Japanese Cinema’S Logic], Tokyo: SanIchi Shobo¯
14 DARK VISIONS OF JAPANESE FILM NOIR Suzuki Seijun’s Branded to Kill (1967) Daisuke Miyao I think that motion pictures should create events by themselves . They should not restrict themselves to merely recreating what has actually happened . Once such events created on the screen occur in reality, motion pictures begin to have a relationship with the society for the first time. (Suzuki Seijun quoted in Ueno 1991: 114) Suzuki Seijun’s 1967 film Branded to Kill (Koroshi no rakuin – hereafter Branded) – the story of a contract killer being dismissed by a gangster organization – created a controversial real life incident when Nikkatsu, one of Japan’s oldest film studios, dismissed Suzuki, then one if its contract directors, ten months after its release. On April 25, 1968, Suzuki was directing the television series Aisai-kun konbanwa: aru ketto¯ [Good Evening, Mr Devoted Husband: A Duel]. He received a telephone call from the secretary of Hori Kyu¯saku, the president of Nikkatsu, and was told that the studio would not pay his salary for April. Just like that, Suzuki Seijun was fired from Nikkatsu. To be sure, Branded had not been a financial and critical success. The film journal Kinema Junpo¯ reported that the release of Branded on a double feature with A Bug That Eats Flowers (Hana wo ku¯ mushi, Nishimura Sho¯goro¯, 1967) ‘resulted in less than 2,000 viewers at Asakusa and Shinjuku and about 500 in Yu¯rakucho¯ on the second day’ (quoted in Ueno 1986: 336). Indeed, Yamatoya Atsushi (1994: 38), one of Branded’s screenwriters, recalls that the Nikkatsu theater in Shinjuku where the film was originally screened was more or less empty on its opening day.
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