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. More than this, some critics were less than positive about the film. For example, Iijima Ko¯ichi wrote in Eiga Geijutsu in August 1967: ‘the woman buys a mink coat and thinks only about having sex. The man wants to kill and feels nostalgic about the smell of boiling rice. We cannot help being confused. We do not go to theaters to be puzzled.’ (Quoted in Ueno 1986: 337) 193 SEIJUN’S BRANDED TO KILL Yet, however unsuccessful Branded may have been, Nikkatsu’s dismissal of Suzuki was still a bolt from the blue. Mass demonstrations followed the filmmaker’s lawsuit against the studio in June 1968 in accordance with the rebellious political climate of the time. Directors such as O¯ shima Nagisa, Shin- oda Masahiro, Wakamatsu Ko¯ji, Adachi Masao, and Fujita Toshiya, together with cinematographers, screenwriters, journalists, and critics, as well as many ordinary filmgoers and students of various cinema clubs, all participated in the protest. Suzuki eventually won a lawsuit against Nikkatsu in 1971. Neverthe- less, he was never again to be rehired by Nikkatsu or to work for any other studio, and no project involving Suzuki was to be released until 1977, when he was finally able to direct The Story of Grief and Sorrow (Hishu¯ monogatari). This infamous incident became known as the ‘Suzuki Seijun Problem’. Why was Suzuki suddenly dismissed after Branded? None of Nikkatsu’s other directors were fired during this period. When Suzuki’s friend, Kobayashi Tetsuo, asked Hori about the reason for his decision on April 26, the latter answered: Suzuki makes incomprehensible films. Suzuki does not follow the company’s orders. Suzuki’s films are unprofitable and it costs 60 million yen to make one. Suzuki can no longer make films anywhere. He should quit. Suzuki should open a noodle shop or something instead. (Quoted in Ueno 1986: 216) Similarly, when Kawakita Kazuko, the leader of a cinema club that had already scheduled a Suzuki retrospective, asked Hori why Nikkatsu would prohibit the circulation of Suzuki’s films after 1968, the studio’s president replied: Suzuki Seijun is a director who makes incomprehensible films. There- fore, his films are not good. It is shameful for Nikkatsu to show his films. Nikkatsu cannot have an image of making incomprehensible films. Nikkatsu fired Suzuki Seijun on April 25. His films are pro- hibited from exhibition at any commercial theaters or at any theaters specializing in retrospective screenings. (Quoted in Ueno 1986: 217; see also Kawarabata 1971: 466) All of the films Suzuki had directed before Branded were studio products made by following their producers’ requests; indeed, he was to claim in the 1990s that ‘I have always made films for entertainment’ (quoted in Yamane 1991: 94). After spending seven years since 1948 as an assistant director at the Sho¯chiku O¯ funa studio, Suzuki moved to Nikkatsu in 1956 and began his directing career with Cheers at the Harbour: Triumph in my Hands (Minato no kanpai: sho¯ri o waga te ni). Under Nikkatsu’s assembly line approach to filmmaking, Suzuki made various genre pieces, or ‘program pictures’, including yakuza (gangster) films, comic detective action films, romantic melodramas, war films, and teen films. These program pictures were released one after the other virtually on a 194 SEIJUN’S BRANDED TO KILL weekly basis, and Suzuki was mostly assigned to direct soemono eiga (accompany- ing films) or tsuide eiga (B pictures) – that is to say, films accompanying ‘A’ category features on a double bill (Ueno 1991: 114). However, Suzuki was allowed neither to select his scripts and titles nor to make use of Ishihara Yu¯jiro¯, Nikkatsu’s most famous star at the time. Instead, Suzuki’s duty for the company was to bring his films in on low budgets (typically between one-third and two-thirds the cost of ‘A’ films) and within tight schedules (e.g. producing two to six films per year for more than a decade). In most cases, the release dates for his films had been set even before shooting began. According to leftist film critic Matsuda Masao (2001: 66), Suzuki was ‘exploited by the capitalists at Nikkatsu’. For Suzuki, ‘It was more of a job than getting any kind of enjoyment out of making a film’ (quoted in Mes 2001). Branded was made as one such B-grade entertainment film. During the lawsuit against Nikkatsu after his sudden dismissal, Suzuki talked about his experiences in making Branded: At that time, the planning division requested that I write a new scen- ario for a film that would accompany an erotic piece, Hana o ku¯ mushi. They did not like one called Dankon [Bullet Mark] written by someone else. It was just another action flick. They told me that the release date was already set. When I gave them what I wrote, the studio head [Hori] said that he was finally able to understand it after he read it twice. I suggested that he stop this project, but he asked me to go ahead with it. Thus, I simply helped Nikkatsu to get through its crisis and it is unfair to criticize me retroactively. (Quoted in Ueno 1986: 226) In other words, neither Hori nor general audiences expected Branded to be anything other than a B picture. Suzuki later confessed that ‘[Nikkatsu] did not care as long as the film was an action piece’ and as long as it was made on time and within their budget (Yamane 1991: 96–7). Moreover, Branded was released in the month of June. At that time, June was considered by film companies to be one of the worst months to release movies. Therefore, most companies chose this time of year to release low budget erotic films or hard-boiled films that were not expected to become a big box-office success. According to Takeda Ryu¯ji (in Uedo 1986: 337), who worked at Nikkatsu at that time, Nikkatsu regarded Branded as one such trivial film that could be released in June. If Branded was only a trivial B picture, then it should not have mattered very much whether it was comprehensible or not. The real issue regarding Suzuki’s dismissal has to do with Nikkatsu’s policy toward its contract directors in the late 1960s. What did Nikkatsu’s dismissal of Suzuki, supposedly a mere dir- ector of B films, mean for the Japanese film industry at the time? This chapter closely examines Branded as an aesthetic text and locates it within the historical context of the Japanese film industry as well as the political and cultural condi- tions of Japanese society in the late 1960s. More specifically, it examines 195 SEIJUN’S BRANDED TO KILL Branded as a focal point for the convergence of Japanese film noir and the Japanese avant-garde. Branded to Kill as film noir The plot of Branded may be briefly summarized as follows: The hero, Hanada Goro¯ (Shishido Jo¯), is the No. 3 killer in the country, and he is turned on by the smell of boiling rice. He is asked to drive an important man in the gangster organization to an undisclosed location on a mountain in Nagano prefecture. On his way back home, Hanada’s car breaks down in the heavy rain. There he meets a mysterious woman, Misako (Mari Annu). Misako offers him a job to kill an American investigator who is looking into a smuggling operation, but Hanada fails to shoot the target only because a butterfly lands on the muzzle of his rifle. The gangster organization now pursues Hanada. After killing many killers of the organization, he eventually comes up against No. 1 (Nanbara Ko¯ji), who is actually the person who hired him in the first place. No. 1 adopts a curious strategy: he comes to Hanada’s apartment to live with him. Finally, Hanada and No. 1 meet in a deserted boxing ring. Misako is accidentally killed during the duel.