General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

Intimidation (ある脅迫) (1960 film)

Intimidation (ある脅迫, Aru kyōhaku) is a 1960 Japanese black-and-white crime suspense film directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara (蔵原惟繕) and produced and distributed by Nikkatsu¹. Adapted from a Naoki Prize-winning work by Kyō Takigawa (多岐川恭), it follows a blackmailed bank executive who plans to rob his own bank on the night his meek childhood friend is on duty, and the reversals that follow when the two men's fortunes begin to turn¹^•².

Key fact	Detail
Original title	ある脅迫 (Aru kyōhaku)¹
Director / studio	Koreyoshi Kurahara; produced and distributed by Nikkatsu¹
Release	20 March 1960¹
Format	Black and white, CinemaScope, 6 reels, 1,791 m; 66 minutes per Nikkatsu, 65 minutes per several international listings¹^•²
Source	Naoki Prize-winning story by Kyō Takigawa¹
Screenplay	Credited to Osamu Kawase (川瀬治), a pen name of Masaharu Segawa (瀬川昌治)¹^•³
Leads	Nobuo Kaneko as Takita Kyōsuke; Kō Nishimura as Nakaike Matakichi¹
Music / cinematography	Masaru Satō; Yoshihiro Yamazaki⁴

Spoilers

Plot

Takita Kyōsuke, deputy manager of the Naoetsu branch of a Hokuriku bank, is promoted to head of the business department at the head office. Sharp and free of scandal, he is well regarded inside and outside the company, and his marriage to the bank president's daughter has also hastened his rise¹. At his lavish farewell party at a traditional restaurant, one man sits apart from the festivities: Nakaike, a clerk in the general affairs section who shared a desk with Takita in middle school. Takita's wife had originally been Nakaike's sweetheart; after Takita took her from him, his golden path through life opened¹.

On the way home from the party a sharp-eyed man blocks Takita and says "you could manage 3 million yen, couldn't you?". To support a woman he had picked up on a business trip to Tokyo, Takita had forged seals and made unauthorized loans, and the yakuza Kumaki, who holds this secret, has been blackmailing him. Kumaki hands Takita a handgun: the money is due by 6 a.m. the next morning, or he will report everything to the police and the company. Cornered, Takita forms a plan: he has used Nakaike all along, and will use him to the very last. He drags Nakaike, who is on night duty that day, out to a bar¹.

Disguised, Takita robs his own bank on the night Nakaike keeps watch³. The heist appears to go as planned, but when Nakaike betrays a hint of recognition, the plot turns, and turns again⁵. The two men's positions, one a winner on the promotion track and the other a clerk who has never advanced, reverse over the course of the story³^•⁶.

Cast and crew

Nobuo Kaneko plays the arrogant, career-climbing Takita, and Kō Nishimura plays the servile Nakaike, a role unusual for an actor more often cast in eccentric parts¹^•⁶. The two leads were both born in 1923⁷. The supporting cast includes Mari Shiraki as Nakaike's sister Umeha, Kōjirō Kusanagi as Kumaki, Jun Hamamura as the caretaker Nozaki, Yōko Kosono as Takita's wife Kumiko, and Kōshin Kawakami as branch manager Okuyama¹. Ryoji Motegi produced; Masaru Satō composed the score, Yoshihiro Yamazaki was the cinematographer, Kazuhiko Chiba the art director, and Akira Suzuki the editor⁴^•¹.

The screenplay credit, Osamu Kawase, is a pen name of Masaharu Segawa, who later worked as a comedy director³.

Production

Koreyoshi Kurahara was born in 1927 in Kuching, Borneo, studied film at Nihon University's art faculty, became an assistant director at Shochiku's Kyoto studio, and moved to Nikkatsu when film production resumed in 1954⁸. Intimidation was one of two features he directed in 1960, alongside Crazed Fruit (狂熱の季節)⁸.

The film was shot in black and white in CinemaScope on six reels totaling 1,791 meters¹. Location work took place in Joetsu, Niigata Prefecture, including Naoetsu Station¹.

Reception and availability

The film was shown at the New York Film Festival in a 35 mm print, where programmers described it as a sleek noir of murder, blackmail, and bitterly ironic twists, and a psychological study of revenge that comments on the ethical shortcuts of corporate life². It streams on the Criterion Channel in the United States⁹, where it holds a 7.2 user rating⁹, and Rotten Tomatoes records an 80% audience score from fewer than 50 ratings⁴. Japanese viewers on Filmarks rate it 3.7 out of 5 across more than 300 reviews¹⁰.

A Japanese reviewer notes that the film's structure, in which the winner and loser of the two men's rivalry swap places, is simple, but that the resolution conceals a device that deceives the audience and then a final twist that turns on that device, with the moral that crime does not pay clearly visible beneath the story⁶. WOWOW's synopsis calls it a low-budget small-scale work under 70 minutes in which the master-servant relationship between the two leads reverses repeatedly, keeping the drama suspenseful to the end³.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026