Tokijiro: Lone Yakuza

So we come to the final Radiance Tai Kato release of 2024, in the shape of Tokijiro: Lone Yakuza. Do we hope for more in 2025? Of course we do, any sensible thinking mortal would. Though let us not forget 2024 brought us more of Kato's film, being the third in the recent Red Peony Gambler I-III box from Eureka.

Traveling yakuza, Tokijiro (Kinnosuke Nakamura) finds himself first attacked, then sucked into defending a geisha house before finally travelling again. Tokijiro once more takes on the hospitality of local yakuza, who in return asks him to kill Sanzo, the last of an opposing clan. Finding in Sanzo a kindred spirit, a man of honour, he nevertheless ends his life, though Sanzo tasks him to take care of his wife Okinu (Junko Ikeuchi) and very young son.

Tokijiro: Lone Yakuza is an intriguing change of pace from the previous Radiance releases. Though at first it has certain genre trappings, with the obligatory opening where Tokijiro is attacked by those seeking revenge, what's interesting is that Kato never lingers on this but gets to the essentials of the violence. Though tackled differently, it reminded me of how Kinji Fukasaku treats violence; neither director gets bogged down in it and Kato here is elliptical in how he goes about presenting the scene. It’s over quickly, and sometimes it’s bloody; yet not without humour.  It also sets up character quickly; his initial travelling partner, Asa is clearly a callow fellow, out of his depth and trying to be the yakuza samurai, where Tokijiro has clearly seen and done things. Of course he has, he’s attacked by mysterious strangers seeking vengeance. Then, as the film skips forward it seems as if it might take place in the geisha house, run by the daughter of an ailing yakuza boss named Sawada but no. Even this is fascinating viewing, because it shows a very different image of the yakuza, and I should add the film is clearly taking place in the period where the perception of the traditional samurai is moving into the image of the yakuza, the gambler, but it is that gambler who has honour (again similar to the Red Peony Gambler films). The image of the aging yakuza, barely able to move, shaky of voice tells a different story to the usual robust clan boss. It’s that little detail that could be overlooked, it’s just there in the background but enriches the film, even as it moves on narratively. 

Before that happens, Kato is able to thrill us. As Tokijiro raids the geisha house to rid it of the vermin yakuza, as he kills the boss there a wonderful series of little jump cuts; as Tokijiro approaches him, it is short but visually ravishing and also echoed in my mind the famous jump edit in Seven Samurai, where the seven men all move in motion together, a unit of one, and here you suspect Kato has learned from his time working as an assistant to Akira Kurosawa, as just like in the opening scene he gets to the essence of violence and doesn’t revel in superfluous action for the sake of it.  

The film, too, seems to revel in much of the rituals surrounding the travelling yakuza (again echoes of the Peony films). The method of introducing himself to clan bosses, and the potential of becoming a tool to be used in return for hospitality matters because the film though it has violence is at heart a drama, and an exploration of time and place.  What surprised me was how, as the narrative unfolded, I expected something different but the emotional core of the film is then Tokijiro’s relationship the wife and child of the honourable man he has killed. It is in this emotional dilemma where the film fully plays out and the internal drama of it unfolds with delicacy. Yes, the past will catch up with them as it must do, at points, but it is how he is willing to shed his old life, how Okinu reacts to that, and the emotional interplay that eventually drives the film and this was both a surprise and a delight. You feel Kato nails the emotional drama, and you are enveloped into their world, and those around them that may support or sell them out. Sometimes bringing drama into a more obvious narrative film can cause it to feel bogged down but there’s nothing of that here, and it’s beautifully performed, with subtlety and grace.  

Layer onto that Kato’s often unobtrusive visual flair, which is regularly slipped in without us noticing, such as when Tokijiro first meets Okinu, the sky is a matte painting, arguably obviously unreal, but it has that delicious artificiality that creates a painterly image. He introduces moments like this throughout, often quietly, and this isn’t even noting the tone of the scene, where Okinu at this point an unknown, seems already like she is caught in the aura of Tokijiro.

Honestly, coming into the film I was wondering whether this might be a minor Kato flick; but by the end I found myself enthralled and surprised. In part because of how Kato manages to take a variety of generic aspects, make those exciting and also never seem like tropes and finally revels in the emotional intensity of a complex human drama.

So, yes, definitely more Tai Kato please Radiance FIlms, so far he’s not put a blade wrong.