The Film Classification and Rating Organization, also known as Eirin (映倫), is Japan's self-regulatory film regulator. Eirin was established on the model of the now-defunct American Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association's Production Code Administration in June 1949, succeeding the US-led occupation authorities' role of film censorship during the Occupation of Japan. It classifies films into one of four categories depending on their suitability for viewing by minors of different ages.
Kinji Fukasaku was a Japanese film director and screenwriter who rose to prominence with a series of yakuza films. He directed the Japanese portion of the Hollywood war film Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), yakuza films including Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1973), samurai period pieces such as Shogun's Samurai (1978), the space opera Message from Space (1978), the fantasy film Samurai Reincarnation (1981), and his final film Battle Royale (2000). He used a cinema verite-inspired shaky camera technique in many of his films from the early 1970s.
Battles Without Honor and Humanity is a 1973 Japanese yakuza film directed by Kinji Fukasaku. The screenplay by Kazuo Kasahara adapts a series of newspaper articles by journalist Kōichi Iiboshi, that were rewrites of a manuscript originally written by real-life yakuza Kōzō Minō. It is the first film in a five-part series that Fukasaku made in a span of just two years.
Bunta Sugawara was a Japanese actor who appeared in almost 200 Japanese feature films.
Noboru Ando was a Japanese actor, writer and former yakuza. He is known for utilizing his experiences as a criminal in his many roles in yakuza films. He had a large knife scar on his left cheek, the result of a brawl with a Korean gangster as a young man.
Eiichi Ono, better known by his stage name Kōji Tsuruta, was a Japanese actor and singer. He appeared in almost 260 feature films and had a unique style of singing. His daughter, Sayaka Tsuruta, is an actress.
Toshio Masuda is a Japanese film director. He developed a reputation as a consistent box office hit-maker. Over the course of five decades, 16 of his films made the yearly top ten lists at the Japanese box office—a second place record in the industry. Between 1958 and 1968 he directed 52 films for the Nikkatsu Company. He was their top director of action films and worked with the company's top stars, including Yujiro Ishihara with whom he made 25 films. After the breakdown of the studio system, he moved on to a succession of big-budget movies including the American-Japanese co-production Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) and the science fiction epic Catastrophe 1999: The Prophecies of Nostradamus (1974). He worked on such anime productions as the Space Battleship Yamato series. His corporate drama Company Funeral (1989) earned him a Japanese Academy Award nomination and wins at the Blue Ribbon Awards and Mainichi Film Awards. In Japan, his films are well remembered by fans and called genre landmarks by critics. He remains little known abroad save for rare exceptions of his post-Nikkatsu work such as Tora! Tora! Tora!. However, a number of his films were screened in a 2005 Nikkatsu Action Cinema retrospective in Italy and a few have since made their way to the United States. In 2009, he helped produce Space Battleship Yamato: Resurrection.
Bakuto (博徒) were itinerant gamblers active in Japan from the 18th century to the mid-20th century. They were one of two forerunners to modern Japanese organized crime syndicates called yakuza.
Kōju Meguro, better known by his stage name Hiroki Matsukata, was a Japanese actor. He was the son of jidaigeki actor Jūshirō Konoe and actress Yaeko Mizukawa and has a younger brother, Yūki Meguro, who is also an actor. With ex-wife actress Akiko Nishina he had two children; son Masaki Nishina and daughter Hitomi Nishina are both in the entertainment industry.
Sympathy for the Underdog, known in Japan as Bakuto Gaijin Butai, is a 1971 Japanese yakuza film directed and co-written by Kinji Fukasaku and starring Kōji Tsuruta and Noboru Ando. It is director Fukasaku's last film featuring Kōji Tsuruta. Complex named it number 8 on their list of The 25 Best Yakuza Movies. Home Vision Entertainment released the movie on DVD in North America in 2005.
Joe Shishido was a Japanese actor most recognizable for his intense, eccentric yakuza film roles and his artificially enlarged cheekbones. He appeared in some 300 films but is best known in the West for his performance in the cult film Branded to Kill (1967). In Japan, he is also known by the nickname Joe the Ace for his popular role in the Western Quick Draw Joe (1961).
Shinjuku Triad Society is a 1995 Japanese film directed by Takashi Miike. The film is one of the earliest examples of Miike's use of extreme violence and unusual characterization, two aspects he would become notorious for. The film is part of the Black Society trilogy and is followed by Rainy Dog and Ley Lines.
Teruo Ishii was a Japanese film director best known in the West for his early films in the Super Giant series, and for his films in the Ero guro ("erotic-grotesque") subgenre of pinku eiga such as Shogun's Joy of Torture (1968). He also directed the 1965 film, Abashiri Prison, which helped to make Ken Takakura a major star in Japan. Referred to in Japan as "The King of Cult", Ishii had a much more prolific and eclectic career than was generally known in the West during his lifetime.
Masanobu Ando is a Japanese actor.
Junko Terashima, known professionally as Sumiko Fuji is a Japanese actress. She originally began acting under the name Junko Fuji, becoming famous as the female lead in yakuza films opposite such stars as Kōji Tsuruta and Ken Takakura. She even starred in her own series as the sword-wielding gambler Red Peony in the Hibotan Bakuto series. Initially retiring in 1972 after getting married, she began appearing on TV in 1974 under her real name. She later returned to films in 1989 using the name Sumiko Fuji, and expanded her acting repertoire. She won a Blue Ribbon Award for best supporting actress in 1999 and 2006. She is married to the kabuki actor Onoe Kikugorō VII and is the mother of the actress Shinobu Terajima and the kabuki actor Onoe Kikunosuke V.
Ambition Without Honor is a 1996 Japanese direct-to-video yakuza film directed by Takashi Miike. The film's title has also been translated as Ruthless Ambition and Heartless Ambition. It was followed by Ambition Without Honor 2 in 1997.
Battles Without Honor and Humanity, also known in the West as The Yakuza Papers, is a Japanese yakuza film series produced by Toei Company. Inspired by a series of magazine articles by journalist Kōichi Iiboshi that are based on memoirs originally written by real-life yakuza Kōzō Minō, the films detail yakuza conflicts in Hiroshima Prefecture.
Gambler's Farewell is a 1968 yakuza film directed by Kinji Fukasaku starring Koji Tsuruta. It is the sixth film in the Bakuto (Gambler) series of films produced by Toei Studios. Fukasaku had previously directed Koji Tsuruta in a similarly titled film, Kaisanshiki, in 1967, but the two films are unrelated.
Ceremony of Disbanding, also known as Dissolution Ceremony and The Breakup is a 1967 ninkyo eiga film directed by Kinji Fukasaku and starring Koji Tsuruta. It was produced by Toei Studios. Fukasaku later directed Koji Tsuruta in a similarly titled film, Bakuto kaisanshiki, in 1968, but the two films are unrelated.
Jakoman and Tetsu, also known as One-Eyed Captain and Tetsu is a 1964 Japanese film directed by Kinji Fukasaku based on an earlier screenplay by Akira Kurosawa and Senkichi Taniguchi that was based on the novel Nishin gyogyo by Keizo Kajino. The screenplay had previously been filmed by director Senkichi Taniguchi in 1949.
