Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Police Tactics

Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Police Tactics
Directed by	Kinji Fukasaku
Produced by	Goro Kusakabe
Written by	Kazuo Kasahara Kōichi Iiboshi (original story)
Starring	Bunta Sugawara Akira Kobayashi Takeshi Katō
Narrated by	Tetsu Sakai
Music by	Toshiaki Tsushima
Cinematography	Sadaji Yoshida
Edited by	Shintaro Miyamoto
Distributed by	Toei Company
Release dates	January 15, 1974
Running time	101 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Police Tactics (Japanese: 仁義なき戦い　頂上作戦, Hepburn: Jingi Naki Tatakai: Chojo Sakusen) is a 1974 Japanese yakuza film directed by Kinji Fukasaku. It is the fourth film in a five-part series that Fukasaku made in a span of just two years.

Plot

In fall 1963, the police crack down on yakuza activities nationwide due to public outcry and in preparation for the upcoming 1964 Summer Olympics. However, the war between the Yamamori family and Shinwa Group versus the Uchimoto, Hirono, and Akashi families wages on. Noburo Uchimoto, Shozo Hirono and Shinichi Iwai recruit Hidemitsu Kawada and Tomoji Okajima, the usually neutral leader of the Gisei Group, to their side. When Masakichi Makihara's men kill a member of Hirono's family he wants to go after Yamamori himself, however retired yakuza and Hirono's adviser Kenichi Okubo stops him. Akira Takeda threatened Okubo to keep Hirono in Kure, as Yamamori has fled to Hiroshima City while Makihara's men stay to fight Hirono's.

The police, knowing that supporting all the visiting reinforcements is taking a monetary toll, strictly watch the gangs' illegal business collections. When an Uchimoto member accidentally kills a civilian, the public demands further action and the media begin photographing yakuza in brawls. The police put a constant stakeout on Hirono's base, effectively paralyzing him, Uchimoto refuses to take action, and his backers the Akashi get entangled in resistance in Tokyo. When Hirono learns that Yamamori will be in Kobe, he secretly leaves his base and plans to kill him then. However, during the trip, his men leave him stranded and intend to perform the hit themselves. But the Akashi stop them, not wanting the murder to happen on their turf, instead Iwai plans a large memorial service for Hirono's killed man, using it as an excuse to send him numerous reinforcements for an attack.

In the meantime, Uchimoto is kidnapped by Takeda and Yamamori and forced to reveal the plan to them. Yamamori tips the police off to a year-old crime Hirono committed to have him arrested. Without him, the Akashi attack never happens and Yamamori and Makihara are able to return to Kure. Due to Takeda tricking Okajima's girlfriend, Yamamori is able to have Okajima killed much to Takeda's anger, as he believes it hurt their image with the public. Gisei Group member Shoichi Fujita retaliates by bombing Shoichi Eda's office and Uchimoto rats on his own men who planned to attack Yamamori as a favor for Takeda releasing him. When Uchimoto's men learn this they launch a deadly gunfight in public, which leads police to arrest Uchimoto, Eda, and Yamamori. Iwai and his men immediately fly to Kure to rebuild the Gisei Group, while Takeda recruits further allies including his former enemy Otomo. Takeda has Boss Akashi's house in Kobe bombed, and the Akashi assume it was the Shinwa Group and retaliate accordingly before further violence follows in Hiroshima.

Kawada then has one of his men kill his supposed ally Fujita, feeling that the Gisei are taking his turf. Iwai visits Hirono in jail and explains to him what has happened and that he has to return to Kobe because the Akashi have made peace with the Shinwa thanks to police mediation. Hirono is sentenced to over seven years in prison, Makihara gets about three, Eda five, Yamamori a year and a half, and Uchimoto is let go on probation for formally dissolving his family. While both waiting to be booked into prison at the film's end, Takeda tells Hirono that Takeda has to turn his yakuza family into a political committee to survive.

Cast

Production

Due to the success of the first film, Toei demanded that screenwriter Kazuo Kasahara finally write about the Hiroshima yakuza war depicted in Kōichi Iiboshi's articles, which are in-turn based on the journals of Kōzō Minō, and split it into two films. Kasahara had purposely avoided that part of the story for the first two installments, not only because he was daunted by all the names and relationships that were presented in a complex way, but also because he would have to write about the Yamaguchi-gumi and was concerned about the agreements he made to the people involved in the incidents.^[1]

The fourth film began in September 1973. Set after the Hiroshima incidents, Hirono and the lead characters are now high-ranking bosses that do not appear in the battles themselves. Therefore, Kasahara and director Kinji Fukasaku decided to show the violent story from multiple angles in an objective way.^[1]

During his fifth visit to Hiroshima Kasahara found that both Minō and Takeshi Hattori, second president of the Kyosei-kai, enjoyed talking about their successful predecessors, but the former bosses refused to talk about the young gangsters that were killed or that committed the murders. So the writer asked the police for information, but they declined as well.^[1]

Kasahara collected all his information into a large collage of all the gang fights, but having worked on the series for a year, began to lose sight of what he was doing. Toei was telling him to hurry up, follow the budget, make it more entertaining and cited reading a collection of essays by poet Sumita Oyama called "Human Adoration" as the only thing that kept him sane. The screenplay took him 73 days to write.^[1]

Release

Battles Without Honor and Humanity has been released on home video and aired on television, the latter with some scenes cut. In 1980, the first four films were edited into a 224-minute compilation and was given a limited theatrical release and broadcast on Toei's TV network. A Blu-ray box set compiling all five films in the series was released on March 21, 2013 to celebrate its 40th anniversary.^[2]

All five films in the series were released on DVD in North America by Home Vision Entertainment in 2004, under the moniker The Yakuza Papers. A 6-disc DVD box set containing them all was also released. It includes a bonus disc containing interviews with director William Friedkin, discussing the influence of the films in America; subtitle translator Linda Hoaglund, discussing her work on the films; David Kaplan, Kenta Fukasaku, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a Toei producer and a biographer among others.^[3] Arrow Films released a Blu-ray and DVD box set, limited to 2,500 copies, of all five films in the UK on December 7, 2015 and in the US a day later. Special features include an interview with the series fight choreographer Ryuzo Ueno and the 1980 edited compilation of the first four films.^[4]

References

External links

• Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Police Tactics at the Internet Movie Database
• Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Police Tactics (Japanese) at the Japanese Movie Database