On the 15th of October, 2025, someone who I would argue was the most gifted director to work within the 60s/70s Japanese Yakuza film scene died. That was Kazuo Ikehiro. He joined Daiei Films, a company that at one point owned their own baseball company, and currently no longer exists. But, back in the day, this used to be up there with the big names like Toho in the Japanese industry.
For those not in the know, Yakuza films aren’t about the 20th/21st century hand-chopping-off gang. It’s about feudal Japan and the “gangsters” (not really gangsters as we think of them) who roam around. Kenji Misumi may be the biggest name in the space, creating the Lone Wolf and Cub franchise and six films in the Zatoichi series. Some may argue that he’s the most influential… and they’d probably be right.
See, I’m not here to claim that Ikehiro started the scene, or is the most influential, or whatever. What I am trying to argue is that he was the best director in the scene. You can tell when it’s Ikehiro behind the camera. When he makes a flick, and despite how much I like them, they’re flicks, not films, it feels more like a mixtape than a straight-forward story. I don’t think I’m seeing the story, I think I’m seeing the story told in a very specific way. Through his stylisation, he almost makes what isn’t shown as important that is.
And, it’s also really fuckin’ cool.
While his 2nd/3rd (depending on the source) film, his first one that isn’t lost to time. The story is classic Yakuza - young, good looking gangster gets hired to take out a fellow Yakuza. He’s about to, but then finds out he’s a family man. He refuses. But the gang takes him out anyway. Feeling guilt, the gangster helps the widow (who of course falls in love with him and - SPOILER - tragically dies at the end of the tale) and kid moves back to the widow’s parent’s town. Once he does that, we have a gambling scene. You need a gambling scene. It’s like a T-Series movie without a fucking dance number. These films live and die on the strength of their gambling scene. While not as inventive as something like Zatoichi either cheating or discovering cheating, due to the Ikehiro of it all, oh - this film lives. Of course, the gang who killed the family man comes to the town, looking for blood. He defeats them, single-handed… and then walks away. The kid screams his name as he walks away, but he can’t raise him - he’s a Yakuza, and any kid with such a dishonorable father figure is surely damned.
To highlight a single piece of brilliance from Ikehiro, would be when the gang marches with flaming sticks. He, like a genius, waited until it was really windy to shoot it. He then got the gang to march into the wind. You may wonder why? Because then, the flame flew behind the stick, almost like a flag. A flag of flames - a PERFECT metaphor for Yakuza gang violence and conquest in feudal Japan.
Ichikawa Raizo, the star, plays the role as a playful charismatic figure with a dark past. Kinda like Matt Smith and David Tennant (the first time) as the Doctor. It works WONDERS, and neither half of this complicated portrait feels limited by the other.
Skipping over more lost media, we find ourselves in Seven Miles To Nakayama. Yes, there’s a wandering protagonist, yes there’s a gambling scene, yes he has his own theme song. And to highlight that gambling scene - Ikehiro alternates between quick smash cuts and long, graceful panning views to execute tone so perfectly that you find your heart racing and slowing with the morally grey man who (spoilers) gets into gambling debt and needs the hero to save him. But despite such a stereotypical set up, there is an amazing twist dug in the third act, that was set up by the very first scene.
Nakajirô Tomita as the gluttenous corrupt official is such a delightfully evil and hateful display that I can’t help BUT be drawn into him as he speaks. In this genre of movie, it’s very rare that the villain’s performance is as stand-out as this.
Ikehiro, proving that he’s the best to ever do it, is his usual self. In one scene, the hero talks to a woman of the night. From elsewhere in the brothel, another woman yells out to her. The first woman tells her to enter the room, and so she does. Ikehiro opts for an active camera, which follows her as she walks into the room. As she goes to sit down, the camera sinks down with her. But the genius that he is, he placed a room divider between the three characters and the camera, a room divider that is only revealed during the camera’s journey to sink down. Through the room divider, without a single cut, we retreat from the previously active, almost stylised participation into a fly on the wall, observing. That’s cinema, there’s no other word for it.
Another great shot comes in the last ten minutes of the film. The good guy is facing off against the villain. Ikehiro places the camera in the middle of the ruins. Not only are we a fly on the wall, by having the destroyed wall frame the shot on both sides, he is constantly reminding us of the very real consequences that this violence, however glorified, has. It’s a very Kill Bill device. The bad guy walks backwards, into some smoke. This is a classic device - bad guy in smoke. But here, it’s inverted. The bad guy doesn’t walk out of the smoke, he walks into it. He retreats towards evil. But, in the name of revenge, the hero walks towards the smoke too. Holding his sword in front of his face, he gets enveloped. These two devices pull us out of the movie - and make us rethink not only this film, but the genre as a whole. Why should we accept the myth of violence being solved by violence? Is this a triumph or a tragedy? Again, amazing.
Every (Ike)hero has their kryptonite. And for Kazuo, that’s, for some reason, comedy.
Maybe there’s a cultural difference, maybe it’s dated, there could be a hundred thousand reasons why, but if I got into listing all of them, I’d have a lengthy essay and no laughter. For a comedy.
This is his Boxcar Bertha. And if you don’t know what that is, it’s Martin Scorsese’s Cut The Shadow. But, in Scorsese’s defence, that was his first movie. This is Ikehiro’s seventh.
Scorsese’s seventh movie was The King of Comedy. Hell, even aside from Scorsese, Hayo Miyazaki’s seventh movie was Princess Monoke, Fellini’s seventh movie was La Dolce Vita, Edward Yang's seventh movie was Yi Yi and Nolan’s seventh movie was Inception (See note). So, if we’re comparing the seventh movies in filmographies, my argument for Ikehiro’s greatness and why he should be known by general fans of the art form aside from the yakuza genre junkies, isn’t all that strong.
But… I don’t think that even Ikehiro would argue that this should be in the Criterion Collection (he actually has three films in the Criterion Collection due to his work on the Zatoichi franchise, coming up really soon). This is Daiei Films, and it’s 1963. He was used as a director-for-hire, I’m guessing. So, a lot of the blame lies with Daiei - who the hell hires Ikehiro for a comedy?
This is forgotten to history - the first page of Google mistakes it for Stranger Things: The First Shadow - and that’s not as great a tragedy as some of his other films.
NOTE - they’re all writer/directors, I’m just counting the films that both wrote and directed.
Zatoichi is like Daredevil. In fact, in the 70s, when Daredevil goes to Japan, he gets called Zatoichi as he (as Matt Murdock) leaves the plane.
Zatoichi, for those who don't know Daredevil, is a blind swordsman. Swordsmen with disabilities was a real niche (see the One Armed Swordsman), and, unlike Gamera, Daiei was actually at the forefront here - and Zatoichi is, at least in the modern day, the most popular disabled swordsman from 1960s Japanese cinema.
In fact, and this may not be true but I did read it online, one Quentin Tarantino wanted to make a Zatoichi film, after Kill Bill. However, he lost interest after Takeshi Kitano’s reboot in 2003.
The specific Zatoichi film Tarantino bought the rights to was Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage - which was directed by Ikehiro.
But this isn't a review of Pilgrimage, it's a review of Chest Of Gold.
And it's fucking good! Look, the first two Zatoichi films have a different vibe from the rest of the films, and such, by this one, I may have still been … waiting for the switchback, and by the two other Ikehiro ones, I had came to the realisation there was no switchback, but looking at it like it's own stand alone thing… yeah. It's fucking good.
If you were to watch Zatoichi, my advice would be to do it over three years (I did it in a month), or like, just pick and choose the best ones.
At the time, I wrote this:
“This franchise keeps retreading the same ground. Though I did like the farmer's revolution. 19 more films…”
Okay, so like every Zatoichi film is a Zatoichi film where Zatoichi (Zatoichi, Zatoichi, Zatoichi) shows off…
But this is a film where Zatoichi really shows off. I mean, read the title, for Chrissakes!
Ikehiro delights in the violence Zatoichi reluctantly leaves in his wake. It’s almost poetic, the way the camera moves and weaves and - I really mean this - dances to keep with Zatoichi in these fights.
Hell, Ikehiro literally starts off with a fly on the wall approach - as the film starts with a fly’s POV of Zatoichi, before the fly (and us) get sliced in half by the samurai master.
And, if you’ve seen the film, you know about the firework scene - where Zatoichi faces off against the most villainous villains in a dark night, with fireworks alighting this firework of bloodshed!
It’s Ikehiro at his most Ikehiro-ist. Let me go look at what I wrote on Letterboxd for the film…
Oh, here we go:
“You gotta stop worrying about plots, and let the kick-ass action and beautiful scenery just wash over you… I might even watch the next one with no subs, just rawdogging that shit. 18 more to go… Also saw people on the Criterion subreddit are watching one of these a day until Christmas. I wanna beat them to the end.”
Stop worrying about plots? Like, in less than 6 months after this review, I managed to sell a very plot-heavy, very dialogue heavy script to a Czech producer. Really rootin’ for the other team, huh?
Holy shit, is this a strong film.
Ikehiro plunges us into an immortal wasteland, devoid of ethics, where our “hero” spends more time worrying about the optics of what he accomplishes than what he actually accomplishes.
There's a couple moments I'd like to pinpoint here:
I really like the chase scenes. By having the camera speed up and slow down with the chased characters, I feel like I'm uncomfortable and stressed, as the normally steady camera is removed from something I can rely upon.
As this moment happens in the last ten minutes, I'll tread carefully upon spoilers, but needless to say, the moment where the music CUTS OUT - chills.
While I'm not the biggest fan of films that are blatantly pro-Christian, the shot of the persecuted Christian from a very high angle was a clever use of the camera.
Ikehiro, throughout the film, emphasizes the theme of isolation and loneliness. Many of the shots focused on the space in between people, and when the film spends time in jails and prisons, Ikehiro shoots the characters through the bars, making a point of them being alone.
I haven't seen any of the other Sleepy Eyes movies, but the reviews on Letterboxd made it seem like I'm not really missing out. Ikehiro manages to change the protagonist from evil to murky, and the world from murky to evil (according to reviewers who have watched the first three Sleepy Eyes). I think that change sounds like a good idea. Well done, Ikehiro.