Hishakaku and Kiratsune: A Tale of Two Yakuza

Japan

• 1968-10-25(JP)
• ▪

  Crime
• ▪ 1h-49m

no tagline

Overview

With his penultimate film, Uchida revisited one of his popular prewar titles, 1936’s Theatre of Life, an adaptation of Shiro Ozaki’s eponymous novel. Three-time Seijun Suzuki collaborator Goro Tanada wrote a gangsterized adaptation of Ozaki’s story for Uchida at a time when the yakuza had eclipsed the samurai genre as Toei's main cash crop. Protagonist Hishakaku murders a man in a quarrel over a barmaid and goes to jail. In his temporary absence, his girlfriend Otoyo, a former geisha, falls for Hishakaku’s brother, inciting a dangerous love triangle that, in typical yakuza fashion, ends tragically.

• Masaru SatōMusic

  Tomu UchidaDirector

  Gorō TanadaScreenplay