February 11, 2025

FILMHOUNDS Magazine

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Furiously Idiosyncratic and Iconoclastic – Eighteen Years in Prison (Blu-ray Review)

Eighteen Years in Prison film header image

Radiance Films

If Japanese director Tai Kato started 2024 as a relative unknown in the UK, spoken of in hushed terms by yakuza diehards and jidaigeki enthusiasts, boutique label Radiance has been steadily making a case for his proper canonisation. First with the desolate, hard-boiled noir I, the Executioner (1968), and then with the equal parts violent and astute social critique By a Man's Face Shall You Know Him (1966). The latest Kato film to make its physical debut in the UK courtesy of Radiance, Eighteen Years in Prison (1967), only strengthens the case further; a taut prison drama shot with an eye for cramped mise-en-scène that simultaneously speaks to the desperate conditions faced by Japanese citizens in the wake of World War II, and the cruel indifference of their government.

Set in post-war Osaka, Eighteen Years in Prison is as much about the helpless bondage of poverty as it is the literal penitentiary much of the film takes place in. For ex-soldier Kawada (Noboru Ando, a regular Kato collaborator) the ruins of Osaka are a constant reminder of the grave cost of the war, disillusioned with the role he played as a squad leader in sending young men to their deaths, and disenfranchised with the government that instigated such mass casualties. His penance comes in the form of community action, establishing an association with his old army buddy Tsukada (Asao Koike) to support those who lost family members in the war. Given the limited resources at hand, it's perhaps no surprise that this “association” functions much like a criminal organisation, stealing American shipments of rice and sugar to redistribute amongst the struggling masses.

If Kawada sounds like a Robin Hood-type (less green tights, more glowering), his ultimate goal is similarly unselfish: establishing a legitimate market to rejuvenate the local community. If only things were so simple. Taking on “one last job”—partially inspired by the fate of Hisako (Hiroko Sakuramachi), the younger sister of a kamikaze pilot from Kawada's unit, beset on all sides by foul American servicemen and contemplating sex work as a means of survival—Kawada is caught, enabling Tsukada to get away with a valuable bounty of copper by turning himself in. Imprisoned and subjected to all manner of inhumane treatment, the world outside continues to change without Kawada, so much so that by the time he realises that economic scarcity has given way to the capitalist individualism of the 1980s, his dreams of an integrated, co-operative way of living can't help but feel quaint. That is until he decides to get his hands dirty again.

Much like By a Man's Face Shall You Know Him, Eighteen Years in Prison is a spitting, iconoclastic reckoning with the deep-set institutional corruption that saw wealth divides open up like ruptured sores in the decades after World War II. Kato spits at the occupying American forces, shameless criminals who robbed and dispossessed out of bored malice rather than any genuine need. He spits at the law enforcement officers who pitted prisoners against one another, offering false empathy as a means to manipulate them further. And, most particularly, he spits at Tsukada, Kawada's one-time comrade who took the money and ran, an embodiment of the greed and hostility which saw the arms-out suffering of the Japanese working classes dismissed as money-grubbing. That Kato also finds buds of kindness amongst the scrabbling dirt—whether it's the stern unity of Kawada's cohorts in jail, or the lifelong gratitude of those his association helped—is what ensures Eighteen Years in Prison amounts to more than pouting cynicism.

Kato's craft is what truly elevates Eighteen Years, however. To evoke the unnerving confines of a jail cell, Kato constantly shoots from his characteristic low angles, situating the audience under dusty desks looking up between the tight-knit holes of an iron grill, or from behind the clean straight lines of the film's many prison bars. Kawada finds himself similarly squeezed by Kato's suffocating composition, whether it's a frame bisected by a band saw, a threatening mob of gang members on the right, the unseasoned, unbroken prisoners huddled together on the left, or a shot from beneath a particularly corrupt prison guard's legs (Tomisaburō Wakayama playing wonderfully against type), Kawada helplessly prone on his knees, his head hemmed in by a uniformed groin. Even in his cell, a place of potential respite, the use of spotlighting accentuates the inky blacks, threatening to swallow Kawada whole at any moment.

In a film full of curt moments of poetic insight, it's an exchange between Kawada and Tsukada in the third act that's most revealing. Having learnt about Tsukada's burgeoning corporate empire, a sea of illicit businesses built off the back of the copper that landed Kawada in prison, Kawada is understandably furious. Tsukada, for his part, tries to weasel himself out like the nascent entrepreneur he is, “The association was a beautiful idea, but not for the world of today.” While Kato held out hope for a better, more communally-oriented society, it's hard to not see a flicker of recognition in that line—not that Tsukada is correct in his assertion, but that people like Tsukada will always find a way to pervert honest intentions. For Kato, the gravest error would be in taking such assertions at face value, in conceding to declarations that doom us to living in a world defined by self-interest. Certainly, Kawada does not.

Special Features

  • Appreciation by critic and programmer Tony Rayns (2024)
  • A visual essay on Japanese prison films by author Tom Mes (2024)
  • Original trailer
  • Newly translated English subtitles
  • Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow
  • Limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Ivo Smits and an archival interview with Noboru Ando by Mark Schilling

Eighteen Years in Prison releases in the UK on July 29th.