Spotlight on Rokuro Mochizuki : Another Lonely Yakuza Auteur?

If you're a reader of Impact magazine, it's a fair bet you know all about Takeshi 'Beat' Kitano. You're likely pretty well versed in the output of Takashi Miike. And the names of Shinya Tsukamoto and Kiyoshi Kurosawa are unlikely to be new ones. But what about Rokuro Mochizuki? Well, you'd be forgiven for scratching your head – even though Mochizuki is regarded in Japan as one of the leading directors to have emerged during the 1990s.

His profile in the west has never been especially high – even though in 1999 he received a ten-film retrospective at Europe's leading showcase of far-eastern talent, the Rotterdam Film Festival. But he's never been short of influential admirers, not least Dutch critic Tom Mes who runs the invaluable Midnight Eye website (www.midnighteye.com) and wrote Agitator, the equally invaluable book about Miike.

As Mes puts it (in Midnight Eye's review of Coward [2000]), Mochizuki "is one of the Japanese genre specialists undeservedly swept away in the tidal wave of uproar caused by the films of Takashi Miike. In many ways, the directors are comparable. Both slumming it in the V-Cinema [straight-to-video] industry, churning out hardboiled Yazuka flicks by the dozens, most of which are of more than above average interest, and show an undeniably original film-making talent at work… The big difference between the two is that Mochizuki's work is a lot more difficult to fit into a 'cult' category. There are no sawed-off legs, exploding planets, dancing zombies or men chopped in half in his films. And this is perhaps why he hasn't been singled out for cult reverence."

Mes is spot-on – but anyone watching the first scene of Mochizuki's 1995 Another Lonely Hitman (Shin Kanashiki Hittoman) may wonder whether they're in for a gorefest that might make even Ichi the Killer look tame. We see a tense gunman injecting heroin in a restaurant toilet, before entering the dining area and blowing the brains out of his 'hit' – literally so, as we see the pulpy cerebral tissue glopping out all over the neatly laid-out tablecloth. "Call the police!" shouts out the hitman – later identified as Tachibana (Ryo Ishibashi) – as, in a classic Yakuza display of bravado, the assassin happily accepts a lengthy incarceration as a crucial part of his mob career.

British audiences can follow the rest of Tachibana's story for the first time, as Another Lonely Hitman is released this month by our most enterprising small-screen distributor, Artsmagic (www.artsmagicdvd.com). Clearly seeking to rectify the historical injustice perpetrated on Mochizuki's films in the last few years, they're releasing several of his movies onto DVD: next up are the three other films which explore similar turf – The Fire Within (Onibi, 1997), A Yakuza in Love (Koi gokudo, 1997) and Mobster's Confessions (Gokudo zangeroku, 1998). The Fire Within is essentially a companion piece to Another Lonely Hitman – both films based on books by Yukio Yamanouchi, who before taking up writing was a lawyer for a real-life Yakuza firm in Osaka.

Artsmagic have no shortage of material to draw on in future if the Mochizuki releases prove successful – the best estimate is that he's completed no less than 29 Yakuza-themed movies in the last 13 years. Not to mention the half-dozen contributions to the 'Pinkku' (arty soft porn) genre which he directed from 1983 to 1992. It's a work rate which isn't far off that of the legendarily prolific Miike himself, and Mochizuki's treatment of the Yakuza theme provides a fascinating counterpoint to that of his more extreme countryman. Because whereas Miike's films have increasingly used Yakuza-movie traditions as a launch-pad for wilder and wilder surrealism – reaching an inspired peak with 2003's unclassifiable Gozu – Mochizuki instead goes deeper and deeper into character, all the while staying grounded in the grim realities of the gangster lifestyle.

"Miike goes over the top – Mochizuki brings it all down a bit – more level-headed, down to earth" – this is how Mes puts it in his audio commentary which, along with an interview with the director, form part of the 'Extras' on Artsmagic's Another Lonely Swordsman release. Mes's emphasis in the voice-over is on the film's context – he points out how Mochizuki fits into the Japanese movie-making scene of the 1990s, and also points out that star Ishibashi emerged from the Punk Rock scene of Kyushu in the 1970s, where the dire fates of his fellow band-members in the band A.R.B. would have given him unwanted first-hand experience of heroin's terrible toll.

The presence of Ishibashi is, of course, a major selling-point for Another Lonely Hitman's belated DVD release. The same year he made his first appearance in a Hollywood movie – in Sean Penn's The Crossing Guard – and in the intervening decade has become relatively well-known to western audiences: perhaps best known as the hapless protagonist in Miike's Audition (1999), he has worked with Kitano on Kids Return (1996) and Brother (2000), while more recently was one of the few 'native' performers to obtain a speaking part in Takashi Shimizu's Hollywood-funded version of The Grudge.

Another Lonely Hitman, however, places Ishibashi firmly front and centre – he's in nearly every scene as black-sheep Tachibana, who (in time-honoured Yazuka-pic fashion) discovers to his dismay that times have changed during his decade inside. In a manner which may remind Brian De Palma fans of Al Pacino in Carlito's Way, he's instantly horrified by the way the underworld has become dominated by the drugs business. Having "kicked the habit" behind bars, he embarks on a one-man anti-junkie mission – which includes forcibly dragging call-girl Yuki (Mami Sawaki) through the horrors of cold turkey before he's ready to embark on any kind of physical relationship with her.

Mochizuki presents Tachibana's odyssey in images subtly leached of colour and vibrancy – everything is bluey-grey, Osaka is a wilderness of concrete, scenes have the sting of winter without a snowflake ever being shown. The one notable exception comes when Yuki sneaks a smoke of what we take to be crack cocaine – and the world brightens into a bold, technicolour playground. This coup de cinema is typical of Mochizuki's sparing use of effects – by showing us the brains splattering out in the very first scene, he lets us know that both he and Tachibana mean business. And though both speak softly, a big stick can be deployed if necessary: witness the brutal beating Tachibana doles out to the cocky young thug who's attacked the defenseless Yuki.

True to genre requirements, of course, such displays cause severe discomfort for Tachibana's zoot-suited, pseudo-respectable bosses in 'the organisation' : "Stupid!," one yelps, "you're following a code that doesn't exist any more!" Tachibana – aptly described in awestruck tones as a "steel-hardened gangster" – realises he has no place in such a world, and dreams of escape to become a fisherman in distant Okinawa. Anyone familiar with film noir and its many descendents will instantly know that Another Lonely Hitman is clearly not going to end with an idyllic Okinawa conclusion – but the film's strength lies not in the originality of its plot, but in the skilled professionalism by which Mochizuki breathes new life into cliched situations and characters. According to Mes, however, Another Lonely Hitman is essentially just a warm-up for Mochizuki's "best movie," The Fire Within. If he's right – and he invariably is – then the appearance of that DVD next month will be well worth what's been an exceedingly long wait.

Neil Young

written for the May 2005 issue of Impact magazine