is a 1963 Japanese
yakuza film
is a popular film genre in Japanese cinema which focuses on the lives and dealings of ''yakuza'', Japanese organized crime syndicates. In the silent film era, depictions of ''bakuto'' (precursors to modern yakuza) as sympathetic Robin Hood-li ...
directed by
Seijun Suzuki
, born (24 May 1923 – 13 February 2017), was a Japanese filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter. His films are known for their jarring visual style, irreverent humour, nihilistic cool and entertainment-over-logic sensibility. He made 40 predo ...
. Much of the film is set in
Tokyo
Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...
, Japan.
Synopsis
Joji Mizuno (
Joe Shishido
was a Japanese actor most recognizable for his intense, eccentric yakuza film roles and his artificially enlarged cheekbones. He appeared in some 300 films but is best known in the West for his performance in the cult film '' Branded to Kill'' ...
), a former Kobe Metropolitan Police Department detective fired after being convicted of embezzlement, is released from prison. During his incarceration, his partner, Detective Takeshita, died in an apparent
lovers' suicide with a
call girl
A call girl or female escort is a sex worker who (unlike a street walker) does not display her profession to the general public, nor does she usually work in an institution like a brothel, although she may be employed by an escort agency.< ...
. However, Mizuno believes that the adultery and the suicide were staged by Nomoto Enterprises, a
yakuza
, also known as , are members of transnational organized crime syndicates originating in Japan. The Japanese police and media, by request of the police, call them , while the ''yakuza'' call themselves . The English equivalent for the ter ...
group whose prostitution operations Takeshita was investigating. Posing as a gangster, Mizuno infiltrates the Nomoto organization in order to find out the truth. At Takeshita's memorial service, Mizuno promises his dead partner's wife, Kumiko (
Misako Watanabe
is a Japanese stage, film and television actress. A graduate of the Haiyuza Theatre Company, she gave her film debut in Tadashi Imai's ''Tower of Lilies'' (1953) before becoming a contract player at the Nikkatsu film studios. She appeared in alm ...
), that he will find her husband's killers.
Mizuno is partnered with a young soldier named Goro Minami (Eimei Esumi) and quickly earns the respect of both Minami and the eccentric head of the Nomoto group, Tetsuo Nomoto (
Akiji Kobayashi), by re-securing protection payments from a business that had switched allegiances to the Sanko Family, Nomoto's sworn rivals. Sanko's second-in-command Shigeru Takechi (
Eiji Gō
was a Japanese actor. He appeared in more than sixty films from 1960 to 1982.
Career
Following his older brother, Jo Shishido, Gō joined the Nikkatsu studio in 1960 and made his film debut in '' The Warped Ones''. He often played villains on ...
), tries to kidnap Mizuno in retaliation, but Mizuno manages to turn the tables and takes Takechi hostage instead, forcing him to take him to his boss. Mizuno meets with Sanko Family head Shinzuke Onodera (Kinzo Shin) and surprises him by offering to spy on Nomoto for money.
Mizuno is approached by Keiko (Naomi Hoshi), one of Nomoto's
mistresses
Mistress is the feminine form of the English word "master" (''master'' + ''-ess'') and may refer to:
Romance and relationships
* Mistress (lover), a term for a woman who is in a sexual and romantic relationship with a man who is married to a d ...
who recognizes him as a cop from her days as a prostitute. She blackmails him into helping her identify and kill Nomoto's mysterious "sixth mistress", the one who secretly runs the prostitution racket, so she can take her place. Aside from Nomoto himself, the only one who knows the sixth mistress's identity is Nomoto's
gay
''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'.
While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...
brother Hideo (
Tamio Kawachi
was a Japanese actor.
Career
Kawachi was a student at Kanto Gakuin University when Yujiro Ishihara, one of his neighbors in Zushi, Kanagawa, invited him to join the Nikkatsu studio. He made his debut in '' A Slope in the Sun'' (1958) playing ...
), who is infamous for going berserk and attacking anyone who impugns the reputation of their prostitute mother. Mizuno goes to the
love hotel
A love hotel is a type of short-stay hotel found around the world operated primarily for the purpose of allowing guests privacy for sexual activities. The name originates from "Hotel Love" in Osaka, which was built in 1968 and had a rotating s ...
Hideo uses as his base of operations and tries to gather information by posing as a client, only to get into a fight with him after realizing that Hideo was involved in framing Takeshita. Ishizaki (Shiro Yanase), one of Nomoto's enforcers, breaks up the fight, and Mizuno is brought before Nomoto and interrogated about his reasons for prying into the prostitution ring. Under duress, Mizuno reveals that Keiko put him up to it and, luckily for him, Nomoto kills her before she can reveal Mizuno's identity.
Mizuno learns of a planned multimillion-yen drug deal between Nomoto Enterprises and an out of town group, the Ishiyama Family, so he brings the information to Onodera, laying out a plan for the Sanko men to steal the money from the Ishiyamas after the deal and make it look like Nomoto Enterprises are responsible. Takechi and his men rob the Ishiyama agents successfully, and just as Mizuno planned, Nomoto is blamed. However, one of Ishiyama's men recognizes Mizuno and makes him as a police officer. Mizuno is captured by Nomoto's men and tortured, but he manages to conceal his double-cross by telling them that he used to be a cop until he was caught and convicted for corruption.
Mizuno convinces Nomoto that the Sanko Family committed the robbery in retaliation for losing the protection racket Mizuno stole back from them. Nomoto sends Mizuno, Minami and Ishizaki to capture and question Takechi. The trio break into Takechi's apartment and hold his wife (Yuriko Abe) hostage while they wait for Takechi to come home. When Mizuno sees Takechi coming from the apartment's balcony, he tosses him a note warning of the ambush, but rather than heed his advice, Takechi bursts into his apartment with a gun drawn. A shootout ensues, during which Takechi, his wife, and Ishizaki are killed and Minami is gravely wounded.
With the police in pursuit, Mizuno and the weakened Minami flee to the nearby home of Takeshita's widow, who hides them. Mizuno calls Nomoto and lies that Takechi knew they were coming, meaning the Sanko Family may be planning an attack, then immediately calls Onodera and tells him of Takechi's death, setting the two gangs up to attack each other.
When Kumiko asks him what is happening, Mizuno explains his work as a double agent and his plan to provoke the Sanko and Nomoto clans into destroying each other to avenge her husband's murder. Nomoto sends his men to retrieve Mizuno and Minami, leaving Hideo behind to hold Kumiko hostage so she will not contact the police. When Mizuno returns to Nomoto headquarters, Nomoto reveals that he has learned of Mizuno's double-cross and has him chained to the ceiling to be tortured. However, before Nomoto can kill him, Mizuno is saved when the Sanko Family arrives and attacks Nomoto's mansion, leading to a massive shootout. After he realizes his gang will lose the battle, Onodera drives his car through the mansion's wall and detonates a bomb in a final kamikaze strike.
The explosion takes out most of Nomoto's men and gives Mizuno a chance to escape. Nomoto attacks him, and after a struggle, Mizuno subdues him and forces him to confess the identity of Takeshita's murderer - Kumiko, Takeshita's wife. Kumiko is Nomoto's sixth mistress and head of the prostitution ring, who married Takeshita in order to keep an eye on the movements of the police from the inside. When Takeshita discovered the truth and was preparing to expose his wife and Nomoto's crimes, she staged the double suicide, killing both him and the call girl herself. Kumiko is also the one who revealed Mizuno's true intentions to Nomoto. Nomoto overpowers the shocked Mizuno and prepares to kill him, but Minami shoots him first and then dies from his own wounds.
Mizuno returns to the Takeshita house and finds Kumiko and Hideo having a friendly chat. When Kumiko leaves the room, Mizuno enters and beats Hideo, then holds Kumiko at gunpoint and forces her to confess to the murder. Kumiko admits to having killed Takeshita but claims Nomoto made her do it, despite Nomoto claiming the opposite. Mizuno tricks her into insulting the Nomoto brothers' mother within earshot of Hideo, and then leaves her behind to be killed by him. Afterwards, Mizuno sends audio recordings he made of Nomoto and Kumiko's confessions to his former police superiors before departing.
Cast
Release
''Youth of the Beast'' was released in Japan on April 21, 1963.
It received an American release in the United States by Nikkatsu in 1993.
''Youth of the Beast'' was released on
DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...
by the
Criterion Collection on January 11, 2005. Eureka Entertainment released the film in on both Blu-ray and DVD release in 2014 as part of the Masters of Cinema range.
Reception
In contemporary reviews in Japan, the film was generally ignored.
The film was not placed in the years top 40 films by ''
Kinema Junpo
, commonly called , is Japan's oldest film magazine and began publication in July 1919. It was first published three times a month, using the Japanese ''Jun'' (旬) system of dividing months into three parts, but the postwar ''Kinema Junpō'' ha ...
'' and managed to place at 21st place in ''Eiga Hyrons through a single ballot vote.
From retrospective reviews, Michael Brooke of ''
Sight & Sound
''Sight and Sound'' (also spelled ''Sight & Sound'') is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). It conducts the well-known, once-a-decade ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, ongoing ...
'' described the film as the first of Suzuki's Nikkatsu films to feature "what became recognised (albeit far from immediately) as his characteristic approach", which Brooke described as "wildly over-composed and colour-coordinated (even the smoke billowing out of a wrecked car is a fetching reddish-brown)" stating that its "style and substance virtually indivisible and equally exhilarating."
Brooke found that "Suzuki doesn't so much undermine conventional gangster flick cliches as turn them up to 11, creating a powerfully satiric effects in the process"
Remake
John Woo
John Woo Yu-Sen SBS (; born September 22, 1946) is a Hong Kong filmmaker, known as a highly-influential figure in the action film genre. He was a pioneer of heroic bloodshed films (a crime action film genre involving Chinese triads) and the gun ...
announced in 2012 that he would direct a remake of ''Youth of the Beast'' titled ''Day of the Beast''.
The film is set to be produced by Woo and
Terence Chang
Terence Chang Chia-Chen () is a Hong Kong and American film producer.
Career
Chang is one of John Woo's long time friends and favoured producers. Chang produced the 1997 action hit ''Face/Off'' and '' Mission: Impossible 2''.
Following the box- ...
's Lion Rock Productions along with Nikkatsu.
The film is set in Tokyo where a Westerner becomes entered into a gang war between the Yakuza and Cold War Russian mafia.
The film will be written by Rob Frisbee.
Following the box-office disappointment of ''
The Crossing'', Woo and producer
Terence Chang
Terence Chang Chia-Chen () is a Hong Kong and American film producer.
Career
Chang is one of John Woo's long time friends and favoured producers. Chang produced the 1997 action hit ''Face/Off'' and '' Mission: Impossible 2''.
Following the box- ...
disbanded
Lion Rock Productions
John Woo Yu-Sen SBS (; born September 22, 1946) is a Hong Kong filmmaker, known as a highly-influential figure in the action film genre. He was a pioneer of heroic bloodshed films (a crime action film genre involving Chinese triads) and the gun ...
.
See also
*
List of crime films of the 1960s
A list of crime films released in the 1960s.
Notes
References
*
{{Films by genre
Crime films
*
1960s
File:1960s montage.png, Clockwise from top left: U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War; the Beatles led the British Invasion of t ...
*
List of Japanese films of 1963
A list of films released in Japan in 1963 (see 1963 in film).
List of films
See also
* 1963 in Japan
* 1963 in Japanese television
References Footnotes
Sources
*
*
External linksJapanese films of 1963at the Internet Movie Database
...
*
Seijun Suzuki filmography
Footnotes
References
*
External links
Youth of the Beast at Eureka Entertainment*
*
*
' at the
Japanese Movie Database
The , more commonly known as simply JMDb, is an online database of information about Japanese movies, actors, and production crew personnel. It is similar to the Internet Movie Database but lists only those films initially released in Japan. Y. ...
''Youth of the Beast: Screaming Target''an essay by
Howard Hampton
Howard George Hampton (born May 17, 1952) is a politician who was a member of Provincial Parliament for the province of Ontario. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Canada, from 1987 to 1999 in the electoral district of Rainy Ri ...
at the
Criterion Collection
{{DEFAULTSORT:Youth Of The Beast
1963 films
1960s crime thriller films
Japanese crime thriller films
Films based on Japanese novels
Films directed by Seijun Suzuki
1960s Japanese-language films
Nikkatsu films
Yakuza films
Films with screenplays by Ichirô Ikeda
Japanese films about revenge
1960s Japanese films