The Yakuza Character Analysis

The Yakuza (Pollack, 1975) was an interesting movie using the blend of American and Japanese culture to help build the storyline. This neo-noir film is about a man that returns to Japan, after World War II, to retrieve the daughter of his friends. Though he completes his mission he is pulled into something deeper that could claim his life. His movie is mostly about relationships between characters and how they change with better understanding of each other. Not only that, but the relationship between East and West. Using the Japanese culture the audience is enlightened about “many salient social and anthropological facts about Japan and its culture.”(Meyer, 1998) Like for instance that “Yakuza” is formed from numbers that when combined equal 20, which in Japanese gambling is an unlucky number. I take this in direct correlation with what happens to the characters in the movie, they seem to lose a lot before thy make it through to the other side of the storm.

Starting with the relationship between Harry Kilmer, our main protagonist, and

How both Hanako and Dusty have long hair and wear jeans but it really lies in how they try to understands each other’s customs. Dusty following the instruction, by Hanako, feel the warmth of the cup before he drinks it or even Hanako letting Dusty finish drying the dishes, which is “an act unacceptable for woman raised in the older [Japanese] tradition who has been taught a position of subservience to men.” (Taylor, 1998) This helps to symbolize how both cultures can understand one another even get along despite what might have happened in the past between them. Dusty and Hanako in The Yakuza are the embodiment of two cultures that have, through the new generation, the capacity to understand one another on a deeper