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 ...
In fall of 1963, the police crack down on yakuza activities nationwide as the government prepares for the
1964 Summer Olympics
The , officially the and commonly known as Tokyo 1964 ( ja, 東京1964), were an international multi-sport event held from 10 to 24 October 1964 in Tokyo, Japan. Tokyo had been awarded the organization of the 1940 Summer Olympics, but this ho ...
. However, the war between the Yamamori Family and the Shinwa Group against an alliance of the Uchimoto, Hirono, and Akashi Families rages on. Bosses Noburo Uchimoto and Shozo Hirono, along with Akashi lieutenant Shinichi Iwai, recruit two additional bosses, Hidemitsu Kawada of the Kawada Family and Tomoji Okajima of the Gisei Group, to their side. One of Hirono's officers is killed by men from the Makihara Family, run by Yamamori's underboss, and Hirono vows to take revenge himself, but others, including his advisor Kenichi Okubo, urge him not to. Akira Takeda, captain of the Yamamori Family, threatens Okubo's life if he doesn't keep Hirono in Kure, as Yamamori has fled to
Hiroshima City
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui ...
while he and Makihara continue the war.
The police, knowing that the gangs are spending heavily to bring in reinforcements from across Japan, begin putting the squeeze on their rackets and business interests. When an Uchimoto Family member accidentally kills a drunken civilian, the public demands further action and newspapers begin running stories attacking and demonizing the yakuza. The police put a constant stakeout on Hirono's office, effectively paralyzing him since he is still technically out on parole. The cowardly Uchimoto refuses to take action, while the Akashi Family becomes distracted by their own problems 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 ...
. When Hirono learns that Yamamori will be traveling to
Kobe
Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, whic ...
, he secretly leaves his base in disguise planning to kill him personally. However, during the trip, the two men escorting him run off intending to perform the hit themselves. The Akashi Family intercepts them, not wanting to be dishonored by letting Yamamori get killed on their turf. Iwai concocts a plan: he and Hirono arrange a large memorial service for his murdered officer, using it as an excuse to bring in hundreds of men for an attack on Hiroshima City.
Uchimoto is abducted at gunpoint by Takeda and Yamamori and rats on his partners. Yamamori tips the police off to a year-old crime Hirono committed to have him arrested. His arrest forces the attack to be called off, and Yamamori safely returns to Kure so he can crush Hirono's weakened family. After learning that Takeda is having Okajima's girlfriend spy on him, he tricks her into revealing Okajima's location so he can be assassinated, angering Takeda. Shoichi Fujita, a senior Gisei Group member and Okajima's likely successor, retaliates by bombing the headquarters of Yamamori officer Shoichi Eda, and Uchimoto sells out his own men when they decide on a whim to kill Yamamori as a favor to Takeda. Their plan foiled, Uchimoto's men start a public brawl that turns into a shootout, giving the police a convenient excuse to arrest Uchimoto, Yamamori, and several other bosses. Iwai and his men immediately fly to Kure to rebuild the Gisei Group and expand the Akashi Family's influence, while Takeda forms a coalition of Hiroshima yakuza to fight them. He orders a bombing of Boss Akashi's house in Kobe to frame the Shinwa Group, triggering retaliation from the Akashi Family and leading to more violence and arrests.
Kawada, tired of the fighting and wanting to protect his own territory from the Gisei Group, manipulates Yazaki, a low-ranking member of his family, into killing Fujita; Yazaki is caught and sentenced to twenty years for murder. Iwai visits Hirono in jail and explains to him all that has happened, before adding that the Akashi Family is pulling its support as the police have forced them to make peace with the Shinwa Group. Prosecutors build a case against Hirono and his parole is revoked, earning him seven years in prison. Makihara gets three years, Eda five, Yamamori a year and a half (and his wife informs him that the government is willing to buy out one of his businesses for a billion yen after he's released), and Uchimoto cuts a deal to dissolve his family and retire from the yakuza, which gets him off on probation. While waiting in a cold, unheated room to be booked into prison at the film's end, Takeda half-jokingly tells Hirono that he might turn his family into a political committee when he gets out.
Hiroki Matsukata
, better known by his stage name , was a Japanese actor. He was the son of ''jidaigeki'' actor Jūshirō Konoe and actress Yaeko Mizukawa and has a younger brother, Yūki Meguro, who is also an actor. With ex-wife actress Akiko Nishina he had tw ...
as Shoichi Fujita
*
Nobuo Kaneko
was a Japanese actor. His wife was actress Yatsuko Tanami. He appeared in more than 200 films between 1950 and 1993.
Career
Kaneko was a versatile character actor, playing roles ranging from comedic buffoons to hardened yakuza bosses. He is es ...
as Yoshio Yamamori
* Hideo Murota as Hideo Hayakawa
*
Shingo Yamashiro
was a Japanese television and film actor.
Biography
Yamashiro, who was originally from Kyoto, Japan, was born , but used Shingo Yamashiro as his stage name. He made his film acting debut in 1957.
Yamashiro starred in the television series '' H ...
as Shoichi Eda
*
Toshio Kurosawa
was a Japanese baseball outfielder who played eight seasons in the Japanese Baseball League from 1936 to 1947. His career was cut short due to typhoid fever, from which he died at age 33. Kurosawa's number 4 was retired by his last club, the Yo ...
Asao Koike
was a Japanese actor. He is most famous for playing yakuza roles. He is also known as voice actor. In 1950, he joined the Bungakuza Theatre Company. In 1963, he left the Bungakuza Theatre Company and established the Kumo Theatre Company. He appea ...
as Tomoji Okajima
*
Asao Uchida Asao is both a Japanese surname and a masculine Japanese given name. Notable people with the name include:
Surname:
* Eliran Asao (born 1985), footballer
*, politician
*, volleyballer
*, baseballer
Given name:
*, Japanese physician, academic and m ...
as Kenichi Okubo
*
Harumi Sone
Japanese given name. Although the name can be given to both sexes, it is more commonly used by females.
Possible writings
Harumi can be written using different kanji characters and can mean:
*晴美, "sunny, beauty"
*晴海, "sunny, sea"
*晴 ...
Nobuo Yana
is a Japanese film actor. He is most famous for playing villains. Before he started his acting career, he was a professional baseball player of Toei Flyer's.
In 1956, he joined Toei Flyer's but in 1958, he retired because of an injury. He jo ...
Mayumi Nagisa
is a Japanese actress and singer.
Biography
She was born from Tokyo. After dropping out of high school, she made her debut in 1961 in the film ''Yūyake Ko yake no Akatonbo'' (directed by Koji Shima). She went sold out as Daiei Film's fresh star ...
as Mieko
*Isao Natsuyagi as Hiroshi Sugimoto
* Toshie Kimura as Rika Yamamori
*
Mitsuko Aoi
Mitsuko is a feminine Japanese given name.
Possible writings
The name Mitsuko is generally written with the kanji characters 光 and 子 which, when translated into English can mean "light, child" or "shining, child".http://www.20knames.com/femal ...
Seizō Fukumoto
(3 February 1943 – 1 January 2021) was a Japanese actor.
Biography
He started acting at age 15 in Kyoto, the capital of Japanese cinema. A specialist in film and television jidaigeki set in the Edo period, he most often played a rōnin, but in ...
Sanae Nakahara
Sanae Nakahara (Japanese: 中原早苗; July 31, 1935 – May 15, 2012) was a Japanese actress from Tokyo. She starred in over 80 films and television shows, the most prominent being her role in the films Lady Snowblood (1973), Yagyu Clan Conspi ...
as Kikue
*
Akira Shioji
Akira may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* ''Akira'' (franchise), a Japanese cyberpunk franchise
** ''Akira'' (manga), a 1980s cyberpunk manga by Katsuhiro Otomo
** ''Akira'' (1988 film), an anime film adaptation of the manga
** ''Akira'' (vide ...
as jailer
Production
Due to the success of the first film, Toei demanded that screenwriter
Kazuo Kasahara
was a Japanese screenwriter particularly known for his work in the yakuza film genre. He was born in the Nihonbashi area of Tokyo and dropped out of Nippon University.
Works
*''Battles Without Honor and Humanity (film), Battles Without Honor and ...
finally write about the Hiroshima yakuza war depicted in
Kōichi Iiboshi
was a Japanese journalist for ''Yomiuri Shinbun'' and author.
Career
Iiboshi graduated from Seventh Higher School Zoshikan (now Kagoshima University) and from Faculty of Law, Kyoto University. He was the vice copy chief of the social news divisio ...
's articles, which are themselves based on the journals of Kōzō Minō, and split it into two films. Kasahara had purposely avoided that part of the story for the first two installments, not only because he was daunted by all the names and relationships that were presented in a complex way, but also because he would have to write about the Yamaguchi-gumi and was concerned about the agreements he made to the people involved in the incidents.
The fourth film began in September 1973. Set after the Hiroshima incidents, Hirono and the lead characters are now high-ranking bosses that do not appear in the battles themselves. Therefore, Kasahara and director Kinji Fukasaku decided to show the violent story from multiple angles in an objective way.
During his fifth visit to Hiroshima Kasahara found that both Minō and Takeshi Hattori, second president of the
Kyosei-kai
The is a yakuza group based in Hiroshima, Japan.
History
The Kyosei-kai was formed in May 1964 from seven yakuza clans united by bakuto Tatsuo Yamamura.
Kasahara collected all his information into a large collage of all the gang fights, but having worked on the series for a year, began to lose sight of what he was doing. Toei was telling him to hurry up, follow the budget, and make it more entertaining. He cited reading a collection of essays by poet Sumita Oyama called "Human Adoration" as the only thing that kept him sane. The screenplay took him 73 days to write.
Release
''Battles Without Honor and Humanity'' has been released on home video and aired on television, the latter with some scenes cut. In 1980, the first four films were edited into a 224-minute compilation and was given a limited theatrical release and broadcast on Toei's TV network. A
Blu-ray
The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...
box set compiling all five films in the series was released on March 21, 2013, to celebrate its 40th anniversary.
All five films in the series were 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 kin ...
in North America by
Home Vision Entertainment
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...
in 2004, under the moniker ''The Yakuza Papers''. A 6-disc DVD box set containing them all was also released. It includes a bonus disc containing interviews with director William Friedkin, discussing the influence of the films in America; subtitle translator
Linda Hoaglund
Linda may refer to:
As a name
* Linda (given name), a female given name (including a list of people and fictional characters so named)
* Linda (singer) (born 1977), stage name of Svetlana Geiman, a Russian singer
* Anita Linda (born Alice Lake ...
Kenta Fukasaku
is a Japanese filmmaker and screenwriter. He is the son of film director Kinji Fukasaku and actress Sanae Nakahara.
Biography
He made his writing debut in the popular Japanese cult film '' Battle Royale'', which his father directed. He wrote th ...
,
Kiyoshi Kurosawa
is a Japanese film director, screenwriter, film critic and a professor at Tokyo University of the Arts. Although he has worked in a variety of genres, Kurosawa is best known for his many contributions to the Japanese horror genre, his honorific ...
, a Toei producer and a biographer among others.Arrow Films released a Blu-ray and DVD box set, limited to 2,500 copies, of all five films in the UK on December 7, 2015, and in the US a day later. Special features include an interview with the series fight choreographer Ryuzo Ueno and the 1980 edited compilation of the first four films.