Wild Detective / Outlaw Cop / やさぐれ刑事 / Yasagure keiji (1976)

Obscure Japanese Film #58

 

Yoshio Harada

 

Based on a 1975 novel of the same name by Giichi Fujimoto (1933-2012), this Shochiku production stars an impressively-sideburned Yoshio Harada as Nishino, a police detective based in Hokkaido’s capital, Sapporo. When he learns that members of an Osaka-based yakuza gang, the Jumonji-gumi, are flying in to organise a drug-trafficking network with the local mob, he goes to the airport to check them out and discovers that their leader is none other than Sugitani (Etsushi Takahashi), a criminal he had arrested and sent to prison seven years earlier. Naturally, there’s no love lost between these two and Nishino also wants to prevent the gang establishing themselves on his turf, so he and his colleagues begin harassing them at every opportunity. Sugitani decides he’s not going to take this lying down, so he poses as a car salesman and seduces Nishino’s wife, Maho (Naoko Otani). This proves to be easy as Nishino is so wrapped up in his job that he pays her little attention. Sugitani even talks her into running away with him and, by the time she learns his true identity and motivation, they’re already on a boat speeding away from Hokkaido to Honshu and there’s no going back. When Nishino learns about this, he’s so incensed that he decks a colleague, quits the force and goes after Sugitano, tracking him first to Aomori, where he discovers that Maho has been forced into prostitution. Maho becomes her husband’s spy, feeding him information about Sugitano’s movements, but Nishino will have to pursue his enemy to the other end of the country before he finally catches up with him.

Naoko Otani

 

Yusuke Watanabe was a prolific director and screenwriter who directed 64 films and numerous television dramas between 1957 and his death in 1985 at the age of 58. He led a rather schizophrenic career, pioneering Toei’s early ventures into eroticism as a means to compete with TV with films like Two Bitches (1964), later making a series of movie vehicles for pop band The Drifters as well as comedies, dramas and seemingly just about everything else, including episodes of Monkey (1978-80). While little of Watanabe's work is accessible outside Japan, at least with subtitles, he has done a good job here on the whole and keeps things moving at a relentlessly fast pace. The film is also well-shot, mostly on location, by Keiji Maruyama, and features an effective music score by Hajime Kaburagi. 

Etsushi Takahashi

 

Watanabe’s film has one of the longest pre-credits sequences I’ve ever seen – it’s not until 18 minutes in, after Nishino quits the force, that the main title suddenly pops up on the screen. Wild Detective also features one of the most unsympathetic ‘heroes’ I can recall in a film – Nishino treats his nice wife like a doormat and, although the fact that she leaves him is entirely his own fault, the first thing he does when they are reunited is to slap her around. In fact, there’s really nothing he does in the whole film which elicits any sympathy, so if you’re looking for a film with someone to root for, look elsewhere! 

Although Ken Takakura is listed among the cast credits on IMDb, he’s not in it. However, it was nice to see Hideji Otaki appear briefly as a shadowy Mr Big, as he also did for director Kei Kumai in both A Chain of Islands (1965) and Wilful Murder (1981).

Hideji Otaki

Mr Mrs Miss Lonely / ミスター・ミセス・ミス・ロンリー (1980)

 Obscure Japanese Film #10

Ryudo Uzaki, Mieko Harada and Yoshio Harada

Best-known for playing the vengeful Lady Kaede in Ran (1985), a very young-looking Mieko Harada here plays Chisato, a girl who becomes involved with a couple of minor league criminals (played with insouciant cool by Ryudo Uzaki and Yoshio Harada) looking to scam a corrupt, model-transport-loving businessman (veteran star Rentaro Mikuni, known in the West for films such as Hara Kiri and The Burmese Harp). This brief synopsis probably makes it sound like this meandering, new wave-style film has more of a structured plot than it actually does, although there is quite a good twist ending (albeit one which may not bear too much scrutiny). There’s a framing device of Chisato writing to an unseen novelist to express how much she identifies with the protagonist of his novel, but this seemed entirely unnecessary to me. Another random element is the presence of musicians from the Down Town Fighting Boogie Woogie Band, who repeatedly appear playing in the background of various street scenes (actor Ryudo Uzaki was actually the band’s frontman). 

 

Mieko Harada and Rentaro Mikuni

Chisato could not be more different from Lady Kaede; here, playing an apparently feckless teenager, Harada wears her hair in braids for most of the film and, somewhat annoyingly, is always sniffing for no apparent reason. Co-written under a pen-name by Harada (who also co-produced) in collaboration with director Tatsumi Kumashiro (best-known for his Roman porno films), this Arts Theatre Guild production feels self-indulgent in that one suspects not only that they made a lot of it up on the spot, but that not a single suggestion was rejected. However, despite the fact that the film is much too long (2 hours 18 minutes) and would undoubtedly stretch the patience of many viewers, I rather liked it on the whole due to the lack of clichés, the oddball characters (which also include Kihachi Okamoto favourite Hideyo Amamoto as a wily old schemer) and the consistently unexpected ways in which scenes were staged. It’s also well-photographed (Takao Oshikiri) and scored (Shuichi Chino). 

Hideyo Amamoto and Yoshio Harada