Judo Life

Overview

Sonny Chiba's first martial arts film, a partially fictionalized judo biopic based on prominent judoka Shiro Saigo (Chiba), the second student of judo founder Jigoro Kano (Naoki Sugiura). Akira Kurosawa’s Sanshiro Sugata is based on the same character and shares some scenes, but Judo for Life focuses more on the martial arts philosophy and training, including scenes depicting how the protagonist learned his famous cat-like landing, coined the term judo, and trained with Tsunejiro Tomita (Hideo Murata). There’s also a slight yakuza film influence. The port street ambush scene is found in both films, but in Judo for Life it’s not Kano but a travelling yakuza that jumps out of the rickshaw. Entertaining and beautifully old fashioned, one does however with there were more shades of gray between good and evil, and a stronger ninkyo-like moral / honour conflict.

Details

Status

Released

Release date

April 21, 1963

Original language

Japanese

Spoken languages

Japanese

Countries

Japan

Production

Toei Company

Cast

Sonny Chiba,Nobuo Yana,Fumitake Ōmura,Tokue Hanazawa,Rinichi Yamamoto,Harumi Sone,Takashi Kanda,Harue Tone,Naoki Sugiura,Hideo Murotaand 6 more

Director

Kiyoshi Saeki

Writer

Ryutaro Kondo,Toshio Matsuura

Budget

Not recorded

Revenue

Not recorded

IMDb

tt6681658