The bittersweet irony of Fukasaku was that he was a talented man that only became known to us through his last film. So it's enthralling to discover small gems like this when in the West we were praising Scorsese for his grittiness.It helps to know a bit about this type, the yakuza film. Fukasaku's The Yakuza Papers series offer all the introduction you're going to need. If you are acquainted this will come as a pleasant surprise. The plot is nowhere near as convoluted, the barrage of constant name-dropping that made the former occasionally hard to follow is absent. Instead we get the distilled energy, with hand-held cameras peering from the most improbable angles, filming the numerous fights not from a distance but in the middle of the swirl. We get stills, narration, clever use of sepia, fast forwards and so on, years before Tarantino made it cool. Yet what sets Graveyard of Honour apart from other yakuza movies is the protagonist. He's not the typical rags to riches and back figure seen in gangster movies. He doesn't hit the good time before falling down, he's not Tony Montana. No, it's all down-hill for him; a self-destructive yakuza without a care in the world who brings about his own misery and challenges his bad karma at every corner. His nihilistic stare reminded me of Ryonosuke Tsukue from Sword of Doom.Strongly recommended for crime drama fans.

This film is about a supposedly real-life yakuza maniac who made his mark in post-war Japan. In many ways, this nut was like Joe Pesci in GOODFELLAS except he had no friends at all (Pesci, a socipathic idiot at least had De Nero). Like Pesci, the anti-hero of this film had a hair-trigger temper and made a bad habit of screwing up his life. While the guy made it to the mid to upper levels in his organization, his insane actions (stabbing superiors, getting hooked on drugs and then stealing it from your superiors, etc.). If this guy WAS based on a real character, then the yakuza is actually a group of pussycats because no matter what he did, he seemed to get away with a lot of smacks on the hand. Imagine a mobster killing a godfather and just getting beaten up and banished as a result! Plus, shortly after his banishment, the idiot returns to town! This is all very interesting but the film, at times, just seems pointlessly violent. Sure, this guy's life WAS that way, but I just didn't want to sit and watch him rape, kill, stab, etc. for an entire movie. By the way, this is pretty much the entire plot. For gore and rape lovers, this film is for you--others think twice about watching.

This is a glorified, down-beat & grim "biopic" of a Yakuza madman named Ishikawa(Tetsuya Watari, who plays him as a quiet calm before the tornadic release)who has this mentally unstable nasty streak that comes out in a fiendish explosion when others stand in his way. He almost causes a clan war when he attacks a rival Yakuza lord from another city. This causes a downward spiral for him as his seemingly uncontrollable path of violence and death leads to a vicious attack on his own Kawada Yakuza Godfather and a banishment from all clans for ten years, which is part of the code. After a brief stint in prison he's ordered to stay in Osaka for the remaining ten and would be allowed back once he served his time. After only a year, Ishikawa returns to cause havoc once again. While in Osaka he developed a drug habit which would lead him down an even more violent path for he would find those in possession of what he needed and threaten their very lives if they wouldn't fork over product to stick in his arm. His only real ally is a tragic geisha, Chieko(Yumi Takigawa), who is slowly dying..but, even she suffered rape from Ishikawa showing that he has no real respect for anyone when it comes to getting his own degree of satisfaction by any means necessary. When he attacks the godfather of the Imai clan, no real avenue of escape will ever be available again. He often seems unkillable as attempts on his life are frequent, though he is often cunning through his hiding(..and also not so cunning when he appears in public at gambling houses). When he kills the Imai Godfather, his life expectancy shrinks considerably.The film is told in a documentary form with narration depicting a specific tumultuous time in the late forties when clans operated almost like little governments dictating business within the city of Shinjuku. Each has their turf and tries to remain loyal to each other hoping to escape any means of war. All Japanese loathe a specific group of foreigners nicknamed "the thirds" making up mostly Korean, Taiwanese, & Chinese who seem to try to live within the city but are treated as the plague of the country. We also see how the loss to America in the World War seems to have created a child without it's parents as this massive collective of people frequent the streets in droves. The Yakuza clans do seem to be the only means of parent-ship available to those without a home or identity. The film is ultimately a blitzkrieg of gang wars, prostituting whores, "black-market" elections, gambling, drugs, and Ishikawa is immersed within the frenzied structure..he's certainly a doomed creature because how can such a crazed heathen as he ever survive? The film has wildly imaginative camera-work which seems to show an unbalanced world through the gaze of Ishikawa. It has visual verve and is certainly loaded with bloody carnage.

Graveyard of Honor is a fantastic entry into the yakuza genre or, for that matter, the gangster genre in general. However, more so than many of its counterparts, it is an excellent Brechtian character study. Filmed in a "mockumentary" style, Graveyard of Honor breaks up its action and storytelling relatively often with bits of narration, setting the events of the film in their period context and transitioning over long gaps in time.A reviewer once equated this film to the "blacksploitation" films of the same period: this betrayed the reviewer's ignorance to the genre. The Japanese gangster film is far more presentational than its western counterparts. From the bright, red, paint-like blood to the strict characterizations and operatic emotions, Graveyard of Honor and other films like it are a sort of midway point between Kabuki theater and French nihilism. It is an intriguing genre, and one that internationally acclaimed director Kinji Fukasaku uses brilliantly to pose intriguing questions and point out crucial problems in the Japanese mindset of the time.To truly appreciate his 1970s yakuza films, it helps to have knowledge of the history leading up o that time from the end of World War II. Watching Graveyard of Honor on its own will certainly be an entertaining experience, but anyone perplexed or intrigued by the film should do research on other films of the period, their cultural context, and their societal implications. Fukasaku was a groundbreaking director, and it's a shame that his brilliance could be lost in the cultural gap.