aka A Man from Abashiri Prison is a 1965 Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese film directed by Teruo Ishii

Teruo Ishii

was a Japanese film director best known in the West for his early films in the Super Giant series, and for his films in the Ero guro subgenre of pinku eiga such as Shogun's Joys of Torture . He also directed the 1965 film, Abashiri Prison, which helped to make Ken Takakura a major star in Japan...

 and starring Ken Takakura

Ken Takakura

, born , is a Japanese actor best known for his brooding style and the stoic presence he brings to his roles.Takakura gained his streetwise swagger and tough-guy persona watching yakuza turf battles over the lucrative black market and racketeering in postwar Fukuoka...

. It is the first entry in the Abashiri Bangaichi / Abashiri Prison series. Highly successful, it was the first hit in the yakuza film

Yakuza film

is a popular film genre in Japanese cinema which focuses on the lives and dealings of yakuza, also referred to as the Japanese Mafia.-Ninkyo eiga:...

 genre. It made a star of Takakura and Ishii directed ten more films in the series.

Synopsis

In Hokkaido's Abashiri Prison, Shinichi Tachibana, model prisoner with six months remaining in his sentence is handcuffed to Gonda, a hardened criminal. When Gonda and other inmates escape from the prison, Tachibana must go along.

Cast

• Ken Takakura
  Ken Takakura
  , born , is a Japanese actor best known for his brooding style and the stoic presence he brings to his roles.Takakura gained his streetwise swagger and tough-guy persona watching yakuza turf battles over the lucrative black market and racketeering in postwar Fukuoka...
  
  
• Kōji Nanbara
  Koji Nanbara
  was a Japanese actor. He was born in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan. He died of a myocardial infarction in Chōfu, Tokyo at age 74.-External links:...
  
  
• Tetsurō Tamba
  Tetsuro Tamba
  was a Japanese actor.-Biography:Tamba is perhaps best known by Western audiences for his role as Tiger Tanaka in the 1967 James Bond film You Only Live Twice . By then, he had among other roles appeared in two films by director Masaki Kobayashi: Harakiri and Kwaidan...
  
  
• Toru Abe
• Kanjūrō Arashi
  Kanjūrō Arashi
  was a Japanese film actor. He entered the film industry in 1927 and came to fame playing Kurama Tengu, a character in the Bakumatsu era created by Jirō Osaragi in his novels. In the 1950s he portrayed the Emperor Meiji in several hit films and appeared in yakuza films in the 1960s...
  
  
• Kunie Tanaka
  Kunie Tanaka
  is a Japanese actor who has appeared in such films as Akira Kurosawa's Sanjuro and The Bad Sleep Well and Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan.He has been nominated for five Japanese Academy Awards, winning the Best Supporting Actor statuette for Gakko in 1993.-Selected filmography:*Minna no Ie aka...
  
  
• Limm Sueii
• Kenji Ushio
• Koji Takishima
• Koji Miemachi
• Kazu Sugiyoshi
• Seiya Satou
• Joji Yoshimura
• Koji Sekiyama
• Tadashi Suganuma
• Tatsuya Kitayama