I began Kino 893 as a casual blog to accompany my exploration of Japanese cinema, with a focus on the yakuza genre of the 1960s and 1970s. Over time I branched out into both professional writing for other sites and informal updates to my Letterboxd, meaning Kino 893 hasn’t been as up to date as I’d like.

Going forward, this will be a place where I highlight Japanese films I have something particular to say about – especially if it’s a new release from boutique publishers like Arrow, Eureka, or Radiance. The first such review, one of the first titles released by new label Radiance Films, is already up: 1968’s Big Time Gambling Boss.

Review: Big Time Gambling Boss (1968)

New British boutique film label Radiance has opened strong with Kosaku Yamashita’s Big Time Gambling Boss among its first releases. This 1968 Japanese film is a fascinating contrast and precursor to better known ‘70s yakuza movies from directors like Kinji Fukasaku. More than a historical curio, though, it’s a gripping crime drama in its own right — a study in flaring tempers and perceived slights spiralling out of control.

Do any digging into the history of yakuza on the silver screen and you’ll no doubt stumble across the distinction between “ninkyo eiga” [chivalry films] and “jitsuroku eiga” [actual record films]. Ninkyo eiga dominated through the 1960s, films that framed the yakuza – Japan’s organised crime families – as bound by unbreakable codes of honour and duty. The heroes of ninkyo eiga are constrained by these codes, depicted like modern day samurai, and typically find themselves pitted against less scrupulous villains, battling for the soul of their gang.

By the early 1970s this had begun to change with films like Fukasaku’s Battles Without Honor and Humanity series reimagining its yakuza protagonists less as honourable heroes in a dishonourable world and more as violent and capricious villains even when they’re the film’s leads. Because Battles drew on newspaper articles for a ripped from the headlines feel, those films became known as ‘actual record’ films or jitsuroku eiga. Big Time Gambling Boss, released in the late 1960s, therefore feels like one of the last hurrahs of the ninkyo subgenre. It’s a film Radiance pitched as the pinnacle of its era, highlighting its pedigree and the influence it had on director Paul Schrader (writer of the ‘70s Robert Mitchum vehicle The Yakuza), but it winds up feeling like much more than hollow marketing copy: it’s a reputation the film lives up to.

Koji Tsuruta and Tomisaburo Wakayama (All image credits: Toei / Radiance Films)
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An Ode to Sega’s Yakuza and its Fictionalised Kabukicho

Tenkaichi Street, as depicted in Yakuza Kiwami 2 (SEGA)

Over on Overlode, you can read my piece exploring the fictional district of Kamurocho – the setting for most of Sega’s long-running Yakuza / Like a Dragon series, based on real-life Tokyo’s Kabukicho district.

Back in 2005, it was an area packed full of bars, short-stay hotels and adult entertainment venues, and was often called a red light district. The Yakuza series features the same attractions as the real Kabukicho, and several such establishments were either nods to or actual branded versions of real locations, from Sega’s own arcades, to the landmark Don Quijote store, and the baseball batting cage beloved by fan-favourite Goro Majima. In many cases, the games act like time capsules from when they were released, capturing snapshots of a Tokyo that has changed considerably over the last two decades. Sega may have closed its arcade business, but the arcades live on in Yakuza.

Read the full piece, “The (almost) unbroken history of Yakuza’s Kamurocho”, on Overlode now

JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film 2021

The on-going pandemic has made attending film festivals and in-theatre screenings difficult. Some festivals have moved to online-only or hybrid events, but even where that has occurred, finding Japanese cinema in particular remains tricky. Enter JAPAN CUTS, from New York’s Japan Society, a hybrid in-person and online Japanese film festival running August 20th to September 2nd.

The bad news? For a UK-based viewer like me, most of the films remain inaccessible, region-locked for US audiences only. But there is good news. With a tip of my hat to Japanese film distributor Third Window it has come to my attention that at least a couple of feature films and a smattering of shorts are available to rent worldwide.

In the features department, we find B/B (2020), the debut from Kosuke Nakahama, and Sasaki in my Mind (2020), from Takuya Uchiyama. Both are airing under the festival’s Next Generation banner, “a hand-picked selection of independently produced narrative feature films by emerging directors who offer a glimpse into the future of Japanese cinema”.

The most attractive pick for me is Toshiaki Toyoda’s 26 min short Go Seppuku Yourselves (2021). Toyoda has been on my watchlist as a director to check out, especially with a new collection of his works coming soon in a 2005-2021 box set here in the UK. What better time to engage with his work?

Though I cannot watch it myself as it’s both restricted to the US and already sold-out online, I would be remiss in not mentioning that tickets still appear to be available for Wife of a Spy (2020), the most recent winner of the Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film of the Year. New Yorkers reading this before Friday, August 27th may still be able to catch it – though I’d only suggest doing so if you can attend an in-person screening safely.

LIFF2020 Programme

Living in Leeds as a film fan has its perks. The city has a long historical association with filmmaking, and annually hosts the Leeds International Film Festival, celebrating films from across the world. Despite living in the city for over a decade now I only started attending the festival in recent years, but it’s quickly become an annual tradition of my own. Every year I enjoy looking through the programme, keeping a particular eye out for Japanese cinema. 2020 has disrupted this yearly ritual as much as anything else. LIFF2020 is smaller, with fewer feature films on the programme, and split between some of its usual venues and a new online player.

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The Real Cop Influencers of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

I don’t always write about Japanese cinema. This week I have a piece on fanbyte covering the uncomfortable relationship between Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and some of the real-life veterans featured as playable characters:

Most of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s “operators” are wholly fictional characters created for multiplayer and Warzone battle royale. A few are drawn from the game’s narrative campaign. A handful, though, are modeled closely on real life figures. I wanted to know more about the people these characters were based on, and investigating their background took me on a strange journey into the marketing of tactical training and equipment — and what it means when that marketing makes it into one of the biggest gaming franchises on the planet.

Keep reading over on fanbyte.com

Review: Days of Youth (1929)

Back when I started this blog, I was trying to keep a record as I began to explore Japanese film in greater depth. I was someone who had spent a significant chunk of their adult life either living in or studying Japan, but Japanese cinema was a blind spot for me beyond a handful of films. I started by going straight to Akira Kurosawa, whose name is still synonymous with Japanese cinema, but I’ve still barely scratched the surface when it comes to other giants of the past – those directors like Yasjuiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Kon Ichikawa, and Mikio Naruse whose names and careers are often linked, like in this feature from the Toronto Film Festival.

Days of Youth (1929) directed by Yasujirō Ozu • Reviews, film + cast •  Letterboxd

Ozu is particularly fascinating to me in the way he straddles the silent and sound eras, and in that many of his earliest works are now lost. The earliest known surviving film of his is Days of Youth from 1929: a gentle, slow-paced comedy following two university students (Ichiro Yuki and Tatsuo Saito) as they vie for the attentions of Chieko (Junko Matsui).

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Osaka Loves Kaiju

This week, officials unveiled the logo for the forthcoming 2025 World Exposition – and Japanese social media is delighted with the result. The red, ring-shaped mass of eyeballs and blobs has immediately been compared to a kaiju, the giant monsters of Japanese cinema fame, with Twitter users immortalising it in art.

Osaka Expo 2025 logo announcement

Per the Mainichi, graphic designer Tamotsu Shimada was quoted as saying, “Like the Tower of the Sun … we wanted to create something that was unique and has impact.” The Tower of the Sun, a huge sculpture by artist Tarō Okamoto, was built for the last World Exposition to land in the city, all the way back in 1970. Though most of the expo park is long gone, the Tower of the Sun still looms over the area.

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Benkei and the Porter

Review: The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (1945)

After writing about the BFI’s celebration of Japanese cinema earlier this month, it still took a little while before I renewed my subscription to the BFI Player and started indulging in some classic films. Over the weekend, I rewatched Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog, which absolutely holds up as a portrait of Tokyo in its sweltering summer heat, and that left me hungry for more of the director’s work. In truth, I didn’t actually expect much from The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail; I had a suspicion that the story around its banning in 1945 by occupying forces would be more interesting than the film itself. Fortunately, I was wrong.

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Ghost of Tsushima Impressions

Barring any late-breaking delays – and really, anything could happen with the coronavirus pandemic not going anywhere any time soon – 2020 will be the final year of the PS4. The final year of a platform is often when developers deliver their finest work, able to leverage a whole console generation of technical know-how. This summer just gave us two swansongs in quick succession: Naughty Dog’s gruelling The Last of Us Part II, closely followed by Sucker Punch’s samurai cinema-inspired Ghost of Tsushima.

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