Set in the early Showa era (early 20th century), Kanto Wanderer is a solid yakuza film, with top acting talent, great art direction and camera work, and a fantastic director in Seijun Suzuki. This is one of the string of gangster films with which he made his name – until he was fired by his studio for the too-over-the-top Branded To Kill.

The story mainly centers around a handful of young yakuza men, each with his own passions; and many of those passions center around the women in their lives. Katsuta (Akira Kobayashi) is the main protagonist – the local schoolgirls are crazy about him, but he’s fixated upon Tatsuko, an older woman who’s already married to a gangster that’s scamming the local gamblers. They’d met previously when she and an accomplice were pulling yet another scam at an inn. Being the protagonist, he’s the one who ultimately lives up to the yakuza (and in a larger sense Japanese) sense of honor and duty, despite the terrible price he’ll have to pay.

Kanto Wanderer is a very formally precise work. This is due to the influence of kabuki theater upon director Suzuki, and this is the first film where he really begins to stretch his stylistic muscles. The film moves along at a deliberately measured pace; there is a lot of dialogue also, so that most of the time the characters are simply sitting around talking, moving the plot forward. But they look good doing it. The only real action (i.e., violence) comes toward the end, but the plot stands on its own without it.

Each shot looks even more carefully planned than in most films, even style-conscious Japanese films of the time – yet another influence of the formal theater. And, lest anyone miss the message, Kobayashi is made up with an obviously-fake scar and painted-on, upswept eyebrows. This would seem, at first glance, to represent an effort on Suzuki’s part to offer style over substance: fortunately, the substance happens to be there too. (Even if the plot is fairly typical of yakuza films. This film was a remake of a novel, which had been filmed previously in 1954 as Songs from the Underground. I have to admit that neither title makes much sense to me.)

The overriding theme of the film is the ultimately tragic life that the yakuza men led, represented by clothing colored either red (after prison garb) or white (for one’s funeral). They knew themselves to be petty gangsters – loved by no section of society, not even themselves; and in the end earning nothing more than either jail time or a nice burial. But they had their own moral code of conduct – and Katsuta was man enough to honor it.

Incidentally, the Region 1 Criterion DVD sports an absolutely pristine transfer, which serves to enhance Suzuki’s work beautifully.