Battles Without Honor and Humanity

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Battles Without Honor and Humanity

Directed by	Kinji Fukasaku
Written by	Kazuo Kasahara Koichi Iiboshi (story)
Starring	Bunta Sugawara Hiroki Matsukata Tatsuo Umemiya Tsunehiko Watase Nobuo Kaneko
Music by	Toshiaki Tsushima
Cinematography	Sadaji Yoshida
Distributed by	Toei
Release date(s)	Jan 13, 1973
Running time	99 min
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Followed by	Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Deathmatch in Hiroshima
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For the instrumental piece by Tomoyasu Hotei featured in the Quentin Tarantino film Kill Bill, see Battle Without Honor or Humanity

Battles Without Honor and Humanity (仁義なき戦い, Jingi Naki Tatakai^?) is a groundbreaking 1973 yakuza film by Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku and adapted from a series of newspaper articles by Koichi Iiboshi, a journalist and former yakuza^[1]. It is the first film in a five-part series that is known as The Yakuza Papers. Due to the series' enormous commercial and critical popularity it was followed by another three-part series, New Battles Without Honor and Humanity, and concluded with a final installment, Aftermath of Battles Without Honor and Humanity. It is often called the "Japanese Godfather".

1 Synopsis
2 Etymology
3 Sequels
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Synopsis

The violent, documentary-style film chronicles the underworld tribulations of Shozo Hirono (Bunta Sugawara), a young ex-soldier and street thug in post-War Hiroshima. Starting in the open-air black markets of bombed-out Hiroshima in 1945, the film spans a period of more than ten years. The plot consists of a changing of the guard of new families and organziations with the same feuds and people, punctuated by the gritty violence. It gave way to four sequels, which form a sprawling yakuza epic. The overall message and tone of the series is a bleak meditation on violence, chaos, and futile struggles.

[edit] Etymology

The title refers to the post-war yakuza's lack of jingi, a Japanese term loosely translated as "honor and humanity". Previous yakuza movies had, for the most part, been tales of chivalry set in pre-war Japan. A commercial and critical success, Battles Without Honor and Humanity changed that, and Japanese cinema, forever.

In the western market it is known under the titles: