Matatabi

This is another recognizably different addition to Ichikawa Kon's mixed filmography. Before his massive "Kindaichi" hits of the late 1970's, the director made several more experimental films, often with smaller budgets such as "Matatabi" (The Wonderers, 1973). This film has high goals. It attempts to de-glorify the Edo period by showing the amount of human misery among Japan's poorest people. The three lead characters are toseinin, traveling men who fight for food. Their existence is sad and hopeless, and Ichikawa uses them to hammer in his points.

I think Kon is on a fine quest here, but I don't like end product. Similar messages have been much better relayed, for instance in the films of Kobayashi Masaki and Imai Tadashi. This is not a particularly well put-together film. The budgetary strains are all too visible, and the narrative didn't really click for me on the character's personal level. I also find Ichikawa's humour to be very hit & miss for my taste. I prefer his more serious films to those with comedic undertones, such as this. The game of greetings, for example, overstayed its welcome before the narrative had properly begun.

So good intentions aside, this is not one of Ichikawa's 50 best films, but if you are a completionist check it out, you might get more from it than I did.

The movie was released at a time when Japan was searching for values to orient its youth and the Yakuza code was heavily used and offered as a model in movies of that period. The whole point of Ichikawa is to ridicule these values, showing Yakuza as a bunch of poor minded wanderers, unworthy cowards following kiddish rules without ever questioning them.

The point of view of Ichikawa is made clear throughout the movie, but without extra emphasis. The movie thus remains very entertaining. The portrait of the ill-fated main character's girlfriend is especially moving.

It is a brilliant parody of Yakuza movies and should definitely give a different look at any Yakuza movie you might see afterward.