Yakuza War: The Japanese Godfather (Yakuza senso: Nihon no don) (1977)
The late 70’s marked the final years of the furious, well produced yakuza film before the genre took a blow in the 80’s. Crime films hardly disappeared, but the quality would never quite be the same anymore. Sadao Nakajima, though ignored by the rest of the world, was one of the seminal genre directors for Toei. After Kinji Fukasaku stepped down from yakuza films, it was it was Nakajima’s epics that brought the genre to the final glory days.
Make no mistake, though, despite the title The Japanese Godfather is not exactly Toei’s answer to the Francis Ford Coppola mafia epics. It’s a 130 minutes of yakuza plotting and crime politics with gratuitous violence, sex, and pop thrown in. In short, an ambitious storyline mixed with scenes of enraged Sonny Chiba pulling a dead corpse from the chest after unloading his six shooter to the poor man’s body.
In comparison to Fukasaku’s raging crime thrillers, Nakajima’s filmmaking techniques are more restrained, with editing tricks and handheld camera toned down. It’s perhaps because of this less frantic approach, as well as the large amount of central characters, that Nakajima’s films occasionally feel more epic. But Nakajima also lacked the burning energy and originality that made Fukasaku an international star.
Nakajima’s catch was his multi-talent; his contributions vary from action films to crime thrillers and pink flicks, only to mention a few. After Fukasaku’s retirement from yakuza films Nakajima was their main man for a couple of years. Even then, The Japanese Godfather films never quite equaled the best yakuza movies. Nakajima’s storytelling was too mediocre for such story heavy films, despite the epic scale and trashy elements adding to the entertainment.
Perhaps anticipating the end of an era, Toei collect all the studio’s tough guys, including some from the previous (ninkyo yakuza era), together for The Japanese Godfather. The film packs Koji Tsuruta, Bunta Sugawara, Tsunehiko Watase, Mikio Narita, Sonny Chiba, Hiroki Matsukata, Asao Koike, Tatsuo Umemiya, and many more. Even the film’s tagline was
“30 years of Toei men!”
Two sequels followed, with former Toho star Toshiro Mifune joining the cast.
The screencaps below are from the Toei dvd.
Sonny China treating women well
Bunta Sugawara pulling bullets out of his west
Alan Delon… I mean Sonny Chiba, doing bodyguarding for Koji Tsuruta
Yakuza mobile
Hiroki Matsukata enjoying the view
Car on fire
Mafia meeting
Mafia man rests on the floor
Sonny Chiba grabbing a man by the chest AFTER shooting him six times!
