The best Tatsuo Umemiya’s crime movies

In the teeming black markets of postwar Japan, Shozo Hirono and his buddies find themselves in a new war between factious and ambitious yakuza...

As Japan gears up for the 1964 Olympic games, the cops start to crack down on the gangs, under pressure from the public and the press, adding a new dimension in the war for power among the yakuza families of Hiroshima.

Shozo Hirono has managed to separate from the Yamamori family and create his own small family, and extend his circle of acquaintances. These new friendships include a powerful underboss of the Muraoka family, Noboru Uchimoto.

A police investigator cracks down on yakuza business, but once he realizes the police are in negotiations with certain factions, he sides with his own syndicate of choice.

Onimasa is the egocentric boss of a small yakuza clan on Shikoku Island, whose criminal duties conflict with his self-image as a chivalrous samurai. His struggles with his boss, the Shikoku Godfather, and the tumultuous life of his adopted daughter, Matsue, form the backdrop of this epic tale of justice, obedience, and bloody vengeance.

A look at the life of renegade yakuza, Rikio Ishikawa, particularly the years from 1946 to 1950 when his violent antics get him in trouble with his own clan, Kawada, and then with the clan of his protector, Kozaburo Imai. In these years, he can rely on Chieko, a young Tokyo courtesan who gives him shelter. He's banished to Osaka, where he picks up a drug habit. Through it all, he keeps his friends and enemies off balance with unpredictable behavior - and he seems indestructible.

When a lucrative waterfront development becomes available, the Kawade gang quickly use their political connections to secure the land. However, the acting boss of the Ohara gang also has his eyes on the property and recruits crooked detective Tokumatsu Kuno to help him hijack the deal. With relations between the rival gangs at breaking point, it's not long before all-out war breaks out as the gangsters, police and local politicians battle for control of the city.

After World War II, their town was a pile of rubble. Gennosuke, the second-generation boss of the Kamizu Group was upholding yakuza chivalry by keeping black-market and illegal items out of their open-air market. Taking advantage of the mess, Iwasa and his gang take hold of goods from the US military, black-market and controlled items in order to become the most powerful group in the Enko area. Iwasa has Gennosuke assassinated but before he dies, he names Shinji Terajima as his successor and makes him swear to carry on the family business and not seek revenge or use violence. Shinji tries to make his family’s marketplace a success, but with constant interruption and attacks from Iwasa’s gang, he can no longer keep his word to his former boss…

Chiba, looking gnarly, and acting as animalistic as ever, stars alongside Matsukata as violent gangsters battling their way through fight after bloody fight with rival yakuza on the streets of Okinawa.

Sakata protects a little boy while coping with rival gangs.

Hiroshi, a small-time racketeer, makes a name for himself extorting vulnerable companies and their directors for financial gain.

After a desperate gang of ex-soldiers and gamblers meet in a fistfight in occupied Ginza they decide to make the neighborhood their own.