“In the 1960s, the Nikkatsu studio was primarily occupied with producing action pictures, both period and contemporary, and Seijun Suzuki was a staff director, not very high in the pecking order, who was given routine assignments. But Suzuki, an auteur theorist's dream come true, managed to subvert each of his assignments with a wonderfully quirky sense of design, composition and character. Conventional genre stories became surreal ballets. Suzuki became a college cult hero in the late '60s, which both puzzled and annoyed the studio, which had never understood or liked his films. Finally, after making an outrageously outre detective film, The Killer's Mark (Koroshiya no) in 1968--somewhat like The 10th Victim, about a pursuer pursued in a deadly game of hide-and-seek, in which the beleaguered protagonist got his greatest pleasure from sniffing steaming pots of rice--Suzuki was fired by the outraged studio at the peak of his popularity.
“Tokyo Drifter is one of the most interesting examples of Suzuki's work because it epitomizes the primacy he placed on surface details--set design, costume and color (unfortunately somewhat faded by now). Some of the action takes place in a carvernous lemon-yellow nightclub in which the hero's girlfriend is a singer (chansonneuse) who never has an audience other than her accompanist. The hero's rival operates a disco called ‘The Manhole Music Tearoom,' full of pipes and conduits, and with a transparent floor which is used for some wonderful shots from below. Other parts of the sets feature hanging Persian rugs and Victorian bricabrac. The hero, Tetsu, wears pastel suits and drives a large black American car with a checkered stripe over it.
“The story has to do with a gangster (Ryuji Kita, who appeared in all of Ozu's late films), but his young disciple (Tetsuya Watari), who want to go straight but are trapped within a murderous plot of revenge and betrayal that prevents their reform.
“The picture was to be a vehicle for Nikkatsu star Watari, a popular singer of the time, and one of the requirements given Suzuki was to work in several renditions of Watari singing the film's engaging theme song.” David Owens, Japan Society