Yakuza and Film In the 1970s

Opening with the iconic image of the atomic bomb exploding in a mushroom cloud formation over Hiroshima, Kinji Fukasaku's epic 1970s yakuza series Battles Without Honor and Humanity ("Jingi naki tatakai") set the tone for films in Japan in that decade, not only in its frenzied pace and unique, action-oriented style, but in its criticism of post-war Japanese society. This trend, dubbed jitsuroku, or "true account," continued in Fukasaku's Graveyard of Honor ("Jingi no hakaba") and Norifumi Suzuki's Killing Machine ("Shorinji kenpo"). These three films made deft use of the yakuza, previously depicted as torchbearers of chivalry, as a metaphor to explore the breakdown of post-war Japanese society, its loss of tradition, and the fate of the individual who found himself at odds with what that society had become.

Before Fukasaku's re-imagining of the yakuza film, the genre was a perennial favorite, especially in the 1960s when the ninkyo eiga—or chivalrous movie—was especially popular. Set in a romanticized pre-war period, usually Meiji, Taisho, or early Showa, the ninkyo eiga invariably followed the same formula: a chivalrous yakuza takes on an unscrupulous rival gang and either dies in the process or is sent to jail, thus fulfilling his Confucian, filial duty to his yakuza family while still maintaining the societal status quo. The films were exceedingly popular, resonating with both the working class and students, the latter of who saw similarities on screen to their own struggles against the system. Fukasaku, in adapting the memoirs of a Hiroshima yakuza member into what would eventually become the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series, wanted to, according to Japanese culture expert Patrick Macias, "replace the old techniques [of the ninkyo eiga] with a new kind of film, where [he] could overlay [his] own experiences of living in post-war Japan." Fukasaku achieved this through a drastic stylistic break from traditional Japanese films. Typically, as in films such as those by Yasujiro Ozu, the camera is static and level. Fukasaku, inspired by the newsreels he saw of rioting students and labor disputes, "took the camera in hand and ran into the crowds of actors and extras," as he explains in Macias' book, Tokyo Scope. This "you-are-there" handheld effect, combined with a liberal use of newspaper snapshot-like freeze-frames and memoir-inspired storylines, served to legitimize the material, taking it out of the realm of fantasy—the territory of the ninkyo eiga—and into that of reality. Audiences could finally see in the films a mirror of their own anger and dissatisfaction. The failed student movement, the working class left behind in Japan's march towards modernization, these members of the audience saw their own feelings expressed in the jitsuroku eiga. As Sadao Yamane explains in an interview on the supplementary disc to the Battles Without Honor and Humanity set, "[The film] connected with people who had doubts inside about the post-war period—unexpressed, maybe unconscious doubts."

Yakuza society—and by extension Japanese society in general—as depicted in the first installment of the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series (1973) is one of sheer chaos and violence, where gang members behave without regard for societal norms. Fukasaku came of age in post-war Japan, saying "it was like living in a constant state of violence" (Tokyo Scope). In the film, Fukasaku's jarring, jostling camera work enhances the chaotic nature of life by highlighting a lack of stability in society. Even within the yakuza, traditionally a bastion of Confucian hierarchy, bosses and underlings have no loyalty for each other, only a Sengoku era-like desire to get ahead. What little order there is arrives in the form of the U.S. Occupation troops, which figure prominently in all three films. Nominally there to provide security and stability, the soldiers are rather depicted as a destabilizing force, using Japan as their personal playground. Their first appearance in Battles Without Honor and Humanity depicts them as lecherous rapists, knocking a woman to the ground and tearing her dress. Her humiliation is Japan's, helpless against the victorious Americans. Fukasaku himself echoed this: "Without the help of Americans, we could not get on with our lives. This was a great humiliation" (Tokyo Scope).

Shozo Hirono (Bunta Sugawara) has joined the yakuza to escape the instability of outside post-war society. While the yakuza may appear to follow the old codes of honor and chivalry, the underlying reality that Fukasaku portrays is one of hypocrisy. The hallmark of the yakuza code of honor is the ritual, of which the yakuza have many, such as the induction ceremony. Normally a lavish affair, when Hirono is inducted into the Yamamori gang his ceremony is "simplified to suit the times." Honor, it is implied, is no longer required—a cursory nod towards it is enough. A scene in which Hirono has to cut off a finger to atone for a mistake reinforces this. A common trope in yakuza films, Fukasaku plays the normally extremely serious act of sacrifice for laughs, having the finger end up in a hen house, pecked by hungry chickens. Even seppuku—that most revered Japanese act of honor and a holdout from the glorified, honor-imbued days of the samurai—is repurposed for honorless means. Hirono's cellmate, another yakuza, slits open his belly not to die for a boss but to be released early from prison, a purely selfish act that displays contempt for the feudalistic ideal of dying for one's superiors, a notion under which Fukasaku came of age. In Mark Schilling's Yakuza Movie Book, Fukasaku is quoted as saying, "Adults were teaching us how to die, but they didn't teach us how to live. …I'd had enough of the emperor." Fukasaku's declarative statement on this is delivered in the form of Hirono firing a gun in protest into the memorial display of a yakuza comrade at his funeral, killed by the hypocritical men now honoring him. The ceremonies and rituals that signify tradition and honor may continue, but they are empty gestures.

For the individual dissatisfied with society, what options are there? For Battles Without Honor and Humanity's Hirono, one of the few honorable characters to survive to the end of the series, there is only frustration and anger. Hirono begins the series an honorable man with respect for the past and his superiors. He enjoys listening to traditional music—dismissed as "old-fashioned crap" by a hip woman in a bar—and refuses to go against the wishes of his boss, even when he doubts his boss' motives. But by the fourth episode of the series, Police Tactics (1974), having been betrayed by a boss one too many times, he decides to kill a superior and declares, "I don't give a fucking shit about honor anymore!" His intent and anger are made all the more real by his atypical use of coarse language. The system has beaten him into an honorless submission, backed him into a corner—a feeling no doubt shared by many in the Japanese audience at the time.

After completing the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series, in 1975 Fukasaku turned to the life of notorious yakuza Rikio Ishikawa for the extremely angry Graveyard of Honor ("Jingi no hakaba"). Similarly set in a Japan still raw from the war, Graveyard of Honor depicts a society in complete chaos, with violent riots erupting seemingly every five minutes. Into this fray comes Rikio Ishikawa (Tetsuya Watari), a man to whom, we learn in the documentary-like opening, the life of the yakuza has always appealed. The yakuza society he finds himself involved in is likely not the one he was suspecting. When he attacks a rival gang boss, prompting a reprisal, Ishikawa is chastised by his boss: "You have any idea how much a gang war costs?" Clearly, Ishikawa is disappointed by his gang's lack of response. It is not stated explicitly, but Ishikawa was likely seduced by the myth of the yakuza as Edo-era outcast folk heroes, providing for those left out of the rigid Tokugawa system, for whom honor and codes of conduct are everything. "You have to follow the rules," Ishikawa's yakuza brother tells him. Ishikawa thinks he is following the rules, but for a gang that values money more than honor, the rules have become very different. Also shaping the rules are the U.S. Occupation forces, a large presence in Graveyard of Honor. Ichikawa's gang is actively colluding with the U.S. to control the black market of Tokyo's Shinjuku, selling Johnny Walker whiskey and other potent symbols of U.S. commercialization. When a gang war threatens to erupt because of Ichikawa's honor-inspired actions, the U.S. forces are called in to thwart the expensive war and force the rival gang to back down. The yakuza have become just like the rest of Japan, in bed with the U.S. and concerned only with money. Any remnants of honor, the hallmarks of the yakuza (and Japan) of old are gone, replaced by capitalism and chaos.

As in Battles Without Honor and Humanity, Fukasaku uses the trope of tradition and yakuza code of conduct—specifically through the breaking of such codes—to highlight the lack of honor in larger Japanese society. In the case of Graveyard of Honor, though, society's abandonment of certain codes of conduct that Ishikawa holds dear drives him to rebellion. If society will not follow the rules, why should he? This is demonstrated by his breaking of two cardinal Confucian codes. The first comes when he attacks his own gang boss, first by blowing up his car (a symbol of his capitalist position) and then by stabbing him. Ishikawa is told this is an "unforgivable offense," yet he is beyond caring. For him, the "unforgivable offense" was committed by society when it abandoned its traditional mores. The second comes when he kills his sworn brother, now a gang boss himself and guilty—in Ishikawa's eyes—of the same kind of honorless corruption as his own boss. If there was still any doubt about how Ishikawa feels about the society that has abandoned him, it is dashed away when he uses a memorial sake cup, picked up off a gravesite, in which to mix heroin and then shoot up. Society refuses to place any weight in its own traditions, so why should Ishikawa?

Of the three films explored here, Graveyard of Honor offers the bleakest option for the individual dissatisfied with post-war Japanese society. When rejected by the yakuza, an organization Ishikawa had longed to join since childhood, he turns to vice: gambling, violence, and heroin addiction. "What turned this man into a rabid dog?" the narrator asks in the film's introduction. "Was it the chaos and confusion of the post-war years?" The answer: "It might be…" Specifically, it is the society that has sprung up from the ashes of the war, a monolithic, profit-driven society that has done this. For Ishikawa, an individual left out of this new society, and one predisposed to rail angrily against it, there is no choice but to spiral into self-destruction. Not every man can be a Hirono, unshakably sure of himself. Some must fall, crushed under the weight of a society that doesn't want them. For Ishikawa, his only options are prison and, ultimately, suicide. For longtime yakuza film fans, the casting of former ninkyo star and pin-up idol Tetsuya Watari as Ishikawa must have made his conduct and fall doubly shocking. The coolly removed, modish star of Tokyo Drifter was here rebelling against every empty yakuza ritual in the book, actions that, when combined with the casting coup that Fukasaku pulled off, perfectly crystallize Fukasaku's critique of post-war Japan.

The decade of the 1970s was a particularly dark one for Japanese film in general, with the jitsuroku style infusing other genres as well, particularly the martial arts film. Most focused on the dark side of humanity, yet one, Norifumi Suzuki's 1975 Killing Machine ("Shorinji kenpo"), is oddly positive, offering a viable alternative for surviving in not only the post-war Japan in which the film is set, but in society in general.

The U.S. military looms large in Killing Machine's post-war environment, an omnipresent force doling out humiliation in large dollops. Their very presence is, as Paul Varley states in his book Japanese Culture, discomforting: "To the Japanese, ever sensitive to matters of face, the swaggering of some GIs must have seemed almost intolerably humiliating." The film plainly shows this, with a Japanese veteran seething while watching American GIs dance with and kiss Japanese women in a club. The veteran explodes in anger until a group of yakuza, obviously working with the occupation forces as muscle for the soldier-friendly club, throws the man out. The veteran, home from fighting for his country, now has to endure the humiliation of watching those he fought for—women—being conquered, albeit sexually, by the former enemy. An early scene reinforces the power of the occupation forces, with an army jeep running over a child in the black market. The jeep speeds off, showing no signs of stopping to check on the child. When the film's protagonist, Doshin So (played by Shinichi "Sonny" Chiba) retaliates, the police arrest and remonstrate him for interfering with the Americans. The film later invokes the Americans again as the ultimate authority: the yakuza wish to expand into new territories, but the dojo founded by Doshin So, an ever-present thorn in their side, is in their way. "I'll advise the Americans to destroy that school," a yakuza boss states. "Martial arts are banned by the occupation forces." Martial arts, a means to strengthen the self, are seen as a direct challenge to the yakuza/occupation power elite, and thus worthy of banning.

That the form of martial arts that Doshin So practices, a pan-Asian hybrid of Chinese Shaolin kung fu and Japanese karate, is also a threat to "pure" Japanese martial arts adds a unique, anti-nationalist twist to the film and challenges what "traditional" means. Two judo experts barge into Doshin So's dojo, demanding to fight, with the rights to the dojo as the prize for the winner. They state their nationalist position plainly: "Even if we won the war, why respect Chinese fighting?" So easily defeats them, lending credence to his anti-nationalist approach. Suzuki reinforces this by having So refuse to recognize nationalist symbols in his dojo. Instead of the kokki, the Japanese flag, So emblazons the martial arts uniforms with the character for manji, the traditional Buddhist swastika, a symbol known across Asia and having its origins in ancient India. So also challenges traditional mores by allowing women to join and train in his school. With his dojo, So has created a new society, one that eschews blind nationalism (his shorinjo kenpo is a mix of Chinese and Japanese fighting styles) and useless traditions (such as the exclusion of women) for one that reflects a modern, pan-Asian way of thinking.

As an individual up against a society he is at odds with, Doshin So is presented differently from Battles Without Honor and Humanity's Shozo Hirono and Graveyard of Honor's Rikio Ishikawa. While the latter two became disillusioned while functioning within the system, Doshin So instead chooses to exist outside it and create his own society, symbolized by the dojo, as previously mentioned. This decision is made when So is informed that Japan has lost the war: "Japan lost," he states defiantly, "but I'm not defeated!" His is a personal, rather than nationalist or power-based, strength, one that he attributes to his martial arts training. "To overcome one's weakness," he states, "that's the spirit of Shaolin." It does not matter to So that Shaolin kung fu is Chinese—if it strengthens him, that is enough. This puts So is at odds with the system, represented by the U.S. occupation forces and, more often as the film progresses, the yakuza, who are depicted often enough working with the Americans that they can been seen as an extension of them. Their dress is always Western—not even the bosses wear the traditional kimono, as is standard in yakuza films. So, on the other hand, dresses in a mix of Asian styles, some Chinese, some Japanese. While he doesn't ally himself with any one country, his position is definitely Asian, as typified by the aforementioned Buddhist manji he has chosen as his dojo's (his "country's") symbol. In one particularly telling sequence, So kicks his Japanese geta into the face of a yakuza wearing a suit. In his pan-Asianism and reliance on inner strength, Doshin So becomes a role model, and the film ends with a wide shot of a field full of Japanese, all practicing shorinji kenpo together. So's dojo has become so large, it has expanded into larger society, previously the exclusive realm of the occupation forces and the yakuza. So's borderless martial arts, the film posits, has become a viable and attractive alternative to the honorless, money-driven society that is post-war Japan.

By the late-1970s, the jitsuroku genre had run its course. Both Kinji Fukasaku and Sonny Chiba would turn to epic fantasies inspired by Hollywood films like Star Wars and Conan The Barbarian, escapist fare that appealed to a populace now flush with cash from an exploding economy. Those who felt an affinity with the downtrodden heroes of the jitsuroku films found themselves as ignored by the media as by Japan, Inc. Young people were able to take solace in the high-speed, punk-inspired bosozoku films of Sogo Ishii and other late-'70s filmmakers, but for the day laborers and former student protestors, there was little in the popular landscape with which to identify. Like their heroes, they too were abandoned by their society. For them, there was little solace to be found in the media. That is, until the VCR allowed them to revisit their old heroes again.

—Adam Douglas

Note: this piece was originally written for a college class on Japanese culture, hence its wordiness.