Pigs and Battleships is set in the harbor town of Yokosuka, host to the U.S. Naval base, along narrow streets with prostitutes, pimps, and assorted yakuza all lurking for the Yankee dollar. Kinta is a young street punk who joins the small-time Himori gang in their ambitious scheme to sell black-market hogs to the American fleet. In the gangland-style war that ensues, Kinta finds himself the fall guy for those he trusted. His girlfriend Haruko meanwhile does what she must to avoid the fate of the battleship babes. Allegory is too kind a word for Imamura's brilliant protest against the American military presence in Japan. His compositions emphasize evidence of American paraphernalia in even the most intimate details of Japanese life. Lives human and porcine are equally expendable, and if the Americans behave like pigs to the Japanese, the local thugs follow their example. The shot of pigs thundering down the narrow streets has no equal for black humoresque.