Love in the time of Yakuza

Kinji Fukasaku’s Hiroshima Death Match (1973)

Many distinguished yakuza films of the 1960’s are moving pop art pieces. They are about messy bromances, carnal desires, and the consequences of duty and honor. Their heroes and villains are jazzy assassins who effortlessly commit acts of violence under the neon lights of Tokyo or in sleepy towns ready to be conquered, their actions glorified by the artistic flourishes of directors like Seijun Suzuki. Made just a few years into the next decade, Kinji Fukasaku’s Hiroshima Death Match is different, a turning point.

Part of the director’s Battles Without Honor and Humanity series, which focuses on the real life yakuza conflicts of post-war Hiroshima, Hiroshima Death Match is a visceral gut-punch of a film compared to it’s 60’s predecessors. The yakuza in this film aren’t stylish; they are forced to eat dog meat because they live on the street, promise murder and revenge rather than brotherhood and loyalty. They are a response to the violent explosion that forever marred Hiroshima; they are warriors trying to rebuild a city in ashes.

Hiroshima Death Match’s protagonist is Shoji Yamanaka, who at one point confesses that he dreamed of being a kamikaze pilot in his youth. His life becomes a kamikaze plane in slow motion when he meets Yasuko, the widowed niece of Hiroshima’s most powerful yakuza boss. For on-screen yakuza from the previous decade, love is easily discarded, a mere distraction from the daily life of being a gangster. For Yamanaka, it’s a chance to retain his humanity. And it’s what sends him plummeting towards death. As legendary American director William Friedkin said in an interview, “(Fukasaku) wasn’t worried about happy endings. He didn’t have to redeem the good guys.” Fukasaku loved to put characters in impossible situations and watch them try to claw and squirm their way out, something that can also be seen in his international hit Battle Royale. In Hiroshima Death Match, the use of the camera makes us feel as though we are in the movie squirming with them.

Fukasaku combines Western-style movement that is dynamic, where the camera is constantly following the characters and even the weapons they use, and the stillness associated with Japanese cinema, inspired by their traditional landscape prints.This ebb and flow between movement, used during violence and sex, and stillness in the aftermath makes us feel we’re inside the frame, rather than an outside observer. When Yamanaka takes a warrior’s stance and braces himself before killing, we are there with him. We feel his strain. We feel the fear of his victims. This feeling of intimacy with his actions make his personal journey compelling, thought it often takes the backseat to the larger conflicts that engulf Hiroshima. Ultimately, as the narrator informs us in the film’s conclusion, Yamanaka’s reputation is legendary among yakuza but his tragic life is an insignificant footnote in a long, violent history. Nobody visits his grave anymore.