Big Time Gambling Boss
The spring of 1943, and Masakichi Arakawa, the leader of the Tenryu clan of the Yakuza, has suffered a stroke from which he is unlikely to fully recover; allowing his lieutenants to choose his successor, they propose Shinjirô Nakai, a worthy heir, but one who is hesitant to accept, feeling the role would be better filled by Tetsuo Matsuda, currently in prison for earlier gang-related activities but soon to be paroled.
Unwilling to wait, Arakawa’s son-in-law Kôhei Ishido is instead placed in his stead, a man who will follow the code of the clan but who is inexperienced, commanding no respect from Matsuda when he is released and immediately challenged, leading to a rift between the factions of the Tenryu and allowing others to manipulate them into destroying each other so their territories can be annexed by another clan.
Released alongside Elio Petri’s The Working Class Goes to Heaven as the opening salvo from the new boutique label Radiance, director Kôsaku Yamashita’s Big Time Gambling Boss (博奕打ち 総長賭博, Bakuchiuci: Sôchô Tobaku) was originally released in 1968 and is now making its Blu-ray debut, a film of the Ninkyō eiga sub-genre, “chivalry films” exploring the Yakuza and their strict adherence to their codes, and the punishment which results from deviation.
Nakai (Kôji Tsuruta) attempting to intercede between Ishido (Hiroshi Nawa) and Matsuda (Tomisaburô Wakayama), the heir apparent denied his throne, he is thwarted by parties unknown, an assassination attempt on Matsuda orchestrated by a traitor within the clan, and those closest to him, his subordinate Otokichi Kobayashi (Shin’ichirô Mikami) as rash in his actions as his elders are stubborn, taking matters into his own hands and inflaming the precarious impasse.
Stretching across a year and chronicling the succession and the tragic upheaval which follows, Big Time Gambling Boss is a film populated by stoic men with angry faces, unswerving in their loyalty to a concept and blind to the consequences of their actions, the few women such as Nakai’s wife Tsuyako (Hiroko Sakuramachi) almost sidelined, the scene where she stands up to Matsuda so unexpected that it requires her sacrifice, pushing the film into melodrama.
The fight scenes somewhat underwhelming though perhaps realistic, frantic thrashing then running away, the new edition carries Mark Schilling’s Ninkyo 101 video essay, exploring the origins of the genre and how it became more extreme in the following decades, and Chris D’s Serial Gambling, which looks at Toei and the many similarly themed films produced by the studio in the era.
Big Time Gambling Boss is available on Blu-ray from Radiance now
