Tokyo: The Last War (1989)

 

Director: Takashige Ichise

Screenplay: Kaizo Hayashi

Based on Teito Monogatari by Hiroshi Aramata

Cast: Masaya Katô as Yuko Nakamura, Takeshi Kusaka as Fumimaro Konoe, Brian Matt-Uhl as Wagner, Kaho Minami as Yukiko Tasumiya, Kyûsaku Shimada as Yasunori Kato, Tetsurô Tanba as Kanaami Kohou, Yoshio Tsuchiya as Dr. Mizuno

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

1945 Japan - after the 1988 adaptation Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis, adapting Hiroshi Aramata's multi-volume novel Teito Monogatari, we return to a later period, following after the main antagonist Yasunori Kato (Kyûsaku Shimada) having attempted to destroy Tokyo in the Meiji and Taishō era the final curtains for the Pacific War and Japan's defeat. In the final years in this story, Japan has a secret governmental group combining Buddhism and science by way of black magic to defeat the Allied forces. Contrasting this, there is the thousand years of accumulating dead, angry and vengeful, which resurrect Kato.

It is a fascinating production which strangely never came to the West, with Ngai Chai Lam as assistant director, the Hong Kong director of Riki-Oh (1991) and The Seventh Curse (1986), and Screaming Mad George on practical effects duty, all for a story which is more overtly horrific in content but is tackling a really difficult historical period. This has to find a balance between the issue that the deaths that happened in Japan for their populous was horrifying, but contrasted by the fact Japan's military did align themselves with the Nazis, the existential contrast even making Kato, despite wishing to just destroy here, almost a true anti-hero finally. A transmission tower is what the plan is, able to channel legendary actor Tetsurô Tanba's will to kill Churchill and Roosevelt with black magic, which General Hideki Tojo thinks is embarrassing and also leads to the question whether it would be enough to actually win a war Japan is in the sliding loss of. The last heir of the previous family who fought Kato, Yukiko (Kaho Minami), is a nurse we follow, and fully emphasises this film dealing with what is still a controversial part of Japanese history, as she is an innocent bystander, there trying to help those maimed in the combat of war, and it is befitting when, traumatised by the history of Kato, he looks like one of the Japanese military on the streets in the uniform as he begins to stalk her and stalks the plan to use the transmission tower.

There is also Yuko Nakamura (Masaya Katô), an assistant to Tanba's Kanaami Kohou who was experimented on as a child to fully cultivate his psychic powers, finding himself in the midst of a plan with the transmitter tower even other Buddhist monks find against their faith, and woefully underpowered against Kato, who could likely twist him like a towel as one unfortunate soldier endures. This is significantly more violent than the previous film - including the soldier unable to throw a grenade due to magic - and Screaming Mad George earns his pay check with skin peeling of the cheek, or a chest mid-operation opening the stitches by their own, or the nightmarish experiences Yukiko has of Miyo, a girl who lost her eyes and mother due to US fire bombings, having a bug body and a human head, or Kato headed children. In contrast however you have the film taking its subject seriously, in that whilst its leads are important, Yukiko the last member of the family who stopped Kato last time, and Nakamura risking his life to stop Kato, ultimately this entire story is about the acceptance of Japan losing the Pacific War.  It balances carefully between its more explicitly horror tone with the severity of its subject.

Yukiko for the most part is a nurse trying to help ordinary people harmed in fire bombed Japan, with Nakamura the result of a child being experimented on by the military against his will, a film really emphasising that it is not looking at Japan with a pro-military stance but stuck in its doomed outcome of the Pacific War, even nodding to the atomic bombs in reference. It says a lot that the comic relief squeaky voice nurse dies, and not in a cheap way but credible to the real conflict this is set in, so The Last War does manage to deal with history carefully. Hitler does make an appearance - which is apt as he was an occultist in real life, approving the killing of Allied leaders with black magic - and it is potent how the outcome even if it drastically changes history before Inglourious Basterds (2009) deals with him. [Major Spoiler] That, realising the doomed nature of the war, figures decide to try to end it quickly, force the curse on Hitler instead and kill him instead, even if real history sadly lead to Japan feeling the effect of two atomic bombs. [Spoilers End] With the hope that Japan, as it did into the fifties and sixties onwards, could rebuild itself from its past and destruction, the film does leave on a bitter sweet finale as a result.

In terms of Teito Monogatari, it does strip back a lot of the historical and occultist content, which may make it a disappointment, where Kato is literally a super powered juggernaut rather than a figure with a symbolic complexity to him. Nods thankfully still exist, such as an entire scene evoking Kwaidan (1964) of monks with text painted on their bodies and face to protect the main temple,  and by its end, the tonal change for Tokyo: The Last War allows it to deal with its subject matter well and stand out by itself. How this never found its way to the West, as it came under the guide of its producer Takashige Ichise directing the film, I cannot say barring pure bad luck, as next to Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis this would have been the more readily accessible of the pair you could get with greater ease. It is, together with its prequel, worthy of critical reassessment.