A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors. Alexander Jacoby

Also set in America, though filmed in Canada, was Rowing Through (Eikō to kyōki, 1996), about a Harvard rower whose hopes of an Olympic medal are dashed when the U.S. boycotts the 1980 Moscow Games. More recently, Harada played the villainous Omura in Hollywood’s take on the end of the samurai era, The Last Samurai (2003, Ed Zwick).

      Like another avowed Hawksian, John Carpenter, Harada appears to have been inspired more by his mentor’s able handling of genre than by his talent for exploring group dynamics. His debut, Goodbye Flickmania (Saraba eiga no tomoyo: Indian samā, 1979), recalled Hawks’ A Girl in Every Port (1928) and was intended as a homage. However, its theme of a film buff unable to tell celluloid from reality set the tone for much of Harada’s later career. The dystopian science fiction film Gunhed (Ganheddo, 1988) was not unlike Carpenter’s 1982 The Thing (itself a remake of a film Hawks produced) in stressing set design, action, and noise at the expense of nuanced characterization and emotional reality. Harada achieved a rare balance of tension and characterization in Kami­kaze Taxi (1994), a moving, well-acted account of the relationship between a small-time hood, on the run after robbing his colleagues, and his Peruvian-Japanese taxi driver. Filmed with intelligent restraint, it tackled the prejudices faced by foreigners even of Japanese extraction and the racist and belligerent attitudes of many mainstream Japanese politicians; it also caught a genuinely Hawksian mood of stoicism in the face of death.

      Subsequently, however, Harada has tended to take on controversial themes in safe ways. Bounce KoGals (Baunsu koGALS, 1997), about the phenomenon of enjo kōsai (“compensation dating,” or less euphemistically, teenage prostitution) made its heroines so charming as to come close to endorsing their behavior. Certainly, its hyperactive camerawork lacked the discipline needed to comment constructively on their actions. Spellbound (Kin’yū fushoku rettō: Jubaku, 1999) was an entertaining but meretricious account of a bank scandal, with Kōji Yakusho’s air of irreproachable honesty used to imply that a mere change of personnel will suffice to root out institutional corruption. Inugami (2001), a fantasy about a family in remote Shikoku possessed by malevolent spirits, addressed incestuous themes and was apparently intended by Harada as a metaphor for the origins of the Imperial Family; however, these implications were obscured by the general tone of hysteria. The Choice of Hercules (Totsunyūseyo! Asama Sansō jiken, 2002) was criticized for avoiding political engagement by telling the story of the 1972 Asama Sansō Red Army hostage incident entirely from the point of view of the police.

      The limitations of these films were those of Harada’s approach, which echoes the shallow facility of modern Hollywood: frenetic cutting is preferred to expressive composition, gloss supplants style. Nevertheless, with Bluestockings (Jiyū ren’ai, 2005), Harada won praise for combining intelligent dramaturgy with a trenchant account of the difficulties facing independent women during the Taisho period, an era torn between tradition and modernity. It is unfortunate that, Kamikaze Taxi aside, he has rarely integrated personal and political themes so successfully with generic material. Indeed with his recent horror films, The Suicide Song (Densen uta, 2007) and The Box of Evil Spirits (Mōryō no hako, 2007), Harada would appear to have made some of his most conventional work to date.

      1979 Saraba eiga no tomoyo: Indian samā / Goodbye Flickmania

      1984 Uindī / Windy / Races

      1985 Tōsha: 250-ppun no 1-byō / Indecent Exposure / Out of Focus

      1986 Paris-Dakar 15000: Eikō e no chōsen / Paris-Dakar 15000: Challenge for Glory

      Onyanko za mūbī: Kiki ippatsu / Onyanko the Movie

      1987 Saraba itoshiki hito yo / The Heartbreak Yakuza

      1988 Ganheddo / Gunhed

      1993 Painted Desert

      1994 Kamikaze Taxi (2-part TV version released as “Fukushū no tenshi,” lit. “Angel of Revenge”)

      1995 Toraburushūtā / Troubleshooters / Trouble With Nango

      1996 Eikō to kyōki / Rowing Through (lit. Glory and Madness)

      1997 Baunsu koGALS / Bounce KoGals / Bounce / Leaving

      1999 Kin’yū fushoku rettō: Jubaku / Spellbound / Jubaku

      2001 Inugami

      2002 Totsunyūseyo! Asama Sansō jiken / The Choice of Hercules (lit. Break in! Asama Sanso Incident)

      2005 Jiyū ren’ai / Bluestockings (lit. Free Love)

      2007 Densen uta / The Suicide Song / Gloomy Sunday

      Mōryō no hako / The Box of Evil Spirits / Kyogokudo 2

      HASEBE Yasuharu

      (b. April 4, 1932)

      長谷部安春

      Hasebe’s films are high on camp and low in intelligence, a combination that has earned him a cult reputation in some quarters. Having trained at Nikkatsu with Seijun Suzuki, he took the elder director’s fondness for absurd plots and stylized visuals to a disreputable extreme in films such as his debut, Black Tight Killers (Ore ni sawaru to abunai ze, 1966). This crazy pastiche of action movie conventions was admirable mainly for Akiyoshi Satani’s inventive art direction, but it established the director’s working relationship with tough/tender leading man Akira Kobayashi, who also starred in such serious yakuza films as Turf War (Shima wa moratta, 1968), Roughneck (Arakure, 1969) and Bloody Territories (Kōiki bōryoku: Ryūketsu no shima, 1969). The last of these, about a classically honorable yakuza clan being edged out by unscrupulous successors, achieved moments of elegiac power among its scenes of nihilistic violence. Hasebe also worked with a more macho action star, Jō Shishido, on Massacre Gun (Minagoroshi no kenjū, 1967), filmed in black and white and considered a companion piece to Seijun Suzuki’s contemporary Branded to Kill (Koroshi no rakuin, 1967).

      In the early seventies, Hasebe realized three out of five entries in the Nikkatsu Stray Cat Rock (Nora neko rokku) series, starring Meiko Kaji as a gang girl; fans generally consider Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter (Nora neko rokku: Sekkusu hantā, 1970) to be the best. With its day-glo colors and stylized sets it was certainly visually striking, and its focus on Japanese concerns with racial purity—a gang leader sets out to clear a town of its mixed-race inhabitants—was intriguing. However, these virtues were overwhelmed by sadism, incoherence, and the limitations of the exploitation format. Hasebe was one of the few established Nikkatsu directors to remain at the studio after it switched to producing Roman Porno in the early seventies, apparently making some of the nastiest of this subgenre. Among these was Assault: Jack the Ripper (Bōkō: Kirisaki Jakku, 1976), a notorious film about a couple who become serial killers after being sexually aroused when they accidentally kill a hitchhiker.

      In later years, Hasebe returned to mainstream production. Fossil Plain (Kaseki no kōya, 1982) was a big-budget action film; Dangerous Detectives (Abunai deka, 1987) was a slick but silly thriller about two cops with unorthodox methods; and Lesson (Ressun, 1994) was an uncharacteristically romantic story about a journalist who falls for an older widow. Alongside these occasional cinema features, Hasebe worked prolifically in television and on films made for straight-to-video release. Overall, the impressive style of his films has never sufficiently compensated for the shallowness and cruelty of their content.

      1966 Ore ni sawaru to abunai ze / Black Tight Killers (lit. It’s Dangerous to Touch Me)

      1967 Bakudan otoko to iwareru aitsu / The Singing Gunman (lit. The Guy Called the Bomb Man)

      Minagoroshi no kenjū / Massacre Gun

      1968 Shima wa moratta / Turf War / Territorial Dispute / Retaliation

      1969 Yajū o kese / Savage Wolf Pack / Exterminate the Wild Beasts (lit.)

      Arakure / Roughneck / Coarse Violence

      Kōiki bōryoku: Ryūketsu no shima / Bloody Territories / District of Violence

      1970 Sakariba jingi / Pleasure Resort Gambling Code / A Gangster’s Morals

      Onna banchō: Nora neko rokku / Girl Boss: Stray Cat Rock

      Ashita