Goyokin (1969) [Film Review]

Goyokin; or, Gold for Official Use

      We made a promise three years ago. But I broke that promise. Magobei, I will break that promise over and over as many times... as I have to. In order to keep the world running, we samurai must dirty our hands with blood.

When thinking about samurai movies, people immediately think about Kurosawa’s immortal Yojimbo (1961) or Kobayashi’s all-time classic Harakiri (1962). While these films are the hallmarks of excellence, they do not constitute the whole of this genre. Similarly to other cinematic trends, samurai films were also made by lesser known filmmakers– not omnipotent geniuses but craftsmen, hardworking and efficient, like Hideo Gosha. Though his productions were domestically successful, the global audience was not really aware of their existence until after the director’s death. One of such modernly rediscovered gems made by Gosha is Goyokin from 1969. An action-adventure flick with the great Tatsuya Nakadai in the lead, which involves revenge, sword-fights, slaughter, and shogun’s gold.

Release Info

Directed by: Hideo Gosha Starring: Tatsuya Nakadai, Tetsuro Tamba, Ruriko Asaoka

Language: Japanese Original Title: 御用金 Runtime: 124 min

Synopsis

It’s the year 1833, the heyday of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Magobei Wakizaka (Tatsuya Nakadai) is a ronin living in Edo. Three years ago, he left the Sabai Clan when its chamberlain, Rokuko Tatewaki (Tetsuro Tamba) used the crash of shogun’s ship to his advantage and stole the state gold. In order to cover it up, he massacred the fishermen from the nearby village who recovered the gold. Now, the ruthless chamberlain wants to save the finances of his clan by staging another ship accident and massacre of innocent people. Magobei gets to know about the devious plan of his brother-in-law and he rushes from Edo to stop him. Along the way, he is joined by the sole survivor of the original slaughter Oriha (Ruriko Asaoka), her brother Rokuzo (Ben Hiura), and a shogun’s spy, Samon Fujimaki (Kinnosuke Nakamura).

 

Samurai’s Funeral

Goyokin (along with Tenchu!) is frequently called the best samurai film from Gosha and I find it hard to disagree. This might not be a black-and-white, ironic examination of humanity (hint: Kurosawa), yet the story is rich enough and professionally executed to be considered a legit period piece. Nevertheless, the film’s main advantage is action. Toshiro Mifune may be the cinematic master swordsman, but Gosha’s quick cuts, zooms, and angle shots render Nakadai’s fighting in this movie unforgettable. It’s been a few years since my first viewing of the film and yet I still vividly remember Magobei’s slashing of the bad guys in pitch darkness.

 

Apart from the entertaining value, there’s also Gosha’s historical commentary. As much as Kurosawa desired to change the course of Japanese history with Yojimbo, Gosha resents and criticises the samurai code of honour. Magobei is a fallen hero who was unable to object to his brother-in-law as he committed the slaughter. Magobei’s quest to stop the chamberlain is a journey of self-redemption, of defying the rotten code of silent obedience when bad things happen. The samurai finally has to do the right thing in order to redeem himself.

 

In addition, I especially love the tiny historical notches provided by Gosha. The story of the samurai clan being desperate enough so as to steal the shogun’s gold makes perfect sense since those are the Tokugawa times, a period of peace and stagnation when samurai were no longer needed as warriors, hence their status almost degraded to that of farmers. Also, we have a scoundrel-like heroine, Oriha, who is not afraid of dealing with the yakuza (Gosha’s exploitation of the yakuza theme here), and she is determined to know what happened to her fellow villagers. What is more, Shino (Yoko Tsukasa), Magobei’s wife, is torn between being loyal to her husband and to her brother, which distorts the image of a proper samurai wife.

 

Nevertheless, a great spirit of adventure is the driving force of Goyokin as we see Magobei and his merry band of avengers (Samon, Oriha, and Rokuzo) kick a lot of sorry samurai butts in the film's fiery finale. Also, Nakadai’s duel with dauntless Tetsuro Tamba amidst the snowy plains of Northern Japan is a definite must-see.

 

In terms of performances, Tatsuya Nakadai as always does splendidly in a role which does not require his character getting killed off by Toshiro Mifune. A word of trivia here: Mifune was actually slated to play in Goyokin as Samon, but he argued with Gosha about the necessity of shooting the picture in the cold parts of Niigata Prefecture and eventually dropped out (shame! yet, Kinnosuke Nakamura provides a decent replacement). Tetsuro Tamba is classic as a commanding samurai leader, having already marked his place in chambara films with Harakiri (1962) and Three Outlaw Samurai (1964). Yoko Tsukasa makes another gracious appearance, yet her role is quite limited. Ruriko Asaoka does magnificently well as Oriha, though pretending to play an 18-year-old when she was actually 28.

 

Recommendations

Highly recommended to anyone who is interested in Hideo Gosha’s work. Goyokin is a wonderfully entertaining instance of a samurai film. It has all of the necessary ingredients: Nakadai, great story, sword fights, and the tranquilizing score by Masaru Sato. Basically, this film is an obvious highlight of the 1960s, the golden period of samurai movies. If you’re into chambara, give it a go anywhere, anytime.

Overall score: 10/10

Cash Calls Hell (1966) [Film Review]

I never imagined you would be so stupid when I chose you...
            Now,  to save a little girl,  I decided to be stupid.

This week’s review will be about one of the earliest and a somewhat forgotten movie from Hideo Gosha’s rich directorial repertoire. A black-and-white picture from 1966 about a decadent lifestyle of the citizens of post-war Japan as well as an unexpected bond formed between a stranger and a child.

Release Info

Directed by: Hideo Gosha Starring: Tatsuya Nakadai, Yukari Uehara, Kunie Tanaka, Kaneko Iwasaki
Language: Japanese Original Title: Gohiki no shinshi Runtime: 92 min

Plot

Oida (played by always amazing Tatsuya Nakadai) used to be a lower-class guy who through a hard work managed to get at the top. He is due to marry a wealthy woman and takeover a prosperous company. However, one night, Oida causes a traffic accident in which a bystander and his daughter die. Thus, in a split second, he loses everything he struggled so long to achieve and gets sentenced to prison. After serving his time, on the last day of his stay, Oida decides to accept an interesting offer from his cell-mate: kill three specific people and get 15 million yen for the job. When finally out, Oida reluctantly tracks down his first victim, but it turns out that somebody else already killed the guy. Oida has found himself in the middle of a dangerous mystery and the key to unravel it is to find the two other listed men and discover what happened on a certain tramway depot two years earlier.

Blood Money 
Cash Calls Hell may be neither a crime film, nor a noir one, but certainly it is a night movie, for the majority of the action happens under cover of darkness. Tatsuya Nakadai’s Oida is a standard everyman who by a malicious twist of fate becomes an ex-convict. He finds himself on the run through dark and devastated back-allies of Tokyo, shabby cabarets, old docks, and dilapidated buildings; all of which are inhabited by people just like him, individuals who had a shiny future before them, but fell from grace right at the very bottom of the social ladder.

Oida feels quite uncomfortable with the job he has to do, but nevertheless, he knows that there is no coming back to luxurious lifestyle for the ones of his kind. He makes a shy attempt to kill the first victim, but fails to do so. Instead, mobsters from Hong Kong do the job and leave Oida with the victim’s orphaned daughter who constantly follows our hero and calls him “Uncle”. Oida realises that he can’t bring himself to kill anyone despite his new role of a criminal in the Japanese society, but he resolves to press on and find out into what exactly he got himself involved.

The truth is quite unnerving. Three ordinary men, who used have big dreams in the past, committed a robbery. As a result, these men end up exactly like Oida. Even more so, they are ruthlessly murdered by mobsters who want to reclaim their stolen commodities. Hideo Gosha’s presentation of visually morbid murder scenes became an irreplaceable trademark throughout his films, but those scenes always served a certain purpose. Gosha provides a comment on the socio-economic situation of post-war Japan, through stories of people who in order to escape the constraints of their degrading lives commit a crime and thus end up dead in abandoned, almost post-apocalyptic, back-streets and gutters. Even Akira Kurosawa didn’t manage to make his moralistic points so clear in, for instance, Stray Dog (1949) or The Bad Sleep Well (1960).

Interesting in Cash Calls Hell is also the parallelism of Oida’s life. At the beginning of the movie, he accidentally runs over a father and his daughter, whereas, towards the end, he himself becomes “a father” for orphaned Tomoe. Needless to say, these little moments between Oida and Tomoe throughout the film are the true highlights of this picture. The little girl becomes a sort of a redemption, atonement for the past misdeeds of Oida, which is visible especially in the scene when witnessing a heated argument between Oida and one of the men who participated in the heist, the girl throws a shoe so as to defend her Uncle. To me, this film provides the best depiction of a relationship between an adult and a child, even surpassing such an immortal classic as Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid (1921).

Recommendations

If you want to see morally conscious cinema with a bit of action and drama, Cash Calls Hell is the movie for you. Unlike Gosha’s other flicks, this is not a chambara film, yet it is by no means an inferior picture. Give it a go and you won’t be disappointed. Just remember to prepare a packet of tissues beforehand.

Overall score: 8/10