Alongside the samurai film the most prominent and popular genre in Japanese cinema in the immediate post-WWII decades was that of the yakuza film. Arguably more than any other generic category in the Japanese canon the yakuza film has been not only perennially visible but also among the most open and responsive to social flux and development, to documenting (explicitly or otherwise) the often dramatic changes that have affected Japan across successive eras of the twentieth century. This ostensibly clearly delineated and narratively demarcated but in fact often amorphous genre thus underlines perfectly some of the issues surrounding the post-millennial return to earlier, popular modes. One can mark out the specific developments within Japan that are, covertly or overtly, reflected within individual films and broader generic trends, even when explicit recapitulations of specific progenitors in the form of direct remakes are not always forthcoming (though there are several such films). However, in a manner comparable to the samurai film, the presence of such reworkings is representative of the general development of the genre that has seen it diversify even as it seems to remain within the realms of established iterations of the form. In other words the modernity or contemporaneous stature of the yakuza drama has tended to go hand-in-hand with its appropriation of a generic antiquation, or at least its adoption of a generic model already introduced and popularised through an extended series of related works.

Taking these features surrounding the yakuza film into account, this chapter will seek to outline and analyse how the modern yakuza films fit into the lineage of the genre, how individual films seem explicitly to engage with its chief tenets and defining narrative and thematic traits. It will attempt to negotiate a space for a dialogical relationship with the prevailing models of both the ninykō eiga (the chivalry film) and so-called jitsuroku eiga (the true account or actual record film) forms of yakuza filmmaking, and will explore Mark Schilling's assertion that it is a ‘disreputable genre’ (2003, p. 11) by considering the extent to which it offers a vision of Japaneseness throughout significant eras in the country's recent history.