Jingi no hakaba (1975)

User Rating:

7.4/10   

Director:

Kinji Fukasaku

Writers:

Tatsuhiko Kamoi (writer) and
Hirô Matsuda (writer) ...
(more)

Release Date:

15 February 1975 (Japan)

Genre:

Action | Crime

Plot:

A look at the life of renegade yakuza, Rikio Ishikawa, particularly the years from 1946 to 1950 when...

Plot Keywords:

Yakuza | Prison | Based On Novel

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Tetsuya Watari	...	Rikio Ishikawa
Tatsuo Umemiya	...	Kozaburo Imai
Yumi Takigawa	...	Chieko Ishikawa
Eiji Go	...	Makoto Sugiura
Noboru Ando	...	Ryunosuke Nozu
Hajime Hana	...	Shuzo Kawada
Mikio Narita	...	Noboru Kajiki
Kunie Tanaka	...	Katsuji Ozaki
Shingo Yamashiro	...	Hiroshi Tamura
Reiko Ike	...	Teruko Imai
Hideo Murota	...	Yasuo Matsuoka
Meika Seri	...	Woman in the slums

Directed by
Kinji Fukasaku

Writing credits
Tatsuhiko Kamoi		(writer) and
Hirô Matsuda		(writer) and
Fumio Konami		(writer)
Goro Fujita		(novel "Kanto yakuza mono" and "Jingi no hakaba")

Produced by
Tatsuo Yoshida	....	producer

Original Music by
Toshiaki Tsushima

Cinematography by
Hanjiro Nakazawa

Film Editing by
Osamu Tanaka

Production Companies

• Toei Company

Distributors

• Les Films de l'Effraie (1980) (France) (theatrical)
• Dolmen Home Video (2006) (Italy) (DVD)
• Globo Vídeo (Brazil) (VHS)
• Home Vision Entertainment (HVE) (2004) (USA) (DVD)
• Rapid Eye Movies (2004) (Germany) (DVD)

Also Known As:

Death of Honor
Graveyard of Honor (USA)
Psycho Junkie (USA) (bootleg title)

Runtime:

Japan:94 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

West Germany:16

Company:

Toei Company

Movie Connections:

Version of Shin jingi no hakaba (2002)

30 Years of Madness

Kinji Fukasaku's mid-70s faux-biopic of a sociopath Yakuza gangster in late-40s Japan is certainly an absorbing experience, even if it never quite manages to immerse the viewer entirely in the nihilism of the world in which Tetsuya Watari's Rikio Ishikawa exists. It's difficult really to determine whether Fukasaku is trying to attract or repulse us here and, for me, this is the film's main weakness. Ishikawa has no redeeming features: he's simply a crude, boorish rapist and murderer who invokes unexplainable loyalty in those around him. There is some amusement to be found in the bewilderment of Ishikawa's Yakuza superiors, who don't seem to know quite what to do with the loose cannon in their midst (presumably something in the Yakuza code prevents them from simply taking him into a back alley and shooting him like a dog) but, for all its kinetic energy and undeniable style Graveyard of Honour mostly fails to fascinate, and fascinate it must – the way a caterpillar squirming on the end of a pin fascinates – if it is to hold an audience who can feel little or no connection with its main character.

Despite these criticisms, the film is never dull. Fukasaku is an unsurpassable director, completely confident of his skills, totally focused, and unafraid to adopt subjects and styles that must have seemed out of the ordinary at the time. It's to his credit that most of the techniques he uses in this film are still widely used today – especially by US gangster flicks. Fukasaku fills the screen with people in this one, countless people, hundreds of them, conveying the raucous and claustrophobic overcrowding of a country recovering from a bruising war. And while attention to period detail is perhaps not this film's strong point, this shortcoming is overcome by good use of sepia tones to reinforce the sense of history.