Tokyo Drifter: Catch My Drift
By December 13, 2011
Just what is it that makes Seijun Suzuki’s Tokyo Drifter (1966) so different, so appealing? The cherubic hero in the neat powder blue suit, who looks like he was torn out of a yakuza pop-up book?
- Japan
- 1966
- 82 minutes
- Color
- 2.35:1
- Japanese
- Spine #39
SYNOPSIS: In this jazzy gangster film, reformed killer Tetsu’s attempt to go straight is thwarted when his former cohorts call him back to Tokyo to help battle a rival gang. Director Seijun Suzuki’s onslaught of stylized violence and trippy colors is equal parts Russ Meyer, Samuel Fuller, and Nagisa Oshima—an anything-goes, in-your-face rampage. Tokyo Drifter is a delirious highlight of the brilliantly excessive Japanese cinema of the sixties.
Cast & CreditsOpen
Cast
| Tetsuya Hondo | Tetsuya Watari |
| Chiharu | Chieko Matsubara |
| Tatsuzo | Tamio Kawaji |
| Kurata | Ryuji Kita |
| Kenji Aizawa | Hideaki Nitani |
| Tanaka | Eiji Go |
| Mutsuko | Tomoko Hamakawa |
| Keiichi | Takeshi Yoshida |
| Umetani | Isao Tamagawa |
Credits
| Director | Seijun Suzuki |
| Producer | Tetsuro Nakagawa |
| Assistant director | Masami Kuzuu |
| Original story and screenplay | Kouhan Kawauchi |
| Cinematography | Shigeyoshi Mine |
| Editing | Chikaya Inoue |
| Production design | Takeo Kimura |
| Music | Hajime Kaburagi |
| Theme song by | Tetsuya Watari |
Disc Features
- New high-definition digital restoration (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
- Video piece featuring new interviews with director Seijun Suzuki and assistant director Masami Kuzuu
- Interview with Suzuki from 1997
- Trailer
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Howard Hampton
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Tokyo Drifter
By February 22, 1999
To experience a film by Japanese B-movie visionary Seijun Suzuki is to experience Japanese cinema in all its frenzied, voluptuous excess. Born in Tokyo in 1923, Seijun Suzuki is best known for a cycle of extraordinary Read more »
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In “the cinema of flourishes”—as scholar David Bordwell once memorably characterized the long and grand tradition of Japanese filmmaking—few flourish makers have flown so high as Takeo Kimura Read more »
