Battles Without Honor and Humanity

I've at last ventured into the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series (Japanese: 仁義なき戦い; also known in English as The Yakuza Papers). Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1973), the first in the eleven-film series, is a chaotic, ultra-violent tale of the yakuza syndicates that formed in Hiroshima Prefecture during the years immediately after WWII. The story uncoils with a documentary-like style, sporadic omniscient narrator, and captions to show dates and names. And also with near constant action, from brawls to limb-lob-offs by katana to countless bloody assassinations—each terminated by a freeze frame and distressing (or distressed) horn-blaring, maybe trumpets.

In the film's first minute or two, when American G.I.s are trying to rape a girl out in the open in a crowded marketplace, it appears as if the cameras were being jostled about violently, which puts us, the audience, smack-dab in the pandemonium. I thought I'd seen the scene before, but no. Surely, though, there's a bit of Battles, this part especially, in Tarantino's Kill Bill movies, not to mention the battle for the Five Points at the beginning of Scorsese's Gangs of New York (2002).

Battles is an ensemble piece but Bunta Sugawara most arouses the spotlight. He's got this tough as big rusty nails look with steely William-Munny-on-whiskey eyes and adamantium jaw—like if you punched him in the head you'd break your wrist. Apparently this film, maybe some of the sequels as well, is based on the memoirs of true yakuza member Kōzō Minō. And I read the actors and director Kinji Fukasaku got help from gangsters during shooting. On the flip side, it isn't hard to believe that real-life yakuza probably took a page or two from this series. At the very least, I'm sure they enjoyed it.

Sansho the Bailiff

Sansho the Bailiff (1954; also called Sanshō Dayū, and in Japanese 山椒大夫) is a film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi that Japanese cinema fans, or any cinephile, shouldn't miss if they want to see this director at the peak of his craft.

A noble governor is banished and must leave behind his wife and two small children. He gives his son a statuette of Kannon, the goddess of compassion, and tells both kids: "Without mercy, man is like a beast. Even if you are hard on yourself, be merciful to others." And with these words they too leave, off to live with an uncle.

But in a fateful turn of events they're waylaid en route by a deceitful priestess. A heart-rending scene shows the mother being snatched away from her terrified children by bandit slave traders, who take her by boat to Sado Island. The kids are also sold (for "seven silvers") into slavery, at an estate where the merciless bailiff Sansho brands the foreheads of those who resist their bondage.

The kids are told that no matter what comes to pass they must endure (enduring is a common theme in Mizoguchi's work, often alongside the themes of misery of women and ruthlessness of poverty and servitude). And endure they do. The film picks up again in their late teens. Anju, the girl, who has held tenaciously to her father's words, convinces her brother, Zushiō, to escape. He seems to have forgotten the words or their meaning and is bereft of hope. But he changes his mind about giving escape a go after he's forced to carry a dying slave up into the mountains, where the estate masters expect her to perish more quickly and out of everyone's sight. Off Zushiō runs, headed for Kyoto, but the tragedy continues. We're left with a narrative that feels whole and well-rounded, and presses us to consider the nature of cruelty and mercy.

As an aside...

Japan had an official slave system from the 3rd century until 1590, when it was abolished by the feudal lord Toyotomi Hideyoshi (to resurface much later when the Japanese government facilitated the use of foreign sex slaves from 1932 to 1945 as well as prisoners of war captured by the Japanese military). Japanese slaves were not only sold domestically but also sold, especially in Kyushu, to the Portuguese. They would then be sold again for sexual and/or labor use in Portugal, other European countries, and even in India and Macau. Slave women from Japan are believed to be the first Japanese to set foot in Europe, and some were sold to other slaves, suggesting that slaves from the Far East were considered to be of less value than their African and South East Asian counterparts. Hideyoshi, furious that his own people were being sold for use overseas, put an end to it. He blamed the Jesuits along with the Portuguese for the trade, and so he banned Christian proselytizing and missionaries as well. After that he went so far as to torture, crucify and mutilate a group of Catholics known as the Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan, a few of whom were Japanese while others were from as far away as Spain and Mexico. Shūsaku Endō's novel Silence (1966) (adapted into Martin Scorsese's 2016 film of the same name) depicts a time about 40 to 50 years later (1638 or so), after slavery had been stomped out and when the Japanese government's persecution of Christians, initiated in part because of the slave trade, had reached new heights.

While Sansho the Bailiff is based on legendary folklore and set in the Heian period (794 to 1185), centuries before Hideyoshi's reign and influence, it reminds us that slavery did exist in Japan and gives us a rare cinematic interpretation of the brutality and harsh conditions those people would have faced.

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (残菊物語, or Zangiku Monogatari) is a 1939 film by director Kenji Mizoguchi. Running about 140 minutes, it's longer than many of his other pictures, and so we get a wider, fuller experience of the major themes Mizoguchi is known for: patriarchal Japanese society; women's roles as the harlot and/or the mother, and to a lesser extent as the sister and/or the lover; sacrifice (that of Japanese women particularly, in the 1800s and early 20th century), and poverty as a catalyst for self-sacrifice and for the degeneration of morals and values. This film also shows the world of theater as it once was, and the sacrifice here is that of a woman for a male actor who has a ways to go before he can achieve anything like artistic greatness. Also different from other Mizoguchi films is that he didn't use any close-ups in this one. Its frequent long takes and traveling shots as well as the rich mise-en-scène also give Last Chrysanthemum a unique feel by comparison.

Set in Tokyo and Osaka in the 1880s, Last Chrysanthemum is centered on stage actor Kikunosuke Onoe (Shōtarō Hanayagi), the adopted son of a renowned Kabuki actor. While everyone praises the young Kikunosuke to his face, they criticize his feeble acting behind his back. But not Otoku (Kakuko Mori), a wet-nurse at Kikunosuke's father's house. She tells him that basically he sucks. This she does so he won't fall prey to self-delusion or conceit. She wants him, rather, to work hard towards his success. And he quickly falls in love with her for her honesty and true-blue devotion.

Otoku is promptly fired, and after several spurts of family drama from both families, the young lovers eventually leave Tokyo to be together. Later, on the road, Kikunosuke and especially Otoku suffer a number of hardships and indignities. Their travelling troupe even gets booted from a venue by a new act in town: butch female wrestlers in kimonos. Eventually Kikunosuke gets his chance to show off the acting skills he's developed and refined on the road, largely thanks to Otoku's support. The fans love him. Other actors laud his newfound talent. He can now return to Tokyo and probably recoup the respect of his father. Otoku, though, is unwell. She's happy, of course, that Kikunosuke has finally made it, but we know she herself will not make it, for she's given herself wholly to Kikunosuke who, at the end, stands godlike on a parade float, posing for his hordes of new fans, while Otoku lies in her deathbed.

Since it's longer, there's plenty to see. Many of the scenes are crammed with either theater paraphernalia or household elements. The kabuki scenes were a treat, as I hadn't seen theater filmed by Mizoguchi before. The various experimental camera angles and travelling shots, from one room to the next or one shop to the next, remarkably fill out the world depicted. Finally, the narrative feels thicker than the stories of some of his other films of the time, such as The Downfall of Osen (1935) and The Water Magician (1933), both similar in that the woman sacrifices herself for the success of the male. This "thickness" is likely the result of Mizoguchi spending more time fleshing out the lead male and female characters and the more nuanced portrayal of the drama unfolding between and around them.