Sadao Nakajima(1934-2023)
- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Born in Chiba in 1934, Nakajima joined Toei in 1959, and was promoted
to director there in 1964. He has never directed outside the studio
since, and has been well regarded there as one of Toei's most prolific
and dependable hitmakers. In the 1960s, Nakajima concentrated on
samurai films, but found his true metier in the 1970s with the
explosion of second-generation yakuza movies. These so-called jitsuroku
(true record) stories were far more violent than their yakuza movie
counterparts of the 1950s and 60s, and none more so than Nakajima's.
Rape, torture, gunplay, nothing was off-limits in a typical Nakajima
scenario, such as the fitful, hysterically violent Bakamasa Horamasa
Toppamasa (1976) and the amazingly raw and passionate Riot at Shimane
Prison (Bodo Shimane Keimusho, 1975), which actually caused a
controversy in Japan for its realistic portrayal of prison brutality.
The violence in Nakajima's work is often accompanied by a deep-running
sentimentalism: he is considered by Japanese critics to be a "wet"
director, as compared to the "dry", cynical style of fellow Toei
yakuza-helmer Kinji Fukasaku. Exemplary among his pictures which
balance sudden explosions of violence with moments of startling
sentimentality is his 1979 hit Sochiyo no Kubi, a lengthy meditation on
the end of an era (the yakuza immediately before Japan's war in China
broke out and escalated into World War II). As his career moved on,
Nakajima's work grew increasingly more elegiac: his 1985 movie Seburi's
Story was selected by the Berlin Film Festival, and several of his more
recent films have examined the plights of women among the yakuza, a
theme usually ignored in his hypermacho work in the 1970s. Despite the
often sordid nature of his pictures, Nakajima has managed to work with
much of the top acting and technical talent in Japan, and has garnered
much of the best work of their respective careers from Toei's top stars
Hiroki Matsukata and Tsunehiko Watase.