Rather than a violent confrontation, our story begins with three giggling schoolgirls curious about the criminal lifestyle. Their snopping leads to a front row audience at the tattooing of one lowlife criminal, and soon they're entangled with a group of gangsters whose scruples range from traditional to nonexistent. Facially scarred Katsura (Akira Kobayashi) tries to stick to the codes of his predecessors, but everyone else seems bent on earning a quick buck no matter how it sullies their name. One of the girls, Tokiko (Cheiko Matsubara), gets casually sold into prostitution, and Katsura's attempts to rescue her lead to the married and less than honest Iwata Hachi (Hiroko Ito), a past fling married to one of the current underworld bigshots. The husband is less than happy when the two resume their affair, with violence providing the only solution.
Ostensibly set in the real world during its first act, Kanto Wanderer becomes increasingly bizarre and stylized as the convoluted story unfolds. The synopsis above only conveys a fraction of the frenzied activity onscreen, with countless gambling sessions exposing one more character revelation after another. The soap opera dramatics are eventually discarded during the arresting finale in favor of startling visual flourishes, prefiguring the MGM-inspired bursts of color and movement which eventually became the entire focus of Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter. The brilliant use of the color red (whose thematic purpose is outlined more than once in the dialogue) pays off with the film's sole action sequence, in which the screen literally turns into a crimson canvas thanks to a single sword slash. Typically for Suzuki, the actors do their business well but never have much of a chance to stand out apart from the magnificient Ito, a complex and compelling woman whose motives are constantly clouded by a situation that seems to change from one scene to the next.
As with its other significant Japanese cinema releases, Home Vision presents the film on its best behavior for viewers unlikely to have encountered it before. Watch it on the largest monitor possible with the color settings tweaked a little higher than normal; it certainly pays off at the end. Optional English subtitles are up to their usual high standard. Extras include a Suzuki filmography and useful liner notes by Tom Mes which offer some much-needed historical and cultural context.
For more information about Kanto Wanderer, visit Home Vision Entertainment. To order Kanto Wanderer, go to TCM Shopping.
by Nathaniel Thompson
