Proof of the Man

Foreign productions shooting in New York were practically their own genre in the 1970s. European thrillers, kung fu imports, even the odd exploitation cheapie—most couldn’t resist a bit of Times Square grit with a washed-up American actor to boost international appeal. For Japan, though, that was rare. Which makes Proof of the Man (1977) stand out: a Haruki Kadokawa produced mystery set in Manhattan and Tokyo, featuring George Kennedy as a weary NYPD detective and Yusaka Matsuda as his Japanese counterpart  Even if it the film itself seems somewhat “manufactured for success,” it dares to wrestle with cultural fault lines most exported Japanese films of the era politely ignored.

The hook is a racial mystery. A young black man is found dead in Tokyo, and the investigation uncovers a web of secrets that trace back to both wartime trauma and Japan’s uneasy relationship with America. Where most cross-cultural crime films treat race as window dressing, this one makes it the core of the drama—anxieties about “otherness,” resentment toward U.S. occupation, and a near-fetishistic fascination with Black Identity all collide in ways that feel at once dated and daring.

Visually, it has that unmistakable ’70s cop movie sheen—grainy film stock, handheld zooms, even a short-lived NYC car chase that takes out the requisite number of hot dog stands. Director Junya Sato borrows liberally from Friedkin and Lumet, but he isn’t just aping style. By filtering an American detective story through Japanese melodrama, he gets at something stranger: the way racism, class, and shame travel across borders but mutate depending on the soil.

George Kennedy does his reliable “big man in a rumpled suit” routine, but it’s the Japanese cast—Yusaku Matsuda in particular—that shoulders the emotional weight. This was Kadokawa’s attempt to elevate the actor’s success outside of Asian circles. So much so that his casting doesn’t add up with the film’s post-war timeline.  The film runs long and often lapses into overheated melodrama, but beneath the surface is a rare snapshot of Japan grappling with America—not just its pop culture, but its contradictions, hypocrisies, and the presence of Blackness that Japanese society both exoticized and feared.  Proof of the Man is messy, sometimes uncomfortable, but uniquely fascinating—a denim-trimmed time capsule where East meets West and neither side comes out smelling very sweet.

Japanese cinephiles and fans of ‘70s cop thrillers are going to devour Arrow’s new limited-edition Blu-ray.  Premiering for the first time outside its home country, the film sports a beautiful new 4K restoration (Japanese subtitles are burned in for the English-speaking scenes) and valuable extras, including a video introduction, two-way discussion with Junya Sato’s biographers, commentary track, trailers, reversible sleeve and illustrated collector’s booklet.