Bo no Kanashimi

Tanaka is a yakuza who collects 'protection money' from establishments. He has just been released from jail, where he had spent eight years, and finds out that his boss wants to get rid of him. Tanaka is not an archetypal yakuza; he travels by public transport. But he does have two mistresses: Ayumi, who runs a nightclub, and Yoshie, a brothel-keeper. When Tanaka's boss ends up in hospital, second man Kurauchi exerts increasing pressure on Tanaka. Tanaka deliberately has himself wounded by a fighter to dodge several of Kurauchi's demands. While the film was made on a very low budget, Kumashiro manages to communicate a huge amount of energy in the film. Kitakata Kenzo, the writer of the hard-boiled story on which the film is based: 'The film version was pretty shocking for me. Although the storylines are almost the same, the world on the silver screen was very different from the one I described. I have to admit that Kumashiro won.'