Tattooed Life

Tetsu kills for the yakuza. The last job is a trap; his own organisation sent him to die. His brother Kenji steps in and kills a man to save him. The two have to run. Kenji was going to university and wanted to be a painter; now he is wanted. They leave the city and take work as labourers on a dam. Tetsu hides his past and shows the tattoo on his back to nobody. Kenji, meanwhile, gets close to the boss's wife. Seijun Suzuki directs. Hideki Takahashi plays Tetsu. It was made at the Nikkatsu studio. Suzuki was making films to order for the studio at the time, on low budgets; even so he experimented with form, and in the end he was dismissed. Its most cited scene is the finale; a fight is shot through the glass floor of a room and the camera sits beneath the men fighting. That shot is often mentioned in Japanese genre cinema. The subject is brotherhood and debt; Tetsu thinks he did not save his brother's life but ruined it. The usual honour narrative of yakuza films is weakened here; the organisation is nowhere protective. The use of colour and the arrangement of space announce Suzuki's later films. Who it is for: viewers who like sixties Japanese genre cinema and Suzuki. Who it is not for: the first half runs straight, the characters are thinly written, and the ending is abrupt.