There is an all-time great story of betrayal, recklessness, and tragedy told about the events that took place among the yakuza of Japan’s snowy north coast, and it’s told through around 50 minutes of interviews included as special features on Radiance Films’s latest limited edition Blu-ray. The same disc happens to include Hokuriku Proxy War (1977), a fictionalized account of a real yakuza boss’s rise to power, also a story of betrayal, recklessness, and tragedy, and the film that directly led to his assassination.
“THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION”
– Opening intertitle
Hokuriku Proxy War (1977) is a B+ film that, in a vacuum, absolutely rips and totally rules, even if its final punches don’t quite ring the proverbial carnival bell. It opens with a young yakuza gang member, Kawada Noboru (Hiroki Matsukata (13 Assassins; Battles Without Honor and Humanity)), burying his deceitful boss up to his neck in the snow and terrorizing him by doing donuts around his head in a Jeep. Feuding yakuza doing donuts with their Jeeps in the snow — need I say more?
The film follows Kadawa through a series of escalating schemes and double-crosses as the snowy country region of Hokuriku slowly draws in larger gangs from across the country. Kawada falls in love, he and his gang earn the film its place in the sweater-movie-canon, he and his “Uncle” Mantani (played brilliantly by Hajime Hana (School in the Crosshairs; Cleopatra: Queen of Sex)) see-saw positions of power and weakness for nearly two hours, and some gut-wrenching things occur that I won’t spoil here. There is also a farcical comedic tone to the unfolding tragedy of the film, which makes sense since screenwriter Kōji Takada (The Street Fighter; Virus) cites both Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies as foundational influences to his understanding of story structure.
The 15-minute interview with Takada conducted by Radiance is a great lecture on writing, art, and life, one you can tell he was preparing for. It’s also a confession, that he and director Kinji Fukasaku were too young, too reckless, and a man died partially because of them.
“The incident seems to be snow-balling and I’m worried.”
Kinji Fukasaku is now best known in the States for Battle Royale (2000) and its similarities to The Hungers Games series. Fukasaku was a prolific journeyman director, churning out an astonishing 20 films (several of them logged on Letterboxd almost solely by Jim Beaver (Supernatural; Crimson Peak)) before hitting a prominent stride with the Pearl Harbor docudrama Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) and the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series. A frequent director of yakuza crime films, this series stood out as an epic series based on real yakuza crimes, produced by Toei. Hokuriku Proxy War was another film in this mold, though Toei failed to market it to audiences as a true story. The film was based on research done by Takada in a coffee shop called Hawaii in Mikuni, Fukui Prefecture. Here, he interviewed Hiroshi Kawauchi, a real yakuza boss from the area whose feud with another boss, Masao Sugatani, served as the scaffolding for the screenplay. The coffee shop Hawaii was recreated on a soundstage for the film, and it’s there that the fictional gangster Kawada escapes an assassination attempt. Six weeks after its release, the film brought the feud back to being front-page news and Kawauchi was killed in a nearly identical assassination in the real Hawaii coffee shop.
“Yakuza movies are fairy tales”
— Koji Takada
While the absence of special features can easily torpedo the value of a disc, it takes a lot to make the special features worth the price of admission alone, but Hokuriku Proxy War is one of those cases. The transfer looks great, the sound is good, and the movie is a ton of fun. But the three interviews, 19 minutes for Takada and 15ish minutes each for actress Yoko Takahashi (Evening Primrose) and yakuza film historian Akihiko Ito, are the real crown jewels. There are a handful of books of criticism and journalism from other countries that I wish were available in English, but Ito’s book of journalistic reporting on the incident is the first to make me think about brushing off my katakana flash cards. Luckily, his interview is essentially a summary of the book and is overflowing with more details than I’ve shared here.
While Takada says that yakuza films are fairy tales, because he wrote this one down, it no longer was. Fairy tales don’t end in assassinations dreamed up by screenwriters. Tragedies end in death, in despair. Hokuriku Proxy War ends in both on all levels. The tragic moral arc of its hero, the death of its real-life inspiration, and the despair of its director, who never made a yakuza film again. The making of Hokuriku Proxy War is an essential story in any discussion on the power of film. Can films change lives? Can films change the world? Does art have to be political? Takada and Fukasaku made a good film, but they didn’t make a masterpiece. And yet, a man died, and many, many more lives were changed forever, even though their prolific careers moved on materially unaffected. This Radiance Films release serves as a reminder that art has power, and that power must be wielded responsibly, a lesson that Fukasaku took hard. In the words of Takada: “I hear that he went back to that inn in Hokuriku after a while and just stood there staring.”
Hokuriku Proxy War Special Features:
- High-Definition digital transfer
- Uncompressed mono PCM audio
- *NEW* interview with actress Yoko Takahashi (2024, 15 mins)
- *NEW* interview with screenwriter Koji Takada (2024, 19 mins)
- Yakuza film historian Akihiko Ito on the real-life Hokuriku Proxy War murder case (2024, 15 mins)
- Trailer
- Newly improved English subtitle translation
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow
- Limited edition booklet featuring newly translated archival writings on the film
- Limited edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings
For more information, head to the official Radiance Films Hokuriku Proxy War webpage.
To purchase, head to the official MVD Entertainment Group Hokuriku Proxy War webpage.
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Categories: Home Release, Recommendation
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