Yakuza film

Film poster for Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1973)

Yakuza film (ヤクザ映画, yakuza eiga) is a popular film genre in Japanese cinema which focuses on the lives and dealings of yakuza, also referred to as the Japanese Mafia.

Ninkyo eiga

Ninkyo eiga, or "chivalry films", were the first type of yakuza films. Most were produced by the Toei studio in the 1960s. The kimono-clad yakuza hero of the ninkyo films (personified by the stoic Ken Takakura) was always portrayed as an honorable outlaw torn between the contradictory values of giri (duty) and ninjo (personal feelings).

Jitsuroku eiga

In the 1970s, a new breed of yakuza eiga emerged, the jitsuroku series, or Docudrama. Many jitsuroku eiga were based on true stories, and filmed in a documentary style with Handy Movie Camera. This genre was popularized by Kinji Fukasaku's groundbreaking yakuza epic Battles Without Honor and Humanity. This film, which spawned four sequels, portrayed the post-War yakuza not as the honorable heirs to the samurai code, but as ruthless, treacherous street thugs. The films star Bunta Sugawara (often thought of as the anti-Ken Takakura) as a sneering ex-soldier who rises to power in the bombed-out Hiroshima underworld.

Recent developments

In the 1990s, yakuza movies in Japan declined. Now, many are low-budget direct-to-video movies. One exception has been the critically acclaimed films of Takeshi Kitano, whose existential yakuza movies are well known around the world.

Prominent actors

• Noboru Ando
• Akira Kobayashi
• Toshirō Mifune
• Joe Shishido
• Bunta Sugawara
• Ken Takakura
• Takeshi Kitano
• Susumu Terajima
• Ren Osugi
• Shingo Yamashiro

Selected films

• Drunken Angel (Akira Kurosawa, 1948)
• Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa, 1961)
• Pale Flower (Masahiro Shinoda, 1964)
• Abashiri Prison (Teruo Ishii, 1965)
• Tokyo Drifter (Seijun Suzuki, 1966)
• Sympathy for the Underdog (Kinji Fukasaku, 1971)
• Street Mobster (Kinji Fukasaku, 1972)
• Battles Without Honor and Humanity (Kinji Fukasaku, 1973)
• Jailbreak Hiroshima murder prisoner (Sadao Nakajima, 1974)
• The Yakuza (Sydney Pollack, 1975)
• Riot Shimane prison (Sadao Nakajima, 1975)
• Osaka blitzkrieg (Sadao Nakajima, 1976)
• Black Rain (Ridley Scott, 1989)
• Boiling Point (Takeshi Kitano, 1990)
• Minbo (Juzo Itami, 1992)
• Sonatine (Takeshi Kitano, 1993)
• Kids Return (Takeshi Kitano, 1996)
• Postman Blues (Sabu, 1997)
• Hana-bi (Takeshi Kitano, 1997)
• Dead or Alive (Takashi Miike, 1999)
• Brother (Takeshi Kitano, 2000)
• Ichi The Killer (Takashi Miike, 2001)
• Gozu (Takashi Miike, 2003)
• Outrage (Takeshi Kitano, 2010)

Bibliography

• Mark Schilling (2003). The Yakuza Movie Book : A Guide to Japanese Gangster Films. Stone Bridge Press. ISBN 1-880656-76-0.

External links

• Yakuza Eiga - Informational website
• Guide to Yakuza Movies at yakuza Japanese