Above you see a poster for a Japanese film called Jingi naki tatakai: Sôshûhen, known in English as Battles without Honor and Humanity. Aside from having one of the great titles in cinematic history (though it’s also known less poetically as The Yakuza Papers), this is a landmark production from Toei Company, helmed by director Kinji Fukasaku, and starring Bunta Sugawara, Hiroki Matsukata, Kunie Tanaka, and Gorô Ibuki. It was the first of what turned out to be a five film series, all adapted from Weekly Sankei newspaper articles by journalist Kōichi Iiboshi that were themselves distillations of material originally written by an actual yakuza named Kōzō Minō.
The movies are a deep dive into organized crime in postwar Japan, and in this first entry various yakuza clan allegiances and hatreds are formed in the shattered and lawless cities controlled by the occupying U.S. soldiers, who are themselves without many scruples. Sugawara becomes enmeshed in violence that leads to his imprisonment, there to become blood brothers with a yakuza footsoldier. Upon release from jail Sugawara goes to work for the same clan as his friend, and this group becomes the feared Yamamori crime family.
From that point the movie follows the fortunes and misfortunes of various families vying for supremacy, as loyalties shift and betrayals beget betrayals. This will probably be hard to follow for most viewers, as many characters have been introduced in rapid succession during the opening minutes, but the focus is always on Sugawara. The story plays out over years, with important characters singled out via freeze frame when they die, and noted with onscreen titles: December 17, 1949: _______ died. By the film’s final frame, a clean conclusion has not been reached (hence sequels).
From the movie’s opening credits, shown atop an image of the nuked core of Hiroshima and the skeletal dome of the Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, to its narrated interstitials, and its overlays of subtitles, there’s a historical feel here and a weightiness that had perhaps been unseen to that point in yakuza dramas. While the film is often called the Japanese version of The Godfather, it isn’t the same type of movie and isn’t on the same technical level. It may occupy a similar place in Japanese cinema culture, but Battles without Honor and Humanity is its own thing. A very good thing, and a mandatory watch for fans of Japanese film. It premiered today in 1973.
