (Hiroko Sakuramachi), Shinkai’s plans are scuppered when she realises that he’s the man who killed her admittedly no good, violent drunk of a gambling husband. Being the charmer that he is, Shinkai manages to talk her round only her brother-in-law Ryuji (Tatsuo Terashima), who’s supposed to marry her sister Otae (Eiko Ito), is hellbent on revenge. Meanwhile, the town is invaded by cruel pirates who commandeer the local well and keep the villagers prisoner. 

“Helping people is my duty,” Shinkai had told the man who weirdly wanted him to sleep with his daughter and true enough he’s never been one to turn away from those in need even if he’s not all that keen on taking responsibility for them. He feels bad for Omine that he ended up killing her husband even if he thinks her husband brought it on himself because of his behaviour, and even after encountering Ryuji tries to talk him down from his revenge rather than simply fighting him even though Ryuji still refuses to forgive him even after Shinkai is nearly fed to sharks in his place by the cruel leader of the pirates. He is later saved by Yamanami (Minoru Oki), a fugitive on the run for killing a politician in Tokyo presumably as part of his revolutionary activities but has become disillusioned with the gang whom he thinks have lost sight of their cause and are now no better than bandits. Shinkai had claimed he could see Yamanami was a good man because of his all-seeing monk eyes, and later praises him as someone who held fast to his beliefs while bravely standing up to his sociopathic gang boss. It isn’t so much that Shinkai has much opinion on their political stance and desire to overthrow the government, only about the way they conduct themselves, callously throwing dynamite around and hassling the local women. Yamanami asks his boss what the point of winning is if everyone resents you, but his boss simply tells him to think about winning first and ideological purity later. 

In a bizarre subplot, meanwhile, Shinkai also finds himself squaring off against a weird sex cult/fake religion on an island connected with the pirates who are also planning to sell off the village women as payment for their Singaporean weapons. Once again, the randy monk becomes a staunch defender of women, saving Otae from becoming the weird priest’s sex slave and shutting down the trafficking plot by indulging his strange love of eye gouging. Meanwhile he’s still being pursued by Ryotatsu (Bunta Sugawara), the blind monk from the previous two films. Blow for blow, there may not be as much action for the warrior monk despite his heroic attempt to reach the well while under fire and eventual descent on the bandit hideout in a single-handed bid for justice, but there is something in Shinkai’s demands for a just world despite his lasciviousness that overcomes his fixation on women even if this time it seems as if the sun may have set on his travels. 

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)