Graveyard of Honor

This crime and social drama flick made during the seventies is typical of the Kinji Fukasaku's films of this period. Brutal full of excess and fast moving scenes, it reunites Tetsua Watari and Ando Noburu in this violent and bloody Japanese crime flick inspired from actual events where the director seems to glorify the hoodlums; as if the film maker from the Rising Sun country wanted to show some kind of Japanese Jimmy Cagney's role. Some kind of Japanese WHITE HEAT.

Kinji Fukasaku's mid-70s faux-biopic of a sociopath Yakuza gangster in late-40s Japan is certainly an absorbing experience, even if it never quite manages to immerse the viewer entirely in the nihilism of the world in which Tetsuya Watari's Rikio Ishikawa exists. It's difficult really to determine whether Fukasaku is trying to attract or repulse us here and, for me, this is the film's main weakness. Ishikawa has no redeeming features: he's simply a crude, boorish rapist and murderer who invokes unexplainable loyalty in those around him. There is some amusement to be found in the bewilderment of Ishikawa's Yakuza superiors, who don't seem to know quite what to do with the loose cannon in their midst (presumably something in the Yakuza code prevents them from simply taking him into a back alley and shooting him like a dog) but, for all its kinetic energy and undeniable style Graveyard of Honour mostly fails to fascinate, and fascinate it must – the way a caterpillar squirming on the end of a pin fascinates – if it is to hold an audience who can feel little or no connection with its main character.

Despite these criticisms, the film is never dull. Fukasaku is an unsurpassable director, completely confident of his skills, totally focused, and unafraid to adopt subjects and styles that must have seemed out of the ordinary at the time. It's to his credit that most of the techniques he uses in this film are still widely used today – especially by US gangster flicks. Fukasaku fills the screen with people in this one, countless people, hundreds of them, conveying the raucous and claustrophobic overcrowding of a country recovering from a bruising war. And while attention to period detail is perhaps not this film's strong point, this shortcoming is overcome by good use of sepia tones to reinforce the sense of history.

It's an unusual Yakusa picture, according some Fukasaku's most closest work friends interviewed on bonus material explained that Rikio Schikawa a wild persona portrayed by Tetsuya Watari is meaning the compassion whereby Fukasaku felt by those losers in the society, thus the story spans since his tender years just narrated by someone until post WWII when the acting really starts properly, exposing a kind of mad dog criminal character entering in a Yakusa gang making great damages whatever he goes, thus has been punished by banishment for ten years in agreement of Yakusa's law, however he dares go back in few years.

Another interesting point is about the fully chaos carried out there by lost the war, followed by American military intervention which wasn't any novelty, although countless people from nearby countries raided the Japanese ground as reprisals over the fierce and ruthless deployed by Japanese Army on previous years on the continent, also inserting those drugs displayed on story, brought massively aftermaths the war and all black market over an economy in ramshackle.

Aside some overacted implied by Kenji Fukasaku on the narrative, the picture in fully interesting by a character study, also understanding how Japan overcame those chaotic environment post WWII, where the Yakusa's mobsters took the political power in many territory thru "good looking civilians" a true achievement by the underrated master Kenji Fikasaku.

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First watch: 2025 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8.

Don't be misled. GRAVEYARD OF HONOR is not your typical Japanese Yakuza film. This genre most often depicts a battle between Good and Evil, or at the very least, the awareness of this struggle. Kinji Fukasaku, director of GRAVEYARD OF HONOR, has created a portrait of a character who is not cognizant of a single redeemable quality. Tetsuya Watari plays Rikio Ishikawa who was a real figure within the Japanese underworld in the years immediately following WWII. This man was clearly psychotic and was not to be restrained or regulated either by the police or leaders within his Yakuza brotherhood. Fresh out of jail, and then banished for attacking his own clan leader, he is sent to Osaka where he acquires a heroin habit. And, all along this downward slide, it is nearly impossible to generate any sympathy whatsoever for this reprehensible character. Fukasaku seems to suggest that US occupying forces were in some ways complicit in the corruption of post WWII Japan. As the US attempted to bolster Japanese self rule, it allowed the Yakuza's fortunes to prosper in phony democratic elections. However, in no way does this allow the viewer to empathize with the sadistically violent outbursts of Rikio Ishikawa. Kinji Fukasaku has crafted a film in which we watch as a malevolent anti-hero voraciously embraces the forces of darkness without a backwards glance.

Kinji Fukasaku is worldwide known for his Yakuza movies, different from the typical overall view the cinema had from Yakuzas. This movie is a good example of how far some yakuzas are from honor or pride.

Fukasaku films Jingi no hakaba (Graveyard of Honor) as a mockumentary (fake documentary) which gives more emphasis to the actual yakuza situation. This movie follows the story of Ishikawa, the archetypical post-war gangster (as it's defined in the film). The character development is great, and very surprising. However, you may loose the plot in some points if you don't have an overall knowledge of the Yakuza organization.

In conclusion, a very entertaining gangster movie the Japanese way. I hugely recommend for anyone looking for the roots of most of the Japanese and Hong Kongese gangsters movies nowadays (Takashi Miike, Takeshi Kitano, John Woo, etc.), you won't get disappointed.