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The Yakuza Papers, Vol. 1: Battles Without Honor or Humanity (1973, Fukasaku)

Started by Smeraldina Rima, May 01, 2022, 08:30:12 PM

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Kinema Junpo film watch

The Yakuza Papers, Vol. 1: Battles Without Honor and Humanity this month. We're watching the top twelve of the KJ 1999 critics' list:

1. The Seven Samurai (1954) (Dec)
2. Floating Clouds (1955) (Nov)
3. Straits of Hunger (1965) (Oct)
4. Tokyo Story (1953) (Sep)
5. The Sun Legend of the End of the Tokugawa Era (1957) (Aug)
6. Rashomon (1950) (Jul)
7. Intentions of Murder (1964) (Jun)
8. The Yakuza Papers, Vol. 1: Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1973) (May)
9. Twenty-Four Eyes (1954) (Apr)
10. Ugetsu (1953) (Mar)
11. Ikiru (1952) (Feb)
12. Life of Oharu (1952) (Jan)

In the 2009 critics' list it was voted up to the fifth best Japanese film.

In the readers' list from 2009 it was voted the fifty-ninth best Japanese film.

In the 1973 KJ year-end list it was voted the second best Japanese film of the year:

1.    Jongara (1973)
2.    The Yakuza Papers, Vol. 1: Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1973)
3.    Seigen-Ki (1973)
4.    The Wanderers (1973)
5.    Senile Person (1973)
6.    World of Geisha (1973)
7.    Coup D'Etat (1973)
8.    The Yakuza Papers: Proxy War (1973)
9.    Tora-San's Forget Me Not (1973)
10.    Man and War, Part III (1973)
11.    Tora-san Loves an Artist (1973)
12.    Rise, Fair Sun (1973)
13.    The Yakuza Papers, Vol. 2: Deadly Fight In Hiroshima (1973)

More lists:
Spoiler alert
1.    Sandakan 8 (1974)
2.    The Castle of Sand (1974)
3.    The Family (1974)
4.    Seishun No Satetsu (1974)
5.    The Assassination of Ryoma (1974)
6.    My Way (1974)
7.    The Yakuza Papers, Vol. 4: Police Tactics (1974)
8.    The Tattered Banner (1974)
9.    Aka Chochin (1974)
10.    Imouto (1974)
11.    Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 (1974)
12.    Tora-san's Lovesick (1974)
13.    Life of a Communist Writer (1974)
14.    Yojohan fusuma no urabari: Shinobi hada (1974)
15.    Nureta yokujo: Tokudashi nijuichi nin (1974)
16.    Street of Joy (1974)
17.    Lived In a Dream (1974)
17.    The Silk Tree Ballad (1974)
19.    Maruhi: shikijo mesu ichiba (dir. Noboru Tanaka)
20.    The Yakuza Papers, Vol. 5: Final Episode (1974)

1.    Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director (1975)
2.    Preparation For the Festival (1975)
3.    Kinkanshoku (1975)
4.    The Fossil (1975)
5.    Tora-San, Love Under One Umbrella (1975)
6.    Pastoral: To Die In the Country (1974)
7.    Super-Express 109 (1975)
8.    Jingi No Hakaba (1975)
9.    The Village (1975)
10.    A Woman Called Sada Abe (1975)
11.    Dokkoi ningen bushi (dir. Shinsuke Ogawa)
12.    Showa karesusuki (1975)
13.    The Gate of Youth (1975)
14.    Yoi-machi-gusa (1974)
15.    Black Rose Ascension (1975)
16.    Shiranui Sea (1975)
17.    Tokkan (1975)
18.    I Am a Cat (1975)
19.    Igaku to shite no Minamata-byo: sanbusaku (dir. Noriaki Tsuchimoto)
20.    Kushi no hi (1975)
21.    Kuraku naru-made matenai! (1975)
21.    Cops vs. Thugs (1975)
21.    Bodo shimane keimusho (1975)
24.    Tora-san's Lullaby (1974)
25.    San oku en wo tsukamaero (1975)
26.    Africa's Light (1975)
27.    Death At an Old Mansion (1976)
28.    Saikai (dir. Koichi Saito)
28.    The Executioner II: Karate Inferno (1974)
30.    New Battles Without Honor and Humanity 2: Boss's Head (1975)

1.    Young Murderer (1976)
2.    Tora-San's Sunrise and Sunset (1976)
3.    Lullaby of the Earth (1976)
4.    Fumo Chitai (1976)
5.    The Inugami Family (1976)
6.    Older Sister, Younger Brother (1976)
7.    A!! Hana No Oendan (1976)
8.    Yakuza Burial: Jasmine Flower (1976)
9.    Farewell, O Summer's Light (1976)
10.    The Stroller In the Attic (1976)
11.    Tora-san, the Intellectual (1975)
12.    Ninkyou Gaiden Genkai-nada (dir. Juro Kara)
13.    Two Iida (1976)
14.    Assault! Jack the Ripper (1976)
15.    Kurutta yaju (1976)
16.    Permanent Blue: Manatsu no koi (1976)
17.    New Battles Without Honor and Humanity 3: Boss's Last Days (1976)

It looks like the first New Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1974) is the only one that missed out completely in the year-end lists.
[close]

The later retrospective list from 2009 is more favourable to Yakuza films, suggesting that they might have started to be taken more seriously, although I guess it's more complicated than that. The original film from the series went up from eighth to fifth, the third in the series Proxy War entered at number 50, Kurosawa's Stray Dog (1949) entered the list at number 11, Shinoda's Pale Flower (1964) entered at 70, Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter (1966) and Branded to Kill (1967) entered at 72 and 33 respectively. On the other hand Kitano's Sonatine fell from 42 to 101, perhaps having been fresher in the memory in 1999 - it was voted fourth best film of the year in 1993 - and Daisuke Itō's A Diary of Chuji's Travels (1927) fell from 104 to 108. There are probably more films worth mentioning that are and aren't on these lists.

Daisuke Itō's silent film A Diary of Chuji's Travels (1927) seems to be widely recognised as either the original of the genre or a good example of the gambling predecessor to the modern Yakuza. It was originally presented as three parts which were lost and some of it has since been found and put together as one rough version. The second and third parts were voted numbers 1 and 4 in the 1927 year-end poll. There is a version of this on youtube but with the running time elapsing on the screen.

Ozu's 1930s gangster films are brought up in some of the introductions to the genre/subject, especially Dragnet Girl (1933). There's a BFI Ozu gangster collection which includes Walk Cheerfully (1930, 92 min), That Night's Wife (1930, 63 min), and Dragnet Girl (1933, 96 min) which might be good to watch with a view to the later period Ozu coming up.

I don't know much about the Yakuza and the only related film I've seen is Drunken Angel which I liked a lot and which has been put at the top of this list: https://www.tasteofcinema.com/2016/the-25-best-yakuza-films-of-all-time/3/

So that introduction might be a bit annoyingly misdirected if you know your stuff. Please share your own introductions, scattered thoughts, reviews and recommendations of any relevant films in this series or large genre and subgenres. And enjoy watching The Yakuza Papers: Battles Without Honor and Humanity...



Interesting to see that Kaneto Shindô's Mizoguchi documentary was voted the best film of the year in the 1975 poll.

sevendaughters

OK I've been majorly busy this year, which has stuck a knife in my wanting to get involved in this. Fortunately, I have seen this for pleasure quite recently and will weigh in with some more carefully considered thoughts in the coming days.

My initial takeaway was that it felt, in a strange way, like an anti-Godfather. That it was taking the same essential idea of social upheaval being the root of underworld formation and one person's journey through it and just completely exploding those myths of family and fealty. Instead of the mannered and invisible prestige style of Coppola, you have this incredible antic (and sometimes difficult to watch) movement, with crowded scenes and loss of bearings in term of direction and overlaid dialogue.

I've got friends who have seen the entire BWHAH series and say that it is all of a similar quality, which is interesting. I thought this film was good but perhaps not absolutely brilliant, partly due to a persistent third cinema-style messiness that doesn't quite appeal to me.

zomgmouse

I saw this on the big screen at a film festival many years ago and I enjoyed but wasn't thoroughly engrossed by it. Perhaps this might change if I were to watch it again. It certainly had an interesting documentary-adjacent style of presenting information and then letting scenes play out. In fact a recent-ish yakuza film - The Blood of Wolves - deliberately harkens back to this style while also being set in a similar place and era and is worth a watch.

For my money the best yakuza films that I've seen (though I haven't seen many) have already been mentioned in the OP - Pale Flower, Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill, Sonatine... Would also recommend A Colt Is My Passport, Pigs and Battleships, Kitano's Ryuzo and the Seven Henchmen, Suzuki's Detective Bureau 2-3 and possibly also Miike's Dead or Alive (as well as Yakuza Apocalypse for something totally off the wall). And for a non-Japanese choice, Sydney Pollack's The Yakuza with Robert Mitchum and Ken Takakura is pretty special.

Battles' director Kinji Fukasaku of course will be most widely known for another "Battle" film, Battle Royale - his final film (which is one of my big gaps). However he was also the director of several other yakuza films (also haven't seen) such as Yakuza Graveyard, Graveyard of Honour and Sympathy for the Underdog. I'd be really interested to see how they compare.

sevendaughters

Battle Royale feels like a different person made it, he really adapted to a different and more technologically-enhanced realm quite well.

colacentral

I have the Arrow box that came out a few years ago and never made it to the third film. I need to give them another go but I couldn't get into them. I can't quite remember what I didn't enjoy about the first two but I want to say I thought they were a bit too pulpy and shallow but without the level of over the top fun that you would expect from something like that. I might be wrong. Maybe I just wasn't in the right frame of mind.

Herbert Ashe

As well as the Ozu silents, there's Uchida's excellent Police Officer (1933); although i'm not sure that they add much context to the 60s/70s Japanese crime film as much as they are part of the 20s/30s assimilation and dialogue with Western (silent) cinema. I've not seen a huge amount of Yakuza stuff though, mostly stuff that's been mentioned, or stuff on the fringe of the genre. Seijun Suzuki naturally; Pale Flower; love Hoodlum Soldier (Masumura, 1965) although that's more a WW2 film; Pigs & Battleships (Imamura, 1961).

Seen a few Fukasaku films before:

Wolves, Pigs & Men (1964): Don't remember much about it except I found it pretty decent. Starts off a bit throw-everything-at-it style-wise in a way that's quite common in 60-70s Japanese cinema, I find.
Sympathy for the Underdog (1971): it's ok, as much as I recall, some Yakuza hide / relocate to Okinawa. If you've seen Kitano's Sonatine then you might find this interesting. Remember music being great (especially for use of Okinawan music - ditto Sonatine)
Violent Panic: Big Crash (1976) Love this, discovered it last year. Uncategorisable anarchic mash-up with an utter all-timer car chase/crash sequence to finish. a societal breakdown, where the collapse of rule-based order not only infects the usual suspects of criminal underworld, police, and juvenile delinquents, but ultimately everyone.
Battle Royale, obv, which I've not seen in ages but I'd imagine is as good as ever, especially as vast swathes of the world lurch ever more onwards into gerontocracy.

Anyway, Battles... was something I'd never got around to. Found it enjoyable but ultimately a bit unsatisfying watch: not really a straightforward genre exercise (that I think all the other films of his I've seen work as) but an uneasy mix of yakuza and post-Japanese New Wave (like zomgmouse mentioned, something of a documentary/pseudo-reportage thing going on - the third cinema feel also makes sense: maybe Fukasaku got some influence from say Adachi/Wakamatsu?).

If, as suggested above, the style plays out like this then I think I'd find it a bit exhausting to watch them all. Likewise the initial frenzy of names & (future) affiliations which are a bit much on a first viewing but I guess probably aren't meant to be that important as specific signifiers, as later these disposable & replaceable names and people come & go and get summarily offed; started to enjoy this aspect of it as I got used to it.

It's something of a cliche of course, but something else I wonder might come out more over the series is the Yakuza as the hidden parallel of post-war Japanese capitalism; to my eyes this very rarely came through, contra what I'd remembered reading about it. In general actually I felt like these people barely interacted with wider Japanese society*.


* A different context, but it reminded me of many Hong Kong Wu Xia, especially those of Chor Yuen, where the protagonists exists in a world essentially separate and parallel to the bulk of society - although I'm not so sure this really extends to the 80s HK Heroic Bloodshed gangster/triad film, for which wu xias (especially the Chang Cheh variety) were a strong influence.

bgmnts

All I know about the Yakuza is, at least from media such as the game series, they have a strict honour code. However, so did the mafia and we can see that meant fuck all in the end, and they are criminals so there's not a huge amount of honour there.

Although I understand they are sort of an actual institution there and semi-legitimate and semi-tolerated? Possibly some sort of necessary evil in Japanese society? Someone with more knowledge can set me straight.


So with that in mind I might throw myself into this film, see what it's all about.

Will try to engage with some of the points above another time, just sharing stuff for now in case it interests anyone before it's too late in the month. This is from an article by Federico Varese called "The Secret History of Japanese Cinema: The Yakuza movies" which goes on to discuss influence crime bosses have had in shaping their representation in films:



The Paul Schrader article is here: https://www.paulschrader.org/articles/pdf/1974-FCYakuza.pdf



Haven't seen either of those films, the first Jirocho or Bakuto (Gambler) mentioned much, or found them streaming, and they aren't in the less directly yakuza themed Venice festival list.

The films shown in the 62nd Venice festival's "Secret History of Japanese Cinema" culminating with 10 Fukasaku films are listed here:

QuoteChōkon    長恨 / Chōkon    1926    Daisuke Itō
A Diary of Chuji's Travels    忠次旅日記 / Chūji tabi nikki    1927    Daisuke Itō
Oatsurae Jirokichi Koshi    御誂治郎吉格子 / Oatsurae Jirokichi Koshi    1931    Daisuke Itō
The Million Ryo Pot    丹下左膳余話 百萬両の壺 / Tange Sazen Yowa: Hyakuman Ryō no Tsubo    1935    Sadao Yamanaka
Priest of Darkness (aka)    河内山宗俊 / Kōchiyama Sōshun    1936    Sadao Yamanaka
Humanity and Paper Balloons    人情紙風船 / Ninjō Kami Fūsen    1937    Sadao Yamanaka
Rivals (aka)    エノケンの頑張り戦術 / Enoken no gambari senjutsu    1939    Nobuo Nakagawa
The 47 Ronin    元禄 忠臣蔵 / Genroku Chūshingura    1941–1942    Kenji Mizoguchi
The Famous Sword Bijomaru    名刀美女丸 / Meitō Bijomaru    1945    Kenji Mizoguchi
A Tale of Archery at the Sanjusangendo    三十三間堂通し矢物語 / Sanjūsangen-dô Tōshiya Monogatari    1945    Mikio Naruse
Princess Yang Kwei Fei    楊貴妃 / Yōkihi    1955    Kenji Mizoguchi
A Wicked Woman    毒婦高橋お伝 / Dokufu Takahashi Oden    1958    Nobuo Nakagawa
The Ghost of Yotsuya    東海道四谷怪談 / Tōkaidō Yotsuya kaidan    1959    Nobuo Nakagawa
Go to Hell, Hoodlums! aka Fighting Delinquents    くたばれ愚連隊 / Kutabare gurentai    1960    Seijun Suzuki
Akumyō    悪名 / Akumyō    1961    Tokuzō Tanaka
High Noon for Gangsters aka Villains in Broad Daylight    白昼の無頼漢 / Hakuchu no buraikan    1961    Kinji Fukasaku
The Tale of Zatoichi    座頭市物語 / Zatōichi monogatari    1962    Kenji Misumi
Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards!    探偵事務所23 くたばれ悪党ども / Tantei jimusho 23 – Kutabare akutodomo    1963    Seijun Suzuki
The Great Killing    大殺陣 / Dai satsujin    1964    Eiichi Kudo
The Flower and the Angry Waves    花と怒濤 / Hana to dotō    1964    Seijun Suzuki
On the Road Forever aka Homeless Drifter    無宿者 / Mushuku mono    1964    Kenji Misumi
Tales of Chivalry in Japan    日本侠客伝 Nihon kyōkaku den    1964    Masahiro Makino
Wolves, Pigs and Men aka Wolves, Pigs and People    狼と豚と人間 / Ōkami to buta to ningen    1964    Kinji Fukasaku
Our Blood Will Not Forgive aka Our Blood Will Not Allow It    俺たちの血が許さない / Oretachi no chi ga yurusanai    1964    Seijun Suzuki
Fight, Zatoichi, Fight    座頭市血笑旅 / Zatōichi kesshō-tabi    1964    Kenji Misumi
Blood of Revenge    明治俠客伝 三代目襲名 / Meiji kyokaku den – Sandaime shumei    1965    Tai Kato
A Solitary Knight    沓掛時次郎・遊侠一匹 / Kutsukake Tokijiro - Yukyo ippiki    1966    Tai Kato
Red Peony Gambler: Flower Cards Match    緋牡丹博徒 花札勝負 / Hibotan bakuto: hanafuda shōbu    1969    Tai Kato
Japan Organized Crime Boss aka Japan's Violent Gangs - The Boss and the Killers    日本暴力団 組長 / Nihon boryokudan – Kumicho    1969    Kinji Fukasaku
Red Peony Gambler: Oryu's Return    緋牡丹博徒・お竜参上 / Hibotan bakuto - Oryū sanjō    1970    Tai Kato
Sympathy for the Underdog    博徒外人部隊 / Bakuto gaijin butai    1971    Kinji Fukasaku
Street Mobster    現代やくざ 人斬り与太 / Gendai yakuza: Hito-kiri yota    1972    Kinji Fukasaku
Battles Without Honor and Humanity    仁義なき戦い / Jingi naki tatakai    1973    Kinji Fukasaku
Graveyard of Honor    仁義の墓場 / Jingi no hakaba    1975    Kinji Fukasaku
Cops vs. Thugs    県警対組織暴力 / Kenkei tai Soshiki Bōryoku    1975    Kinji Fukasaku
Yakuza Graveyard    やくざの墓場 くちなしの花 / Yakuza no hakaba: Kuchinashi no hana    1976    Kinji Fukasaku
Shogun's Samurai    柳生一族の陰謀 / Yagyū Ichizoku no Inbō    1978    Kinji Fukasaku

That might be a more satisfying way to go back to some earlier films without focussing on silent gangster films.

William Friedkin on Kinji Fukasaku (Makes a comparison with The French Connection, which came out two years before The Yakuza Papers but after some of Fukasaku's earlier crime films.)

QuoteThe camera is constantly moving. The action is visceral. He tries to put you in the middle of the action. Very often it goes from handheld very visceral filmmaking into a kind of operatic style which is extremely unusual, he mixed styles all I believe in an attempt to deeply immerse the audience in the experience of the story. You feel as though you are inside the frame rather than outside the frame looking at a painting. You're not outside looking in you are often very much within the frame and that's a style that the filmmakers of the 70s picked up and sort of ran with. French Connection could very easily have been done by Fukasaku and I was never thinking about his work when I did the film - I was trying to tell that story - but the visceral approach to the story, I know it wasn't just inspiration, I had seen his work and I saw how it was useful in telling a story like that - a crime story as he would put it - it was useful to have the camera constantly following the people and more importantly to not be making any judgments about these characters. He wasn't worried about happy endings he didn't have to redeem the good guys he didn't have to say that the good guys triumphed at the end and that was a profound influence on me.

bgmnts: This gives a five point guide to the yakuza code of ethics. It's all directly relevant to The Yakuza Papers 1 so I don't know whether that means that the article is really just thinking about the film and leaving out other important ethical things or that the film deliberately covered all the key points.

Quote from: colacentral on May 06, 2022, 11:07:19 AMI have the Arrow box that came out a few years ago and never made it to the third film. I need to give them another go but I couldn't get into them. I can't quite remember what I didn't enjoy about the first two but I want to say I thought they were a bit too pulpy and shallow but without the level of over the top fun that you would expect from something like that. I might be wrong. Maybe I just wasn't in the right frame of mind.

This was a bit how I felt watching a couple of Seijun Suzuki films (not sure if those are the kind of over the top films you meant) and then TYP, but I also liked the more seriously hectic style of TYP and because some of it reminded me of the framing of adult comics - crowded framing plus the actual freeze frames and this bit where they didn't seem to have enough time to say what they would need to but you could imagine it as comic book frames with speech:





- ... I wondered whether there were many yakuza gekiga or seinen in the 1960s and whether there's any parallel between the changes in audience expectations of comics and crime films. The seinen wiki history mentions: 'One of the earliest manga magazines published in Japan was a seinen publication: Weekly Manga Times, first released in 1956. It was aimed squarely at middle-aged men, featuring erotic fiction and manga and tales of yakuza.' But I can't find outstanding examples of a yakuza comic comparable with TYP in the 60s or early 70s.

Using this summary as a point of reference...

QuoteThe Nikkatsu Action films of the 1960s and Kinji Fukasaku's Battles without Honour and Humanity series (1973-1974) present radically different portrayals of yakuza life. Both can be seen as attempts to create movies distinct from Toei Studio's ninkyo eiga ("chivalry films") that were very popular throughout the 1960s and offered a traditional view of the yakuza in particular and Japanese society in general. In contrast, the Nikkatsu films were flashily contemporary, heavily influenced by international films and its own recent series of "rebellious youth" movies, and celebrated aspects of modern Japan that the ninkyo eiga criticized. Fukasaku's films reject the glamourization of the yakuza and visual stylishness identified with both of these sub-genres. Instead, it presents a rewriting of post-war Japanese history which exposes the fraudulence of yakuza mythology and adopts a deliberately raw film style to convey the chaotic nature of the period as well as the filmmaker's political ideas.
https://offscreen.com/view/japanese_yakuza_films

...if The Yakuza Papers is supposed to react against the Nikkatsu yakuza films and the more traditional chivalry Toei yakuza films while also having been made for Toei, I wonder whether the opening upwards shot of the black and white picture of the atomic bomb was meant to work as a (mis)match cut with the Toei ocean waves logo:




The rest of the introduction ends with the slow saturation of a crowd scene:






It's less likely to be a deliberate subversion, but this subdued kind of colourisation contrasts with how the two Suzuki Nikkatsu films I've watched go suddenly from black and white openings to colour and the historic pictures contrast with the 'time and place are nonsense' phrase that I've seen attributed to Suzuki. This is from the beginning of Youth of the Beast (1963)

Colourful titles on black and white crowd scene

Isolated colour burst - think it's a peony as in Red Peony Gambler series - red flowers and other red focal points are all over the rest of the film and seemingly in a lot of yakuza films

More from the crime scene

Then the film jumps into life with a cut to colour and jazz and then a stylised fight scene

Later flowers:



Tokyo Drifter has a similar start to Youth of the Beast with more bursts of red before the full colour sliding opening:







Curious about the third cinema similarities and capitalism parallels cliché things...

Herbert Ashe

Second watch, and I'm still have no real strong feelings about this overall. Think my personal indifference is that it's revisionist, but without being truly idiosyncratic or eccentric; it's not Suzuki, Kitano, or for that matter something like Sailor Suit and Machine Gun. Without much grounding (or interest) in the more orthodox instances of the genre, the revisionism of this didn't do much for me. I will probably have to see all the others, just because I wonder how much of it's high placing in this poll is an endorsement for the series as a whole (and I have liked every Fukasaku film I've seen).

Seppuku as a ploy to get out of prison, and the finger tip lost amongst the chickens both still amused me.

QuoteCurious about the third cinema similarities and capitalism parallels cliché things...

From stuff I'd read in the past I'd had the impression that the series of a whole was quite expansive in it's scope re: it's treatment of postwar Japan, so it's just the folly of having expectations rather than taking something as it is; probably not a good example to contrast, but as opposed to say Kitano's Outrage films - which I remember as being quite wry in how they depicted the stagnant, hidebound corporatised yazuka world - I never picked up on anything much (which I thought I might after that opening, the part most obviously connected to wider society).

I read the chapter, "Heroes in Crisis: The transformation of the Yakuza Film" in Japan, 1972: Visions of Masculinity in an age of Mass Consumerism by Yoshikuni Igarashi. It begins with examples of how audience members watched yakuza films - including Yukio Mishima's preference for a dingy space and people responding to the song "Karajishi Botan" (Lion and Red Peony) and the snow scene halfway through this clip, and gets around to the Yakuza Papers series and how the film compares to the earlier yakuza films from the 1960s. It highlights the passivity of the hero and his lack of control over outcomes when he intervenes and concerning the cinematography mentions Yoshida Sadaji's attempt to bring in some quieter moments to offset the movement and chaos that Fukasaku had already been using in his earlier films (which must have been the ones that Friedkin had seen before The French Connection) as one of the reasons for its success. The thing of it being only a half-step forward from what audiences were accustomed to seems to be part of what disappointed a few of us. I tried to spoiler it and post here but it didn't work so going to see if I can put it in the next post.

I think the two scenes Herbert Ashe mentioned above were my favourites too, along with Hirono's awkward assasination of Doi when running out of bullets (I thought he had failed to kill him), which made a nice contrast with the smoother scene of Michael Corleone shooting Solozzo and gliding away.

Thanks for the rec of Uchida's Police Officer, I watched it along with Dragnet Girl.

The memory of friendship below seemed like it could have inspired the divided self nightmare in Drunken Angel.




The part when he he takes an impression of the finger print, envisages his friend and then looks at the picture reminded me of the photos being developed at the end of Elevator to the Gallows.




I also liked the very dark scenes, like the car chase and bits where you can only see lights moving around.

I watched a few more 60s yakuza films but still have quite a lot to explore in the noir and yakuza genres and where they overlap.

Edit: On second thoughts, probably shouldn't post a whole chapter. Here are the bits I mentioned above:

Yakuza film also served as one of the last strongholds of the struggling Japanese flm industry, which was losing its market share to the newer mass medium of television. The genre appealed largely to young adult males as it portrayed the underworld and violence in a way that family-oriented television programs could not. The yakuza flm audience identifed with what had been left behind in the progress of society. For example, in writing about Big Gambling Ceremony (Bakuchiuchi: Sōchō tobaku, 1968), Mishima Yukio carefully describes the mise-en-scène of his viewing experience:

The small alley that I took, following a stranger's directions, was dark and wet from rain. Deep in that alley was a small, old movie theater. A tacky picture on the sign looked bleak. . . . The door on the right side of the screen constantly squeaked: whenever somebody opened it, it made a banging sound, and the draft that came through it carried abundant toilet aroma. . . . In this ideal environment, I saw Big Gambling Ceremony.6

Mishima found it appropriate to watch a yakuza flm in a dingy space tucked away from the ordinary life of Japan and the everyday comfort that the high-growth economy ofered.7 The sensory conditions—smell, noise, and feel—of the viewing environment enhanced the audience's identifcation with the underdogs on the screen. 8

[...]

For many youths in the audience, watching a yakuza flm was an intense and personal experience. The television writer Takada Fumio—one of the numerous college students who enthusiastically embraced onscreen yakuza heroes—recalls how his generation identifed with them: At the end, with the masterpiece song "Karajishi botan" [the theme song for the Brutal Tale of Chivalry series] playing, we saw Takakura Ken and Ikebe Ryō walking in the snow toward their fnal battle.

How we juxtaposed ourselves, college students who were not able to accomplish anything in real life, with them and cheered for them. For our generation, that movie Brutal Tale of Chivalry was our youth. 24 Sometimes the cheering was literal. In the late 1960s some of Tokyo's downtown theaters began hosting all-night flm showings, often featuring several yakuza flms. Young viewers—many veterans of student political movements—transformed the dark space into a political and convivial participatory space, responding emotionally to key scenes. 25 They shouted "nonsense" at the screen when the don of the evil gang spoke; when the hero, Takakura Ken, told the evil don, "Shinde morauze" (you shall die), they cheered "Iginashi" (no objections). 26 The young audience treated yakuza flm like a kabuki-style performative art, where audience response is an essential part of the enjoyment. The flmmakers were self-conscious about shooting overwrought kabuki-esque drama. According to the writer Yamadaira Shigeki, when Saeki Kiyoshi was directing Brutal Tale of Chivalry, he refused to shoot the scene where Takakura Ken and Ikebe Ryō walk toward their fnal showdown. The assistant director Furuhata Yasuo and the cinematographer Hoshijima Ichirō shot it instead. Other staff members were embarrassed by the overdramatized direction, while the producer Shundō Kōji pronounced: "All right, we've gotta go with the theater world." 27 But interaction allowed the young audience, albeit momentarily, to experience the hero's moral action as its own. Ōshima Nagisa relates an episode from an all-night showing in downtown (Ikebu-kuro) Tokyo of Ōshima's Night and Fog in Japan (1960). As the audience grew disgusted by the long-winded speech given toward the end by one of the characters—an autocratic party leader—one man shouted: "Ken-san[i.e., Takakura Ken], please cut this guy in two!" The whole theater, "though momentarily stunned by the comments, soon cheered and erupted into huge laughter." 28 Yamadaira Shigeki's personal recollection illustrates the emotional ties between yakuza flm and the student movements through the voice of a participant: "At the leftist meetings, I was singing 'The Internationale.' But I had the posters of Takakura Ken and Fuji Junko up on walls of my tiny apartment room. There I sang . . .'Karajishi botan.' [Yakuza flm] powerfully appealed to our feelings back then." 29 Both yakuza flm and the student left shared a will for radical change—a will that emerged within the historical conditions of postwar Japanese society. 30

Let me know if you want to read the rest and have any trouble finding it.

Herbert Ashe

^
thanks for that; interesting, and possibly some parallels (sex replacing or in addition to violence) with how some radicals took up the possibilities of the pink film (Adachi, Wakamatsu...) as came up in the Imamura thread.



So, Vol. 2: Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Deadly Fight in Hiroshima

Basically self-contained follow-up, slightly toned-down overall; but plotting somewhat less arbitrary and relentless than the first, with a couple of plot strands around the (welcome) addition of Meiko Kaji and Sonny Chiba.

References to Kamikaze pilots (relevant, plot-wise, it should be said) maybe a little on the nose but nevertheless make for an effective and pertinent ending, with the old bosses' platitudes whilst they get comfortable and fat off sacrifical youth.

zomgmouse

Adding to this as I watched two very distinct but both terrific yakuza films yesterday - one by Fukasaku himself. Both from 1971, so just a couple of years before this was made. Also both centre on slightly older yakuza men recently released from prison.

Sympathy for the Underdog. This is the Fukasaku one. A group of yakuza who were pushed out by a bigger syndicate restart their efforts in Okinawa. Fairly violent at every turn and done with a matter-of-factness that I think gets amplified even more in The Yakuza Papers. Likewise the contextual narration, which the following film does too actually.

The Wolves. Directed by Hideo Gosha - haven't seen a film by him before but I have some others on my watchlist and will definitely be checking them out at some point. Particularly interesting for being a yakuza film set in the 1920s. Elegiac and spending more time on the mood of the characters than the story, which is nevertheless engaging and poetic. Really liked this.