The Tokyo Drift

It should not come to shock by any stretch of the imagination, that Japan would host one of the finest film noir tradition's east of Hollywood. The Japanese had their own brand of expressionism in the 1920s ( in addition to taking note of Germany's variety) but procedural films such as the French policiers, were also doted on in Japan. Add to this, a bit of the world's densest urban landscapes, home-grown post-war alienation and a wide array of expert practitioners in the realm of 
cinematography and what to you get? Every ingredient necessary for noir to flourish.

Early traces of noir in the Japanese cinema came from one it's greatest talents to date; Akira Kurosawa. His 1948 effort, Drunken Angel, with it's arresting imagery and sharp-suited gangster anti-hero played by Toshiro Mifune, proved transfixing. Through the humanistic emphasis of Kurosawa's filmmaking, would assure that the end product and overall impact of the film was not misanthropic and world-weary like much of noir, so many adept stylistic touches echo or anticipate the genre that it was apparent that Kurosawa was a master of the dark art and the shape of things to come for the crime film. His next project was police procedural Stray Dog (1949) which was a note-perfect application of the American noir tone and tempo, as told per a Japanese narrative, and here a neophyte policeman frantically tried to track down his long lost gun in Tokyo, In the 1960 film, The Bad Sleep Well, a young man masterminds a plot to expose corruption within the capitalizing organization that was culpable for his father's death. For all it's very dark visuals, the film wasn't authentically a noir. But Kurosawa would revert decisively to the genre, even though it's heyday was over in the year 1958, Kurosawa, the great trickster managed to extend the genre, but limited to his own efforts. In 1963 he would churn High and Low, and here we find a drug-addled urban hades packed with a heavier wallop than much of Hollywood's stylish and decidedly more innocuous urban decay. In both these films would be a powerful social message that highlighted both the disparate and similar aspects of the rich and the poor, the police, and their victims.

              Exploitation was never more graceful than seen in the yakuza film

Kurosawa matriculated to other genres, and it would be the homegrown Yakuza films that would lead the way, and these were a mainstay for decades, the noir film would be drowned out in a blaze of bullets just as it was in Hollywood. It was however , an excess of style that prolific cult director Seijun Suzuki employed when his studio boss reviewed Brand to Kill (1967) It was shot entirely in black and white, and saturated in wonderful high contrast photography and memory staining images that came from the extra special lens of Kazue Nagatsuka. it was in stark contrast to Suzuki's film of the previous year, Tokyo Drifter which was both garish and colorful and a tad more of the convention. The studio chief was disconsolate, given the fact he financed a film in which the plot had been sacrificed to directorial whimsy. Suzuki had previously staked out his renegade credentials with a sequence of exploitation prostitute films including 1964's Gate of Flesh, but this  time there was to be no reprieve. He was not to produce another film for cinema for over ten years. when he finally did return, it would be at the age of 78 in 2001, with the sequel to Branded to Kill - Pistol Opera. He abandonded his tried and true forumla in favor of the garish palette of Tokyo Drifter.

With Suzuki languishing out of favor with the studios, the 1970s would not be a hight point for mainstream thrillers in Japan. Nomura Yoshitar's The Castle of Sand (1974), a slow-burn detective drama, with a baroque musical score and provincial settings, lacked the angst and punch of his earlier films. Kinji Fukasaku's updating of the yakuza tradition in such films as Battles Without Honor or Humanity (1973) increased the body - and bullet count but could not embark on the cool and style of Suzuki's films. By the time the 1980s rolled around , other types of film would take center stage in Japanese cinema. In anime, noir was somewhat of a contribution, as seen in the signature bleakness of tone and darkness of styling to a dire and dystopic future. Elements of the yakuza aesthetic were not uncommon but did not pervade in any single anime. Wicked City (1987) featured a femme-fatale in spider's form and the mercenaries of The Professional Golgo 13 (1983) sported 1940s era trenchcoats, a true testament to the importance of noir in Japanese cinema in all it's incarnations.