100th Post Special: １００発１００中 / Hyappatsu hyakuchu / 100 Shot, 100 Killed (aka Ironfinger) [1965]

One hundred posts! I don't know whether to be proud or embarrassed.

In any case, to celebrate my hundredth post (and Akira Takarada's birthday), let's take a good, long look at 100 Shot, 100 Killed, or Ironfinger, as it's better known to audiences outside of Japan. Before we get started, though, if you haven't heard the full version of Akira Fuse's theme from the movie, do yourself a favor and listen to it on YouTube here; it is leaps and bounds better than the version used in the movie.

Thus soundtracked, let's begin by looking at some of the films that influenced Ironfinger. This post will, to no one's surprise, run very, very long, but I aim to make it worth your while.

Influences, part I: The Name's ボンド... ジェームズ ボンド

The first Japanese translation of a James Bond novel came in 1957, when Hayakawa Shobo published Live and Let Die as part of their "Hayakawa Pocket Mystery" series. The novels were published out-of-order; Casino Royale, chronologically the first Bond novel, wasn't published in Japanese until 1963. Japan first saw Bond on screen that same year, in Dr. No, retitled "007 is the Number of Killing" and released as a road show. Surprisingly, according to Wikipedia, ticket sales were very poor; the film grossed only 57.8 million yen, which didn't even place it within the top ten foreign films distributed in the country that year.

For whatever reason, audiences decided to give it another shot when From Russia With Love came to town the next year, and that film grossed 260.8 million yen - a drastic improvement that would become a pattern. Goldfinger¹- the third entry in the James Bond series - premiered in Toho-owned theaters on April 1st, 1965 and grossed 706.32 million yen, making it the highest-grossing film of that year period, even including domestically-produced films.

Thus far, every Bond movie released in Japan had multiplied its gross returns by about four times the previous one, and Toho managed to capitalize perfectly on that success by releasing Ironfinger at almost the same time as the fourth Bond movie, Thunderball, which again brought in a mind-boggling profit. Raking in over one billion yen, Thunderball was Japan's top-grossing film of 1966 (its December 1965 release made it count for the next year). 

Two years after Ironfinger, Bond himself would come to Japan on-screen in You Only Live Twice, the production of which was assisted by Toho (they provided soundstages, personnel, and Mie Hama and Akiko Wakabayashi as Bond girls). I could say many things about the film and its source novel's depiction of Japan, Japanese culture, and Japanese people, but its Japanese Wikipedia page does a better job than I ever could by succinctly describing several aspects of it as "absurd" and "unrealistic".

However, while Ironfinger does clearly tie itself to the Bond series through its title and the timing of its theatrical release, the film that arguably inspired much more of its overall style and tone is a relatively lesser-known French-Italian co-production called That Man From Rio.

Influences, part II: The Name's Belmondo... Jean-Paul Belmondo

One has only to watch Goldfinger and That Man From Rio back-to-back (as I did during research for this post) to see that Rio clearly had a much larger influence on Ironfinger in almost every respect. Jean-Paul Belmondo's performance as Rio's protagonist, unassuming train concierge/aviator/international man of mystery Pvt. Adrien Dufourquet, is very physical, taking advantage of his height to portray a character who almost comes off goofy and awkward at times but is, despite outward appearances, capable of holding his own in almost any situation. These are all things that are also true of Akira Takarada's performance as Andy Hoshino, and I'll eat my hat if Takarada wasn't studying Belmondo in preparation for his role in Ironfinger.

And it's not just Belmondo's acting that Ironfinger obviously takes a cue from: the fast-paced, zany yet self-aware tone of Rio feels like a blueprint for Ironfinger's similarly frenetic tempo. There is even a scene in the back quarter of Rio where Dufourquet steals a small passenger plane that, as far as I'm concerned, Ironfinger was paying direct homage to with its own prop plane chase scene.

Phillipe de Broca's That Man From Rio premiered in Japan in October of 1964, and both it and Belmondo were enormously popular in Japan at the time (JP Wikipedia states that he was equally as popular in the country as Alain Delon but had more male fans). Belmondo influenced a number of Japanese productions where characters were modeled after him - again, there's no way Takarada wasn't looking to him for inspiration. Most notably, Belmondo was a direct inspiration for the manga Lupin III, and in fact when Belmondo's films began airing on television², Yasuo Yamada - by far best known as the voice of Lupin - became his exclusive Japanese dubber.

The line between all of these influences (though Ironfinger takes more from some than from others) is a closed circle, considering That Man From Rio was itself intended to be a bit of a Bond send-up. To get a more comprehensive picture of everything that went into Ironfinger, we'd have to conduct a full examination of the history and scope of the spy genre within Japanese cinema might be appropriate here - Bond did not invent the spy/crime movie, and neither of the two films we've just looked at were the first time Japan became acquainted with the genre - but such an examination is unfortunately outside the scope of this article.

So, for now, we'll leave it at that and move on to discussing the film itself.

Discussing The Film Itself

Ironfinger was released to laserdisc in 1997 (image credit to sinekon on Ameblo). Fun fact: That is a real rifle and it was gifted to screenwriter Kihachi Okamoto by Toshirō Mifune.

Although Ironfinger bears clear influences from other, contemporary films, in order to properly appreciate it on its own, I want us to set those associations aside, at least a little. Focusing too much on them runs the risk of distracting from the fact that the crew Toho assembled to work on this movie were some incredibly talented people, whose particular creative tendencies were perfectly suited to produce a zippy, eye-catching crime movie - Bond and Belmondo influences or not.

The film was directed by Jun Fukuda, whose style is all over it, but I would argue that Ironfinger's overall vibe owes as much if not more to the combination of Fukuda and Kihachi Okamoto as screenwriter than simply Fukuda alone. Okamoto's movies have an instantly recognizable look and feel to them no matter what genre he's working within, and although he only co-wrote the screenplay, I think something of his distinctive style shows through in the actual aesthetic of the film itself.

Okamoto's co-writer on the screenplay was mystery and sci-fi writer Michio Tsuzuki, who deserves mention as well. After the war, Tsuzuki worked on editing translations of French mystery novels and then began translating English mystery novels on his own, despite his inexperience (at the time) with the language. Tsuzuki's involvement with Ironfinger is extremely apropos, considering that he was working for Hayakawa when the company was producing the first Japanese James Bond translations - although I'm not certain if he was involved with Bond in any way before being brought on to co-write Ironfinger.

Looks can be deceiving: Ironfinger is so well-outfitted (despite a few reused sets) that it's very easy to believe actual overseas location shooting was used; in reality, the entire film was shot within Japan.

The film's cinematography and overall aesthetic are top-notch. Ironfinger's art director, Kazuo Ogawa, worked on many projects that reflect the typical style of 1960s Japanese cinema; he contributed to a lot of Crazy Cats films and Hitoshi Ueki's Japan's No. 1 ___ Man series, as well as two of Toho's Seishun TV dramas (among many other things). Cinematographer Shinsaku Uno is a much more obscure character, with only a few credits to his name and none of them particularly well-known, but he does a remarkably good job with Ironfinger despite being kind of a nobody. One thing I particularly appreciate is that the two rival crime families are color-coordinated to match their names, with the head of the Aonuma gang wearing blue (ao) and the head of the Akatsuki gang wearing red (aka). Komori, the Aonuma hitman who we'll meet shortly, even wears a blue tie and has some blue trim on the breast pocket of his suit. 

Ironfinger's boppy 1960s soundtrack was created by Masaru Sato, who really needs no introduction since you've most likely heard his work if you've seen more than one or two Japanese movies. As mentioned above, Akira Fuse sings the theme song, which was written by Tokiko Iwatani. Iwatani may not be a household name to Western audiences, but she's enormously important within the history of Showa-era pop music and composed lyrics for the likes of Yūzō Kayama, Hiromi Go, and The Peanuts. Within Japan she was also enormously prolific within the field of translating stage performances into Japanese. (Jesus Christ Superstar!)

From Toho's official DVD release. Splash text reads (in part) "Is this the Japanese 007!?"

In terms of acting, the star of the show is obviously Akira Takarada, although the movie would not be what it is without an excellent ensemble cast backing him up. Takarada's physicality is what sells the role, I think - he rarely spends a moment sitting still, even when he's tied up by some villain or another. Takarada himself has looked back on this role fondly in interviews, and it's considered by fans to be one of his best; his oft-mistranslated "Mr. 100 Shots" line in Godzilla Final Wars is, in the original Japanese, a reference to this role, inserted at the behest of director Ryūhei Kitamura.

Many reviews of Ironfinger that I've read tend to agree that Akihiko Hirata's character is really underused. Hirata plays Komori³, a hitman for the Aonuma family, one of two rival gangs both vying for the same shipment of firearms. Komori almost acts as a foil for Hoshino, or at least he would have if his character had been a little more developed. Hoshino's also a hitman, as we learn at the end of the film, but Hoshino is nothing but an impenetrable shield of bravado under which his true identity lies, whereas with Komori, what you see is what you get. And what you see is a really ruthless killer who carries a pocket flask full of acid.

This off-white pinstriped suit Komori wears for the first half of Ironfinger is one of my favorite suits Hirata's worn on film. It also ties into the color-coding of the two rival gangs, because after Aonuma dies (and it starts to become clear Komori wasn't only working for Aonuma), we see Komori in a plain grey suit without the blue accents.

The last thing I'd like to note before we move on is that while Takarada seems to have learned his French lines phonetically⁴, Hirata actually learned French in military school and had planned to become a military attaché to the French embassy if there hadn't been a war. That was about 20 years before Ironfinger, so I have no idea how much of that he retained, but he certainly had familiarity with the language at the very least. He has fewer French lines than Takarada, but to me (someone who knows absolutely no French) I think he does sound a little more natural in his delivery.

With that on our minds, let's take a look at Ironfinger on the international stage.

A Parisian in America (and Romania, Italy, Brazil, etc): Ironfinger Goes Global

"Squirm as a girl takes over!"...?

Ironfinger's entrance into the United States market is somewhat murky. Its first mention in English-language print material dates back to volume 9 number 2 of UniJapan Film Quarterly, published in 1966. This seems to be the first time the "Ironfinger" title was associated with the film. In 1968, the film was included in volume 13 of Toho's Toho Films catalog of movies available for purchase and screening to distributors in the U.S., also under the Ironfinger title. An English-dubbed version, produced in Tokyo by Frontier Enterprises, was offered; I am uncertain at what point English subtitles were created for the movie, but as we'll see shortly, in its brief U.S. theatrical run, it was shown with subtitles, not dubbed.

Up until now, the full Frontier Enterprises export version has been considered unavailable. We're going to explore that dub further in its own separate post because, as it happens, I found it on a bootleg Indian VCD. Like, the entire thing. I am not joking.

We might also have some scanty evidence that the film was briefly considered for marketing under a different title: TohoKingdom user Terasawa notes here that a film titled "Last Man From Paris", mentioned in a Variety article about Toho's deal with Henry Saperstein, might very well be Ironfinger. Given that the title "Last Man From Paris" evokes That Man From Rio (if you squint), I'm inclined to agree with that speculation.

While Saperstein may not have succeeded (if he ever actually tried?) to bring Ironfinger to American shores, he was (unfortunately) instrumental in cross-pollenating Japan's Western-influenced spy movies back into the Western market by way of his involvement in what would eventually become What's Up, Tiger Lily?. Saperstein acquired the rights to Key of Keys, an entry in Toho's International Secret Police series and, when text audiences reacted well to it, attempted to bring in Lenny Bruce to write English comedy dialogue for a re-dubbed version. Bruce refused, which led Saperstein to hire Woody Allen for the project instead. (As a sidenote, Google's AI overview claims that Ironfinger is part of the International Secret Police series, which it most definitely isn't.)

Oddly enough, some of our earliest English-language marketing for the film comes from Singapore. Thanks to the National Archives of Singapore, a government-run website, I've managed to dig up a promotional flyer for the film produced bilingually in Chinese and English. I'm going to guess this ad copy may have been used for other English-speaking markets as well, and I'm going to reproduce it here in full because it is so rare (and, honestly, weird... tell me this doesn't sound exactly like it was written by ChatGPT):

ACTION: Does it have a limit? Not in Toho, where action pics are loaded with every twist, every hook contributing towards satisfying the audience's gourmand craving for filmic feasts claiming a maximum of high-strung movement in adventure. 

Toho, like many other first-class production firms in the world, has for years created action-thrill-suspense films tailored to fill the routine-thinking movie-goer's demands for that which will transport him for brief hours to the unattainable world of heroicism[sic] and hair-trigger action the average male secretly longs to live in. Needless to say, Toho's audiences are never disappointed.

And then came 007.

Not to be outdone, Toho undertook still another new approach to the problem of action-adventure film production. And the answer was IRONFINGER.

Replete with thrills, spills, action, special effects, arch killers, intrigue, truly inventive methods for slaughtering unwanted citizens and, of course, sex - all presented in a humorous vein - IRONFINGER is another milestone in the careers of director Jun Fukuda and Kihachi Okamoto, director by trade, who wrote the tightly-woven script.

IRONFINGER is a ruthless character, target for killers throughout the world, who operates an illegal gun manufacturing plant on an island not far from Manila. Humor gets underway, when an attempt on the life of the Interpol agent sent from Paris to check out the operation results in the death of the wrong man. Sex, with the dainty appearance of a curvy murderess. Action and hair-raising adventure never cease, as two gangs of cutthroats butcher each other in gauche attempts to seize the weapons.

Akira Takarada, credited with such brilliant performances as the elder brother in Toho's classic DIFFERENT SONG, stars as the Interpol agent. And lovely Mie Hama, costar of the Italian-French-Japanese coproduction LES PLUS BELLES ESCROIQUERES DU MOND, is cast as the oversexed killer.

In color, of course, IRONFINGER boasts a score by the gifted Masaru Sato, the great Kurosawa's first choice as a composer, a man honored with music credits for such prize-winning masterpieces as Kurosawa's YOJIMBO and RED BEARD.

Warm inside in winder, cool inside in summer, just right in spring and fall is not enough, exhibitors have got to book good pictures to lure that reluctant audience into the theater. Toho's IRONFINGER will help them solve this problem.  

While Ironfinger never received a wide U.S. theatrical release, it did play in at least a few theaters stateside. In June and July of 1971, the film made its rounds through Hawaiian theaters, first at Toho's Honolulu location and then at the Mamo theater in Hilo, which appears to possibly have been running a nudie show at the same time. The film was hyped a little in the May 24th issue of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, and the blurb kind of makes it sound like it's a brand-new film, so I think it's pretty safe to say that this summer 1971 release was probably the first time it had played with English subtitles anywhere.

While America was faffing about, many other countries got the film much earlier. France was the first, and released it under the title "Chasseur d'Espions" (with the alternate title "Traquer d'Espions") in November of 1966. 

That most exotic and mysterious of locales, Canada, got the film starting in April of 1967 with a second run in 1968. I have found quite a few Quebecois ads for it. It seems never to have been screened on its own; the ads I've found show it running as part of a double- or even triple-bill.

Are we really still advertising "in color!" as a selling point in 1967?

Italy seems to have gotten the film in 1968, and an Italian dub was produced for the occasion. The entire dub isn't extant as far as I know, but you can see clips here and here. Interestingly, Italy was also showing the film on TV; I've found TV guide listings for the film from 1979, 1980, and 1981. While most countries that imported the film screened it under more or less a transliterated version of the title "Ironfinger", Italy decided to forge their own path and retitle the film Colpo grosso a Manila, or "Big Heist in Manila".

I have some questions about the way Italy does things.

I'll close out this section (and the post at large) with the film's most ephemeral international release: its Romanian run in November of 1970 at Bucharest's Moşilor theater, which you can see with your eyes here. Not a lot of information to be gleaned about that.

"Please Excuse Us": The End

Ironfinger is still fairly obscure to most people outside of Japan - a fact that I tend to forget, because in my heart, it's a smash hit. The film and its sequel are both licensed by Janus Films and available for streaming on the Criterion Channel with some very good subtitles which are, as far as I've seen, currently the only set that exist. If you haven't already seen the film and I've managed to entice you, you've got no excuse not to go check it out. 

Screenshot taken seconds before absolutely nothing disastrous happens at all.

_______

1 Goldfinger the book had been available in Japanese translation since 1960.

2 There is, as is often the case, A Copyright Situation™ with Belmondo's filmography in Japan.

3 "Komori" is phonetically identical to the Japanese word for "bat" (as in the animal), but Komori's name is written with different kanji. This probably means nothing.

4 The source I got this from did not cite a reference, hence the "seems to have". "[Actor] learned their lines phonetically" is a claim that REALLY pisses me off when people throw it around without verifying it, so I want to be very clear that I don't know this for certain.