Kinji Fukasaku

Japan is the world's most crime-free nation. But its very nature is violent, and the violence of earthquakes, typhoons and wars is reflected in many of its arts, particularly in the cartoons (manga) that form one-third of Japan's publications, and in the cinema, in films on all levels.

The aftermath of nuclear war has had an enduring influence on Japanese mentality. In recent years, examples of the most extreme cruelty have been seen in crimes, particularly by young people: in 1997 a Kobe schoolboy decapitated a fellow pupil, and hung the head on the school gate. From the 1950s, films have tended to become more and more violent, sometimes in emulation of manga and animated films. Kinji Fukasaku was a cineast who became famous for the increasing violence of his series of yakuza or gangsterland movies.

Fukasaku studied cinema at Nihon University in Tokyo, and after graduation was taken on by Toei Co Ltd, as a scriptwriter and assistant director, on numerous low-budget "B" movies. He soon became a director. It was in 1961, in Sendai, that I became fascinated by his carefully choreographed yakuza movies, after seeing, three times in a row, Hakuchu no buraikan ("Gangsters in the Afternoon", issued in the United States as Greed in Broad Daylight).

In his early movies, the violence was more symbolic than actual, but it was realistic enough, though the films of this period often portrayed disappointingly sentimental gang bosses who gave their most powerful henchmen hell, while displaying a fatherly, almost homoerotic indulgence towards younger, weaker recruits.

Another revelation, in the late Sixties, was a most preposterous film, Kurotokage (Black Lizard, 1968), adapted by Yukio Mishima from a crime novel written by a devoted admirer of Edgar Allan Poe, who even imitated his hero's name by transforming it into the Japanese pronunciation of Edogawa Rampo. The star was a famous transvestite, Akihiro Maruyama, a close friend of Mishima, who also appears in the movie as a "living statue" to exhibit the results of his latest body-building efforts. The film has a certain weird charm, and seems to show the influence of Fritz Lang's "Spider" movies. Louis Feuillade's "Vampire" series and his mythical character Fantomas also seem to have inspired both Mishima and Fukasaku.

In the 1970s, Fukasaku's gangster movies became much more violent, and often painfully realistic, to the point of provoking nervous laughter in the audience. In order to inflict the utmost sadistic cruelties on the gangsters' victims, Fukasaku made a star of Bunta Sugawara, a sinister, brutal tormentor. There are also scenes of self-mutilation, when in the traditional manner gangsters chop off their little fingers in atonement for bungled jobs.

The film that started the series, in 1973, was Jingi naki tatakai ("Combat Without Honour Code"), obviously partly influenced by Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972). The audiences loved it, and the following series in the same crude pitiless vein was a great box-office hit, especially among high-school students.

Another film that had a tremendous success was a sado-maso war picture, Gunki hatameku motoni (Under the Flag of the Rising Sun, 1972), about the terrible famine suffered by Japanese troops on the New Guinea front, towards the end of the war in the Pacific, which showed the troops assassinating their leaders.

One of Fukasaku's main themes in his gangster movies was the black market run by the yakuza after the Second World War, particularly in the ruins of devastated Hiroshima. Graft, corruption and blackmail were rife, and provided a highly sinister emotional background to the horrible tortures and mutilations depicted by Bunta Sugawara with chilling efficiency.

In 1975, Fukasaku turned in one of his best films, Jingi no hakaba (Graveyard of Honor), in which the chief character, Tetsuya Watari, a very good actor, plays the part of a ruthless destroyer and provides one of the most chilling visions of a totally amoral gangster world, grotesquely cruel and terribly convincing.

Besides gangster movies, Fukasaku also made science-fiction films of quality, such as Gamma dai sango (The Green Slime, 1968) and Fukkatsu no hi (Virus, 1980). He also filmed part of the massively tedious American war film Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), in which he shot the attack on Pearl Harbor seen from the Japanese side – the most interesting part of the film. His works began to be shown in the US, and he became a hero to Quentin Tarantino and John Woo.

At the end of December 2002, Fukasaku had begun shooting what was to be the last of his 60 or so films, Battle Royale II. The first Battle Royale (2000) had marked the return to serious film-making of the director, and it caused a sensation, for it showed a class of high-school students taking part in strange rites organised by a secret society on a desert island. They are armed to the teeth and under the power of a cynical and murderous professor played by Takeshi Kitano. It gave rise to protests by educationalists and parents in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong, but continued playing to packed houses of young people, officially deemed to be "over 15". Battle Royale II is being completed by Fukasaku's son, Kenta, who had written the original script.

Kinji Fukasaku's reputation has been steadily rising in Japan, encouraged by the great interest taken now in his work by young directors in Japan and the US. So it is to be hoped that eventually we may at last be able to enjoy his works in Europe, where only Battle Royale has been seen, in France in 2001, chiefly on the strength of its star, Takeshi Kitano.

James Kirkup