The other day, I saw Seijun Suzuki's Branded to Kill, a
Japanese thriller about a yakuza killer. The professional
killer likes to sniff rice, which throws him into an ecstatic
trance. And he's played by an actor with surgical cheek
implants that make him look like a cross between a chipmunk
and Brando in The Godfather. He's the #3 killer, given to
asking, "Who is #1?" It came out in 1967, the same year #6
started asking that same question in The Prisoner. And it's
just as whacked out (in a good way) as The Prisoner.
Plotwise, it's a "program film," as Suzuki calls it (of
course, he got fired because the studio said this film didn't
make sense), a formulaic studio movie for nothing but
entertainment, which sounds a lot like those B movies that
later came to be considered noir classics. Stylistically,
this black and white film also draws from America noir, but
even more from the French new wave.
According to the movie notes, there are a whole bunch of
Japanese movies like this. Are there Japanese books like
this? The only one I can think of that comes close is Peter
Tasker's series featuring his PI Mori, but he's a Brit, even
if he does live in Japan. And they're far more recent. The
Japanese mysteries I'm aware of are higher class affairs,
just as the Japanese movies I knew were, such as Kurosawa's
films. I know there are Manga of this sort, but are there
Japanese Yakuza novels, Japanese equivalents of Gold Medals?
And have any of them been translated?
Mark
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