Hanzo the Razor is a trilogy of 1970s exploitation-flavored Jidaigeki films based on Kazuo Koike's manga Goyokibe. The titles are Sword of Justice (1972), The Snare (1973), and Who's Got the Gold? (1974)
Hanzo Itami is a righteous officer of the law in Edo Japan, foiling nefarious plots by corrupt officials. His greatest weapon in getting information is his other blade.
No relation to another character named Hanzo, nor the trope Hanlon's Razor.
Hanzo the Razor provides examples of the following tropes:
- Abortion Fallout Drama: In "The Snare", the plot involves abortion being illegal but still sought by desperate women. It starts when Hanzo discovers a woman who bled to death from a botched procedure, and follows the clues to a temple where the priestess is operating as a back-alley abortionist. One would-be patient named Oshizu says her husband is a poor merchant and they already have three children; if there’s even one more mouth to feed they will starve.
- Adaptation Name Change: The movies were based on the manga Goyokibe, but used the main character’s name as the title instead.
- Anachronism Stew: Many of the magistrates wear glasses, and the aesthetics of the movie overall are very 70s, right down to the soundtracks by famed composer Isao Tomita and Psychedelic Rock musician and record producer Kunihiko Murai.
- Anti-Hero: Hanzo is of the Unscrupulous flavor, being a well-meaning policeman willing to gain access to information with rather nasty methods.
- Bigger Is Better in Bed: Hanzo's Gag Penis should reach somewhere into his victims' chest cavities. Instead of inflicting horrific pain and damage, the gigantic size of his penis is implied to be a big part of the reason his victims experience so much pleasure that they tell him anything he wants to know.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: Hanzo works tirelessly to bring murders and evildoers to justice, but he bends the law and uses unsavory methods to get his results. While modern attitudes about sexual assault would push this into black and black morality, the movies certainly don’t treat Hanzo as if he were just as bad as the villains.
- Black Comedy Rape: Hanzo's main trick when interrogating women. He rapes them with his Gag Penis until they are so overcome with pleasure that they'll tell him everything.
- Buried Alive: Invoked. In the second movie Hanzo needs to get inside Kaizan Temple, but it’s got tight security who don’t like people snooping around. Since the parents of the dead girl Omachi Surugaya were patrons of the temple, Hanzo hides in the coffin that’s supposed to contain Omachi so he can get buried in the temple’s graveyard. When the guards have left he bursts out of the ground and gets to work.
- But for Me, It Was Tuesday: When Hanzo confronts the first priestess in "The Snare" about the anonymous girl who died after an abortion, she laughs and says she’s done it for over a hundred girls and can’t be expected to remember every one of them. Hanzo's servants bring the corpse in a barrel of salt, and he shoves her face next to it asking if she remembers now; she admits that the girl was a patient of hers named Omachi Surugaya, but haughtily claims the girl was fine when she left her temple and it wasn’t her fault if the girl died afterwards.
- Can't Bathe Without a Weapon: Hanzo has weapons hidden next to his bathtub in case he needs to defend himself.
- Crazy-Prepared: Hanzo has a booby trap that deploys spears from the ceiling just in case someone tries to attack him while he’s in the bathtub.
- Dirty Cop:
- Magobei Onishi was the officer who dealt with the accused killer Kanbei, but he took a bribe of 500 gold pieces—plus the sexual favors of Kanbei's mistress Omino—in exchange for letting Kanbei off the hook.
- Hanzo arrests women and screws them until they confess whatever information they know, which would be considered rape and abuse of power in any modern legal system. But ironically the movies portray him as a genuine protector of the law who can’t be bought or intimidated, and his various underhanded tactics are excused under the idea that "the ends justify the means."
- Embarrassing Tattoo: The story takes place during the Edo period, when criminals were branded with specific tattoos to identify and punish them. Hanzo's two servants are reformed crooks who each have a pair of stripes tattooed around the left forearm: if they ever try to talk him out of some plan he will order them to show him their tattoos, which always makes them ashamed and reminds them that they have no right to refuse their master who saved them from prison.
- End of an Age: The second film suggests the film trilogy takes place towards the end of the Edo era in the 19th century.note
- Establishing Character Moment: The first movie opens on a meeting at the North Magistrate’s Office where all the officers present sign an oath to never take bribes or abuse their authority. But Hanzo makes a scene by refusing when it’s his turn, saying it’s hypocrisy to do so when the Magistrate’s office they’re all a part of does accept gifts from the retainers of the daimyo and other interest groups seeking lenient treatment. This establishes him as an anti-corruption crusader and protector of the common people who's not afraid to rock the boat or upset powerful people.
- Exalted Torturer: Hanzo Itami, who was formerly the page's picture. He's played straight as a "good cop" who investigates his cases by raping his suspects into submission.
- Exploitation Film: Essentially a Japanese, Jidaigeki-flavored version of the genre with plenty of blood and guts as well as a hero that rapes female victims into submission to expose devious plots by corrupt officials.
- Gag Penis: Hanzo has a morning regimen for his penis that involves pouring hot water on it, then placing it against a block of wood and beating it with a stick. And then thrusting it in and out of a simulated vagina that’s full of uncooked rice grains. This ridiculous procedure is presumably to toughen it and improve his hang time during his "interrogations". The impression on the block is huge.
- Gorn: Like most of Kazuo Koike's works, there's a lot of blood. It looks like bright red paint, though.
- Jidaigeki: The trilogy is essentially a series of exploitation films set in Edo period Japan, specifically the capital city of Edo.
- Jurisdiction Friction: Hanzo's philosophy is that he goes wherever the criminals go, even if they've fled to someone else’s jurisdiction or are being harbored by a corrupt person of power. Naturally this annoys a lot of obstructive people who tell him to back off or else.We keep peace and order in Edo. But there are too many things to block us. Starting with the retainers, the temple, and the finance magistrates, they all say they are not under our jurisdiction, and won’t let us investigate. Innumerable suspects escape because of it.
- Kavorka Man: Hanzo is a slightly pudgy middle-aged guy with nasty-looking scars on his body, but gorgeous women can be persuaded to like him by the time an "interrogation" is through.
- Mercy Kill: At the end of the first movie Hanzo discovers a girl trying to kill her terminally ill father, who’s begging to be put out of his misery because he’s gotten too weak to even kill himself. The girl tries to strangle him with a scarf but breaks down crying before she can finish; her little brother sees her emotional suffering and also doesn’t want her to get crucified for committing patricide, so he offers to do the killing with a knife, which she snatches away because she would rather be crucified herself than let it happen to her brother. Hanzo stops them at this point in order to save them from punishment; he summons Dr. Inamura to administer a sedative and confirm the hopeless prognosis. After the doctor leaves, Hanzo tells the kids to wait outside and mercifully kills the unconscious man by hanging, in such a way that they can all pretend that the father hanged himself.
- More than Mind Control: Hanzo's rape victims are so overwhelmed with pleasure that they tell him whatever he wants to know.
- "Not If They Enjoyed It" Rationalization: Hanzo commits rape against his female interrogation subjects, which is evident from the fact that they protest and struggle at the beginning. Yet he’s such a Sex God that after a certain point they literally beg him to continue, at which point he denies them pleasure unless they agree to confess everything they know. The movies imply that it's not rape because the women end up liking it in the end, or at least that Hanzo isn’t bad for doing it.
- One-Man Army: Hanzo is a genius fighter who can dispatch ten or twenty enemy mooks single-handed.
- Perpetual Frowner: Although Hanzo may occasionally crack a smile or laugh, grim scowling is very much his default expression.
- Police Brutality: In addition to all the rape, Hanzo employs plenty of this as well. In one case involving a Buddhist nun, he actually tries this first before switching to his preferred method for interrogating women,
possibly out of respect for her religious status. - Rape Portrayed as Redemption: A major trope in the series. Some of Hanzo's suspects whom he rapes into submission are portrayed as changing their ways, such as Omino who agrees to help Hanzo catch her former lover Kanbei.
- Recruiting the Criminal: Hanzo is in the habit of showing mercy to lesser criminals in exchange for helping him catch the really bad ones.
- Reformed Criminal: Hanzo has two minions nicknamed Devil-Fire and Viper: the first was a thief, and the second a human trafficker. They are both ashamed to talk about their criminal pasts, and are loyal to Hanzo because he took them out of prison so they could serve him instead.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: At the beginning of the first movie Hanzo gives one to Onishi and the entire North Magistrate’s Office of Edo for being a bunch of corrupt hypocrites.Our duty’s not to protect the samurai, the rich, or Yoshiwara. We should protect the millions of Edo townsmen and farmers. Put that in writing before you make us take an oath!
- Reassigned to Antarctica: Lady Oraku threatens to get officer Onishi reassigned to Kofu if he refuses her bribe, noting how cold it gets there in winter.
- Ridiculous Exchange Rates: The context of the second movie includes economic hardship caused by the government debasing the coinage. The old coins made of purer gold are treated as significantly more valuable than the new ones.
- The Rival: Chief officer Magobei Onishi, who Hanzo hates ("Snake Magobei!") for being a jackass who takes bribes and has (consensual!) affairs with women.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Oyura is the daughter of the wealthy doctor Inamura, and is a favorite of the powerful Lady Oraku. When Hanzo comes to arrest Oyura for her connection to Lady Oraku's schemes, she boasts about how her powerful friends will come down on him like a ton of bricks.
- Seppuku: When Oyura threatens to have Hanzo forced to perform hara kiri as punishment for daring to barge into her home and arrest her, Hanzo opens his robe to reveal bloody bandages around his abdomen, declaring he’s already cut his stomach in advance and bandaged it just long enough to complete the arrest. This helps to intimidate her into being dragged out since he’s apparently got nothing to lose, but once he’s got her back at his house he reveals that the bloody bandages were fake.
- Sword Fight: The climax of the first movie features a furious sword duel between Hanzo and the assassin Kanbei the Killer.
- Sherlock Scan: At the beginning of "The Snare", some peasants lead Hanzo to a half-naked woman whom they found dead in a water mill. At first her identity and cause of death are unclear. First Hanzo notes that her clothes and appearance are those of a rich merchants daughter. Then he says the fact she has dark nipples implies she was promiscuous or had an affair. He feels between her legs and discovers a lot of blood, revealing she died from a botched abortion. And finally, he recognizes on her the smell of goma, a type of incense burned at temples. This victim puts him on the trail of a temple priestess named Nyokai who sells her pupils into prostitution.
- Stout Strength: Hanzo might be carrying some flab, but he’s also got enough muscle to break pieces of stone in half with his iron knuckles.
- Training from Hell: Hanzo practices torture on himself in order to sharpen his interrogation skills, and he also uses a painful-looking regimen to toughen up his penis.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Towards the end of the first movie, Hanzo is eating at a ramen stand when a girl who’s a teenager at most walks up and orders two cups of alcohol instead of food. She’s visibly staggered afterwards and needs to lean on her little brother in order to get home. Hanzo follows and discovers the situation: their father is suffering a slow and painful death from stomach cancer and is begging to be put out of his misery, so she got drunk as a way of preparing herself to kill him.
- Wall of Weapons: Hanzo has a concealed weapon rack installed on a hidden panel next to his bathtub, including a sword, spiked knuckles, and several jitte.
