Tag: Yoshihiro Igarashi

Classmates (あゝ同期の桜, Sadao Nakajima, 1967)

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There had been films that dealt with the war before, but it was really with the generational shift that occurred among filmmakers in the mid-1960s that there was a greater willingness to reckon with the wartime past. Sadao Nakajima’s Classmates (あゝ同期の桜, Aa Doki no Sakura) was the first in a planned trilogy of war films at Toei, which was in other ways a studio that often leaned towards the right with its steady output of yakuza films, and most likely for that reason struggled to gain approval from studio heads. Taking its name from the military academy song, the film was inspired by a collection of essays put together from the letters and diaries kamikaze pilots had left behind. Nakajima had seen some of the letters sent back by the brother of a school friend, and reading them again on publication was determined to turn them into the film.

Nevertheless, only 25 years on from the end of the war it remained a sensitive topic. The film follows the men of the 14th class of reserve students who had previously had their draft notices deferred until they finished university but were now called up early because the war was going so badly. The majority of these men were allocated to kamikaze units and subsequently died in suicide attacks on US warships, though they received little in the way of training and mostly failed to hit their targets due to having limited fight experience. 

What might seem most surprising is that several of the men voice their opposition to the war along with the realisation that Japan is going to lose. Early on in training, one man deserts but the others are reminded that to do so amounts to treason and once caught, deserters will be executed by firing squad. This turns out not quite to be the case. Shiratori (Hiroki Matsukata), the resigned hero, encounters Taki (Mitsuki Kanemitsu) in Okinawa. where he’s working as ground staff. He’s insensible and appears to have lost his mind. The man working with him suggests that he was tortured so badly that it’s left him in a vacant state, though he’s still deployed for mindless tasks because they just don’t have the manpower.

Part of the reason for that is that they keep ordering people to die in a validation of the death cult that is militarism. On their arrival, the instructor tells the men he will have them all die, because dying for the emperor is their duty and destiny. The top brass insist this is the only way to win the war even though it’s counterproductive in that they’re running out of aircraft and skilled pilots even if one officer callously remarks that they have an endless supply of bodies. There’s also no real reason to send the planes up with two pilots as opposed to one, but they leave fully manned. The suicide missions are supposedly “voluntary”, but the men can’t really refuse due to a combination of peer pressure and military order.

When one pilot, Nanjo (Isao Natsuyagi), returns to base having been unable to reach his target, he’s immediately set upon by the others as a coward and a traitor. They accuse him of being afraid to die, leaving him feeling ashamed and frustrated by a sense of injustice while admitting that he didn’t want to die like a dog. He knows that he would not be able to go on living afterwards if he simply didn’t go through with it because the stigma of being a coward who let other men die so he could live would always be upon him. Eventually, he becomes so determined to prove himself that he insists on getting right back in his plane once it’s repaired and then blows himself up on the runway to prove a point.

Nanjo’s case is all the more poignant because he was a new father whose son was born after he was called up. He appears to have married quickly against his parents’ wishes and is now anxious that his family won’t accept his wife and child who will be left alone when he dies. His wife (Yoshiko Sakuma) desperately tries to see him to show him the baby, but manages only a few seconds before he’s forced to return to the barracks. Given a little more time, she brings a wedding dress for the impromptu ceremony they presumably skipped before, but ends up tearing it and giving Nanjo a strip as a kind of good-luck charm though like everything else it’s a gesture filled with futility.

It’s this sense of futility and resignation that seems to overtake Shiratori who knows he cannot escape his fate. To desert to is be killed anyway or to experience a spiritual death like Taki. He had introduced a friend, Hanzawa (Shinichi Chiba), to his sister and the two had become close, but he is forced to abruptly break up with her because he knows it’s unfair to string her along when he’s been sentenced to death. Reiko (Sumiko Fuji) will lose her brother and her boyfriend on the same day. Hanzawa and the other men visit a brothel on the night before their mission where they are treated as “gods”, though he sees only irony in the situation in which they are more like human sacrifices offered in prayer for an impossible victory. Their deaths will have no real meaning and are really only intended to instil fear in the enemy and weaken their morale rather than cause actual material damage to their fighting capability. Making use of stock footage, Nakajima freeze frames a plane in flight and points out at that point the men inside were still alive before cutting to a title card confirming the war ended just four months later. The title card at the beginning dedicated the film to the souls of those who died in the Pacific War, though it’s perhaps as quietly angry as it was permitted to be in 1967 in the senseless sacrifice of these men’s lives who were shamed, tricked, or forced at gunpoint into their cockpits and told they were disposable while those who stayed on the ground cheered and whooped at the grim spectacle of death.

Sister Street Fighter: Fifth Level Fist (女必殺五段拳, Shigehiro Ozawa, 1976)

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Though it’s tacked on to the Sister Street Fighter series, Level Five Fist (女必殺五段拳, Onna hissatsu godan ken) actually has nothing to do with it save borrowing a part of the title which is intended to signal the presence of its star. Thus, this is not really a martial arts movie but a much more conventional Toei action film in which the leading role is technically split between Etsuko Shihomi’s posh girl karate champ and Tsunehiko Watase’s sexist cop. It does however continue the smuggling theme with the drugs this time first being packed inside fish and then encased in Buddha statues to be exported to America.

Like many Toei films of the time, there is an underlying theme of anti-Americanism as the “Far East” big boss, posing as a Hollywood movie exec, is supposedly from there but has a strong accent suggesting otherwise. Meanwhile, the brother and sister at the film’s centre are a pair of children who were fathered by American servicemen at the bases in Okinawa who presumably took no responsibility for their upbringing. The brother’s father was black, while the sister’s was white, and though they have both suffered prejudice and discrimination because of their mixed ethnicity, it’s clear that Jim (Ken Wallace) has had it worse. Michi (Mitchi Love) makes good use of her native-level English abilities and martial arts skills to work as a bodyguard / interpreter for visiting dignitaries, but Jim seems to struggle to find employment and subsequently ends up working for a Korean gang run out of a local nightclub. 

The pair have a dream of saving up enough money to return to Okinawa, which was returned to Japan in 1971 after an extended period of US occupation, and opening a restaurant which the film positions as a desire to escape from the racism they experience on the mainland. When Jim says that Kiku (Etsuko Shihomi) is their only friend, he half implies that the discrimination they face is down to being Okinawan rather than their mixed ethnicity which would continue to be an issue even on the islands as it was in their childhood even if there may be more understanding given the continuing presence of the American military and larger numbers of mixed-ethnicity people. In any case, it’s true enough that even those from Okinawa do also experience discrimination on the mainland and are not always accepted as “Japanese” while their Okinawan identity is not respected either. 

Kiku is trying to protect her friends, but finds herself hamstrung by rigid cop Takagi (Tsunehiko Watase) who also happens to be the son of a friend of her father’s. Kiku’s father is apparently a self-made man and successful kimono merchant married to a more conservative woman with higher social ambitions. As the film opens, Kiku is dressed in a kimono and being subject to a formal omiai meeting for an arranged marriage with an admittedly promising candidate who graduated from an elite university and works for a prominent bank. But Kiku looks bored throughout and defiantly flouts social convention by suddenly claiming to have an appointment and walking out, much to her mother’s embarrassment. Her father lets her go and is apparently less bothered about this sort of propriety though later trying to put his foot down when she leaves the house dressed like a hippy rather than in a fine kimono which is not, after all, a very good advert for the family business. 

Her father also tries to set Kiku up with Takagi, but like her mother, Takagi also tells her to keep her nose out of the case and “try trusting a man for once”. He criticises her for saying that she doesn’t want to lose to a man and explains that men are attracted to women because of their “gentleness.” He adds that cooking and raising children are what make women happy, with the clear implication that Kiku is in the wrong for flouting conventional gender roles and should quickly conform by getting married and becoming a wife. Kiku appears to give him the benefit of the doubt and this confusion over gender roles is compounded when she poses as a boy and takes a job as a extra on the jidaigeki film set at the studio which turns out to be a front for drug runners. A queer-coded actor who is later told off for “stalking people again” tries to hit on her in a clear allusion to her masculinity. But unlike in the Sister Street Fighter films, she is ultimately defeated and tied to a log with a buzz saw coming at her only to be saved by the intervention of Takagi while the final scenes see her supporting him after he is (possibly fatally) injured defeating the bad guys.

All in all, it’s some rather confusing messaging but seems to come out on the side of male authority as represented by the police rather than Kiku’s father who is depicted as a weakened figure of masculinity owing to being henpecked by his wife and hoodwinked by his feisty daughter. Even the grinning sap from the gym who tried to put Chanel No. 5 on Kiku’s karate outfit, much to her annoyance, is later revealed to be an undercover cop. Which is all to say, that Kiku’s martial arts ability is almost a kind of joke and something that places her outside of conventional gender norms which should otherwise be “corrected” rather than praised, as it was in the Sister Streetfighter series which placed more emphasis on martial arts philosophy. Then again, the original trilogy ended on a similarly sour note in reaffirming Koyu’s maternity. It seems it’s less sisters doing it for themselves, than sisters doing as they’re told, which aside from anything else is a disappointing conclusion to one of the few female–led action franchises of the 1970s.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

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.

Samurai Wolf 2: Hell Cut (牙狼之介 地獄斬り, Hideo Gosha, 1967)

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“We ronin must live without mercy” insists a fugitive on a quest for vengeance and riches only to meet his match in the justice-loving wanderer Kiba (Isao Natsuyagi) making his return for Samurai Wolf II: Hell Cut (牙狼之介 地獄斬り, Kiba Okaminosuke: Jigoku Giri). Like the second instalment in many series, Gosha’s avant-garde chambara largely follows the same formula picking up several familiar elements from the first film if giving them a new spin as Kiba once again finds himself caught up in intrigue provoked by the amoral venality of late Meiji society. 

In this case, he makes a rod for his own back by humiliating some swordsmen after catching them harassing a young woman, mocking them when they try to claim that their treatment of her is part of their “training”. Kiba saves the girl, Oteru (Rumiko Fuji), who has some kind of etherial quality and doesn’t quite seem to know what’s going on immediately throwing herself at Kiba who turns her down in gentlemanly fashion. Sometime later, he runs into a convoy of officials transporting criminals to the nearest judicial centre and stops to give the prisoners some of his own water explaining that that from the stream is polluted thanks to leaks from a nearby goldmine. In any case, Kiba is struck by the appearance of one of the men, Magobei (Ko Nishimura), who reminds him of the father who was killed by swordsmen he’d humiliated with his skill. 

Magobei is in chains for murdering the manager of the mine which previously belonged to the shogun but has now been shut down, its seam apparently exhausted. But like the toxins that poured into the river, the mine is a poison to society and in more ways than one. Magobei tells Kiba that he’s been set up. He was hired to kill the manager by a duplicitous gang leader named Jinroku (Bin Amatsu) who has found a new seam and has been operating the mine illegally taking all the gold for himself so obviously Magobei wants revenge. After seeing off an ambush, Kiba agrees to act as a bodyguard delivering both Magobei and the other prisoner, Kihachi (Out Yokoyama) who claims to be a big time bandit in trouble for robbing a samurai family, to the nearest city but secretly seems to sympathise with the injustice dealt to Magobei and the female prisoner who later joins them, Oren the Thistle (Yuko Kusunoki), who murdered a judge who killed her lover. 

Yet Kiba’s memories of his father cloud his judgment about Magobei who is definitely not a man worthy of his faith in him. “What good would pity do?’ Magobei asks, certain that compassion is a weakness and that if he were to give in to human feeling he would immediately be betrayed. The men misunderstand each other, assuming they are alike when in reality they are opposites. Kiba bets on Magobei’s humanity and loses, while Magobei assumes that Kiba will easily be won over by the riches to be found in the goldmine and help to wipe out Jinroku’s gang which is also a family of which Oteru is a member. “Life’s tough that’s how it is” he justifies, but Kiba cannot forgive him not least for his callous murder of a man who was only a frightened braggart and could not have harmed him and a woman who was otherwise blameless. Just as Sanai had in the first film, Magobei tells him that “one day you will be like me” a future that Kiba once again violently rejects. 

But then again he can never escape the world where goldmines pollute the rivers and money can buy anything, even the hearts of men. Just like his father, he’s pursued by the swordsmen he’s unwittingly insulted while discovering his desire to serve justice backfiring, eventually robbing him of the only thing he actually wanted just as it had at the end of the previous film. Even so, Kiba retains his sense of humanity and unlike so many jidaigeki (anti-)heroes refuses to give in to nihilism or despair. A little less avantgarde than the previous instalment, Gosha nevertheless conjures a world of dazzling violence in freeze-frame and silence while once again leaving Kiba the furious wolf to wander, a lonely figure in an unforgiving landscape.

Samurai Wolf 2: Hell Cut opens at New York’s Metrograph on Dec. 26 as part of Hideo Gosha x 3

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Terror of Yakuza (沖縄やくざ戦争, AKA Okinawa Yakuza War, Sadao Nakajima, 1976)

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An old-school yakuza finds himself cornered on every side while caught in the confusion of Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in Sadao Nakajima’s jitsuroku gangster movie Terror of the Yakuza (沖縄やくざ戦争, Okinawa Yakuza Senso, AKA Okinawa Yakuza War). Where similarly themed Okinawa-set gangster pictures such as Sympathy for the Underdog had largely presented the islands as an appealing place for mainland gangsters because the conditions of the occupation which had allowed them to prosper were still in place, Sadao reframes the debate in terms colonisation and conquest as the hero finds himself increasingly marginalised as an island boy contending with amoral city elitists. 

Nakazato (Hiroki Matsukata) has just been released from prison after serving seven years for the murders of two rival gang bosses that allowed his boss, Kunigami (Shinichi Chiba), to rule the roost in Koza. But now that Okinawa has reverted to Japan, everything has changed. Kunigami has formed a loose alliance with another regional gang to oppose the incursion of mainland yakuza but behind the scenes the higher-ups are intent on a mutually beneficial alliance with the Japanese perhaps seeing the writing on the wall and assuming that it’s better to work with the new regime that against it. For his part, Nakazato is more loyal to the clan than he is opposed to Japan but he’s also resentful towards to Kunigami for failing to live up to his side of the bargain now that he’s been released while fearing the influence of his new sidekick Ishikawa (Takeo Chii) whom he suspects of murdering one of his former associates while he was inside. 

As such, much of the drama unfolds as in any other yakuza picture with Nakazato, regarded by some of the other bosses as a loose cannon and potential liability, reluctant to move against Kunigami for reasons of loyalty even while Kunigami becomes increasing unhinged and dangerous, deliberately running over an Osakan foot soldier who was apparently just on holiday with no particular business in town. Kunigami’s recklessness in his hatred of the Japanese threatens to start a turf war the Okinawan gangs fear they couldn’t win, sending snivelling yakuza middleman Onaga (Mikio Narita) along with Nakazato to negotiate in Osaka only to be told the price of peace is Kunigami’s head. Inspired by the Fourth Okinawa War which was still going on at the time of the film’s completion (in fact, the release was blocked in Okinawa in fear that it would prove simply too incendiary), the conflict takes on political overtones as the mainland gangsters assume their conquest of Okinawa is a fait accompli while those like Onaga are only too quick to capitulate leaving Kunigami and Nakazato as two very different examples of resistance. 

Yet Nakazato finds himself doubly marginalised because he is from one of the smaller islands with most of his men also hailing from smaller rural communities (one uncomfortably wearing extensive makeup to ram the point home that he is from the southern reaches) with the result that they are often pushed around by the city gangsters who view them as idiot country bumpkins. On his trip to Osaka, Nakazato even describes himself as such in an attempt to curry favour apologising in advance should he make a mistake with proper gangster etiquette. Like a good platoon leader, Nakazato’s primary responsibilities are to his men which is one reason why he takes so strongly against Ishikawa, one of the new breed of entirely amoral yakuza who care nothing at all for the code and think nothing of knocking off his guys for no reason. Consequently he finds himself caught between the invading mainlanders, the unhinged chaos of Kunigami, the coldhearted greed of Ishikawa, and the spineless venality of turncoats like Onaga. 

It’s no wonder that he eventually loses his cool, going all out war and like Kunigami dressing in vests and combats in an internecine quest for vengeance precipitated in part by Kunigami’s attempt to discipline one of his men for encroaching on his territory by removing his manhood with a pair of pliers. “Someone will get to you someday too” Nakazato is reminded though having lost everything including his loyal wife who insisted on selling herself to a brothel to get the money to fund his war of revenge he may no longer care so long as he cleans house in Okinawa to the extent that he is really able to do so. “Okinawa is such a scary place” one of the Japanese guys admits, though showing no signs of backing off in this maddeningly chaotic world which turns stoic veterans and hotheaded farm boys alike into enraged killers fighting on a point of principle in a world which no longer has any. 

Terror of Yakuza screens at Japan Society New York May 20 at 7pm as part of Visions of Okinawa: Cinematic Reflections. 

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Images: Terror of Yakuza © 1976 Toei

Inferno of Torture (徳川いれずみ師：責め地獄, Teruo Ishii, 1969)

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“There’s no hope for us anymore” cries the hero, redeeming himself with one last act of humanity before allowing himself to be consumed by the flames of Edo-era barbarity. Another tale of feudal exploitation, Teruo Ishii’s Inferno of Torture (徳川いれずみ師：責め地獄, Tokugawa Irezumi-shi: Seme Jigoku) opens with an otherwise unrelated scene of female crucifixion followed by an elaborate beheading, presenting both of these events with a degree of historical authenticity they do not perhaps possess. Nevertheless, his central tale which turns out to be less about two women than two men, turns on the exploitation of female bodies, subtly suggesting that the modern society is itself founded on female exploitation. 

Though dropping the portmanteau structure frequently employed in the Joys of Torture series, Ishii returns from the prologue with the end of the first arc in which the presumed heroine, Yumi (Yumiko Katayama), makes a stealthy visit to a ghostly cemetery in which she trashes the grave of a man named Genzo (Shinichiro Hayashi), digs him up and dismembers his body to retrieve a key we later see him swallow which she hopes will unlock her womanhood currently imprisoned by an ornate chastity belt, only the key doesn’t fit. 

Flashing back again, we see Yumi forced into sex work in payment of a debt and imprisoned in a labyrinthine brothel which specialises in bondage and torture under the guidance of lesbian madam Oryu* (Mieko Fujimoto) and her samurai fixer Samejima (Haruo Tanaka). The brothel’s USP is in its tattooed women which neatly leads us into the main narrative as Yumi’s body becomes a battleground contested by two men, top tattoo artists in search of the perfect canvas in order to win, ironically, the hand of their master’s pure and innocent daughter Osuzu (Masumi Tachibana). 

Horihide (Teruo Yoshida) and Osuzu are in love, but the dark and brooding Horitatsu (Asao Koike) is determined to frustrate his rival’s desires by becoming the successor to Osuzu’s dying father, the tattooist Horigoro. The “hori” which prefixes each of the men’s names relates to the process of tattooing and comes from the verb to chisel, hinting at the way they prick and channel their desires into the canvas which is human skin. Horihide is our “hero”, described by Horigoro as the light to Horitatsu’s dark, Horitatsu currently making more of an impact with his designs of violent intensity, but each of them is in a very real way content to use and exploit the bodies of women without their full consent in order to practice their art. It is essentially an act of violence if not of “torture”. 

Meanwhile, Oryu and Samejima are profiting off their “merchandise” more directly in participating in the trafficking of tattooed ladies to lecherous foreigners displaying an early fetishisation of Asian women. This being late Edo, Japan is still in its isolationist period in which fraternising with foreigners was illegal which is why the action eventually takes us to Nagasaki and the Dutch trading port of Dejima, here presented as a nexus of corruption, where Samejima and Oryu prove themselves very much in league with foreign powers dealing with powerful businessman Clayton (Yusuf Hoffman), despite his name apparently a Dutchman, and his Chinese associates. Like Nikkatsu’s borderless action films of the ‘50s and ‘60s, Inferno of Torture indulges in an unpleasant Sinophobia which culminates in a chase through a crowded Chinese wet market in which we catch sight of dogs hanging bound ready for the slaughter in similar poses to those of the women in the brothel, not to mention thrusting snakes, before being confronted by a basket full of adorable puppies presumably headed for a dark destination, while we finally rediscover Hidetatsu collapsed in an opium den after being forcibly addicted by Oryu as a means of control. 

“This is a house of horrors” the Chinese gang leader tells a group of women bought by Samejima from a prison and promised a life of wealth and ease as geisha catering to high class clients. It’s difficult to tell if Ishii is critiquing Edo-era misogyny or that of the present day, or merely revelling in it with increasingly perverse scenes of sexual violence and degradation which continually imply that women have no role or value outside of reflecting the desires of men while those who try to claim their own agency are brutally put down by an inherently misogynistic, patriarchal society. After a Count of Monte Cristo-esque subplot in which Horihide is framed for murder but escapes to plot his revenge, the psychedelic final showdown returns us to the tattooists’ artistic face off as they again weaponise female bodies to embody their own ambitions, Horihide turning a blameless young woman into an iridescent peacock to get back at her father. Nevertheless, he finally reassumes his humanity in ending his mission of vengeance before it takes more innocent lives while accepting that he may now be too corrupted to return to his former life. Elegantly composed often unconsciously recalling the keyhole in Yumi’s chastity belt as it imprisons women within the peephole of the frame, Inferno of Torture ends exactly as it began, with a scene of grim and ironic punishment in which the female form is itself obliterated. 

Inferno of Torture is available on blu-ray from Arrow Video in a set which also includes an in-depth commentary from Tom Mes discussing the treatment of the various actresses involved with the series, Ishii, and Toei in general; Jasper Sharp’s Miskatonic lecture Erotic Grotesque Nonsense & the Foundations of Japan’s Cult Counterculture; and a booklet featuring new writing by Chris D.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

*This character’s name is rendered as “Oryu” in the subtitles but “Otatsu” (different ways of reading the same character which means “dragon”) in the accompanying booklet.