On November 10, 2014, one of the greatest legends of Japanese cinema passed away: Having experienced almost 40 years of unparalleled stardom, Ken Takakura’s death of lymphoma at age 83 severed one of the last remaining links to the Golden Age of Japanese Cinema. In America and Europe, he is often called the “Japanese Clint Eastwood”, a term which probably stems from his relatively late discovery in the West, when the already seasoned veteran played the roles of introverted, stubborn old men. A nickname, which I feel does no justice to the impressive résumé of Takakura’s career.

Ken Takakura seldom played the roles of wise-cracking vigilante cops or cynic cowboys, Eastwood became famous for in the 1960s. Indeed, the punkish nonchalance and characteristic tough guy swagger of his on-screen persona in his earlier career bore more resemblance to a young Steve McQueen. As a contract actor for Toei, Ken Takakura began his carreer playing a multitude of different roles, from romantic leads in several Hibari Misora films to morally corrupted gangsters as in “Pigs, Wolves and Men”. It was, however, in the middle of the 1960s, when he first achieved major stardom as a leading actor in Toei’s ninkyo eiga-type yakuza films.

Ninkyo eiga were glamorized accounts of gangsterhood, whose yakuza heroes were heroic loners, fighting a steady battle between their own desires as human beings (“ninjo”) and their duties towards their clan (“giri”). Playing these noble yakuza, Ken Takakura became the venerable sustainer of the traditional values of Japan and the supposedly honorfic way of the yakuza.

In this phase of his career, he might well be called the Japanese John Wayne. His stoic presence and air of melancholy made him a role model for Millions of young Japanese fans, while he also enjoyed great respect among older generations for evoking the conservative values of Japan, which many Japanese believed to have been lost in the increasingly capitalist, liberal and outspoken atmosphere of the 1960s.

The famous author and conservative politician Shintaro Ishihara once called Takakura “the last big star”. Indeed, one hardly could name another actor, who already became a megastar in the his 20s and whose popularity only rose when he got older. Takakura managed what only the greatest of actors, among them Toshiro Mifune, Marilyn Monroe or James Dean, were able to achieve: He transcended his state as a human being and became a legend, whose death will only further reinforce his on-screen immortality for generations of films fans to come.

This list tries to trace back this process of becoming a legend by chronicling the most important stations in Takakura’s long career. Despite many of his films being landmark works, the focus should be mostly on the performances of Takakura in those films and the effect they had on his career. The author hopes that Takakura will emerge as more than the Japanese equivalent of some Hollywood icon. In the end, Ken Takakura was neither the Japanese Clint Eastwood, nor the Japanese Steve McQueen or the Japanese John Wayne, but a magnificent star in his own right, whose magnetizing screen presence was uniquely his own.

1. Deep Blue Sea (Aoi Unabara, 1957)

Considering that Ken Takakura made his breakthrough as an action star in yakuza pictures, it will come as a surprise to many that he cut corners in his early career, playing opposite to Hibari Misora in several romantic comedies. Shot on low-budget and directed by anonymous directors, those films were often lightweight and rather trivial, depending completely on the star appeal of Hibari Misora, both Japan’s most successful actress of the 1950s and legendary pop singer queen.

However, while Ken Takakura’s fame in no way matched the popularity of Hibari Misora at that time, her films starring him mark one of the few instances where the male co-star appears as an equal charismatic personality as the great female star. With his good-looks and noble charm, Takakura soon became popular among the crowds of teenage girls, which largely made up the demographic of Misora’s films. Thus, while seldom particularily memorable, those films were important for introducing Takakura to the public and establishing him as a promising new talent of Japanese cinema.

2. Miyamoto Musashi 3: Birth of the Two-Sword Style (Miyamoto Musashi: Nitoryu kaigen, 1963)

As a contract actor for Toei, Ken Takakura enjoyed a certain star status from the beginning due to his outstanding screen presence and was often cast in contemporary prestige pictures. However, while he never played roles in the so-called Toei gorakuhen, Toei’s trademark low-budget jidai-geki (“period films”), he also made some memorable appearances in the more elaborate of Toei’s period pictures in the beginning of his career.

In Tomu Uchida’s celebrated six-part Miyamoto Musashi series, which chronicle the rise of legendary swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, he was cast as Kojiro Sasaki, the arch enemy of Kinnosuke Nakamura’s Musashi. His stoic and noble presence made him an ideal choice for this role, which coincidentally was also played a few years earlier by Koji Tsuruta in Toho’s Academy Award-winning take on the Miyamoto Musashi mythos. In the 1960s, Tsuruta, along with Ken Takakura, should become the greatest male star of Toei’s ninkyo eiga circle.

3. Theater of Life (Jinsei gekijo, 1963)

“Theater of Life”, directed by Toei artisan Tadashi Sawashima, was the first great hit of the ninkyo eiga and boosted the genre’s popularity. It’s leading man, the already experienced actor Koji Tsuruta, successively became a major star of the genre. He plays the role of a noble yakuza hero, who after being released from prison, discovers that his wife has committed adultery – with a character played by Ken Takakura.

Thus, while the man of the hour was Koji Tsuruta, this film also gains particular importance for the career of Takakura, who played his treacherous adulterer with unexpected nobility and heartfelt sorrow over the deed he has committed. Establishing Takakura as a mainstay in the genre, the film was at the same time only the first step for Takakura to gain major stardom as a leading actor of the ninkyo eiga. A genre, which should soon become dominated by Takakura, playing the lead in literally hundreds of these films.

4. Wolves, Pigs and Men (Okami to buta to ningen, 1964)

A financial and critical flop at its time, “Wolves, Pigs and Men” could be nonethelessly named the artistical breakthrough of Toei director Kinji Fukasaku. Shot in gritty black-and-white, full of ultraviolence, out-of-control camera angles and immoral human filth, it seems truly unbelievable that this film could be made in the early 1960s, when most Japanese gangster films were still rather tame and strightly modelled on routine Hollywood potboilers.

In what is without a doubt his most disgusting and evil role, Ken Takakura acts as an inscrupulous gangster, who doesn’t even recoil from torturing his own brother to achieve his goals. Here, his noble behaviour in other gangster films gives away to utter disregard for human lives, his readiness for self-sacrificing to the desire for egoistic self-preservance. “Wolves, Pigs and Men” is truly a film that has to be seen to be believed. An aggressive and violent tour-de-force, which shows Ken Takakura not only at his most diabolic, but also at his most intense and diverse.

5. Abashiri Prison (Abashiri bangaichi, 1965)

Spawning 17 sequels from 1965 to 1972, all but the last 8 directed by the prolific Teruo Ishii, “Abashiri Prison” ist often seen as the breakthrough of Ken Takakura as a new star of the ninkyo eiga. However, set in the snowy fields surrounding the legendary Abashiri prison (Japan’s equivalent to America’s Alcatraz) and modelled after Stanley Kramer’s “The Defiant Ones” (1958), “Abashiri Prison” is actually more of an exciting and action-packed prison breakout film, incorporating a few elements of the ninkyo eiga, mainly in the form of Takakura’s stoic yakuza leading character.

Nonetheless, while no pure ninkyo eiga, in terms of its commercial success “Abashiri Prison” is certainly one of Takakura’s most important films. Becoming the most successful film series of the 1960s in Japan with almost every film reaching top spots at the annual box-office, it boosted Ken Takakura’s fame to enormous proportions and made him the most popular Japanese film star of of his time.

During the 1960s the public interest in period spectacles (Jidai-geki), the famous film studio Toei produced at that time, slowly began to wane. The times had changed and Japan was in state of constant political turmoil.

Extremist leftist groups emerged and students rose up to protest against the continuing American influence on their country, resulting in bloody streetfights between the police and the protestors. The audience yearned for something to reflect on those times on screen, yet, which at the same time also adhered to the memory of the supposedly traditional and honorific values of Japan.

The invention of a new type of Japanese gangster film (yakuza eiga), the ninkyo eiga (chivalry films) was Toei’s answer to these demands, a genre which began to emerge in the early 1960s and continued to florish until the 1970s. Ninkyo eiga were films about honorable and old-fashioned yakuza who fought against the greedy and scheming yakuza of the present, who had long traded their honor for the “dog eats dog” mentality of capitalism.

Often set in the Meiji era, an era of politicial reforms and industrialisation, the villains of those films usually were products of this approach to the Western world, wore modern suits and exploited their low-wage workers for personal benefit. In contrast, the heroes wore traditional kimono and stuck to the conservative and virtuos values of bushido. By playing those tateyaku (heroic lead), actors Koji Tsuruta, Ken Takakura and Junko Fuji soon became the great stars of the genre.

The genre gained additional impetus by making the heroes suffer a constant conflict between their duty towards their yakuza brothers (giri) and their own human emotions (ninjo). In contrast to Western films, where the hero usually acts according to his own feelings, it is actually the giri side which is favored in the ninkyo eiga. Eventually, the leading actor of such films will abonden his humanism to exact violent vengeance upon clans of evil yakuza, usually perishing in the end – after having slaughtered every one of them.

It’s no exaggeration to call the ninkyo eiga the most successful Japanese film genre of the 1960s. For example, in contrast to the common Western belief, not popular series like Zatoichi (1962 – 1989) or Sleepy Eyes of Death (1963 – 1969) ruled at the domestic box-office, but ninkyo eiga like the Abashiri Prison series (becoming in fact the highest-grossing film series of the 1960s in Japan) or the Tales of Japanese Chivalry (1965 – 1972) series.

Those films managed to unite their audience by confirming their uprising feeling of xenophobia, celebration of conservative values, while, given that often militarists are the villains of those works, at the same time taking a harsh stance against right-wing parties and as such were also frequented by students, who were commited to highly popular leftist ideologies.

However, since the basic formula of a lone yakuza member fighting against an evilish yakuza clan, attacking the latter’s clan of honest and pacifistic yakuza, was seldom varied, the genre quickly became stale and mannered and younger directors started to question the perception of the yakuza as honorful warriors for justice.

However, while the ninkyo eiga was developed by several talented Toei contract directors like Tai Kato, Kosaku Yamashita or Masahiro Makino, its final deconstruction in the 1970s was almost solely the work of one man, Toei director Kinji Fukasaku.

Beginning in the late 1960s, Fukasaku should demistify the prevalent notion of the yakuza as honorable heroes. His yakuza eiga were rough and violent, he made great use of shaky-cam and more realistic fights and his heroes were no venerable saints, but brutal savages. By giving the genre a more realistic feeling, Fukasaku created the Jitsuroku eiga (actual record film), which succeeded the ninkyo eiga as the most popular yakuza eiga genre of the 1970s.

In the end, however, neither ninkyo eiga, nor jitsuroku eiga could sustain the harsh economic environment of postwar Japanese cinema. In the 1980s, the great yakuza boom faded and Toei ceased production of such films.

Yet, given that Quentin Tarantino has outed himself as a fan of Fukasaku’s gangster films and John Woo has claimed the influence of the ninkyo eiga for his own pathos-filled and violent “Heroic Bloodshed” films of the 1980s, it seems certain that, while becoming comatous as a genre, Toei’s yakuza films still have a profound influence on the work of Western and Asian directors alike and will continue to inspire young filmmakers for decades to come…

This article is dedicated to Ken Takakura and Bunta Sugawara, the two greatest stars of the yakuza film, who both died merely month after this article was originally written

1. Theater of Life: Hishakaku (Jinsei Gekijo: Hishakaku, 1963)

Theater of Life was one of the first big hits of the ninkyo eiga and helped to set the stylistic and narrative patterns for the upcoming yakuza eiga boom of the 1960s. However, the film will probably split the minds of the viewers as its story about a yakuza (Koji Tsuruta) whose wife commits adultery (with a character played by Ken Takakura, soon also a great leading man of the genre), while the latter is in prison for killing a hostile oyabun (gangster boss), is portrayed in a manner both sentimental and overtly melodramatic.

However, the giri-ninjo conflict seen here also presents the genre at its most effective. It concerns the conflict of Koji Tsuruta who, having forgiven his wife, is torn between his love for her and his obligations towards his yakuza brothers who are threatened by another devilish and violent yakuza clan.

In the end, Theater of Life combines both the weakest and most powerful aspects of the genre. The typically weak portrayal of the female characters, both histerical and bland, and a slow pace are faced with uniformly great performances (especially by Tsuruta in one of his most beloved roles) and a breathtakingly dense and pathos-filled mood.

While some might detest the film for its characeristically conservative attitude towards honor and its clicheed female characters, fans of the genre will find one of the purest examples of the genre (including its two sequels, making the series a triology) which contains this strangely affecting and very unique melodramatic mood, only the ninkyo eiga can provide, at its most carthartic and perfect.

2. Blood of Revenge (Meiji Kyokakuden: Sandai Shumei, 1965)

In contrast to Ken Takakura, whose ninkyo eiga personality was that of a honorful stoics in a cruel world, the second great male star of the genre, Koji Tsuruta, always gave his characters an air of melancholy and hopeless romanticism. A trait that can be seen at its most effective in Tai Katos Blood of Revenge, often cited as the definitive artistic accomplishment of the ninkyo eiga.

Thus, while the story about a yakuza torn between his love for the prostitute Haruta, Junko Fuji in a mesmerizing performance before she made her own breakthrough as an action heroine, and his own good clan, constantly attacked by another clan of evilish yakuza, is fairly run-off-the-mill material, the film is elevated above similar genre pictures by its geniuenly romantic and heartfelt mood, filled with emotional symbolism and subtle gestures.

In one of the most beloved scenes of the genre, Koji Tsurutas yakuza visits the funeral of Haruta’s father and gives her two peaches from her parents garden when he returns. A deeply moving moment, which reminds Haruta of her once innocent youth, before she had to live the sad existence of a forced prostitute.

Set in the Meiji era, the film also shows its directors, the masterful craftsman Tai Kato, characteristic talent for recreating a bygone time period with a natural sense for details and a powerful mise-en-scene. As effectively the romance is played out in this film, however, it is clear from the beginning that this love cannot be in the world of ninkyo. In the end, Koji Tsuruta’s yakuza will leave Haruta and seek justice for the unspeakable misdeeds his clan was subjected to – knowing too well that this will mean his certain death.

3. Abashiri Prison: Longing for Home (Abashiri Bangaichi: Bokyohen, 1965)

In the West, Teruo Ishii is mainly known for his many ero-guro eiga of the late 1960s and 1970s. Films, filled with extreme violence and bizarre fetishized sex scenes. In Japan, however, his numerous ninkyo eiga are usually seen as his most important work. From 1965 until 1972, he directed the first 10 parts of the eightteen-part Abashiri Prison series, which should not only boost its leading actor Ken Takakura to stardom, but also became the highest grossing Japanese film series of the 1960s.

While the first film, Abashiri Prison, was more of an prison breakout film than a ninkyo eiga and the second one, Abashiri Prison: Continued, was a weak heist comedy, the third part, Abashiri Prison: Longing for Home, emerges as a just perfect combination of the ninkyo eiga and the modernist directorial style of its director.

Set in contemporary Japan, instead of the Meiji era, the characters wear stylish Western suits and instead of the characteristically melodramatic ninkyo eiga soundtrack, Ishiis main composer Masao Yagi employs a lofty low-key jazz score.

The film may be hampered by its uneventful middle-part and the inclusion of an African-Japanese girl being grotesquely played by a Japanese actress in blackface, but some scenes belong to the most iconic examples of the style and honorful gusto of the genre. The most striking of them features a thrilling sword-duel between the heroic yakuza hero, played by Ken Takakura, and the killer Joe, whose white suit is stained by the blood of his tubercolosis caused cough seizures.

4. Big Gambling Ceremony (Bakuchiuchi Socho Tobaku, 1968)

It was not long after the invention of the ninkyo eiga that the genre became stale and formulaic. However, while the basic plot elements were seldom varied, it was the central conflict between human emotions (ninjo) and social responsibility (giri) which gave every ninkyo eiga its unique nuances. If employed effectively, the giri-ninjo conflict could be tremendously powerful and could raise individual films high above gangster pictures from other countries.

In Big Gambling Ceremony, the fourth film in the ten-part Bakuchiuchi series, this giri-ninjo conflict is brought to its perfection. Justly, the film is hailed as the supreme achievement of the genre and was once described by famous author Yukio Mishima as “resembling ancient tragedies”. The story concerns itself with a yakuza, once again played by Koji Tsuruta in one of his most powerful performances, who acts unwillingly as a executioner for his devilish and cowardly oyabun.

By fullfilling his duty towards his clan, killing several of his close friends in the process, the self-sacrificing hero slowly destroys his own life. When in the end, he finally snaps and proceeds to kill his boss, the latter tries to saw his life by reminding him of the way of ninkyo. In the probably most frequently quoted line of the genre, Tsuruta’s yakuza answers, “I don’t know anything about the way of ninkyo. I’m just a low-down killer”, before he finally ends the life of his oyabun.

5. Red Peony Gambler (Hibotan bakuto, 1968)

Traditionally, the ninkyo eiga is a very male-centered genre. Women usually appear as weak and histerical characters, the personification of the reprehensible ninjo, which hinder the male hero from fullfilling his honorful obligations towards his yakuza brothers. There is a certain irony in the fact that it was this conservative and male-dominated genre that gave birth to one of the greatest female action heroines of all time, Junko Fuji.

She may not have been the first female action star but in previous films the female heroines usually had to trade their femininity for oversexed male fantasies and vulgar behaviour. Junko Fuji’s characters, on the other hand, were not only sword-wielding heroics but also enchanting and sly women whose breathtaking beauty and gracefulness always ensured that they were never overshadowed by their male co-stars.

Her greatest success came with the eight-part Red Peony Gambler (1968 – 1972) series where the actress plays the honorable and stoic gambler and oyabun, “Red Peony” Oryu. Her tragic fate as brave woman in a male-dominated society gave those films nuanced and melancholic conflicts and the technical mastery of the series’ directors, among them Kosaku Yamashita and Tai Kato, made some of the films true classics of the genre.

It was, however, Junko Fuji who united every film with her beauty and grace. Director Paul Schrader justly once said that “Western cinema has no equivalent for a gracious, polite woman who, given the proper circumstances, can exact violent physical revenge upon the men who oppress her without ever losing her sense of femininity”.

Since Akira Kurosawa’s groundbreaking movie, Rashomon (1950), introduced Japanese cinema to the Western world, the Western film critics’ processes of discovery and evaluation of the Japan’s greatest directorial talents have constantly been both ideologically cloaked and selective.

First, humanist critics like Donald Richie hailed filmmakers who demonstrated a unique style and whose work supported a strong humanist attitude. Meanwhile, Richie dismissed directors he considered to be mere producers of commercial films—solid craftsmen at best.

This critical standpoint was then picked up by French critics, such as members of the infamous Cahiers du Cinéma, who applied their Auteur theory to the Japanese cinema. Subsequently, the Cahiers du Cinéma celebrated the Japanese masters who had a unified style and content in their bodies of work, but the French critics condemned more diverse directors.

The consequences of this rather limited perception of Japanese cinema continues to haunt the work of every new Japanese film writer. To this day, ridiculously narrow-minded critics and scholars thoughtlessly name, adopt, and redistribute renowned directors Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, and Yasujiro Ozu as “The Big Three of Japan’s Golden Age of Cinema.”

Japanese genre directors are largely dismissed by film critics, and Japanese film criticism as a whole emerges as a confined space in which the work of “auteurs”—such as Kurosawa and Ozu—receive the most attention and often prolific, in-depth analyses. Many other great masters of Japanese cinema, however, still linger in the shadows of obscurity.

Nevertheless, the advent of the home video in the 1980s slowly changed the Japanese cinematic situation. Curious, young students of Japanese cinema, as well as often devoted fans or projectionists, began to rediscover the great Japanese genre cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. The arrival of the home video also gave talented studio artisans, like Kenji Misumi or Kinji Fukasaku, the attention their impressive bodies of work well deserved.

This list tries to go one step further and present ten great Japanese directors whose work, until recently, has received little-to-no attention in the West. As with most top ten film lists, the choices of the respective directors are meant to be nothing more than representative.

Since this list focuses primarily on directors who had their directorial prime in the 1950s and 1960s, few of the great directors of pre-war or modern Japanese cinema are included. Needless to say, many more brilliant Japanese directors that are to be rediscovered do exist. In times of globalization and the internet, this rediscovery doesn’t rest solely in the hands of Japanese film scholars anymore.

In this respect, this list should serve as an inspiration for every film fan to look beyond the well-known names of Japanese cinema. After all, one fan reading this list can be the individual to discover the next great, forgotten director of Japanese cinema and reevaluate his or her work for the public.

10. Toshio Masuda (1927 – now)

Despite the fact that Toshio Masuda was one of the most commercially successful directors of the famous production company, Nikkatsu, his work is doomed to exist behind the shadow of his more famous colleague, Seijun Suzuki. The reason for this is Suzuki’s alleged rebel status and extraordinary style.

He is said to have enriched the typical gangster films of his studio with his attitude and style, which, when made by other contract directors, normally were unoriginal and dull. Moreover, the trademark coolness and outlandish 1960s stylization of Suzuki’s films were highly influenced by Nikkatsu’s studio policy. A fact often forgotten by Western critics. Yet Masuda, who had an integral part in shaping the style of Nikkatsu’s typical company product, is often overlooked.

During his time as a contract director for Nikkatsu, Masuda specialized in a genre called mukokuseki akushon (borderless action). Set in contemporary Japan, these films strived for a more international style in which the main characters were usually former boxers and cops, drove in fancy modern cars, and drank their whiskey in Westernized nightclubs (instead of traditional Japanese inns).

Already his third film in the genre, Masuda managed to direct one of the highest grossing films of the year, the highly atmospheric Rusty Knife (Sabita naifu, 1958). In the following decade, he established himself as one of the studios top directors who, in contrast to Seijun Suzuki, was allowed to make films with Nikkatsu’s biggest star, Yujiro Ishihara.

Often those films, concentrating more on atmosphere than character or story, were fairly trivial affairs. However, when Nikkatsu Action films adopted a more somber tone in the late 1960s, it was also Toshio Masuda who directed two of the greatest masterpieces of that era: Velvet Hustler (Kurenai no nagareboshi, 1967) and Gangster VIP (Borai yori: Daikanbu, 1969).

Contrary to Suzuki, Masuda never allowed the visual excess reign over the content of his films. Thus, while his films were not as visually striking as Suzuki’s, they usually were much more emotionally arresting and visually united.

For example, Velvet Hustler is modeled slightly after Godard’s Breathless (1959). The film—with the eternal coolness and air of melancholy of its main protagonist; the laid back atmosphere, and the excellent low-key jazz soundtrack—reveals itself as one of the greatest works to embody the tone of the Swinging Sixties.

Gangster VIP (1969), on the other hand, is actually a hybrid gangster film which effectively juxtaposes the international atmosphere of the classical Nikkatsu Action film with the honorable and pathos-filled ninkyo eiga-type yakuza films that the Toei Company made at that time.

Even after Nikkatsu switched to pornography in the 1970s, Masuda continued to helm often highly successful big-budget blockbusters for other studios.

While those films were highly restricted by studio requirements and the general decline of the Japanese film industry, at least during his time at Nikkatsu´s production facilities, he made some of the most perfect modern and hip gangster films to ever graze the Japanese silver screens. For this alone, he deserves to stand shoulder to shoulder next to his critically acclaimed contemporary, Seijun Suzuki.

9. Masahiro Makino (1908 – 1993)

Without exaggeration, Masahiro Makino is one of the most prolific directors of all-time. In his forty-six years as a director, he made no less than 261 films—most of them feature length. Why, then, are his achievements largely neglected by the critics? Makino is regarded as a hack by the few who know him.

He is seen as a craftsman who filmed fast, but whose films were barely more than routine programmers. Often forgotten, however, is (at least in the earlier part of his career) that he created some of the most influential jidai-geki ever made.

The son of famous Japanese film pioneer Shozo Makino, Masahiro Makino began directing period pieces in 1926 for his father’s production company. He rose to fame when he made grim samurai spectacles like his Roningai series (1928-1929) and Beheading Place (Kubi no za, 1929).

These films demystified the prevalent notion of the samurai as honorable heroes and depicted them as ordinary human beings who barely manage to survive in a cold, cruel world. Even though Makino emerged as a socially conscious filmmaker, it is true that most of his postwar films are fairly routine.

After World War II, he soon found himself working for the aspiring Toei Company where the now highly regarded veteran was busy directing the usual company product: countless trivial period films in the 1950s and ninkyo eiga-type yakuza films in the 1960s.

Yet, as the film critic Sadao Yamane argues, the director’s rushed filming practice “also contributed to Makino’s speedy, rythmic film style.” Though the stories are prosaic, most of Makino’s postwar films have gained other features from his unquestionable expertise.

For instance, the lyrical poetry of The Red Cherry Blosson Family (Junko intai kinen eiga: Kantô hizakura ikka, 1972), the retirement film of great Yakuza film icon Junko Fuji; the genuinely funny period comedy, Bull’s Eye of Love (Oshidori kago, 1959); or the highly atmospheric, yet somewhat dull Tateshi Danpei (1950), written by none other than Akira Kurosawa.

Makino’s Western equivalents might be directors like Michael Curtis or Anthony Mann, who seldom left familiar genre patterns, but whose expert craftsmanship made even their minor works never less than entertaining.

8. Kazuo Kuroki (1930 – 2006)

The son of Masahiro Makino, Kazuo Kuroki’s work as a filmmaker couldn’t be further away from the mostly conventional studio programmers in which his father specialized. Directing his first feature film in 1966—when the Western interest in Japan’s artistically daring and innovative art films had waned—Kazuo Kuroki’s imaginative and experimental works were mostly ignored by Western critics.

In Japan, however, he already established himself as one of the most fascinating new filmmakers with his first film, Silence Has No Wings (Tobenei chinmoku, 1966). Connected by the image of a caterpillar being unintentionally transported from Nagasaki to Hokkaido, the film functions as an allegory on the Japanese post war society told through several human stories.

Kuroki’s creative use of a handheld camera and his poetic nature imagery earns his spot on this list. One of the first scenes alone, showing a boy hunting a butterfly, must be named one of the most visually lyrical and moving sequences in the history of Japanese cinema.

In the following years, Kuroki continued to cultivate a lyrical and poetic film style while observing the Japanese postwar society. The films Tomorrow (Ashita, 1988) and Face of Jizo (Chichi to kuraseba, 2004), for example, deal with the aftermath of the atomic bomb; other films are deeply rooted in genre cinema but transcend genre mechanisms with visual experimentation and philosophical themes.

Thus, the yakuza film, Evil Spirits of Japan (Nihon no akuryo, 1970)—despite culminating in a rather atypical one-against-all climax—primarily is an existential drama about a cop and a criminal changing identities.

Yet, his masterpiece is probably the independently produced jidai-geki, The Assassination of Ryoma (Ryoma ansatsu, 1974). Shot in grainy 35 mm, and mimicking old black and white photos, the film portrays the historical figure Ryoma Sakamoto (1836-1867), whose progressive ideas were integral in overthrowing the Tokugawa shogunat, which led Japan to modernity.

Both melancholic and funny, the film denies Sakamoto any idealization; instead, he is perceived as an ordinary human being. Nontheless, Kuroki, pays tribute to Sakamoto`s revolutionary ideas.

In Roningai (1990), Kuroki paid homage to his father by remaking one of the latter’s greatest successes. Though it is well-crafted, the film is quite pedestrian and not one of Kuroki’s best works. Nevertheless, it gave seasoned genre star, Shintaro Katsu, a memorable last screen credit.

Katsu’s character, the dilapidated Ronin, proved that Kuroki transcended above everything he touched. The filmmaker’s use of characterization is mastery, especially with his poetic film style and his fine sensibilities in drawing his actors’ screen personas.

7. Tai Kato (1916 – 1985)

Among the many almost unknown directors featured in this list, Tai Kato is probably one of the least known in the West; even in Japan, he seems to be largely forgotten. Yet, the critics’ negligence of his filmography should not mask fact that Tai Kato could actually be named one of the most influential filmmakers of Japanese cinema.

The nephew of renowned director, Sadao Yamanaka, Kato initially started by directing documentaries during the war. He made his first feature film for the production company, Takara Productions, where he subsequently churned out several low-budget jidai-geki. In the late 1950s, he switched over to the aspiring Toei Company, where he was assigned to shoot so-called Toei gorakuhen (Toei Entertainment Edition).

Usually those films were trivial jidai-geki—with young stars, covered in heavy make-up—which were designed to play at the lower end of a double-feature. Instead of repeating the usual stereotypes prevalent in those type of genre films, Tai Kato managed to infuse this genre with a groundbreaking sense for realism.

In films like Wind, Woman and Vagabonds (Kaze to onna to tabigarasu, 1958) or Ghost of Oiwa (Kaidan Oiwa no borei, 1961), he abolished the use of make-up entirely, providing credibility to the screen characters by carefully drawing on the respective actors’ personalities.

Some critics argue that director Akira Kurosawa—with his gritty realism and unheroic action scenes—revolutionized the jidai-geki. Kurosawa, however, directed big-budget films, and his sheer magnitude was unreachable for the average contract director. Tai Kato, on the other hand, directed low-budget features.

Thus, it is an understatement to claim that he was an even more pivotal figure than Kurosawa, especially in the transformation of the period film—from simple escapist entertainment in the ’50 to the more the serious, nuanced and violent jidai-geki of the ’60s.

When the Toei Company started producing ninkyo eiga in the ’60s, Kato enhanced these genre films with well-drawn characters and a somber atmosphere, which often resulted in uniformly great performances by his actors. Junko Fuji, one the greatest stars of the ninkyo eiga, called Kato’s film Blood of Revenge (Meiji kyokaku: Sandaime shumei, 1965) her personal favorite of Toei Company’s ninkyo eiga.

The rushed mass production methods of his company also taught Tai Kato to cultivate his unique and highly economical style. His camera often remained in fixed, low-angle positions, running an unusually long time, so as not to interrupt the natural, emotional flow of his films.

Beginning in the 1970s, Tai Kato—who always tried to refine his style from film to film— experienced a period of unrestricted excellence. Among the many masterpieces, often long and complex yakuza or jidai-geki epics, he made in the last years of his career, especially his last work, Like a Burning Flame (Honoo no gotoku, 1981) deserves wider exposure.

The moving story of a Bakumatsu era gambler, whose tragic quest to protect the beloved women of his life often ends in misery, ranks among the last really great jidai-geki. The film signified Tai Kato’s importance as a director, who transcended stereotyped narratives of genre films. His skills make his films truly unique and often masterfully crafted classics of the Japanese cinema.

6. Kosaku Yamashita (1930 – 1998)

Like Tai Kato, Kosaku Yamashita worked as a contract director for Toei. While his films seldom reached the heights of Kato’s best works, Yamashita was nevertheless a director of taste and integrity. He never let the generic nature of his many genre pictures limit his talent for the creation of atmosphere and for milking sincere pathos out of often hackneyed scenarios.

Yamashita made his debut in 1961, but he first gained acclaim for his third feature, the matatabi eiga: Yakuza of Seki (Seki no Yatappe, 1963). The film is an adaptation of a well-known novel about a feudal yakuza who cares for a fatherless child—one whose father was killed before his own eyes.

Yamashita, however, transcends the story into a genuinely moving tragedy of a low-born man being forced to take the violent path of a wandering gambler—instead of a common citizen—due to the demands of his criminal environment.

However, Yamashita didn’t come fully into his own until the 1960s when Toei switched from producing jidai-geki to yakuza eiga. In those days, Toei’s gangster film output consisted mainly of so-called ninkyo eiga, films. Primarily, honorable yakuza were caught in a steady conflict between their often cruel obligations toward their yakuza brothers (giri) and their human emotions (ninjo).

Often those films were reactionary and generic; In Yamashita’s hands, however, the genre flourished. His film, Big Gambling Ceremony (Bakuchiuchi: Socho tobaku, 1968), is hailed by genre aficionados as one of the greatest classics of the Japanese gangster film.

The story is about a noble yakuza who fulfills his duty toward his boss by bringing misery upon himself, and Yamashita brings the central giri-ninjo conflict to its very essence. In fact, the last statement of the main character—played by ninkyo eiga icone Koji Tsuruta (before he finally slays his devilish boss)—belongs to the most celebrated lines of the genre: “I know nothing about the way of the yakuza.”

Yamashita also directed Red Peony Gambler (Hibotan bakuto, 1968). First of a revolutionary film series, the director transformed the male-oriented genre by casting a female yakuza in the lead role.

By giving the female lead a strong—but feminine and sensitive—personality, Yamashita and script writer, Norifumi Suzuki, created a completely new type of action heroine—one who simultaneously enchants and slices up her enemies. Actress Junko Fuji turned into a successful film star into after performing in this film of tremendous proportions.

Yamashita remained a stalwart of Toei’s until his death in 1998, directing everything from big-budget war movies to the more realistic jitsuroku eiga-type yakuza eiga. Yet, his greatest works were made within the ninkyo eiga circle.

Unparalleled by gangster films from other countries, Yamashita’s unobtrusive mise-en-scène, sincere pathos, and strong emphasis on the giri-ninjo tragedy—which often tore apart the characters of Yamashita’s films—gave those works a bleak and dense tone. By creating them, Kosaku Yamashita repeatedly proved himself again as the great master of the ninkyo eiga.