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Gun and Sword
An Encyclopedia of Japanese Gangster Films 1955-1980
by Chris D.
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Chris D. began watching yakuza films, writing the initial drafts of GUN AND SWORD, the definitive encyclopedia of the Golden Age of Japanese gangster films, in 1990. In 1997, he traveled to Japan, doing research and collecting illustrations. With 95% of the main text completed in 2002, several publishers were interested but only if the book was cut by 300 pages. It still took another ten years for this astounding reference guide to come to final fruition in its unexpurgated form – a fount of fascinating insights and information for both the seasoned Japanese genre film fan and the curious newcomer. All types of the Japanese gangster movie made between 1955-1980 are covered: the swordfighting ninkyo sagas set in the 1890-1940 period, the modern jitsuroku ("true story") bloodbaths, the matatabi (wandering samurai gambler) pictures, plus the juvenile delinquent subgenres: sukeban (girl boss), taiyozoku ("sun tribe") and bosozoku ("violent tribe" or biker). Complete with the original 2002 foreword written by famed yakuza film director Kinji Fukasaku (The Yakuza Papers, Blackmail is My Life, Graveyard of Honor, Battle Royale), and literally hundreds of illustrations. "All movie genres deserve ardent completists as well as astute critical observers. With Chris D. the reader gets both. His informed passion matches an eagle's eye for small but critically important details and cinematic-literary-historical-industrial connections. Rich in primary, groundbreaking research, GUN AND SWORD is an invaluable reference." – Stuart Galbraith IV, author of The Emperor and The Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune "Chris D.'s exhaustive research and dry wit gives us the sense of a dark city detective leading us through the dangerous terrain of an exotic mystery...packed with rare stills and essential, new information on the genre...it is an awesome tome in the true sense of the word." – Kier-La Janisse, author of House of Psychotic Women
> On a related topic:
The Yakuza Movie Book (2003)
A Guide to Japanese Gangster Films
The Japanese Filmography (2010)
A Complete Reference to 209 Filmmakers and the Over 1250 Films Released in the United States, 1900-1994
Transcendence and Spirituality in Japanese Cinema (2024)
Framing Sacred Spaces
Prostitutes, Hostesses, and Actresses at the Edge of the Japanese Empire (2023)
Fragmenting History
Japanese Filmmakers in the Wake of Fukushima (2023)
Perspectives on Nuclear Disasters
Cinema of Discontent (2023)
Representations of Japan's High-Speed Growth
Film Viewing in Postwar Japan, 1945-1968 (2022)
An Ethnographic Study
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