Main Cast: Shinya Tsukamoto, Kaori Fujii, Kohji Tsukamoto
Release Year: 1995
Country: JP
Run Time: 87 minutes
Plot
Tsuda (played by Shinya Tsukamoto) is a frustrated insurance salesman who lives a life of quiet desperation with his girlfriend Hizuru (Kaori Fujii). His job yields little fulfillment, his relationship lacks passion, and he feels perpetually fatigued, as if overwhelmed by the inhuman scale of Tokyo. His life takes a bizarre turn when his old high school acquaintance Kojima (Kohji Tsukamoto) pays him a visit. The wild-eyed professional boxer attempts to seduce Hizuru, driving Tsuda into a jealous fury. When he confronts Kojima, he ends up in the hospital and Hizuru ends up with the boxer. Seeking revenge, Tsuda begins boxing training with insane intensity. Watching his former high school chum thrash his sparring partners gives Kojima a rise of some form, bolstering his sagging career in the ring. Meanwhile, Hizuru begins her own brand of self-discovery though self-mutilation, from relatively mild tattoos and nose rings to driving metal stakes into her flesh, until she looks like a vengeful goddess from Japanese mythology. What develops has to be one of the most bizarre, masochistic love triangles ever committed to celluloid. Kojima relishes ripping the rings from Hizuru's flesh; Hizuru tenderly beats Tsuda into a bloody pulp; and Tsuda bashes his own head against the wall. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
Review
As in much of Shinya Tsukamoto's work, mutilation, male rage, and latent homosexuality are at the heart of this brutally violent, strangely hilarious, wildly over-the-top film. Tsukamoto draws from Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927), both in showing Hizuru's evolution into something not quite human and in including the city as a central character. The director cleverly juxtaposes the static violence of Tokyo's ultra-modern architecture with the literal violence of Tsuda's pulpy face and bleeding wounds. By the end of the film, Tsukamoto hints that Hizuru's search for her own identity is the key to escaping this cycle of male aggression and brutality. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
Tokyo Fist (1995) is a Japanesedrama/horror film. It was written and directed by Shinya Tsukamoto, who also stars in the film along with his brother Kôji Tsukamoto and Kahori Fujii. The horror aspect of the film comes mostly from some brutal and exaggerated imagery showing the consequences of the film's violence.
Like so many other films by Tsukamoto, the music for the film was composed by Japanese industrial music band Der Eisenrost.
Plot
The film tells about a Japanese door-to-door insurance salesman, Tsuda Yoshiharu, who takes up boxing after some chance meetings with a former high school friend, Kojima Yakuji. Tsuda lives a more or less uneventful life. He has a fiance, Hizuru, who one day invites Kojima in to Tsuda's apartment. Kojima comes onto Hizuru, who rejects him. Still, Tsuda finds out and gets enraged at Kojima, but Kojima beats Tsuda to a pulp and humiliates him to the point where it strains his relationship with Hizuru. Hizuru is intrigued by the animalistic Kojima, and ends up moving in with him. She also starts to pierce herself and get tattoos. She wants to box, but is denied that life by the surprisingly cowardly Kojima, who says she is a scary freak of a woman.
Tsuda still has feelings for Hizuru, and he keeps trying to win her back, leading to a confrontation where they bond by beating each other's faces to a pulp (Tsuda is quite mutilated in the process). In the end, Kojima and Tsuda end up in a sparring match in their boxing club, which leads to Tsuda getting beaten again, while Kojima goes on to win a real match, with no regard to his own well-being, afterwards. Kojima wins the match, but both he and Tsuda's faces begin to break apart and bleed profusely, suggesting fatal wounds.
