When Mark Schilling was interviewing veteran filmmaker Seijun Suzuki for this book, the director suddenly asked the author: "Why are you interested in yakuza movies?" Well, answered Schilling, they form an important genre in Japanese film and one that has never been fully written about. The director then asked "Are yakuza films so different?"
This book, well-written, beautifully researched, thorough and fascinating, is the author's answer. Not since Paul Schrader's early (1974) essay on the yakuza film has this important genre received such insight and detail. Among the reasons for its success is Schilling's approach to his subject.
As in his two prior books, "The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture" (1997) and "Contemporary Japanese Film" (1999), Schilling favors a format grounded in personality. We are given the people who do the work and we are spared authoritarian theory. Thus this book interviews five notable genre directors -- Kinji Fukasaku, Teruo Ishii, Seijun Suzuki, Takashi Miike and the often under-rated Rokuro Mochizuki -- and gives profiles of the late Tai Kato and Takeshi Kitano.