Movies: Takuzō Kawatani

1974 Japanese film....

In a small Japanese village at the end of the 19th century, a rickshaw driver's wife takes on a much younger lover and the two conspire to murder him....

Two short stories set in Edo during the Shogun era. The first, during a time when Christians are persecuted vehemently, Iori falls in love with a young Christian girl. When she and her family are captured during a raid, his sadistic master takes her ...

Older, wiser but still a wandering loner, the blind, peace-loving masseur Ichi seeks a peaceful life in a rural village. When he's caught in the middle of a power struggle between two rival Yakuza clans, his reputation as a deadly defender of the inn...

Takuma Tsurugi takes on the government, the police, the mafia and an international ring of kidnappers who aim to dispossess a beautiful young heiress of her millions....

In the teeming black markets of postwar Japan, Shozo Hirono and his buddies find themselves in a new war between factious and ambitious yakuza....

Shozo Hirono has managed to separate from the Yamamori family and create his own small family, and extend his circle of acquaintances. These new friendships include a powerful underboss of the Muraoka family, Noboru Uchimoto....

As Japan gears up for the 1964 Olympic games, the cops start to crack down on the gangs, under pressure from the public and the press, adding a new dimension in the war for power among the yakuza families of Hiroshima....

While Hirono is in prison, his rival Takeda turns his own crime organization into a political party, whose two executives stir up new tensions in their thirst for power....

When a fugitive begins a romance with the woman hiding him from the law, it becomes uncertain whether he will ever escape the shadow of his heinous crimes--or the detectives hot on his trail....

The eighth sequel of the series by the successful “Fukasaku and Bunta” collaboration revolves around the men of a lesser organization that are constantly bullied by the upper organization and “bleed in vain” in gang wars....

A former stockbroker-turned-yakuza must make sure his alcoholic boss is up to the task of swearing in the next leader of their syndicate....

Repeatedly beat to a pulp by gamblers, cops, and gangsters, lone wolf Shoji Yamanaka finally finds a home as a Muraoka family hitman and falls in love with boss Muraoka's niece. Meanwhile, the ambitions of mad dog Katsutoshi Otomo draws our series' h...

Based on the "2.26 Incident", an attempted coup d'état in Japan 1936, launched by radical ultra-nationalist parts of the military. Several leading politicians were killed and the center of Tokyo was briefly held by the insurgents before the coup was ...

Amidst Japan's postwar economic boom, yakuza factions in Osaka fight for survival when Japan's largest crime syndicate plans a hostile takeover....

Episode-length Osomatsu-kun film, released as a feature of the Toei Manga Movie Festival. Loosely based on a manga chapter, the film revolves around an alien plot to take over the world....

A police investigator cracks down on yakuza business, but once he realizes the police are in negotiations with certain factions, he sides with his own syndicate of choice....

Bunta Sugawara is Miyoshi, a low-level assassin of the Yamamori gang who is sent to jail after a bungled hit. While in stir, family member Aoki attempts to seize power from the boss, and Miyoshi finds himself stuck between the two factions with no ho...

Kumokiri Nizaemon, a former samurai warrior, has abandoned his class to become the leader of a gang of thieves. He leads his outlaws in an attempt to rob the castle of his former clan....

Rin Jyoshima lost her father to death-by-gambling; years later, she's grown up in the Kosugi household and has fallen victim to gambling herself....