Japan Organised Crime Boss

So the year draws to a close with perhaps the last of the Kinji Fukasaku releases. Who knows, maybe someone else will sneak one in unseen – go on, I dare you! It’s been a good year for them because many of the releases have provided glimpses of his films outside those which are normally seen. Also the chance to really immerse yourself as a viewer is something that is not to be sneezed at, really, because growing up it was easy to see how many classical Hollywood directors developed; Hitchcock, Hawks, Huston, you name them, because even if you didn’t have all their films available you could almost always see a representative selection of their work across time. Too often with Japanese cinema we have clusters of films by directors and then gaps, which unless we really strive to find or watch awful online copies of (nah, not doing that) the wider range is absent.  

So this brings us to Japan Organised Crime Boss, Fuksaku’s 1969 entry into his ouvre.  

In the film, the powerful Osaka-based Danno clan have their eyes on taking control of the country. An alliance of Tokyo yakuza join forces to oppose it, but it all comes to a head in Yokohama where Tsukamoto (Koji Tsuruta) is released from prison and finds himself and his old clan in the midst of a turf war.

The first moments are delivered in still images of yakuza fighting, their history and growth; the biggest clan, Danno moving out from Osaka, and moments of sudden, sharp violence and the announcement of the dead: this is Battles Without Honour and Humanity mark one, preparation perhaps for his later films. It’s easy to say but it shouts it. This is not a bad thing, not at all, because it is a classic situation of Fukasaku taking narratives that have a complicated number of protagonists and organisations and ordering it so that the viewer can hope to consume it. Short. Sharp. Effective. It’s worth raising this immediately as one issue I’ve often heard with yakuza films, and perhaps some of Fukasaku’s films, is that trying to follow them with all the various clans, characters, places and relationships can get confusing, fast. This is arguably no different from early Suzuki potboilers and the answer is that to try and get your head around everybody is not the point, especially in Fuksaku’s films where you are there, like the protagonists, for the wider narrative. There’s little chance of hoping to know everyone, so to follow everything you need instead to flow with the overarching narrative. Once you allow yourself to do this the film is very different because it doesn’t matter if a certain yakuza clan’s name doesn't quite resonate at a given moment because the story and its protagonists do. Everything fits together. It’s also often representative of the chaos and the change, as allegiances shift and merge, as blood brothers split or bond.

That is the point.  

And Fukasaku deals with this, less so here than in his Battles films, by telling you: This Person Dies Now. This happens for a reason, the reason being violence is chaos and chaos is not easily dealt with. Okay, understood and followed.

So flow with the film. All will be well.  

And it will be well because this is a precursor yes for his Battles films but it is also a balancing act in terms of narrative and character. Tsukamoto is the yakuza often seen throughout the 60s, he is the violent but noble character. He is the one man on the cusp of what Fukasaku will show us in his later films, but it is also Koji Tsuruta as the actor and yakuza that is on the cusp of being too long in the tooth for this kind of film, for this kind of world. As the film progresses, we see him with Kazama (Bunta Sugawara) behind him, the younger man clearly being the next in line in the clan, and of course he is also next in line in Fukasaku’s films, Sugawara oozing leading man charisma. Intriguingly though Sugawara has a cameo almost, as does later Noboru Ando as the one-armed Ooba. Yet Tsuruta is our lead and it’s noticeable that he is often more softly shot in scenes where candles flicker and glimmer, he’s less hard-edged than everyone else and the cinematography has him framed in a more romanticised way. He is the last of a dying breed; loyal to his people, willing to stand alone, able to sacrifice himself.  

You can argue that Japan Organised Crime Boss is a quietly excellent film. It never quite explodes like many of Fukasaku’s other works but by the end I found myself surprised how effectively it hooked me. I was tired when watching it, arguably less receptive than on other nights but the film carried me along effortlessly. That it contains some standout moments is never a bad thing, such as the funeral for Tsukamoto’s fallen boss, with the sudden influx of opposing yakuza all making nice, and there Tsukamoto is sitting, as leaders pray at the funeral, the contradicting showiness and the undercurrents of animosity become apparent as the chanting we hear suddenly become incessant, reflecting the tension in both the funeral and more importantly within Tsukamoto’s soul.

Some of the why it is so good is possibly evidenced by Tomisaburo Wakayama as Miyahara, a rival yakuza who is being used as proxy by the Danno clan and it’s fascinating thing as Wakayama’s performance is a mixture of the theatrical and the underplayed; at first you think he’s going to go into OTT Wakayama mode but then keeps it under wraps, emotions bleeding through. In passing we notice that Miyahara is an addict (heroin one assumes) and his behaviour suddenly falls into place. We’re not told anything, we take the performance and work it out, and are also entertained.

Yes, this is entertainment but it also reflects on society as Fukasaku’s best work often does, the bosses who manipulate, become part of the establishment, who are arguably the worst possible villains, where we can see their scheming behind their faces as they rack up money and you know that they will be accepted into the apparently honest world as entrepreneurs and not as gangsters.

But who cares when the film ends with the beautiful handheld chaos that it does. Oh yes, the film really ends with a short but bravura sequence.  

As a way to (probably) end a year of some excellent Fukasaku releases across several labels, Radiance have picked up one that could be a rote yakuza yarn but is so much more - a fascinating glimpse of the genre in transition. You can see Koji Tsuruta as a leading man being gently pushed aside by the more visceral Bunta Sugawara. But this is all film history yet to come, and the most important thing is this another excellent Fukasaku release and I for one would welcome more of his back catalogue.