Tsuda (Shinya Tsukamoto) is an insurance salesman who hates the daily grind of his job, traipsing around Tokyo trying to sell contracts to the population who really are not interested: nobody is happy to see him, and his boss pressures him so much he comes to think of himself as a doormat. At least when he gets home to his fiancée Hiziru (Kaori Fujii) he can relax, but she starts going on about getting married and it's more pressure he doesn't need, so begins to lash out at her verbally, since he has no one else he can take out his frustrations on. How about he takes up boxing, like semi-professional Kojima (Kôji Tsukamoto) has? When Tsuda catches sight of a training bout on his travels around town, it plants a seed in his mind...
But little does he know this will send him into a downward spiral of violence - or was it an upward spiral of violence, as he appears to be liberated in the boxing ring like never before? This was the movie director, writer and star Shinya Tsukamoto crafted after Tetsuo II: Body Hammer hit the international markets, and this broadening of his horizons paradoxically took him closer to home to study his relationship with Japan's capital. It's actually fairly difficult to perceive the message he was making about Tokyo for someone who is not a resident in his own mind, as certainly there were a number of shots of the city and montages where he apparently took his camera and swung it about, drinking in the skyscrapers and traffic, but quite what that had to do with boxing was not so clear.
According to Tsukamoto, the four sides of a boxing ring represented the walls of the city closing in, suggesting a claustrophobia that could only be alleviated through physical energy, which in the case of the characters meant punching one another in the face. As you may have expected should you have seen one of this filmmaker's works before, intensity was a major part of the tone of the piece, starting with a series of images of feverish boxing including a face's eye view of a fist smashing through it and a bunch of training athletes going at it in weirdly comical fashion. Some saw significance in the casting of the director's own brother as his character's rival both in love and in the sport, and it was true Tsukamoto appeared to be paying tribute to his sibling.
Kôji Tsukamoto had experience as a professional boxer himself, and had turned trainer at the point this was made, so at least he could guide his brother in making the fights look convincing, or so you'd believe, yet this was no Rocky imitation as the action was stylised to an absurd degree, leaving you unsure if you were intended to be laughing or otherwise. Indeed, here pugilism would seem to be a stand in or at least comparable with sadomasochism, the release of inflicting pain or taking it yourself the equivalent of getting your kicks sexually. This was underlined in the central love triangle as Tsuda loses Hiziru to Kojima when he is demonstrated to be far more macho than some dull salaryman, so Tsuda takes up the sport to prove himself worthy of his girlfriend.
However, Hiziru gets in on the pain business as well, taking up piercing her body, first with self-administered ear piercings and then getting a tattoo (this is seen as body mutilation too), then sticking metal rods in her skin to achieve the satisfaction the men in her life are not able to give her. If you had any doubt Darren Aaronofsky watched a lot of Tsukamoto before making Requiem for a Dream, prepare to have those doubts dispelled, as the climax of Tokyo Fist was markedly similar in editing and drama to what the three main characters are putting themselves through in self-punishment for their supposed inadequacies at getting by and forward in the capital. Maybe you had to really know the city to get what the director wished to convey in his apparently conflicted opinions of his hometown, which left you with an impression of suppression and anxiety that can only be let out through some very unorthodox behaviour no matter where you were from. That the film ends with faces literally pissing blood all round suggested issues, or perhaps a twisted sense of humour. Music by Chu Ishikawa.
Japanese writer/director and actor whose controversial, stylised films have bought him considerable notoriety in the West. His 1988 sci-fi body-horror debut Tetsuo: The Iron Man was a hit at international film festivals, and he followed it with the colour sequel/remake, Tetsuo II: Body Hammer. Other films include the supernatural yarn Hiruko the Goblin, boxing fetish tale Tokyo Fist, the urban drama Bullet Ballet, erotic thriller A Snake of June and mental breakdown drama Kotoko.
