Tamaki Awazu (Shima Iwashita) is holding her husband’s place as head of a powerful yakuza family during his incarceration, their operation in Takamatsu running under the auspices of the Domoto Syndicate. The Domoto family is thrown into turmoil following the death of their chairman. An ambitious lieutenant, Koiso (Mikio Narita) strikes out on his own, hiring an outsider Sugita (Masanori Sera) to kill the boss’s successor, Kakinuma. Tamaki remains loyal to her original clan, rejecting Koiso’s proposal to join the new outfit. However, Tamaki’s decision is made more perilous when she discovers that her younger sister Makoto (Rino Katase) has begun a relationship with Sugita, who also harbours ambitions of rising in the criminal underworld.
Based on a book by Shoko Ieda that collected interviews with real Yakuza spouses, with a screenplay by Koji Takada, “Yakuza Wives” offers a look into the lives of the women involved with the Yakuza. Often sidelined or used as window dressing, here Tamaki and her sister take centre stage and we see they are riven with the same conflicted loyalties, tormented by the same brutal moral code, and equal to the men in maliciousness and self-interest. The performances by Shima Iwashita as the ice-cold matriarch and Rino Katase as the naive side-piece to a vicious killer, are rich and believable in their duelling ideologies. The film occasionally over-burdens itself with exposition, but when the characters are given a chance to breathe they create a compelling world and web of relationships. The supporting cast are good as the more familiar yakuza stereotypes: Masanori Sera as the thuggish Sugita and Mikio Narita as the avaricious Koiso in particular. Throughout there is an underlying threat as the pieces move into place, punctuated by flashes of violence as it spills over in killings as the men attempt to claw their way to a position of power. There is a stylishness to Hideo Gosha’s directing, with the lavish lifestyles of the criminal class on full display masking the harsh realities of fortunes built on bloodshed.
“Yakuza Wives” ends with a shocking climax that reinforces the message of the film: that a callous live-by-the-sword-die-by-the-sword mentality usually ends badly for all parties involved. Throughout the film expresses the sense that the Yakuza, despite their stylish pretentions are involved in little more than puerile power-games. In the sequence in which Tamaki and Makoto fight we witness a childish squabble replete with hair-pulling and rolling around on the floor. It is comi-tragic as it represents what the Yakuza as a whole are involved in, infantile disputes made more deadly in maturity. At heart “Yakuza Wives” is a drama about family feuds and the potentially lethal consequences of an endless demand for authority.
