Why are Japanese characters in Hollywood films so often portrayed as honorable, loyal and bound by duty?
From Ken Takakura in The Yakuza (1974) and Black Rain (1989) to Hiroyuki Sanada in The Last Samurai (2003) and Shōgun (2024), Hollywood has long favored a particular image of Japanese masculinity.
But what happens when Takashi Miike brings Abel Ferrara’s cult classic Bad Lieutenant to Tokyo in a Japanese-American co-production? Through its lurid colors and recurring images of crows, Miike offers a very different vision of Japan, one that challenges the image Hollywood has spent decades creating.
Spoiler Warning: This article discusses major plot points, including the ending.
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Hollywood’s Longstanding Image of the Honorable Japanese Man
Drugs, violence and redemption. Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant (1992) is a brutal portrait of a corrupt New York City cop at rock bottom. More than 30 years later, director Takashi Miike brings that world to the darker side of Tokyo in Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo.
Hollywood has a long history of films exploring Japan’s criminal underworld. From Tokyo Joe (1949), starring Humphrey Bogart, to The Yakuza (1974) and Black Rain (1989), the fascination goes back decades. And it hasn’t faded. More recent examples include Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003), The Wolverine (2013), the TV series Tokyo Vice (2022) and John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023).
One recurring theme in these stories is the idea of Japan as a place where traditional virtues still survive. In both The Yakuza and Black Rain, Ken Takakura embodied giri and ninjō, a sense of duty and human compassion. His characters offered weary American protagonists a glimpse of honor and integrity they seemed to have lost in their own lives.
Today, Hiroyuki Sanada has arguably inherited that role in Hollywood. From The Last Samurai (2003) to John Wick: Chapter 4 and the Emmy-winning Shōgun (2024), he has repeatedly portrayed Japanese men who live by their principles, even at great personal cost. It’s an image of Japan that Hollywood has returned to time and again.
But the Japanese-American co-production Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo has no interest in following that familiar formula.
