Yama – Attack to Attack

Right from the start, Mitsuo Sato makes clear that this film is not an appeal for pity. Instead, Yama is a film for the workers, meant to function as a weapon in their struggle. Sato paid for this stance with his life: on December 22, 1985 – during filming – he was murdered by Yakuza gangsters whose criminal involvement in the restructuring of the job market Sato intended to reveal with this film. A collective of directors headed by Kyoichi Yamaoka finished the film; Yamaoka, too, was later murdered. The dramatic circumstances of the production reflect the explosive nature of the subject: the film exposes the collaboration between the Japanese elite and police with Yakuza gangs, who gained ever more power in the mid-80s as subcontractors in the booming construction business in Tokyo. Yama accuses those responsible of the resulting brutal exploitation of the types of people Marxists call the “reserve army of labour”: day workers, outcasts, the unemployed, foreigners. Highlighting their dramatic struggle as those exploited and victimised by criminal conditions, the film documents the excesses of a capitalism with fascist undertones.