Let Him Rest in Peace 
友よ、静かに瞑れ 「Tomoyo, Shizuka ni Tsumure」
Release Date: June 15th, 1985
Duration: 103 mins.
Director: Yoichi Sai
Writer: Shoichi Maruyama (Screenplay), Kenzo Kitakata (Original Novel)
Music: Shigeru Umebayashi
Starring: Tatsuya Fuji, Mitsuko Baisho, Ryoichi Takayanagi, Maya Ito, Hideo Murota, Daisuke Iiijima, Junko Miyashita, Yoshio Harada, Kei Sato, Ryuzo Hayashi,
A mysterious man with murky motivations ventures into a town and his presence sets off a powder keg of violence as he upsets the local order. This is the set-up for numerous Westerns and samurai films. Think Yojimbo and A Fist Full of Dollars. With that in mind, it is the latter, or at least the genre of the Western, that Yoichi Sai’s old-school hardboiled thriller Let Him Rest in Peace harks back to.
Based on a novel by Kenzo Kitakata, a novelist known for writing novels akin to the works of Raymond Chandler, the film stars Tatsuya Fuji as a laconic 40-something named Shindo, a Tokyoite who drifts into the tightknit community of the port town of Tamari, Okinawa, like that aforementioned mysterious stranger.
Shindo attracts silent stares and standoffish behaviour from the locals in the atmospheric opening as he drives through sun-bleached streets and sends suspicious citizens scattering. Once a thriving place thanks to the presence of the US military, with the Americans mostly gone, locals are down on their luck and looking to take a land buyout offered by Shimoyama (Kei Sato), the head of construction company who wants to redevelop the area. Tensions are high, however, as a violent incident has put everyone’s deals on hold and so the natives are suspicious of the outsider from Tokyo. They are right to be wary as it is gradually revealed that Shindo is investigating the arrest and imprisonment of his university friend Sakaguchi (Ryuzo Hayashi), the one person in town who refused to sell up to Shimoyama to the point that he drew a knife.
Knowing that Sakaguchi wouldn’t play madman without a reason and Shimoyama is the key to busting his friend out of the clink, Shindo stays at Sakaguchi’s failing hotel and launches an investigation that kicks over a hornet’s nest of corruption.
With a lean noirish story of smalltown corruption exposed as the villain, a property developer, takes on the form a modern-day robber baron who has the local populace in his pocket, including the police and yakuza. The simplicity in story makes it easy to follow and to enjoy the film’s strong points which are the atmosphere and thought-provoking themes on changing times in Okinawa.
Kitakata’s story was originally set in a hot spring town in the Sanin region of Honshu in the novel. While I have not read the source book, the film’s shift to Okinawa gives an undercurrent of economic malaise and politics.
This being made in the 80s, it’s fairly topical as bubble economy was growing and land developers were scheming and stealing plots of land up and down Japan. There was also the drawdown of the US military presence after the reversion of Okinawa to Japanese control in the 1970s. This creates a rich background of details for character motivation and atmosphere to keep hooks in an viewer.
The setting is fictional Tamari town and the locations are rife with English-language signage that reminds one of the US presence – notice in particular the signs and T-shirts emblazoned with Camp Schwab. Pizza, tacos, and Pepsi. all the visual signifiers of American imperialism. The locals cling onto them, the remnants of an economy geared towards a foreign presence, even though foreigners are distinctly absent, hence the economic malaise driving people to sell up.
Beyond any possible social commentary, artistic license allows Western genre inflections to be felt heavily from locations so that they add to the rich atmosphere.
What also reminds one of America is the desert-like atmosphere that is conjured up in shots of stray dogs running along dusty streets framed by a wide open sky above, faded signs and vacant grass lots. There are shots of the gorgeous flora and beaches of Okinawa but the preponderance of dust and concrete gives the film an arid look. At times it could be any desert in America (yeah, I’m generalising) and Shindo need only a Stetson and a horse to be the cowboy to complete the transition.
The hotel that Shindo stays at could be a bordello in a frontier town, inhabited as it is by sex workers (another nod to Okinawa’s history) who make up a patchwork family. A love interest is placed in here, played wonderfully by Mitsuko Baisho at her flintiest and fieriest, and a chaste romance full of simmering chemistry between her and Fuji’s character occurs as well as allowing a diverse group of characters to emerge on screen. However, whatever the softer feminine presence may add, this is an old-fashioned tale of men of honour coming into conflict with the nouveau riche of 80s Japan.
Key players in the story Shindo, Sakaguchi, and Takahata (Yoshio Harada), an ex-boxe and one of Shimoyama’s heavies, are played by the cast in a manner akin to Ken Takakura. They are university graduates with chequered pasts that have seen them ejected from regular society and a sort of sympathy based on shared ideals of stoicism in the face of their hardships creates a bond that allows them to be unpredictable. However, they ultimately embody traditional masculine traits of toughness, determination, and idealism in the face of reality corrupted by money flaunted by weak men like Shimoyama.
They are a pointed contrast to the women, who adopt more submissive roles, and Okinawans who are colonised people easily pushed around, and the younger gangsters who get outwitted and flattened in fights by the middle-aged men seeking redemption or an honourable way out of a dishonourable situation. This feeds into a subplot where a boy must learn to overcome cowardice and be more like a man. It also further helps punch up the simple story and add more value, especially as the performers pull of their roles with brilliantly measured cool and some killer lines that show how fearless they are.
What makes the film really kick during its slowburn approach to storytelling is that it looks good. Yes, it is because has a big Kadokawa budget, a fantastic cast, and it is shot on film so that the blacks to be deep and moody while the reds pop, but it has to be the camerawork that flows and the framing that has all of that dynamic acting caught perfectly.
There are numerous striking images. A child dragging the corpse of a dog along a beach, the fur matted with blood. The camera is constantly on the move when it wants to relay the details of a place or show the actors at work – that aforementioned chaste romance is delivered via an impressive crane shot as we get two characters, lying on beds on different floors of Sakaguchi’s hotel, obviously drawn to each other, their thoughts and emotions overlapping through shared their movements and some match cuts.
With a tight story, an atmosphere that is rich and fine acting, this is a film that has aged well and will definitely appeal to people who like old-school yakuza films.