Hishakaku and Kiratsune: A Tale of Two Yakuza

Hishakaku and Kiratsune: A Tale of Two Yakuza (1968)

Crime

With his penultimate film, Uchida revisited one of his popular prewar titles, 1936’s Theatre of Life, an adaptation of Shiro Ozaki’s eponymous novel. Three-time Seijun Suzuki collaborator Goro Tanada wrote a gangsterized adaptation of Ozaki’s story for Uchida at a time when the yakuza had eclipsed the samurai genre as Toei's main cash crop. Protagonist Hishakaku murders a man in a quarrel over a barmaid and goes to jail. In his temporary absence, his girlfriend Otoyo, a former geisha, falls for Hishakaku’s brother, inciting a dangerous love triangle that, in typical yakuza fashion, ends tragically.

Director: Tomu Uchida
Writer: Gorō Tanada

Casts

	Koji Tsuruta as
	Tomisaburō Wakayama as
	Sumiko Fuji as
	Ken Takakura as
	Takeya Nakamura as
	Minoru Ōki as
	Kinzō Shin as
	Bin Amatsu as
	Rinichi Yamamoto as
	Kunio Murai as
	Shingo Yamashiro as
	Tatsuo Endō as
	Hiroshi Nawa as
	Seiichirō Kameishi as
	Nobuo Yana as
	Keiichi Kitagawa as
	Hiroshi Date as
	Seiya Satō as
	Kōji Sekiyama as
	Kosaku Okano as
	Nenji Kobayashi as
	Hiroki Matsukata as
	Sachiko Hidari as
	Ryūtarō Tatsumi as

Crew