I started collecting research material about real-life outlaws
for a series of Toei ninkyo yakuza films prior to Battles Without Honor & Humanity.
Ninkyo means chivalrous spirit... It’s difficult to explain in words.
It’s the story of the conflict between human love and pain on the one hand,
and duty and obligation on the other.
Especially when the ninkyo subgenre first began,
the drama was about strong morality and ethics.
Even though evil is evil, justice is sure to win.
But since 1970 the stories had been transposed to the early post-war period.
Earlier in my career, I had written period swordplay films with fairly dry conflicts.
But that same dry feeling doesn’t work for stories about chivalry.
Out of duty, those characters put their lives on the line for others,
and I had never done that in my period swordplay stories.
Those characters fight for survival, while helping their family and friends.
It doesn’t matter to them whether it’s for love, or justice, or evil.
I had covered this before in period swordplay screenplays,
and it was very popular with audiences.
One winter I went to Hokkaido for location scouting
and was introduced to Kinji Fukasaku at an inn we were staying at.
It was in Asahikawa City in the middle of the snow.
He was playing mahjong. Someone said, “That’s Fukasaku,” and I said I was Takada.
He said “Hey!” and waved to me, and looked so handsome.
Kasahara was also good-looking.
I really felt that when I first met them.
When I first met Fukasaku,
I think the Battles Without Honor series had just reached its fourth episode.
Now I can often be quite a disagreeable person and find fault with everything.
So I told Fukasaku which parts of Kasahara’s script I thought were bad.
I liked the scripts, but I told him it’d be better if I got the negative stuff out first.
I loved the part of Boss Yamamori, as played by Nobuo Kaneko.
I’d never seen that sort of role in western films,
though I don’t know why that turned out to be the case.
I’ve never seen a villain like this, even in Mafia films.
He always says you’re the only boss in Hiroshima.
I knew it.
Makihara here was going to kill your husband, but I stopped him.
I’ve never killed a man.
I’m such a kind little poppa.
I understood why Fukasaku had taken on on this project.
I admired him a lot and was really honored to work with him.
For that reason, I pushed him a bit to make him let me do what I wanted.
By the way, one of our big problems was Bunta Sugawara’s schedule.
I imagine Bunta might have been less than enthusiastic for another sequel.
But if we couldn’t get Bunta we couldn’t use Nobuo Kaneko.
I think this film was all about Bunta’s Hirono, a stand-in for Kozo Mino,
whom I had met in real life many times before.
Nobuo Kaneko’s character was just plain nasty in the series.
The films were about the grudge between them.
So Bunta’s character was full of bitterness, which warped his mind.
Everything was twisted by Kaneko and became too much to bear.
The films had been especially vivid because of the supporting characters.
So I created the characters played by Jo Shishido and Hiroki Matsukata,
as I wanted to completely change the dynamics of the previous films’ relationships.
My intention was to create a different kind of story than in the previous four films.
Shishido and Matsukata’s performances helped reinforce that difference.
For example, Kinya Kitaoji’s main character.
Kasahara thought we shouldn’t use him because he was based on a real yakuza boss.
But I had met the real guy in Hiroshima and based the character on him.
I was told, “It’ll be dangerous if you do that.”
But I was determined.
The problem would be on set, not for me.
I didn’t care what happened after I wrote the script,
so it went into circulation.
After that there were some big problems
because the real-life yakuza boss saw the film and raised hell with the studio!
I believe Fukasaku did watch my films, like my swordplay movies or crime comedies.
Although Kasahara said there was no material left to write a fifth Battles film,
I think what he really wanted to do was simply to work on another project.
He wrote in an article somewhere that he thought I was just wasting my time,
writing the fifth film in the series, but I don’t think he really meant that.
I’m sure he thought that it wasn’t his project any longer.
Which is why he gave me a massive amount of research data.
Usually one writer doesn’t give this sort of material to another.
But he passed it on to me.
To tell the truth, I didn’t use much of it since it didn’t really fit the story.
The reason being that Hiroshima’s yakuza were destined to become “respectable” in the end.
The group was bound to turn into a gigantic association of yakuza throughout western Japan.
People expected that I couldn’t possibly depict that with accuracy, but I did anyway.
And I think the script turned out to be pretty successful.
The producer, Kusakabe, and Kasahara both said so, too.
And Fukasaku also said okay right away.
He gave me his seal of approval, so the rest trusted me.
Another major reason was because Kasahara supported me.
Later he said I’d done a first class job, but I didn’t feel so pleased
because my project was a success, while the project he’d wanted to do never happened.
You can say that it was my achievement.
But in reality my success was due to Kasahara, Kusakabe and Fukasaku
taking me under their wing and entrusting their huge project to me.
It became the launching point for later success in my life.
I can’t send Ujiie into a snake pit like that.
If you want him,
you’ll have to clean up your kitchen first.
I’ll give you my reply after that.
All right.
I’ll come again after my installation ceremony.
I’ll expect your answer then.
Kasahara told me that he thought I hadn’t put any black humor into my Battles film,
but I thought the scenes showcasing Bunta’s chivalrous spirit were good examples of that.
While I was researching the story one of the things that moved me emotionally
was the general unhappiness and pathos of the lowly hoodlums in the gangs.
So I made it a point to include their lives in the film.
But the comedy in the first four films is always coming from Nobuo Kaneko. I couldn’t beat that.
Please empty your glasses at once, gentlemen.
I don’t know why, but exchanging cups of sake was a typical yakuza ceremony.
I thought it became ridiculous since the films stuck too much to this formula.
Then they’d return their sake cups too quickly when leaving the gang.
Even Kasahara said this.
In my mind, I was always disappointed by these scenes.
So I decided to mess things up a bit, regarding the sake cup rituals.
So that’s why I switched to a whiskey exchange for Jo Shishido’s scene.
They decide to do their own style of ritual, by themselves,
in a way that’s completely different from the usual way of doing it.
So we created a scene that’s a complete reversal.
I wanted to make the title “Sake Cup Exchange Without Honor & Humanity.”
That’s what was I was aiming for.
I think that scene was one of the finest in the whole series.
Kozo Mino was the initial inspiration for the story.
When I first went to see him, he said he didn’t like any of the first four episodes.
Not at all.
“That was not my Battles Without Honor & Humanity,” he said.
He gave me a stack of manuscript papers,
which turned out to be a script he’d written himself.
I went back to my hotel in Kure City and read it straight away.
From the start, Nobuo Kaneko’s Yam amori character had abuse showered on him throughout.
I’m not forcing you.
You see what I’m made of, don’t you?
Don’t come crying to me later.
Boss,
I want to be very clear about this.
Sakai may be bad, but you’re just as bad.
- The pot calling the kettle black. - What?
I’ve had it with you.
I won’t fall for your tricks anymore.
I’m turning in my pledge to you. So stop thinking of me as your man.
During filming we stayed in a business hotel in Kure, which is a such a bizarre city.
Coming back to the hotel after a drink, we saw this naked foreigner there,
looking like a demon, just standing there shouting,
“Give me a man!”
He was out of his mind.
It turned out that a bellboy was his target.
So we tried to help the kid escape.
The manager was struggling to find some company for this foreigner
and he knocked on our doors one after the other: Takaiwa, Goro Kusakabe and Namura.
Takaiwa was the most handsome, then Kusakabe, followed by Namura and lastly me.
In a way, I was annoyed to be the last in line!
The manager’s pounding almost broke down the door.
Kure is a wild town like that.
I’m not sure of the situation with Kozo Mino at that time.
When we filmed Final Episode, and I met Mino, Hiroshima and Kure were in chaos.
It was like civil war.
We didn’t know who was the real boss at that time
and we couldn’t comment on it, either.
I thought Mino could maybe say or do something,
and the money he received from Toei helped to settle things down a bit,
but in reality nothing really changed.
At your level, who gives a damn over a little drug business.
The boss wants him to quit dealing.
He’s one to talk.
You guys take plenty off the top.
So we make a little on the side with drugs.
How are we supposed to make a living?
Of course they deal drugs.
You serious?
This is my turf.
Go home.
If that’s your attitude,
let’s take this thing straight to the boss.
One thing I struggled with every day while writing was
how the characters in the prior four films could have made their living.
The story was about introducing drug dealing into the mix wasn’t it?
Yamamori was sly, in that he said drugs were inexcusable,
but still tried to make money indirectly from their trade.
In a sense, post-war Kobe was the central place for the yakuza
involved in the black market and female trade.
Meaning prostitution.
Also the protection racket. Meaning extortion.
To survive in the general community the yakuza had to adapt
the innate characteristics of their economic activities to stay within the law.
This means they’d make money hidden behind the facade of speedboat or bicycle racing.
Within that society they had the right to open up shop and act as tipsters.
But those jobs were pretty worthless, so they also had to collect from large companies
in discreet ways, like through extortion basically.
So they were concession hunters.
For instance, the third generation of the Yamaguchi family got jobs as
laborers and general workers to gain entry to the transport industry.
Yakuza can survive easily in the entertainment business.
Those yakuza earned their living as “economic yakuza.”
But to depict those sort of yakuza on film takes a lot of time and effort.
Thanks for coming, pal.
Come with me.
Who else?
So the intellectual climate of this film didn’t match the Battles Without Honor series.
But I didn’t have much choice other than to reflect the special situation of the yakuza at the time.
Critics complained that my script talked about
economic yakuza, but portrayed the opposite...and I kind of agree with them.
It looks to me like our time is over.
Do this for 18 years you grow used to certain comforts,
but the cold in here really gets to my bones.
When Police Tactics ended, you know what I actually said to Kasahara?
Hirono and Akira Kobayashi [Takeda] talk with each other and say “our time is over,”
but in reality they haven’t really accomplished anything or created their own era whatsoever.
There was no “time” to end for them!
What era did they create?
Maybe they raised hell and were violent for a bit,
but what does that leave for later generations?
I wondered about that.
What “our time is over” really meant was that they couldn’t survive any longer
by just running around, living frantically, and shooting each other. That era was over.
My interpretation was that they needed to gain a firmer foothold, even as outlaws,
in order to continue moving forward, otherwise they would have no choice but to keep killing each other.
OCR: LoudCrazyHeart