Yakuza movie
The yakuza film ( Japanese ヤ ク ザ 映 画 , Yakuza eiga ) is a genre of Japanese film . Yakuza films are gangster films that, similar to mafia films , deal with the activities of a criminal organization , the yakuza .
Ninkyō movie
Ninkyō eiga , knight films, are the first type of yakuza films. Most of these were produced by the Tōei studio in the 1960s . The kimono-wearing protagonist of the Ninkyōs (embodied by a stoic Ken Takakura ) was portrayed as an honorable outlaw, torn between the contradicting values of giri (duty) and ninjō (personal feelings).
Jitsuroku movie
In the 1970s, a new type of yakuza film emerged, the jitsuroku eiga ("documentary true film"). Many of these films were based on true stories or were made in documentary style. The genre was made famous through Kinji Fukasaku's seminal epic Battles Without Honor and Humanity . This film, which has four sequels , portrayed the members of the yakuza of the post- Pacific War era not as the venerable heirs of the samurai, but as ruthless traitorous street gangsters, the movie star Bunta Sugawara (often viewed as anti-Ken Takakura) as a derisive ex-soldier of the seizes power in the underworld of bombed-out Hiroshima .
Modern yakuzafilm
In the 1990s, the yakuza films lost popularity in Japan. Many of today's yakuza films are therefore low-budget productions that do not come into the cinemas but appear directly on video. An exception were the existentialist films by Takeshi Kitano , which received critical acclaim around the world.
Well-known actors
- Noboru Ando
- Akira Kobayashi
- Jō Shishido
- Bunta Sugawara
- Ken Takakura
- Shō Aikawa
- Riki Takeuchi
- Tomisaboru Wakayama
Films (selection)
- Tattooed Life ( Seijun Suzuki , 1962)
- Pale Flower ( Masahiro Shinoda , 1964)
- Tokyo Drifter (Seijun Suzuki, 1966)
- Battles Without Honor and Humanity ( Kinji Fukasaku , 1973)
- Graveyard of Honor (Kinji Fukasaku, 1975)
- Yakuza ( Sydney Pollack , 1974)
- Black Rain ( Ridley Scott , 1989)
- Minbo ( Juzo Itami , 1992)
- Sonatina ( Takeshi Kitano , 1993)
- Brother (Takeshi Kitano, 2000)
- City of Violence ( Derek Yee , 2009)
- Outrage (Takeshi Kitano, 2010)
- Outrage Beyond (Takeshi Kitano, 2012)
- Outrage Coda (Takeshi Kitano, 2017)
literature
- Mark Schilling: The Yakuza Movie Book: A Guide to Japanese Gangster Films . Stone Bridge Press, 2003, ISBN 1-880656-76-0 .
Web links
- Yakuza movie guide
- Overview essay on the genre - with a list of films available in the West.