

Tattooed acrobats, stolen daggers, and Edo-era murder—this detective's got 99 minutes to save his friend.
During the era of Tokugawa Ieyasu, one night a carver named Fujijiro was murdered. Immediately launching an investigation, Denhichi, accompanied by Otoshi and Take, toured the entertainment houses of Ryogoku. There, they discovered a connection between an acrobat and the incident. On their way home, Otoshi unexpectedly encountered an old friend, Inosuke, nervously buying a dagger. Inosuke, a clerk at the Kashimaya store, was in love with Oko, a secret lover of Bunzaemon. Amidst this, Seihei, the head clerk, was murdered by someone, and a dagger belonging to Inosuke was found at the scene, leading Gohei to suspect Inosuke as the culprit. However, Otoshi was hiding Inosuke. Driven by Otoshi's plea and a professional instinct that Inosuke wasn't the perpetrator, Denhichi desperately searched for the real culprit.
Cinematography
Shadow-drenched Ryogoku pleasure district shots are pure 1954 noir poetry.
Acting
Kōkichi Takada's Denshichi: gruff compassion in every sideways glance.
Director
Tsuruo Iwama
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Ryogoku was Edo's pleasure district, and these films helped preserve its vanished world for modern audiences.
Tsuruo Iwama directed dozens of Denshichi films; this was peak franchise output when Japanese studios released multiple entries yearly.
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