Twilight of the Yakuza

The history of the Yakuza Eiga at the TOEI studio is roughly outlined. Real Yakuza and also their connections to the movie business are discussed, and...

Film director and screenwriter Seijun Suzuki (1923-2017),who in the sixties was the great innovator of Japanese cinema; and his collaborator, art dir...

Since the enactment of the Anti-Boryokudan Act and Yakuza exclusion ordinances, the number of Yakuza members reduced to less than 60,000. In the past...

A behind-the-scenes look at the creative process behind Juzo Itami's "Minbo no Onna" a.k.a. "Minbo: the Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion".

Former yakuza gang boss Noboru Ando reminisces about old partner in crime Kei Hanagata.

Meet the Japanese Mafia's latest son: a 20 year old named Naoki, part of a surging, decade-long wave of juvenile delinquency in Japan. As Naoki reject...

An exploration of underground Japanese counter-culture including the Yakuza, the nationalists, the gay and lesbian community, the bikers and the homel...

A Japanese Yakuza gangster's deadly existence in his homeland gets him exiled to Los Angeles, where he is taken in by his little brother and his broth...

Tanaka is a yakuza who collects 'protection money' from establishments. He has just been released from jail, where he had spent eight years, and finds...

Satomi Oka is worried about his final choir competition but is accosted by a shadowy gangster, Kyouji Narita, who demands karaoke sessions with him.

Mikami, an ex-yakuza of middle age with most of his life in prison, gets released after serving 13 years of sentence for murder. Hoping to find his lo...

An assassin is shot by her ruthless employer, Bill, and other members of their assassination circle – but she lives to plot her vengeance.

A member of the jieitai ("Self-Defense Force"; i.e. Japanese military) is on leave and finds a woman giving birth in a graveyard in the former Yoshiwa...

Dolls takes puppeteering as its overriding motif, which relates thematically to the action provided by the live characters. Chief among those tales is...

Adventures of famous yakuza boss Jirocho and his disciples who settle in Kofu.