Concrete Playground

Kinji Fukasaku’s Battles Without Honour and Humanity (1973) harks back to a time when directors of mob films didn’t care about “slick,” they just focused on “violent”.

The film follows Shozo Hirono (Bunta Sugawara), living the thug life on the mean streets of Hiroshima in 1945. In its post-war state, the city is an ideal battlefield for feuding Yakuza factions, under the watch of a dubious Japanese government.

Battles covers ten years in its 99 minutes, and each generation of bosses seems to possess even less mercy than the last. The result is one of the most frenzied and unrelentingly intense films you’re ever likely to see.

In a statement for his subsequent film Battle Royale (2000), Fukasaku says that he possessed “a poisonous hatred” for adults after his high school class was drafted to work on munitions for Japanese soldiers fighting in WWII. After being caught in crossfire, Fukasaku and his surviving classmates were made to bury the corpses.

“This is the point of departure for all my films,” he says in the statement. “Lots of people die in my films. They die terrible deaths. But I make them this way because I don’t believe anyone would ever love or trust the films I make, any other way.”