The outstanding performance by Koji Tsuruta, the yakuza genre’s first star, is the most commanding reason to see this film, in addition to über-stylist Kato’s masterly and distinctive mise en scène. Osaka, 1907: Asajiro lives between a rock and a hard place: he has to keep his business clean and running, tame his late oyabun’s hot-blooded son and suffer the throes of his impossible love for beautiful geisha Hatsue. Life is tough, but misdeeds will not remain unavenged and trickling blood will swell to a flood, of course. —Japan Society
In the 1960s Toei Studio was Yakuza Central and Tai Kato was the chief exponent and innovator of this popular genre. American audiences equate the yakuza with the contemporary gangster, but the classic yakuza setting is more akin to the western, with swordplay more than gunplay, silk not seersucker, and honor not anarchy in the teeming gambling underworld. This allowed Tai Kato to indulge his passion for historical drama, as well as for startling realism and audacious camerawork. It also shows us yakuza’s roots in the samurai (chambara) film, in which Toei specialized. Kato contributed to the chambara revival after the Occupation ban on this genre’s “feudal values” was lifted. The evolution from samurai to yakuza was effected by a societal change-when swords were outlawed (in 1868), only outlaws had swords. Ergo, the outlaw hero, for whom duty (giri) and humanity (ninjo) were frequently in conflict.In the low-budget quickies that were in demand during the second Golden Age of Japanese… read more
