The Japanese Godfather Trilogy


When it comes to films that reveal the inner workings of mafia crime families, The Godfather (1972) was far from the first of its kind. As far back as New York Confidential (1955), screenwriters were laying the groundwork for power-hungry dons, resentful daughters, stoic hitmen and crooked politicians. So the Japanese Godfather Trilogy (1977 – 1978) isn’t exactly breaking new ground, merely shifting the setting to a new locale and reinforcing the adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

As head of the Nakajima group, Sakura (Shin Saburi) understands a brutal truth of the modern era: a business that isn’t growing is already dying. So he pushes his second in command, Tatsumi (Koji Tsuruta) to expand the yakuza empire into legitimate territory, crossing paths with political figures who all want a piece of the pie…but whose morals are even lower than the criminals they publicly condemn. In part two, Ambition, Matsugae (Hiroki Matsukata) carries on with the campaign, opening an exclusive club to blackmail high-level officials as part of a land development scheme that pits him again rival boss Oishi (Toshiro Mifune). And in Conclusion, the more things change the more they stay the same as Sakura refuses to retreat, even as his empire rots from within and his family collapses around him.

There are a few constants in director Sadao Nakajima’s trilogy, namely Shin Saburi as Sakura, a clear stand-in for Marlon Brando’s iconic patriarch. But his take is far less sympathetic, burning bridges with impunity in his single-minded quest for dominance. Instead, it’s his subordinates who carry the emotional weight of chapters one and two, choosing loyalty or love over cruel ambition. As the trilogy progresses, characters enter, exit or are confusingly recast but the theme remains the same: the world of politics and business is even more cutthroat than that of the criminal underworld. And that’s what makes this uniquely Japanese take on organized crime so interesting. It’s not the yakuza corrupting modern society, but the other way around.

Premiering on Blu-ray for the first time ever, Radiance packages the trilogy in a two-disc set limited to 3000 copies that includes new and archival interviews, a video appreciation, new subtitles, trailers, liner notes and handsome cover art.

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