Period yakuza tale from Toei is quite a revelation

NINKYO NAKASENDO (aka ROAD OF CHIVALRY, 1960) is the third in a trilogy of films directed for Toei Pictures by Sadatsugu Matsuda about the real-life Boss Jirocho of Shimizu, an honorable yakuza leader from the Edo era who ran afoul of corrupt rivals and officials, at least according to this trilogy. I've reviewed the first one, NINKYO SHIMISU-MINATO (PORT OF HONOR, 1957), on this site, but have yet to see the second, NINKYO TOKAIDO (A CHIVALROUS SPIRIT, 1958). This one is superb, packed with incident, boasting a large cast of the studio's top actors, and beautifully shot--in color and widescreen--on various locations and at the studio's sprawling backlot. It introduces well over a dozen major characters and juggles a number of subplots before settling into a moving account of two bosses, Jirocho (Chiezo Kataoka) and Chuji (Utaemon Ichikawa), with a longstanding respectful relationship, suddenly thrust into conflict after manipulation by various rivals and a corrupt governor. The backdrop for this state of affairs is a crop failure in the town of Jinshu, which compels the farmers to sell their daughters to a broker working for the governor in order to pay the land taxes. The broker will either marry the girls off to affluent buyers or divert them to brothels. Boss Chuji, who comes from Jinshu, resorts to desperate measures to try to aid his hometown, causing problems with rival bosses and the local constabulary, leading to a plot to frame Chuji for the murder of one of Jirocho's allies, setting the stage for a major confrontation. A subplot involves Chuji's top swordsman, Takei (Hashizo Okawa), and his girlfriend Okin (Satomi Oka), a Jinshu maiden sold to a brothel and his efforts to free her.

There is enough material here to fuel a half dozen Zatoichi movies. In fact, when I watched this film, after first watching PORT OF HONOR, and VANQUISHED FOES (1964, not on IMDb), all directed by Madatsugu and featuring many of the same actors, my immediate response to each was, "This is like a Zatoichi movie without Zatoichi, which is not a bad thing at all." In the movies with Zatoichi, the blind swordsman/masseur whose other senses are so highly developed that it compensates for his lack of sight when confronted by multiple opponents, the rival bosses and their henchmen are stock characters whom Zatoichi confronts and frequently disposes of in climactic, highly implausible one-against-many swordfights. In other, more notable samurai movies, there's usually a lone ronin, or unemployed samurai, who wanders into a conflict and either plays both sides against the middle, as in Kurosawa's classic, YOJIMBO (1961), or takes the side of the underdog and makes things right for them (THREE OUTLAW SAMURAI). Heroes like Zatoichi and Yojimbo wander into a conflict, resolve it with their swords, and then move on.

In these Toei movies, there is no lone hero or wandering ronin. Boss Jirocho is the protagonist and he has to weigh a history of interlocking relationships and knowledge of current conditions (such as the failure of the rice crop and the wholesale trafficking of the farmers' daughters) before making his decisions. He's not imperfect by any means. His kindness leaves him open to a humiliating theft of his men's belongings in one scene and, later, manipulation by rivals into challenging Chuji to a showdown. If Jirocho and Chuji can eliminate each other, it removes all obstacles to the Governor's complete plunder and exploitation of the farmers. Outside of works by the great Japanese directors, I can't think of any other movies of this type that plunge the viewer so completely into their world and offer us a crash course in the yakuza way of life in pre-Meiji Japan and its intersection with different classes of villagers in a region far from Edo and nestled in the shadow of Mount Fuji, which is seen in a spectacular opening shot. We're not asked to identify with a lone, hyper-skilled swordsman with no ties to the community, but with an array of human beings forced to negotiate a web of conflicting loyalties, economic woes, struggling relationships and natural disasters, like villagers everywhere.

One of the unexpected pleasures of this film is the chance to see both actors who later played Ogami Itto (Lone Wolf) sharing the screen together. Tomisaburo Wakayama played the role in a series of six "Lone Wolf and Cub" films released by Toho Pictures in 1972-74, while Kinnosuke Nakamura played the role in the "Lone Wolf and Cub" TV series from 1973-76. In this film, Wakayama plays the top lieutenant to Boss Jirocho while Nakamura plays a wayward inn owner addicted to gambling who, after committing an act that would have gotten him killed by any other boss, is forgiven by Jirocho and assisted in making restitution and later comes to Jirocho's aid at a crucial point.

I only learned of this film through a gray market dealer offering dozens of Toei films for sale. As happens with a number of Japanese films I've discovered late in life, I must ask the question of why this film and so many like it were never shown at the Japanese film festivals I attended so frequently in New York back in the 1970s or why they've never been released on home video through a legit source in the U.S. If I missed this one, there must be dozens more like it that I've also missed. As a longtime American fan of Japanese cinema, I'm happy to continue making new discoveries and excited by the sheer volume of unseen gems waiting to be brought to my attention, but frustrated by the question of how, when and if they ever will.

Japanese cinema is celebrated for its refined minimalist dramas and avant-garde experimentation; it also introduced popular genres like jidaigeki (samurai epics), kaiju, and anime. Across both high art and mass entertainment, it often explores morality, impermanence, and the pressures of modern life.

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