Discovering a Japanese master: Tai Katô

Former soldier Kawada (Noboru Andô) defies the law and his former comrades to help his community in Tai Katô’s Eighteen Years in Prison (1967)

Despite a career spanning from the 1930s to the mid-’80s, I hadn’t even heard of Tai Katô until a recent flurry of disk releases from Radiance in England and Film Movement in the States, yet he produced significant work in some of my favourite genres – particularly chambara and yakuza films, both of which are represented in these releases, with excellent editions of postwar crime stories (By a Man’s Face Shall You Know Him [1966] and Eighteen Years in Prison [1967]), police procedural noir (I, the Executioner [1968]), and period swordfighting (Tokijiro: Lone Yakuza [1966]).

Blasts from the past

Not so Super 8

DVD Review: Masaki Kobayashi Against the System (Eclipse)

Recent Indicator viewing

The two sides of Shintaro Katsu

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