News

By the second half of the 1960s, it was obvious that the relationship between director Seijun Suzuki and production company Nikkatsu was more than just a little strained. After years of yakuza-flicks and B-movies, Suzuki had proven with works such as “Youth of the Beast” he was fed up sticking to genre conventions as well as the rules enforced by his employer of what a certain movie has to be, what the story has to be like and essentially playing second fiddle to whatever the main feature his work was supposed to prepare the audience for. Having repeatedly violated that agreement, Suzuki was given another opportunity, resulting in “Carmen from Kawachi”, a B-movie based on themes from Georges Bizet. While the story has certain aspects following the conventions of B-movies, its style and images often transcend its origin, making it a very interesting precursor to Suzuki’s “Branded to Kill...

A year after the great “Gate of Flesh“, Seijun Suzuki returned with “Story of a Prostitute”, the second part of what later came to be known as the “Flesh Trilogy”. Like the former, this one is also based on a story by Taijiro Tamura and deals with women who make a living by selling their flesh.

Angry at her lover who marries another woman, the prostitute Harumi (Yumiko Nogawa) decides to become a “comfort woman” (i.e. army prostitute) in Manchuria and service the Japanese Imperial army in their war with China. Quickly after arriving at the army outpost and starting her new dehumanizing job, Harumi is liked by the brutal unit adjutant lieutenant Narita (Isao Tamagawa) who wants to make her his. Yet, to spite him, she starts paying attention to his quiet and shy aide, Mikami (Tamio Kawachi). Though initially repelled by her, the young...

In the mid-1960s, Seijun Suzuki would go on to make a trilogy of features, now called the “Flesh Trilogy”, that would depict a degraded post-war Japan and people’s poor living standards in it. These depictions were put forth in the form of stories that featured women that trade in their own flesh. The first of these would be “Gate of Flesh”, a production based on a novel by Taijiro Tamura that would go on to stand tall as one of the best in Suzuki’s fantastic and lengthy oeuvre.

Heavily bombed, post-war Tokyo is a dog-eat-dog city where a living is hard to come by and people are still exploited on a daily basis. The city lies in ruin and so do the lives of its inhabitants. In one such bombed building live five prostitutes, all working without any support from any males and taking...