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Nikkatsu Action special

By Jasper Sharp

The highpoint of this year's Far East Film Festival in Udine was a 13-film program curated by Mark Schilling centered around the dynamic world of the Nikkatsu Action movie. Mostly made in the 60s, these were colourful program pictures from a variety of genres that relied heavily on the charisma of their star actors. Nikkatsu turned out these films at a remarkable rate, as they would do in the following decades with their erotic Roman Porno pictures. Aside from the work of Seijun Suzuki, most of the films are unknown in the West. Midnight Eye picks out the gems from this almost forgotten golden age.

Plains Wanderer
Crimson Pistol
Fast-draw Guy
Dirty Work
The Velvet Hustler
My Colt is My Passport
Gangster VIP


Plains Wanderer

Original Title: Daisogen no Wataridori
Director: Buichi SAITO
Cast: Akira KOBAYASHI, Jo SHISHIDO, Ruriko ASAOKA, Mari SHIRAKI, Yoko MINAMIDA, Yuzo KIURA, Goro TARUMI, Nobuo KANEKO, Toshio EGI
Running time: 83 mins.
Year: 1960

picture: scenes from 'Plains Wanderer'The fifth in the nine-film Wataridori, or Wandering Guitar, series that made Kobayashi one of Nikkatsu's most popular and prevalent stars in his role as Taki, the guitar-strumming crooner with the black-tassled leather jacket and the red neckerchief, who wanders across Hokkaido from town to town, righting wrongs and leaving a trail of broken hearts behind him. 

In this instance, it is a community of indigenous Ainu people who need his assistance against plans by a ruthless developer named Kodo (Kaneko) to turn their native land into something more lucrative. Taki is taken into the household of kindly landowner Kiyosato (Kiura) after rescuing his adopted Ainu daughter Setna (Shiraki) from being molested by a local roughneck, and soon finds himself acting as a temporary father to Nobuo (Egi), the abandoned child of Kodo's mistress Kazue (Minamida), as well as the subject of a romantic crush by Kiyosato's niece Junko (Asaoka). Both developments land him in deep hot water with Kodo and his rowdy henchman (Shishido).

Plains Wanderer is not Japan's first example of the "Ainu Western" genre, an honour which goes to Tomu Uchida's The Outsiders. But while that film bore similarities to the American Western mainly by virtue of its basic elements (violent colonials persecuting indigenous locals, civilization versus nature, a great outdoors setting, male-dominated action scenes), here the borrowings from American pulp movie culture are more wholesale. Aside from such B-movie Western set pieces as poker games and fist fights and costumes modelled on those of Wyatt Earp, scenes of Kobayashi playing his guitar at dusk look like something from an Elvis beach movie, reminding us that Kobayashi's singing voice too was a large part of his matinee idol appeal.

All of this is realised on a far smaller scale than Uchida's film, with most of the action unfolding in interior scenes rather than making full use of Hokkaido's epic landscape. The Wataridori films were essentially small and formulaic program pictures, and while this offering doesn't really tread any new water, its script and performances are lively enough to pass the time of day and provide a few laughs along the way. Kobayashi, before his face thickened out to the pudgy levels seen in Black Tight Killers, is all deadpan stoicism, but it is Jo Shishido, hamming things up outrageously, who steals the show. Look out also for Tomio Aoki, the child star of Ozu's I Was Born But… in a tiny role as a heavy.


Crimson Pistol

Original Title: Kurenai no Kenju
Alternative Title: A Killer Without a Grave
Director: Yoichi USHIHARA
Cast: Keiichiro AKAGI, Reiko SASAMORI, Mari SHIRAKI, Kazuko YOSHIYUKI, Goro TARUMI, Arihiro FUJIMURA
Running time: 87 mins.
Year: 1961

picture: scene from 'Crimson Pistol'Dispatched by his boss to find a suitable candidate to perform the contract killing of the Hong Kong boss of a rival gang, Ishioka (Tarumi) chances upon a penniless down-on-his-luck young man named Nakata (Akagi) nursing a scotch in a snazzy drinking joint. With Ishioka left out of action with a prosthetic arm after a former job has gone wrong, he now acts as a trainer for would-be hitmen, taking them into the household he shares with his blind sister Kikuyo (Sasamori) and training them up as efficient killing machines.

As his protégé, the charming Nakata is particularly quick to learn how to wield a Colt 45, and the success of the mission seems assured. As Kikuyo begins falling for their new lodger, Nakata pledges to use his fee to send her for an operation with an eye specialist in Kobe. But complications set in when Nakata becomes reacquainted with Chikako (Shiraki), a damsel in distress whom he gallantly rescued from a group of hoods in an early scene. It soon transpires that neither Nakata nor Chikako are exactly who they seem.

After his first leading role in Seijun Suzuki's Age of Nakedness (Suppadaka no Nenrei, 1959), Akagi's turn in the spotlight as one of Nikkatsu's Diamond Line range of actors (which also included Yujiro Ishihara, Akira Kobayashi and Koji Wada, with Jo Shishido and Hideaki Nitani later joining them to become the New Diamond Line) was a tragically brief one. He died at the early age of 21 in a go-carting accident on Nikkatsu's studio backlot. His noble turn in the central role of Crimson Pistol works perfectly in tandem with a tense and fast-moving script from veteran screenwriter Takero Matsuura based on an original story by Taijiro Tamura. His final shot is particularly poignant given that it was to signal the end of such a short yet accomplished career.


Fast-draw Guy

Original Title: Hayauchi Yaro
Director: Takashi NOMURA
Cast: Jo SHISHIDO, Reiko SASAMORI, Sayuri YOSHINAGA, Yoko MINAMIDA, Toshio SUGIYAMA, Nobuo KANEKO
Running time: 78 mins.
Year: 1961

picture: scene from 'Fast-draw Guy'One of the oddest sub-genres to emerge from Nikkatsu's mukokuseki akushun (borderless action) range is the bizarre cross-cultural hybrid of the Eastern Western. Taking its cues from the Akira Kobayashi Wataridori series, Fast-draw Guy replaces all local colour with a mishmash of B-movies genre staples, with the plains of Hokkaido doubling for the deserts of Arizona. A small-town posse enforces law and order as the police station lies still under construction, while scarlet women line up at the Blue Star saloon bar run by local benefactor Mishima (Kaneko) to slug bourbon. 

At the heart of all this lunacy, clad in a black costume modelled on Burt Lancaster's look in Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich, 1954), is Joe the Ace (Shishido), sashaying into the movie's small frontier town setting as dawn breaks, with a song in his heart and a body slumped over the back of his steed. As he attempts to claim his reward from greener-than-green young police officer Oda (Sugiyama) for bringing in an outlaw caught stealing from the payroll of the nearby dam construction site, he announces his name with a business card plucked from the top of a deck playing cards. But there's no shortage of those amongst the corrupt local officials who want this mysterious stranger run out of town, and after being thrown out of the Blue Star for fighting, drinking and womanising, even Miss Togawa (Sasamori), the prim but pretty young schoolmarm who provides a roof over his head finds her patience wearing thin with this unruly outlaw.

There's nothing particularly special about the convoluted plot of Fast-draw Guy to really make it stand out from the avalanche of program pictures Nikkatsu were churning out during the 60s. The drifting loner who wanders into town to right injustice in the local community was a familiar template from the period, and the "miso Western" was hardly a novelty among the company's monthly release roster either, with the likes of Seijun Suzuki's Shotgun Man (Sandanju no Otako, 1961) starring Hideaki Nitani and the Wataridori series drawing large local audiences. What really makes this one stand out is the larger-than-life performance of Shishido, who seems fully aware of the ridiculousness of the whole exercise and eager to have as good a time camping things up as possible. His cool antics remain the most watchable hook throughout.


Dirty Work

Original Title: Rokudenashi Kagyo
Director: Buichi SAITO
Cast: Jo SHISHIDO, Hideaki NITANI, Nobuo KANEKO, Eitaro OZAWA, Yoko MINAMIDA, Sayuri YOSHINAGA, Zenji YAMADA
Running time: 83 mins.
Year: 1961

picture: scene from 'Dirty Work'This charming but workmanlike comic buddy caper seems mainly concerned with recreating the magic of the Bob Hope/Bing Crosby combo in the 'Road to' series, and provided the first major roles of two of Nikkatsu's New Diamond Line actors Nitani and Shishido as the loveable rogues Keisuke Kuroda and Eiji Yano. First seen hitching a free ride stowing away in the carriage of a freight train, they arrive in a small coastal town knocking on the door of local bigwig Otaguro (Ozawa) for work as bodyguards, though find themselves promptly escorted out by the police and slammed in the cell for the night.

The incident, however, draws them to the attention of corrupt shipping magnate Katsumata (a typical role for Kaneko) who employs them to pull an insurance job by dynamiting a boat moored in the harbour. After augmenting their bounty at a local gambling den, the bullish, straight-talking Yano makes off with the jackpot from beneath his more laidback partner's nose, and returns to employment working as a heavy for Katsumata, though severely rocks the boat when he falls for his new boss's cabaret singer mistress Yuri (Minamida).

Meanwhile, as Kuroda sets himself on the trail of finding out who was behind the original insurance scam, the two alternately come into contact with the beautiful Sumiko Hamada (Yoshinaga) and her father Senkichi (Yamada), the former president of the shipping company, ousted from his post some five years before by Katsumata. As the two bicker boyishly for the affections of the womenfolk while courting danger from those in the employ of Katsumata and Otaguro, the plot becomes thickened with the revelation of Hamada's missing son and heir.

Buoyed up with a handful of musical numbers from Shishido and the spirited patter between its two leads, this is a watchable romp that ultimately fails to really gel into much more than the sum of its parts. It nevertheless signalled a lease of life for Shishido's career at Nikkatsu - he was back in Yoichi Ushihara's sequel Red Shoes and Dirty Work (Akai Kutsu to Rokudenashi) in 1963, with Shobun Inoue replacing Nitani as Keisuke.


The Velvet Hustler

Original Title: Kurenai no Nagareboshi
Director: Toshio MASUDA
Cast: Tetsuya WATARI, Ruriko ASAOKA, Ryutaro SUGI, Kayo MATSUO, Tatsuya FUJI, Chiyo OKUMURA, Jo SHISHIDO
Running time: 97 mins
Year: 1967

picture: scene from 'The Velvet Hustler'Hitman Goro (Watari) likes his women like he likes his cars: fast and dangerous. After rubbing out a rival gang boss, he leaps into a conveniently parked red convertible and hotfoots it out of Tokyo to the other side of Japan. After a year of lying low with his local gang members, he has wound up the kingpin of the Kobe underground, hanging out in smoky lounge bars by the downtown port area keeping the US marines on leave from Vietnam in check, while avoiding both Uzu (Tatsuya Fuji, from In the Realm of the Senses), the suspicious police detective who has trailed him all the way down from Tokyo, and the mysterious hitman (Shishido) sent to kill him.

But Goro is bored of life with his current moll Yukari (Matsuo), and pines to leave vulgar Kobe to return to the sophisticated big city. This desire gains greater impetus when he gets embroiled with Keiko (Asaoka), the strikingly beautiful daughter of a jeweller who has recently been embezzled by his employee and future son-in-law. Amused by his rugged charm and over-zealous attempts at bedding her, Keiko soon finds herself drawn into a more dangerous world than the one she is accustomed to.

Takeo Kimura's bright and baroque art direction defined Nikkatsu's product for the decade, but it was the stars that kept the audiences coming, so without imposing an overbearingly visual style over the story, Toshio Masuda mainly lets his actors get on with the job, which may account for his status as one of the most popular and profitable of Nikkatsu's directors at the time. Among all the background shenanigans of fistfights and colourful cabaret numbers, the relationship between Watari's toe-tapping, finger-snapping rogue and Asaoka's pristine rich girl takes centre stage. Kitsch maybe, but difficult to resist.


My Colt is My Passport

Original Title: Koruto wa Ore no Pasupoto
Director: Takashi NOMURA
Cast: Jo SHISHIDO, Chitose KOBAYASHI, Jerry FUJIO, Ryutaro SUGI, Kanjuro ARASHI, Toyoko TAKECHI
Running time: 84 mins.
Year: 1967

picture: scene from 'My Colt is My Passport'Seijun Suzuki has been hailed as a renegade doing his own thing within Nikkatsu's conveyor-belt production system, and Branded to Kill as the pinnacle of his anarchic style, but Nomura's My Colt is My Passport reveals the director's swansong effort for the studios to be not quite the one-off it is hailed to be. Released some four months before Suzuki's film and utilising similarly striking monochrome images (this time the cinematographer is Shigemini Yoshi rather than Branded to Kill's Kazue Nagatsuka), a percussive lounge jazz score and dominated by a characteristically hard-boiled performance by Shishido, the difference between this and Nomura's earlier works like Fast-draw Guy is just as extreme as that between Suzuki's Branded to Kill and his early-60s films with Koji Wada.

It highlights a change in Nikkatsu's direction at this time, with the departure of their top lead Yujiro Ishihara and the declining box-office popularity of their other main stars like Akira Kobayashi prompting a change in tack towards what became known as muudo akushun (mood action). Here the same plot template of a contract killer on the run after completing a kill-be-killed mission on a rival yakuza boss, a familiar staple from dozens of their akushun films from the 60s, is recycled and given a new stylistic slant akin to that manifested in other great works from the period, like Atsushi Yamatoya's Dutch Wife of the Wasteland (Koya no Dacchi Waifu, 1967) and Shogoro Nishimura's Cruel Female Love Suicide (Zankoku Onna Joshi, 1970).

Whole scenes, such as the POV-shot of Shishido's victim being tracked through telescopic gun sites during the initial assassination, are heavily redolent of Branded to Kill. After the initial slaying, Shishido's hitman, Kamimura, attempts to flee overseas with his accomplice Shiozaki (Jerry Fujio), but both are intercepted at the airport and abducted at gunpoint before hiding out in a safe-haven hotel full of drunken reprobates in Yokohama, awaiting their next boat out of the country to Pusan.

Like Suzuki's film, the plot of My Colt is My Passport is so spare and well-trodden that one can see why the directors felt the need to bring such a fresh approach to the visuals. Though the formal experimentation and editing is in no way as extreme as in Branded to Kill, it is still pretty much in evidence. The final showdown between a solitary Shishido and a bullet-proof car full of gangsters staged on a deserted beach at dawn, the howling wind sweeping sand across the ground, is as impressive as anything of the era in this neglected masterpiece.


Gangster VIP

Original Title: Burai Yori: Daikanbu
Director: Toshio MASUDA
Cast: Tetsuya WATARI, Chieko MATSUBARA, Kyosuke MACHIDA, Mitsuo HAMADA, Tamio KAWACHI, Shoki FUKAE, Kayo MATSUO, Yasuko SANJO
Running time: 93 mins.
Year: 1968

picture: scenes from 'Gangster VIP'Unlike the Toei ninkyo eiga that began winning over audiences during the late 60s, Nikkatsu's yakuza movies were more like youth action pictures that took place in a gangster setting. Nevertheless, this first film in the six-part Burai series has a fairly major streak of authenticity in it, in that it was based on the published confessions of ex-gangster Goro Fujita. His experiences also formed the basis of the next five parts in the series (1968-69), as well as Goro Fujita's Wife of a Gangster (Fujita Goro no Anego), two films in Nikkatsu's Red-Lacquered Sword Sheath Moral Code trilogy (Shuchiya Jingi, all directed by Saito Buichi and released in 1969), and most famous of all, Kinji Fukasaku's Graveyard of Honour.

While featuring some fairly bloody knife battles, and an overall darker, more serious ambience than Nikkatsu's more lightweight gangster flicks from the early 60s (i.e. Youth of the Beast), Gangster VIP is less concerned with detailing moral codes and intra-gang dynamics than depicting those who don't fit comfortably within such rigid group structures, and their connections with the world outside them, particularly with their women.

The central relationship is that between Goro (Watari) and Sugiyama (Machida), two men who spent their boyhood together as friends in a reformatory for war orphans but now find themselves members of rival yakuza groups, the Mizuharas and the Uenos. When Goro wounds Sugiyama in a knife fight, he is carted off to Abashiri prison for 3 years. He returns to a hero's welcome from his gang, the Mizuharas, who provide him with an apartment and two rookie gangsters to assist him back into daily life.

Then Goro meets Yukiko (Matsubara), a naïve young girl who is purer than the driven snow. Having just left home after a row with her parents, she immediately forms an unnatural attachment to him. Initially unable to forget his first love Saeko (Sanjo), who during his spell in jail is now settled down married to a normal office worker, Goro is not too keen on courting further danger by having this young lady setting up home in his bare apartment room, especially with the Uenos now alerted to his presence and hungry for revenge and his renegade nature no longer proving an asset to the Mizuharas. With Sugiyama and his moll Yumeko (Matsuo) having problems with their own gang, the two rivals, drawn into this harsh life through their rootless background, decide to bury their differences and seek a new future outside gang life.

Toshio Masuda didn't make the flashiest of works at Nikkatsu, but he did make solid, reliable movies with great characters and well-crafted plots that always keep the viewer on their toes. Gangster VIP is a far more mature and serious film than most of Nikkatsu's akushun films from the 60s, benefiting from some great acting, especially from its lead Watari (Tokyo Drifter), and the poignant final scenes will stick in one's mind for a long time after the film is over.

The following films in the Burai series brought back Watari as Goro, and were all directed by Keiichi Ozawa (with the exception of Burai Hijo, directed by Mio Ezaki). They were Daikanbu Burai [trans. Big Boss: Outlaw]; Burai Hijo [trans: Outlaw: Heartless]; Burai: Hitokiri Goro [trans: Outlaw: Goro the Assassin]; Burai: Kuroi Hishu [trans: Outlaw: Black Dagger]; and Burai: Korose [trans: Outlaw: Kill!].