The Oddity That Is (or Oddities That Are) "Ankokugai" Export Dubs (and More!)

I was initially going to make this post solely about The Last Gunfight, but according to Stuart Galbraith's comprehensive Toho Studios Story, The Big Boss and Big Shots Die at Dawn received English dubs as well, so we're going to look at all three. Galbraith doesn't provide specifics on when the films were released stateside or how widely, so let's see what else we can find out about the English-dubbed versions of each of these three films and how they were released in the U.S., if at all. (There are, of course, more films in the Ankokugai series, but we're only going to be talking about these for [gestures to blog] obvious reasons.)

The Last Gunfight (1960)

It would appear that the U.S. release of The Last Gunfight was limited strictly to television. Introducing Mifune's character with a shot of him socking Hideyo Amamoto in the face can almost make us forget that the trailer omits Hirata entirely. In addition to the above trailer, there's also a far less flashy one where their approach to dubbing seems to be "just don't include clips of anyone speaking".

Distribution was handled by National Telefilm Associates, who had launched their own network four years prior and would shortly become the largest independent television distributor in the nation, and the much less successful Commonwealth United. The dub was produced in Tokyo. Judging from the fact that the dub was first featured in Toho's catalogue of 1962 international releases, it seems that it was available for TV syndication by that point, although whether or not it was actually ever aired on TV is unknown to me. Despite ultimately being relegated to television, the dubbed version was intended for theatrical release; this is evident from the way the closing credits are cropped. Why a theatrical release was aborted is unknown. Who currently holds the full dub, if it is extant, is unknown. Interestingly, though, I've found a list of inventory once held by NYC's Movielab, a defunct film post-processing facility, that includes the film.

The trailer was featured on Vol. 5 of Something Weird Video's Dusk to Dawn Drive-in Trash-O-Rama Show trailer compilation VHS tape series.

Big Shots Die at Dawn (1961)

While we don't have a trailer for this one, I was able to find the film featured in the same catalogue of 1962 international releases mentioned above:

I also came across potentially the most unexpected thing I've ever found in the course of doing research for this blog: there is a no wave album called Ninja Star Danger Rock by Henry Kaiser, Charles K. Noyes and Weasel Walter where every track is titled after a Kihachi Okamoto film. Big Shots Die at Dawn is included, as is The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman and At This Late Date the Charleston. I bought it, I listened to it, and... it's just no wave. It doesn't have anything to do with Kihachi Okamoto. Fortunately, I do like no wave, so I enjoyed it. (And I thought the Pittashi Kan-Kan Soundcloud rap was weird.)

The Big Boss (1959)

A dub of this may exist, but it doesn't seem to have been included in the same deal as Big Shots and Gunfight, and was probably promoted, dubbed, and distributed by different companies. It's almost impossible to Google this movie due to the existence of a Bruce Lee film with the same name. Even more confusing is that our beloved patron saint of weird Toho stuff SpaceHunterM has contributed to the preservation of the English dub of the Bruce Lee film. I'm not sure if the fact that I can't find anything out about an English dub of our Big Boss is because there genuinely wasn't one, or if the proliferation of similarly-titled films is obfuscating the English dub beyond my reach.

However.

In the "really didn't see that one coming" category of archaeological finds I've unearthed, we have the Cuban theatrical release of this film. The newspapers that advertise the film are from mid-October to early November 1959, so it was dubbed/subbed (not sure which) and distributed incredibly quickly. I can find three ads that ran in Diario de la Marina and one from Prensa Libre, which shut down the next year due to being occupied by the Cuban government:

The text under the ad says "We protest the closure of the Universal Cinema due to an illegal strike" and was under every cinema ad on the page.

This one says "The wildest gunfighters filmed".

This one says "Luxurious and violent like no other movie ever made - don't miss it!"

I think "El Submarino Heroico" MIGHT be Submarine E-57 Will Not Surrender.

Five years later, in 1964, the film was released in Mexico. I'm really having to grub around for any evidence of this Spanish-language release at all, so I have no idea if the same dub/sub was used for both the Cuban and Mexican markets. I do know one thing: we have lobby cards! Somebody in Japan even cared enough to import one at some point, since there's one for sale on Yahoo! Auctions.

The tagline reads "Who took care of you when the crime syndicate took over Tokyo?" Also, is that supposed to be Mifune? It looks like Joe Pesci in Home Alone.

 

That's all for now. While I've always respected dubbing and the efforts to preserve international versions of Toho movies, I've never been that personally interested in the hunt for lost dubs; however, that may be changing, as lately whenever I sit down to write about the international release of a film, I end up going down a huge rabbit hole.

Rakugo Nagaya ha Hana Zakari Addendum: Ōwarai Daifukucho Edition [大笑い大福帳]

Translating that script left me wanting to do further research on the shortened re-release version of the film. I'm not that curious about why they cut Akihiko Hirata's role (they cut a lot of people's roles, not just him), but I wanted to know more about the shortened version and what of the original film did survive the editing process. Here's what I was able to find out.

When the film was re-released, the title was changed to Ōwarai Daifukucho, or Big Laughs Daifukucho. (A daifukucho was a type of account book used in the Edo period, when the film is set.) With only four confirmed screenings in the past ~25 years, it's barely less obscure than the film proper, but it does at least exist.

Thankfully, people who have seen this edited version of the film shared their thoughts about it on the internet. Through this, we can glean that the 38-minute version is comprised of two skits from the full film: "Mind's Eye", the skit featuring Hisaya Morishige as Mokuichi the anma, and "Tarachine", the skit where Kenichi Enomoto's character is set up with Asami Kuji's character through a matchmaking arrangement. Intriguingly, even though it isn't seen, events from the segment that featured Hirata's character are mentioned in the shortened film.

One glaring blind spot I have as regards this version of the film is why it was re-released and when. I recall hearing a vague mention of the late 1950s, but nothing concrete. Theoretically, since we have the film's Eirin (Japan's MPAA, sort of) mark, we should be able to figure out roughly what year it was produced. In practice, though, that is far harder than it seems, given the variation in Eirin marks (most are five digits, with the year and the number of films reviewed, but ours is four). As for why, I'm assuming it was to make money; this is usually a good assumption for many situations.

Let's take a look at those screenings.

Laputa Asagaya

Occurring in June 2016, this appears to be the most recent screening. It was held as part of a showcase of screenwriter Toshiro Ide's work, focusing mostly on women's films. The showcase ran from June through to August and a great deal of films were shown. Owarai Daifukucho was screened from June 26th to July 2nd.

Satellite Theater

Satellite Theater (Eisei Gekijo, or Eigeki) is a Japan-only digital television channel that broadcasts kabuki and other stage plays, Korean dramas and K-pop, Chinese dramas, music, older films, and other such things. The channel apparently broadcast Ōwarai Daifukucho in May of 2016, and I found a blog post where someone complains about the way Satellite Theater presented the film as if it were the full version when it wasn't.

Jimbocho Theater

On June 12, 2010, as part of the "Comedy Movie Paradise" film festival, Ōwarai Daifukucho was shown at the Jimbocho Theater. The theme of the day was rakugo movies, and the slate of films was even titled after our movie: "Rakugo Movies in Full Bloom". Since the edited version is so short, it was screened alongside another, unrelated film. This particular screening is interesting because the person who was responsible for getting Ōwarai Daifukucho was film writer and music producer Toshiaki Satō, who asked Toho directly if they had a print of Rakugo Nagaya ha Hana Zakari. They apparently did not, so he was given the short version instead, and his excitement about seeing the film is palpable in the blog post he wrote. He also mentions having a script in that post. I can’t help but wonder: is that script my script? I have no way of knowing, but for some reason I have a feeling that it very well might be.

The post says that Satō watched the film together with someone else, and it was then screened digitally at the Jimbocho. I don't know who currently holds the print (presumably Toho) or who has the digitized version, but it's good that there is a digitized version, given that the print is most likely severely degraded by now.

Unknown 2000 screening

I'm gonna be honest here. I said in my original post that I found a screening that took place in 2000. I remember it, I remember looking at a webpage with information about it, I confirmed that it happened in 2000. What I did not do was save this page in any capacity and now I have no idea where the hell it is. I don't want to edit that part out of the post because I'm sure I did see it, but also, with no way to verify it, I feel bad leaving it in. Great job, me.

With that I think I've covered everything I can about the state that Rakugo Nagaya ha Hana Zakari currently exists (or doesn't exist) in. Yippee, a whole four(?) screenings.

Rakugo nagaya ha hana zakari [落語長屋は花ざかり]: Original Script

That's right. I said "original script".

I translated the whole thing. If you'd like, you can also look at it for yourself; I've put it on archive.org here. Sorry for the bad photos, but putting this in a scanner would have destroyed it. I'm going to go ahead and create a specific tag for this film as well since I'll be writing about it so much.

So.

While I was doing research for my post about this movie, I found a kosho.org listing simply titled "Rakugo nagaya ha hana zakari script". The description said "stains, tears, scratches". There were no photos. No further details. No page count or dimensions were given. The price it was listed for was suspiciously cheap.

"Count me in," I said.

After reading the script, I think I can infer a few things about it. The first is that this is an early draft. That's fairly obvious just from looking at the pages where the cast is listed - there are actors written there who weren't in the final film, roles that didn't make it, and blank spaces where there should be names. There's also a blank page where the rest of the crew's names should be. I haven't (and probably won't) see the finished film, so I can't say this with full confidence, but I'm inclined to think that this may even be the first draft. We can be certain, though, that whoever owned this definitely knew Akihiko Hirata was going to be in the film at the point when they were writing stuff in it, since his name is written with the rest of the cast.

There is absolutely no way to tell who this belonged to. I'm almost certain it was someone on the production crew rather than the cast, since the notes made in the script seem to pertain to cutting/editing scenes. However, I don't know how many people in the crew would or could have the authority to do things like cross out entire scenes and change the layout of the set. That blank page where there should have been more crew listed is interesting in this regard. It could mean absolutely nothing, but it could also mean that the rest of the crew hadn't been assembled yet, so the script would have been owned by one of the few crew members whose names were written in the script: Ichiro Sato, Yoshie Kishii, Tsuruo Ando, Toshiro Ide, or Nobuo Aoyagi. You can find a fuller list of the credited production crew here, although as always be aware of mistranslated names if you're using an auto-translator.

Utter guesswork there, though. Anybody could have had it. It could have been someone in the cast as well, but I’m trying not to think too hard about that.

Just... honestly, my god. Holding this in my hands. This was bouncing around Toho even if it wasn't on set during filming. I just want to emphasize that the experience of reading this script and "watching" a film that doesn't seem to exist anymore in its full extent was, honestly, very affecting. You want to see something incredible?

Like, incredible incredible?

To talk about the actual process of translating it: I put several weeks of my life into this project and I don't think I fully knew what I was getting into. As you can see in the photo above, the handwriting was extremely difficult for me to decipher as someone who doesn't natively write kanji. Further complications arose the further I went into it: it became evident that the entire film assumes familiarity on the viewer's part with a plethora of specific aspects of Japanese culture and history from the Edo period, including plays, people, places, customs, and language. The script is also so old that it frequently uses obsolete kanji.

That all being said, on the whole I am fairly confident about this translation, because the bulk of it was done literally word-by-word, copy-pasting kanji into online dictionaries and using websites like HiNative and Kotobank to gain context for phrases and idioms I was uncertain of. I did lean on machine translation, but I don't want to say that that's all this is, because the percentage of it that I figured out through looking up individual words in a dictionary (or being able to read it myself, although that accounts for very little) far outweighs what I got from DeepL and the like. I've tried to be honest in places where I just can't figure something out, and I've added a frankly somewhat frightening amount of footnotes to make it easier to understand, so hopefully reading it is not as hard on you as translating it was on me.

If you read this far, thanks! I included a chart mapping out all of the relationships between the characters in the PDF of my translation, but I'll post it here too just for funsies. Note that this only applies to the script - many of these characters aren't present in the final film.

Here are my links once more for good measure: translation here, full script here.

嵐の中の男 / Arashi no naka no otoko / A Man in the Storm (1957)

Release date: February 5, 1957
Director: Senkichi Taniguchi
Studio: Toho
Cast: Toshirō Mifune, Kyoko Kagawa, Akio Kobori, Akemi Negishi, Jun Tazaki, Midori Isomura, Akihiko Hirata, Yoshio Kosugi, Ikio Sawamura, Makoto Satō, Yoshifumi Tajima
Availability: No DVD or streaming release. Occasional theater screenings and broadcasts on SkyPerfect and possibly other television networks as recently as last year.

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Consider this a sequel to my post about Rainy Night Duel - another entry in the "Toshirō Mifune Does Judo" Cinematic Universe, if you will. The two films are unrelated but highly similar and were both directed by Senkichi Taniguchi with Kihachi Okamoto as AD, so I will skip the production background, for the most part. Several years ago I was searching for this movie and became very excited when I thought I found it, but I had in fact found the Nikkatsu film Man Who Brings a Storm (Arashi wo yobu otoko)... and I watched it anyway, it was really good.

Much of my information and stills come from this person's blog post. They seem to have mistaken someone else for Yasuhiko Saijō in one photo. Saijō was acting in 1957 (just barely) but I don't believe he was in this film.

And here's something very interesting: a (closed) auction listing for an album of behind-the-scenes photos from the time of the film's production. I'm not sure what the story behind this is. I suppose it must have belonged to someone who worked on the film.

This film isn't that obscure - it's still being seen in Japan, with theater screenings in 2023 and television broadcasts in 2024. However, at least one reviewer has mentioned that the print being shown at Cinema Vera in 2023 was degraded, which is very concerning. At least there is a digitized version.

As for further crew: prolific screenwriter Kenrō Matsuura (who also went by Takeo) co-wrote the script with Taniguchi and Tomoyuki Tanaka produced the film. Urato Watanabe, a classical composer who didn't work too much in the film industry but did a lot of school songs, handled the score. The cinematographer was Kazuo Yamada who I note here because he was apparently the person who hired Toshirō Mifune on at Toho - not as an actor, initially, but as a strapping young lad to carry photography equipment. This would then lead to Mifune entering Toho's New Face program.

I can't see how Mifune's role here is much different from his role in Rainy Night Duel. However, the film is set during the Russo-Japanese war, so it has some political turmoil going on in the background. Akihiko Hirata doesn't play a rival judoka like he did in Rainy Night Duel but is instead the leader of a group called Sekishinsha. This group did actually exist in the Meiji era; they were Christian colonists aiming to settle in the north of Japan in the 1880s. Hirata also doesn't have long hair in this one like in the previous film, but he does have a mustache. (Jun Tazaki gets to wear the bad wig this time, and according to reviewers he was not good at judo.)

That print really is looking yucky.

As early as 1959, the film had been dubbed into English and was being promoted for international release by Toho (a subbed version was produced at some point as well). The film was also included in Toho's 1962 catalogue of international releases. Despite these, I can't verify any screenings that happened stateside prior to its 1969 release.

The film would also be released in Mexico in 1962 and Argentina in 1963. To me this seems like a bit of an odd choice for an export, considering the political backdrop of the film. I would think Rainy Night Duel would be less complicated to translate. The American release was handled by Toho International and doesn't seem to have been edited for export, since the running time is the same as the original.

I did some Google scouring and I came across one of those things that I feel like I might be the only person to have looked at in many years. A 700-page, Spanish-language volume - fully scanned, and god bless the people who did it - on every film exhibited in Mexico from 1960 to 1969.

So we know that it played on February 22nd, and we know where. Here is the Polanco Theater and... maybe the Coliseo, I can't figure out if the theater in the picture is the specific Coliseo referred to in the book.

Information on the 1969 U.S.American run of the film is hard to find. I had a hunch it probably played at Toho La Brea, given that none of Toho's other U.S. theaters were operational at that point, and it turns out that it did. I'm not paying through the nose for a newspapers.com subscription to see the full issue, but, I mean, I don't really need to. It's right there.

The Toho La Brea was opened in 1926 as Chotiner's La Brea and then renamed to Fox La Brea; no photos seem to exist from the specific time period during which it was operated by Toho. It is currently a church, but as it was a theater, in some way, it was always a church.

I had quite a difficult time finding information about the Argentinian run of the film, and was about to give up, but after some more scouring, I found out that it played at the Cine Hindu in Buenos Aires, which has been demolished and is now department stores. The film was still playing on September 25th, but I don't believe that was the opening date. While the Mexican market titled the film either "El Hombre de la Tormenta" or "El Judoka", I believe Argentina used "El Judoka/Yudoka" exclusively.

violence, suspense and action - oh boy!

credit to @buenosairesperdida on insta

So that's that. I can't go back in time, but I have the internet, which is, like, the same thing. 

I don't know if this is interesting to anybody else, but it is to me. I don't know how to explain why it feels important to remember that there was an era where the only way you could see a movie was to physically go to a theater. All of the theaters I mention in this post are beautiful buildings, and none of them now exist in the form they did when people were sitting down to watch A Man in the Storm. I was not able to do the same deep dive into international releases for Rainy Night Duel since it doesn't appear to have been exported, although according to Stuart Galbraith it did receive an English subtitled version. 

クレージーの殴り込み清水港 / Kureji no Nagurikomi Shimizu Minato / Crazy Violence at Shimizu Harbor [1970]

Release date: January 15
Director: Takashi Tsuboshima
Studio: Toho
Cast: Hitoshi Ueki, Kei Tani, Hajime Hana, Senri Sakurai, Shin Yasuda, Etaro Ishibashi, Hiroshi Inuzuka,  Keiko Natsu, Yoko Naitō, Yuriko Hoshi, Akemi Kita, Akihiko Hirata, Hideyo Amamoto, Gorō Mutsumi, Akira Fuse, et al
Availability: Available on Amazon Prime (Japan-only) and an unsubtitled DVD.

----

Here we have the sequel to The Boss of Pick-Pocket Bay, released four years later (unusual for Toho, who typically crank out sequels at a rate of one per millisecond). It is in fact the only sequel in the Crazy Cats series, and is the last to feature all seven members together. I don't have much trivia for this one, but I did find it interesting that evidently Yoko Naitō was sent to Toei to learn from Koji Tsuruta and Ken Takakura since the people at Toho did not have adequate experience directing female yakuza characters.

The first movie was a total mess that was only barely held together by Hitoshi Ueki being really entertaining to watch. Let's see if this one is any better. As always, I claim no copyright, all images belong to Toho. All I own is the DVD.

The film opens with Yoko Naitō's character Oyo delivering a message to Jirocho from a man named Tomokichi, who he had previously taken care of. Tomokichi is now in need of 150 ryō to repay a debt, and Jirocho is more than willing to help him, but he needs someone to deliver the money. Ishimatsu is the first to step up, immediately seeing an opportunity to make some money, so he cheats when all of Jirocho's men draw lots - but is disappointed to learn that he'll be ordered not to drink or mess around with women during his journey.

Hirata is again playing Ōmasa, one of Jirocho's real-life henchmen. He is very clearly having a great time in this role. For such a random movie that he isn't even in that much, this ended up being one of my favorite roles of his that I've seen recently. Toho frequently cast him as a villain, of course, but the roles where he really seems to be getting into it are the ones where he has to play bitchy villains. (See also: Mr. K.) He does "fake mean" really well.

Ishimatsu tries to get on a boat and set off, but he encounters a petulant samurai named Gojuro, played by Ryōhei Uchida. Fortunately Sangoro (Hitoshi Ueki) shows up to defuse the argument using a move I'm surprised I'm seeing for the first time here: as Gojuro goes to unsheathe his sword, Sangoro grabs the hilt from behind so he can't pull it out. Then Sangoro and Ishimatsu try (and fail) to steal the boat just for funsies. This is also Hiroshi Inuzuka's only scene; I'm wondering if they forgot to write him into the movie again.

Reunited with Sangoro, Ishimatsu is unable to resist the call of women and drink. Sangoro promises Ishimatsu that he'll take his place as Jirocho's messenger so he can stay behind and have his fun. He dresses up as Ishimatsu and goes off in his place - and we get our first musical number of the film. On the road, Sangoro encounters a woman named Ogin (Akemi Kita), who, mistaking him for Ishimatsu, is thrilled to make his acquaintance.

...so that she can steal his wallet.

Out of money and hungry, Sangoro now has to scam his way into a meal. As in the first film, he makes trouble for the owners of a restaurant by ordering tons of food and leaving them with only an IOU. Gorō Mutsumi's character Tamegoro shows up at this point, I like him, I'd been looking forward to seeing him in this. (Sangoro steals his wallet.)

The poor harried restaurant owners know of Tomokichi (Hyō Kitazawa), the man who Sangoro/Ishimatsu is supposed to be delivering the 150 ryō to, and Oyo as well. Sangoro meets up with Tomokichi, who explains that he's in poor health and borrowed money from a man named Samezo (Kaku Takashina - another actor I like) to get medicine, but Samezo increased the interest until Tomokichi owed the lofty sum of 150 ryō, and also threatened to take Oyo - his daughter - and sell her to a brothel. (Remember: at this point Sangoro no longer actually has the money.)

Also featuring Hideyo Amamoto, the Blind Swordsman. (I'm not kidding. His character's name is "Zatokichi".)

"i want zatoichi" "we have zatoichi at home" zatoichi at home:

Tamegoro and his thugs intimidate Sangoro into giving the 150 ryō (that he does not have) to his boss Samezo. Sangoro charms Samezo into believing he wants to leave Jirocho and join Samezo's family instead (so he won't get killed). He comes up with a plan to gamble until he gets the money back.

Meanwhile, the real Ishimatsu is fantastically drunk. He stumbles into the same restaurant Sangoro tried to use his clout as fake-Ishimatsu at and gives them the exact same spiel, but of course they don't believe he's who he says he is. After a dagger fight with the owner he then makes it to Tomokichi's place, and they don't believe him either. Just as Sangoro is about to make good on his debt by gambling, Samezo shows up with Ishimatsu and the whole jig is up. "Zatokichi" is as good as the real Zatoichi at sussing out dice game tomfoolery, so Sangoro is in even hotter water when Samezo challenges him to a game directly and he tries to cheat.

subtitle: "[ahem]"

Sangoro gets in trouble for all of five seconds and the focus then shifts to Oyo running off on her own to raid Samezo's place. Akira Fuse's character Yuki shows up at this point, playing the good cop to Gojuro's bad cop. Neither he nor Gojuro really feel like they need to be in the movie, but it is nice to have some people in this aside from the seven Crazy Cats. Fuse is so blatantly just there to look pretty.

Very quickly some kind of cockamamie scheme that I had trouble following is concocted whereby Tomokichi pretends to sell Oyo to a magistrate named Genba (Kenzō Tabu), but instead of Oyo, he gives him Sangoro in drag. Hijinks ensue. Samezo catches Sangoro and throws him in jail, but he escapes, then Genba catches him and throws him in his jail, but he escapes that... however, neither Samezo nor Genba actually know Sangoro has escaped, because he's performing some insane magic act where he runs between their respective jails when one of them isn't looking, so he appears to be in both jails at once. During all of this, Oyo is safe and getting fantastically drunk with Ishimatsu.

Sangoro sends Tomokichi, Oyo, and their family back to Shimizu to be protected by Jirocho's family while he stays behind to deal with Samezo and Genba. (His plan is to pit them against each other and then sit back and watch it all implode. Quote: "Stupid fights are only boring if you're the one in them. It's fun to watch other people do them.")

I'm realizing something about "Gojuro". His full name is Gojuro Arafune... he's a ronin in a black kimono who hires himself out as a bodyguard... Go... juro... Ara... fune... huh... hmm. This is Toho riffing on their own hits, isn't it. Anyway Sangoro gets into a fight with him but outwits him by being able to run faster than him. Sangoro then does some more jail hopping, but meanwhile someone from Samezo's family has managed to get to Jirocho and try to poison him and his men with pufferfish.

I really do love these Crazy Cats movies. They're just high silliness all the way through.

The ending is a bit anticlimactic, but this entire movie feels like one long climax, so it's fine. Jirocho and his men fake their own deaths just so they can jump out and have a big fight with Samezo and Genba's combined forces right when they least expect it. We get a Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo fight at the end, Sangoro rebukes the woman who had fallen in love with him, and the movie ends on a shot of Mt. Fuji, like it began.

?

Extremely unserious movie. Is it better than Boss of Pick-Pocket Bay? Yes, by a country mile. This is what that movie should have been: well-paced, with tons of genuinely funny jokes that don't feel strung together. Ueki is a strong lead as usual, but he doesn't have to carry the whole movie this time, since he's supported by an enormous cast of goobers who all bring their own gags. Highly recommended.

I wish Hirata had gotten more comedic roles.

黒帯三国志 / Kuro-obi sangokushi / Rainy Night Duel (1956)

Release date: January 29, 1956
Director: Senkichi Taniguchi
Studio: Toho
Cast: Toshirō Mifune, Shin Saburi, Akio Kobori, Kyōko Kagawa, Mariko Okada, Asami Kuji, Akihiko Hirata, Hideo Saeki, Yū Fujiki, Haruo Tanaka, Shōsaku Sugiyama et al.
Availability: No availability on home media. Infrequent screenings and television broadcasts.

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This is a film that has multiple English titles (and no English release). I've decided to go with the title that the film is listed under on Letterboxd, but it's not a literal translation - not even close, actually. A literal translation would be Black Belt Sangokushi, which is sometimes elaborated into Black Belt Romance of the Three Kingdoms, since that's what "sangokushi" means. ("Romance of the Three Kingdoms" is a historical novel attributed to Luo Guanzhong which is set during the end of the Han dynasty and the beginning of China's Three Kingdoms period.)

Got all that? Okay.

A promo still from this movie has been the header image on my blog since I created it, but you may have noticed that said image has changed from a small, low-resolution photo to a large, high-quality scan. This is because I now own this promo still. It currently sits in a frame on my desk. Unfortunately I haven't seen the film, but maybe someday I'll get that lucky.

fun fact: it took me 11 months to notice Toshirō Mifune was in this photo

I have to continue talking about the title for a moment longer, because now that we know the historical context that it implies, I must disabuse you of the notion that this movie takes place in ye olde ancient times. It takes place at the end of the Meiji period (early 1910s). The movie is in fact bookended by shots of trains. I have read that the "Three Kingdoms" in the title is an allusion to Kyūshū, Honshū, and Hokkaido, but I'm not sure about that, due to not having seen the film.

On the surface, this may look like a samurai movie due to the way everyone is dressed, but it's actually about judo and karate. The story was written by Akira Shimomura and serialized in Novels and Readings magazine; I can't find out much about the story or the author, but it seems like Shimomura may have written other works about judo. The film was directed by Senkichi "No Way In Hell Am I Directing Godzilla" Taniguchi, and the music was done by our favorite, Akira Ifukube. You can actually find his score for the film on CD here and there, but the movie itself remains elusive. Kihachi Okamoto also served as assistant director. It would be a few years before he would make his solo directorial debut.

I don't own this, unfortunately

eiga.com and a translator will give you a decent summary of the film. Be sure to check out reviews on kinenote as well for much more plot detail. Toshirō Mifune plays what sounds like a righteous dojo member who is excommunicated from his former dojo and repeatedly pitted against human traffickers, people from rival dojo, and other opponents, while attempting to romantically pursue a woman who isn't allowed to be with him. 

I didn't start this blog to talk about Toshirō Mifune, though. Hirata's character is one of two sons of the head of a rival dojo who, as I understand it, does get some one-on-one fight scenes with Mifune. I must also mention that, yes, that is him with long hair in those photos up there. I don't know what to make of it either. Hirata seems to have the primary antagonist role here, which is interesting, and I'm hearing a lot of people express surprise to see him playing a karateka - get good and watch you some Tetsuwan Namida Ari!

extremely crusty poster

There are some more stills here, but whatever print this person was watching is so bad it looks like something made by the Lumiere brothers. There's been a handful of reviews from people who have seen it in theaters or on pay-per-view television over the years, so, as with many things, this could easily be released to home media, but it just isn't. Now is the time to be digitizing and releasing movies such as this one - the further the print degrades, the less use there’ll be in producing a home media edition.

It would appear that this was adapted into a manga twice in the same year that it was released. From what I can tell the serialized story came first, then the film and the manga concurrently, as a promotional campaign. (I managed to find some pictures of the actual manga itself and I do find it very amusing that the mangaka has chosen to make Hirata’s character bald.)

I'll end this post with a few miscellaneous impressions I've gleaned from reviews:

• The judo choreography is not good but the karate is alright.
• Some of the tertiary dojo guys use weapons like brass knuckles and chains, which is unusual.
• People don't really know for sure what the "Three Kingdoms" in the title refers to, what I mentioned above is just speculation.
• There's shakuhachi.
• General consensus is Mifune was too old for this role (he was 36 at the time).
• Hirata may have been playing his role comedically or it just came off that way unintentionally.

This is a really interesting movie that remains essentially unknown outside of its home country, and inaccessible even within it aside from the odd theater screening and TV broadcast. But people are seeing it somehow - the last review on Filmarks was from October 2023. Even though I haven't seen it, there are enough reviews of the film that I feel like I know a lot about it. And now you do too!