Tattooed Life is another of Radiance Film’s restored Blu-ray releases of a yakuza film from a master of the genre, this time a 1965 colour entry by Seijun Suzuki.  In his fourteen-year tenure (1954 – 1968) at Nikkatsu studios he won the approval of cineastes but the disdain of studio executives who thought his films made “no sense” and “no money” and this eventually led to his dismissal.  

Suzuki and his art director collaborator Takeo Kimura worked to create eye catching images sometimes for symbolic vale and sometimes, by Suzuki’s own admission, to refresh stock story elements.This is less true of Tattooed Life than some of Suzuki’s more highly regarded films such as Fighting Elegy,  Tokyo Drifter (both 1966) and Branded to Kill (1967) although the climax is highly stylised and one of Suzuki’s most popular set pieces and the movie also has more conventional pleasures.

Tattooed Life takes its title from the torso length tattoos yakuza would adorn themselves with.  The protagonist Tetsu (Hideki Takahashi) has a tattoo of a silver fox across his back and he is nicknamed after the animal. The title alludes to the permanence of the tattoos mirroring the marked for life quality the yakuza vocation gives, something that haunts Tetsu as well as his brother Kenji (Kotobuki Hananomoto).

The film is set during the first year (1926) of Emperor Hirohito’s reign, the Showa period.  Silver Fox Tetsu Murakami is a junior yakuza with the Owada family.  His brother Kenji has no other connections to the criminal world and wants to enrol at art school.  At the start of the film members of the rival Totsuka family kidnap Tetsu and intend to execute him following his hit on a senior family member.  Kenji happens upon the kidnap and kills the senior assassin, saving Tetsu’s life.  The brothers decide to escape to Manchuria and avoid reprisals.  On the way they stop off at a coastal town and find work with the Yamashita construction company.  Tetsu and Kenji fall in love with, respectively their boss’ daughter, Midori (Masako Izumi) and wife, Masayo (Hiroko Ito).  This makes their situation more precarious.  At the same time detectives are closing in on them and there are further dangers.

A fairly low budget film of the mid-sixties, Tattooed Life has some of the features found with this type of production, such as a robust colour palette but often unconvincing sets.  The structure and details of the story often recall the classic Western.  The Showa period like the one detailed in the Western was one of expansion.  Like the heroic gunslingers the classic yakuza are seen to follow an honourable code and their existence is imperilled by the spread of civilisation.  There is a similar pleasure taken in local colour.  The geishas in this film act like their Western saloon girl equivalents.  After being so familiar with the formality of tea ceremonies, it’s strange to see women in kimonos sashaying around drunk on sushi.

The male stars are appealing.  As Tetsu Takahashi has that ascetic quality often found in Japanese leads in period films.  As Kenji Hananomoto is convincing as the sensitive, romantic but courageous younger brother.  

They are given solid support from the rest of the cast; Izumi and Ito as the female leads, popular character actor Yuji Odako as the weaselly manager Ezaki and the actors playing the older heads of the Yamashita and their unscrupulous competitor Kanbe construction companies.

Seijun Suzuki’s greatest claim to fame is his reputation as a stylist.  His idiosyncratic approach to images and editing was partly to keep things interesting.  Examples are dotted throughout the earlier part of the film.  

When Midori is rejected by Tetsu at one point she leaves the scene by charging through a water trough near the mill.  Unlikely but it makes for an arresting visual.  What appears to be the approach of the detective but is actually a piece of misdirection is signified by shots of feet wearing distinctive footwear.  However, the choice of bright scarlet patent leather boots seems terribly anachronistic especially when they are sported by two characters.

Suzuki and Kimura come into their own on at the climax of the film.  When a character is murdered the whole scene is flooded by scarlet light as if by blood.  The scene is effective but purely symbolic as there is no source for the light.  When Tetsu goes on his revenge rampage his distinctive kimono is lit with a white spotlight.  Again highly theatrical but akin to non-diagetic music in that there is no source for the light.  Things ramp up as Tetsu gets closer to his prey.  He has to hack his way through a number of primary-coloured panels behind which lurk katana brandishing thugs.  The effect is of someone crashing through a series of Mondrians.  When Tetsu faces off against Kanbe the duel is partly shot upwards through a glass floor.  Again impressive but with no internal logic.

Even without these bravura details Tattooed Life is an entertaining effort with an engaging narrative and authentically tragic in depicting the fates of the likeable brothers.

The Radiance Blu-ray comes with a small but useful set of extras.  An audio commentary by William Carroll, author of ‘Seijun Suzuki and Postwar Cinema’ gives a comprehensive background to the film, pointing out Suzuki’s distinctive directorial touches as they appear.  There are two short documentaries from 2009 which appear in new edits courtesy of Radiance, one with Suzuki, the other with art director Takeo Kimura.  Although elderly both men discuss their own and their co-workers’ contributions lucidly.

Radiance have again released an excellent package of a film by a cult director, one who can count Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch and Wong Kar-Wai among his fans.