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MOREAN, Brian Language and popular culture in Japan. Manchester University Press, 1989. 196p. diags. bibliog. index. Essentially a useful summary of critical opinion. Following Mellen (see above), Morean argues, “the values of yakuza gangsters are essentially a reassertion of patriarchal supremacy in a society which has gradually become more ‘feminine’ in its ways, with Westernisation and peace” (p168). Referring to the Hagakure, the famous C18 book on the code of the samurai warrior (the assassin’s bible in Jim Jarmusch’s GHOST DOG: WAY OF THE SAMURAI – itself a pastiche of yakuza movies like Seijun Suzuki’s BRANDED TO KILL), which states, “what is moral must be beautiful”, Morean draws parallels between the yakuza movie and Japanese ritual practice. Often, the inevitable death of the yakuza hero “functions as a kind of purification”, much like Spanish bullfights (see Buruma’s book, above, for further discussion of this death ritual). POWERS, Richard Gid and KATO, Hidetoshi (eds) Handbook of Japanese popular culture. Greenwood Press, 1989. 350p. bibliogs. index. This chapter gives a brief but useful historical overview of Japanese popular cinema, including the yakuza genre. Writing on the classical period of the 1960s, McDonald notes, “while all yakuza gangster-gamblers are low-life characters, the ‘good’ yakuza lives true to the old-fashioned code of honour that the ‘bad’ is willing to violate” (p117). While the post war samurai movie showed heroes acting to support ‘the system’, the yakuza genre “has returned us to the pre-war loner hero whose moral authority” stands in opposition to a corrupt social system. SATO, Tadao Currents in Japanese cinema: essays. Kodansha International, 1982. 288p. plates. chronology. Index. In the Chapter: ‘Developments in Period Drama Films’ Sato, one of Japan’s leading film scholars, discusses the early wave of yakuza thrillers, usually set in the early 1900s and less nihilistic than the modern yakuza films produced in the 1970s. He suggests that yakuza films became popular in the 1960s by offering a “utopia for lonely young men” recently arrived in Japan’s big cities who “cherish the wish of belonging to a small tight group bound by friendship and loyalty” (p53). The attack by a lone hero on a large profit-oriented enterprise (the ‘bad’ gang) also provided a social outlet for a critique of capitalism and its dehumanising aspects: “such a hero was only a myth, but he was loved by the Japanese, who were mostly poor and preferred to believe that they were honest while the rich were liars” (p242). SCHILLING, Mark Contemporary Japanese film. Weatherhill, 1999. 399p. index. This collection comprises Schilling’s reviews for The Japan Times during the 1990s, including many contemporary yakuza movies, and all films are usefully indexed by subject and director. The book also features interviews with leading figures in the Japanese film world (including Takeshi Kitano) and several useful essays on the state of contemporary Japanese cinema. 72
SERVER, Lee Asian pop cinema: Bombay to Tokyo. Chronicle Books, 1999132p. illus. bibliog. Lightweight survey, but includes short chapters on key ‘yakuza film’ directors, Seijun Suzuki and Takeshi Kitano. SUZUKI, Seijun Woestijn onder de kersebloesem = The Desert under the Cherry Blossoms Film Festival Rotterdam/Uitgerverij Uniepers Abcoude, 1991. 88p. illus. bibliog. filmog. Another volume designed to accompany a Suzuki retrospective; this Dutch collection features lots of writings from the director himself (p39-40 on yakuza films) and a detailed essay on his work. WEISSER, Thomas and WEISSER, Yuko Mihara Japanese cinema: essential handbook (rev. 4 th ed). Vital Books Inc./Asian Cult Cinema Publications, 1998. 397p. [32] col. plates. Not much critique but invaluable as a reference source if you plan to track down those hardto-find yakuza cult classics. Journal Articles CINEMA JOURNAL vol.40 no.4. Summer 2001, pp.55-80 Reigniting Japanese tradition with Hana-Bi, by Darrell William Davies Davies analyses Kitano’s HANA-BI (FIREWORKS, 1997) for its appropriation of traditional Japanese iconography (the use of images like cherry blossoms and raked sand gardens which stand for Japanese tradition in the same metonymic way that palms trees represent Los Angeles), and examines how Kitano reworks the conventions of the yakuza genre in his films: “mob hierarchy is balanced by an eccentric individual; yakuza trappings such as tattoos, sunglasses and silk shirts, are ridiculed; and swaggering toughs are humiliated by quiet, lethal loners” (p69). Another staple of the yakuza film is the boss-apprentice (oyabun-kobun) relationship, which, in Kitano’s films, is recast as a “homoerotic or sadomasochistic ‘training session’ [in which] a crazy veteran both teaches and exploits youngsters” (p70). ASIAN CULT CINEMA issue 30, 2001, pp.49-52 A triple dose of Takashi Miike, by Steven Puchalski Miike is an iconoclastic genre-bending shockmeister in the spirit of Suzuki and his work deserves more serious critical attention. Don’t expect to find much in Asian Cult Cinema, but it will definitely whet your appetite. 73
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General References compiled by Ayes
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US Gangsters compiled by Ayesha Kha
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