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Audio Format: DD 2.0 Stereo, DD 1.0 Mono Video Format: Widescreen 1.78:1 (Anamorphic) Languages: Japanese Subtitles: English Region Code: 2, PAL Year Made: 1973 / 1975 / 1969 Running Time: 133 / 101 / 97
Please note: Please verify that PAL formatted DVD will play on your machine prior to purchasing this title. (PAL TV and DVD players required.)
A box set featuring 'Graveyard Of Honour' in which Rikio Ishikawa finds himself in hiding from the entire Yakuza world after he attacks his Godfather, he is forced into hiding, but there he plots his return to power...
'Cops vs Thugs' in which loyalties are pushed to the limit when two rival gangs try to hit the big time again...
and 'Japan Organised Crime Boss' in which the Danno Organisation instigates several battles in order to run the Japanese underworld. They are successful and form an alliance with the remaining Yakuza clans...
Cops vs Thugs
Moving away from the rather more glamorous and romanticised image of gangsters depicted in Japan Organised Crime Boss (1969) and Street Mobster (1972), Fukasaku used Cops vs Thugs (1975) to further explore not only the darker side of the criminal underworld, but also corrupt society that allowed it to flourish, blurring the lines between straightforward depictions of good and evil and showing a far more complex and morally ambiguous society than in previous films.
 "Gangsters and cops are the same. They both respect codes and laws. They were drop-outs who couldn??t get good jobs", says one character during Cops vs Thugs and that just about sums up what the film is about. Set in Kurashima in 1963, Cops vs Thugs claims to be based on real-life events, and the film has a certain grim air of believability. The Kawade gang are supported by congressman Tomoyasu, while the Ohara group enjoy the favour of the local police force. Kenji Hirotani is the acting leader of the Ohara group, planning a scam over the purchase of some land, with the police force helpfully turning a blind eye. However, boss Ohara comes out of prison a changed man and wants to legitimise the organisation. When a new straight-laced lieutenant, Kaida, is brought into the police-force things really get shook-up.
The film seems less focussed than other Fukasaku films due to there being no one lead character, but the various threads gradually fall into place leading to a dramatic and tense stand-off finale. All the trademark Fukasaku stylistic tricks are here, well honed and effectively used. The acting throughout is superb, with good characterisation and realistic characters with complex moral ambiguities. Cops who are on the side of law and justice now, once lived on black market rice as children in the post-war years when there was no other choice. Are they any better than those who enjoy the hospitality of gangsters because of the current ecomomic situation? The press are similarly vilified for their hypocrisy. Do they report in the interests of justice or are they just filling newspaper space to sell ads and compromising their integrity to please their advertisers?
Graveyard of Honor (aka: Jingi no Hakaba)
 Vengeance Is Mine meets La Strada in Japanese gangland auteur Kinji Fukasaku's real-life yakuza drama about a sociopathic loser who always seems to make the wrong decision. Opening in the blackmarkets of Shinjuku just after the war, Ishikawa (played by matinee icon Tetsuya Watari) works as muscleman for the Kawada crime family.
After a raid on a Chinese gang's gambling parlor turns into street warfare, Ishikawa finds himself taking refuge in the boarding room of frightened waif and war orphan Chieko (Yumi Takigawa). After a brief departure, he returns, stinking drunk, to collect his belongings and eventually he rapes her.
Meanwhile, Ishikawa almost sparks a gang war after beating up a prostitute of a rival gang. Though the Kawada clan's connection with the American occupation forces eventually forestalls any bloodshed, Ishikawa's godfather (Hana Hajime) balls him out and humiliates him. In retaliation, Ishikawa jumps his boss and stabs him an inch short of his life ? a cardinal sin in the crime world. Ishikawa again takes refuge with Chieko, who in spite of his previous brutishness takes pity on the battered and bleeding gangster and nurses him to health.
After a brief stint in jail, Ishikawa learns that he is spared execution only through the efforts of his old friend and crime boss Kozaburo Imai (Tatsuo Umemiya); he is instead banished from the Tokyo yakuza world for ten years. Imai arranges for him to lay low in Osaka, where he lives in a flophouse, spending his time whoring, developing tuberculosis, and shooting up dope. He soon gets bored of Osaka, and ventures back to Tokyo with his witless junky sidekick Ozaki (Kunie Tanaka). After another stint in jail, he marries Chieko, who has by this point developed full-fledged tuberculosis. This film was ranked one of the best Japanese films of 1975 by the prestigious film journal Kinema Jumpo.
Japan Organised Crime Boss
Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku died in January 2003, while making the sequel to the controversial Battle Royale, the film that made his name worldwide. Yet Fukasaku??s career goes back much further than this, throughout the 60s and 70s creating a large number of stylish and violent as well as successful and highly influential Japanese gangster films.
 In Japan Organised Crime Boss, Tetsuo Tsukamoto has just been released after 8 years in prison. He returns to the Hamanaka organisation to find that things have changed since he has been inside. The Danno organisation ? an Osaka-based yakuza gang, is extending its influence throughout Japan, using local gangs to do their work and catch their bullets for them. The Hamanaka boss regrets getting his men involved and asks Tsukamoto to help get them out. But the gang violence continues to escalate as the rival mobs slug it out.
Fukasaku??s visual language owed some influence from the French New Wave, but he developed and refined a style that became uniquely his own. Japan Organised Crime Boss is a beautifully stylised film, making use of a number of techniques that enhance and aid the visual storytelling. Voice-over narration taking you through the complexities of the plot, striking camera angles, close-ups and beautiful day-glo 60s colour schemes reminiscent of Tokyo Drifter. Other techniques employed by Fukasaku in this film are freeze-frames and splash screens which practically depict score-sheets of the tally of gang wars.
The acting is first class and one of the highlights is a wonderfully eccentric performance from Tomisaburo Wakayama ? Itto Ogami in the Lone Wolf & Cub series. At this stage in his career, as in Street Mobster, Fukasaku would still adhere to the cinematic conventions of an underworld code of honour between gangsters. This would change in later films such as Cops vs Thugs and Yakuza Graveyard to depict the yakuza in a less glamorous light. Japan Organised Crime Boss is a violent and bloody film, but it is not just a straightforward action thriller. There are strong statements made about the poverty of post-war Japan, and the rise of opportunist gangsters to exploit the situation, but in this film there is a bit of a contradiction between the social commentary and the glamorous activities of the Japanese crime bosses.
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