Battles Without Honor and Humanity (film)
Battles Without Honor and Humanity (Jingi Naki Tatakai, 仁義なき戦い) is a groundbreaking 1973 yakuza film by Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku. (It is also sometimes known as "The Yakuza Papers").
The violent, documentary-style film chronicles the underworld tribulations of Shozo Hirono (Bunta Sugawara), a young ex-soldier and street thug in post-War Hiroshima.
Starting in the open-air black markets of bombed-out Hiroshima in 1945, the film spans a period of more than 10 years. It gave way to four sequels, which form a sprawling yakuza epic. It is often called "the Japanese Godfather".
The title refers to the post-War yakuza's lack of jingi, a Japanese term loosely translated as "honor and humanity". Previous yakuza movies had, for the most part, been tales of chivalry set in pre-War Japan. A commercial and critical success, Battles Without Honor and Humanity changed that, and Japanese cinema, forever.
Sequels
The film's success quickly spawned four sequels:
- Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Deathmatch in Hiroshima (1973)
- Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Proxy War (1973)
- Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Police Tactics (1974)
- Battles Without Honor and Humanity: Final Episode (1974)