SHORT HISTORY OF JAPANESE WESTERN MOVIES

Although Japan is not the West of the US, Japan has a similar frontier called Ura-kaido (the back society) for the outcasts and the outlaws inside it.  Setting the story in it, many sentimental and nostalgic historical/modern drama had been made.  These depicted the spirit, the struggle and demise of Ura-kaido as well as American Western.


After WW II, historical drama was at the peak although the most was just a detective story with Chambara (sword fighting).  Instead, Nikkatsu Adolescent-Drama / Stateless-Action, Kurosawa and ZATO-ICHI adopted the American Western and got popular in the 1960s.  These were exported to France and Italy and they made Nouvelle Vague and Spaghetti Western.


After that, Japanese theaters felt and were filled with the Ninkyo (anachronistic Yakuza) movies complaining the people’s morality while the TV sent a lot of the didactic detective Jidai-geki.  Furthermore, films began to depict the real histories of the modern Yakuza by the support of the real Yakuza and TV Jidai-geki got absurd imitating the notorious later Spaghetti Western in the 1970s and 80s.  However, in the 1990s, the relation with Yakuza got fell out of favor and bizarre Jidai-geki got tired.


In the recent years, not only the Yakuza movie but also the TV Jidai-geki is not made any more.  Japanese in modern times cannot understand the morality and mentality of Jidai-geki.  However, a new genre of loan shark stories comes in fashion where the hero solves the problem of the outcasts of the modern economic life with knowledge of laws and a shrewd con-game, not more with a sword and a gun.