#Koji nanbara

[dare-g]

Zero Focus (1961)

[fuckyeahmeikokaji]

Koji Nanbara (南原宏治), Meiko Kaji (梶芽衣子), Tsunehiko Watase (渡瀬恒彦) and Seiya Sato (佐藤 晟也) in Wandering Ginza Butterfly (銀蝶渡り鳥), 1972, directed by Kazuhiko Yamaguchi (山口和彦).

Scanned by me.

[streamondemand]

'Branded to Kill' – Assassins gone wild on Criterion Channel

Seijun Suzuki’s absolutely mad yakuza movie Branded to Kill (Japan, 1967) blows the genre to smithereens. Jo Shishido stars as Goro Hanada, the Number Three hitman in a crime organization that makes him the next target after the butterfly effect upsets an important mission. Goro is no pushover and easily dispatches the first comers, leaving them splayed in death contortions that could qualify…

[randomrichards]

BRANDED TO KILL:

Rice sniffing killer

On the run due to botched job

Seeing weird visions

[cultfaction]

Preview- Yakuza Wolf 1 & 2 (Eureka Classics Special Edition Two-Disc Bluray)

A duo of ultra-violent yakuza thrillers starring the late great Shinichi “Sonny” Chiba, available for the first time ever in the UK. In the Spaghetti Western inspired I Perform Murder, a mysterious black-clad killer (Chiba) with a personal vendetta against the yakuza manipulates two rival clans in order to draw out his targets, leading to a climactic bloody shootout that must be seen to be…

[byneddiedingo]

Koji Nanbara and Takashi Fujiki in A Flame at the Pier (Masahiro Shinoda, 1962)

Cast: Takashi Fujiki, Mariko Kaga, Koji Nanbara, Tamotsu Hayakawa, Kyoko Kishida, Shinji Tanaka, So Yamamura. Screenplay: Ichiro Mizunuma, Masahiro Shinoda, Shuji Terayama. Cinematography: Masao Kosugi. Film editing: Yoshi Sugihara. Music: Toru Takemitsu.

Imagine that instead of Marlon Brando, Elvis Presley had been cast as Terry Malloy in Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954) and that Budd Schulberg's screenplay had been rewritten to give him a couple of songs to sing. Then you'd have a pretty good sense of what Masahiro Shinoda's A Flame at the Pier* is like. That's not meant to belittle Takashi Fujiki's performance in the film, which is closer to Brando (or really James Dean) than to Presley. Clearly, Fujiki's singing ability -- he had a side career as a pop singer -- inspired the filmmakers to arrange for these fairly well-integrated musical moments. The standout is a command performance put on by Fujiki's character, Sabu, who has been roped into doing an a capella rock number at a party for some rich people, friends of the owner of the shipping company for which Sabu works. The song is about a tour of hell, which is pretty much where Sabu finds himself. He works as an enforcer on the Yokohama docks, where the workers are trying to unionize. His loyalties are to his boss, Kitani (Koji Nanbara), who is the company man in charge of keeping the dockworkers from organizing. Sabu believes that when he was a toddler during the war, Kitani rescued him from a fire and was crippled during the rescue. When he's not pushing the dockworkers around, trying to get them to go back to work after a sitdown strike, Sabu is wooing a pretty waitress, Yuki (Mariko Kaga). But after his performance at the party, he's seduced by Reiko (Kyoko Kishida), who is married to the owner of the shipping company and is also having an affair with Kitani. Eventually, all of these plot threads tangle when Sabu is asked to rough up one of the men trying to organize the union but accidentally kills him. The murdered man turns out to be Yuki's father. Sabu also learns from Reiko the truth about what crippled Kitani. A Flame at the Pier rises above this overplotted narrative because of the performances, especially by Fujiki and Mariko Kaga as the young lovers, as well as Masao Kosugi's eloquent black-and-white cinematography, and a score by Toru Takemitsu.

*The retitling and/or translation of Japanese film titles for English-speaking countries is always mysterious. A Flame at the Pier has also been titled Tears on the Lion's Mane, which seems to be, if Google Translate is to be trusted, a little closer to the Japanese title, Namida o shishi no tategami ni. There are certainly a pier, a lion, and considerable tears in the film, but the attempt at poetry in both titles rings false as a label for what is essentially a gritty dockside melodrama.

[capnmetalheadlives]

Super Robot Wars J (2005)

Scenario 12: Koji Kabuto, Dead!?

The scene starts off on board the independent battleship Nadesico, en route to Yokosuka via the Pacific coast of Asia. The trip goes smoothly, and the ship touches down without issue. Koji and Sayaka leave the ship to report back to the Photon Power Labs in Atami, while the Combattler V's pilots also disembark to return to the Nanbara Connection and get some repairs and resupplying done. The Cyber Beast Force receive orders from their superiors to remain on the Nadesico, so the Dancouga sticks around. The two supporting Nergal staff members sent to the Nadesico, Akatsuki and that uptight lady whose name I can't remember, also step off the ship after it lands, but return rather quickly. This is noted as suspicious, and for good reason, they're shifty, those two. Also remaining on the ship is Gundam fighter Domon Kasshu, who agrees to supplement their fighting force with his Shining Gundam provided they help him locate and destroy the Devil Gundam piloted by his brother, Kyoji.

Meanwhile, in Atami, Baron Ashura, subordinate of Dr. Hell, sorties in the flying fortress Ghoul along with an army of mechanical beasts, once again marching on the Photon Power Labs to steal their technological secrets of free and unlimited energy for the purpose of world domination. By this time, Koji has returned to Atami, so he, Sayaka, and Boss sortie in their robots, Mazinger Z, Aphrodite A, and Boss Borot, to intercept.

The three warriors take up a defensive position in a forest just outside city limits, luring the vanguard of mechabeasts into the effective range of their weapons. The trees give them plenty of cover, and with each other's support, they fend off wave after wave of mechabeasts until only the Ghoul remains, looming overhead.

Another wave appears out of nowhere moving in from behind the Mazinger army, and Sayaka attempts to intercept, but is ambushed by even more mechabeasts and her robot is disabled. Ashura turns the tables by forcing a hostage situation, and Koji is forced to give himself and Mazinger up.

Baron Ashura, being the bastard they are, decides to finish Sayaka off anyway, but before they can make the move, Tetsuya arrives in the Great Mazinger, backed up by Combattler V and the Nadesico. Sayaka is saved, and the Ghoul makes a tactical retreat, leaving behind an even larger army of mechabeasts in Atami to cover their escape with Mazinger in tow.

The Nadesico and co. march west in an unceasing tide, crashing against the mechabeasts and engulfing them, though the battle is taxing. The DancouCannon proves to be a valuable asset in the ensuing fight, arcing over incredible distances and annihilating mechabeast after mechabeast, first in the south, then whipping around 180 degrees to the north, before taking out a third mechabeast slightly west.

Before long, Atami is empty of mechanical beasts once again. Mazinger Z sends a signal that the pilot escaped, flying off in the hovering cockpit known as the Pilder, but nobody is able to make contact with Koji.

Meanwhile, in the lair of Dr. Hell, the eponymous mad professor berates Baron Ashura for his incompetence and wastefulness in Atami. A single captured super robot is nothing compared to the force commanded by the Nadesico, he says. He orders Baron Ashura to go out and capture all the other super robots under its command, along with the ship itself. However, they're going to need help. Dr. Hell makes plans to contact the Tekkoryu, the true name of the megacorp known as Hau Dragon, known by those who walk in shadows to possess an army of superpowered robots.

Elsewhere in Japan, a boy named Masato Akitsu is captured by armed goons belonging to an organization called Last Guardian, where he will be put to work piloting a machine known only as Zeorymer of the Heavens...

[clemsfilmdiary]

Demon Pond / Yashagaike (1979, Masahiro Shinoda)

夜叉ゲ池　（篠田正浩）

2/12/22

[maxwelltait]

Branded to Kill (Suzuki, 1967)

[imamurashohei]

Branded to Kill (1967) dir. Seijun Suzuki

[fuckyeahmeikokaji]

Meiko Kaji (梶芽衣子), Shun Ueda (うえだ 峻) and Koji Nanbara (南原宏治) in Wandering Ginza Butterfly (銀蝶渡り鳥), 1972, directed by Kazuhiko Yamaguchi (山口和彦).

Scanned by me.

[randomrichards]

DEMON POND:

The bell must be read

So village won’t be flooded

Kabuki Princess

[byneddiedingo]

Hideko Takamine in Danger Stalks Near (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1957) Cast: Hideko Takamine, Keiji Sada, Akiko Tamura, Koji Nanbara, Toshiko Kobayashi, Hiroko Ito, Masako Arisawa, Ryo Ono, Kotohisa Saotome, Yoshihide Sato, Koji Satomi, Saburo Sato, Akira Oze, Shoji Sayama, Shinji Tanaka.   Screenplay: Keisuke Kinoshita. Cinematography: Hiroshi Kusuda. Art direction: Chiyoo Umeda. Film editing: Yoshi Sugihara. Music: Chuji Kinoshita. Nothing about the English title suggests that you're going to get the comedy of errors that Danger Stalks Near turns out to be, or that its star, Hideko Takamine, usually seen in serious, often glamorous roles, will play a mousy, bespectacled housewife under the domination of her tyrannical mother-in-law. The film starts out with two young thugs bullying Kohei (Shinji Tanaka), a man from the country who needs money to return home, into robbing a suburban house. But as they case the joint from a nearby hillside, things constantly happen to keep them from their goal. The house is the property of Tetsu Sato (Akiko Tamura), a war widow, who lets her son, Kaneshige (Keiji Sada), and his wife, Yuriko (Takamine), and their son, Kazuo (Kotohisa Saotome), live there. She also rents a room to Miyoko ( Hiroko Ito), a flighty young woman who starts the day's madness off by burning a hole in the tatami mat in her room. Tetsu immediately evicts her. Things snowball from there, with the tatami repairman coming and going, movers arriving, Yuriko's sisters showing up with various problems of their own, Yuriko returning with her boyfriend to demand the remaining day she had paid for in rent, an old friend of Kaneshige's arriving and revealing his own larcenous aims, and various other unexpected incidents. The three would-be thieves watch in dismay as their opportunity to bust in and steal what they -- and others -- believe to be a considerable amount of money belonging to Tetsu disappears. Kinoshita piles on the complications, and in the process unveils some of the hidden motives and simmering resentments of the members of the household. For once, Kinoshita lets his cynical side dominate, diluting some of the syrup that often makes his films a little sticky.

[jailhouse41]

Lobby card for Yakuza Wolf: Extend My Condolences (Okami Yakuza: Koroshi Wa Ore Ga Yaru, 狼やくざ 殺しは俺がやる), 1971, directed by Ryuichi Takamori (鷹森立一) and starring Makoto Sato (佐藤允) and Koji Nanbara (南原宏治).

[clemsfilmdiary]

Branded to Kill / Koroshi no rakuin (1967, Seijun Suzuki)

殺しの烙印　（鈴木清順）

2/21/19

[coupdetorchon]

Japanuary Day 5 (2/2) - Branded to Kill (1967)