# Pigs and Battleships (豚と軍艦)
**Pigs and Battleships** (豚と軍艦, *Buta to gunkan*; also released internationally as *Hogs and Warships*) is a 1961 Japanese black-and-white drama directed by Shohei Imamura and produced by the Nikkatsu studio, set in the port city of Yokosuka around the American naval base and following a young hoodlum drawn into a yakuza gang's pig-farming scheme.[1](https://jfdb.jp/title/7365) • [2](https://intl.nikkatsu.com/sales/73.html) It was Imamura's fifth feature and the first made to his own design, and it is regarded as the film in which his mature style, focused on the crude energies of postwar Japanese lower-class life, first fully appeared.[3](https://www.jcablog.com/post/pigs-and-battleships-review) • [4](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/wp-content/uploads/a619a6bbade20707d02d8f37b80d9233.pdf)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Original title | 豚と軍艦 (*Buta to gunkan*); English titles *Hogs and Warships* and *Pigs and Battleships*[1](https://jfdb.jp/title/7365) |
| Release | 21 January 1961 (Japan), Nikkatsu; produced 1960[1](https://jfdb.jp/title/7365) • [5](https://www.nikkatsu.com/movie/20503.html) |
| Format | 108 minutes, monochrome, CinemaScope (1:2.35)[1](https://jfdb.jp/title/7365) |
| Director and writer | Shohei Imamura; screenplay by Hisashi Yamauchi; cinematography by Shinsaku Himeda; music by Toshiro Mayuzumi[6](https://www.foodwatch.jp/screenfoods0025) |
| Principal cast | Hiroyuki Nagato (Kinta), Jitsuko Yoshimura (Haruko), Masao Mishima, Tetsuro Tanba, Yoko Minamida[6](https://www.foodwatch.jp/screenfoods0025) • [2](https://intl.nikkatsu.com/sales/73.html) |
| Setting | Yokosuka's Dobuita Street and the U.S. naval base, Kanagawa Prefecture[5](https://www.nikkatsu.com/movie/20503.html) |
| Recognition | 7th place in Kinema Junpo's Best Ten for 1961[5](https://www.nikkatsu.com/movie/20503.html) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
The story is set in 1960, when a warship's arrival revives Dobuita Street, the strip of cabarets catering to American sailors.[2](https://intl.nikkatsu.com/sales/73.html) • [7](https://eiga.com/movie/39185/) Kinta (Hiroyuki Nagato), a small-time hustler stuck in postwar poverty, joins the local Hi Mori yakuza family, which is involved in drug dealing, pimping, and racketeering; his girlfriend Haruko (Jitsuko [Yoshimura](https://www.edgepedia.org/yoshimura)) pleads with him to go straight and proposes they move to Kawasaki, where her uncle lives, but he cannot leave the gang.[2](https://intl.nikkatsu.com/sales/73.html) • [8](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1960_n.html)
**The pig scheme.** After the authorities destroy the family's illegal brothel business, the gang turns to large-scale pig raising, using food scraps from the base, an offer brought by Sakiyama, who has come from Hawaii.[7](https://eiga.com/movie/39185/) Kinta, who had worked as a tout for the brothel, is put to tending the pigs.[5](https://www.nikkatsu.com/movie/20503.html)
**The corpse.** The gang's ailing lieutenant Tetsuji asks Kinta to dispose of the body of Harukoma, a drifter yakuza who came to extort the family; Kinta feeds it to the pigs. Later, as the gang eats a pork dish, a gold tooth emerges from the meat.[5](https://www.nikkatsu.com/movie/20503.html)
**Collapse and climax.** The family disintegrates: the accountant Hoshino absconds with the money, Sakiyama flees to Hawaii after squeezing out an advance for the scraps, and Tetsuji, misdiagnosed with terminal stomach cancer that proves to be a mere ulcer, is killed by the hitman he had hired. The family splits into factions that each try to sell the pigs for themselves; Kinta, ordered to move them at night and betrayed once too often, fires a submachine gun, and hundreds of pigs stampede through Dobuita Street, trampling everyone in the way. Days later Haruko leaves home, and the base town goes on as before, crowded with sailors, women, and touts.[7](https://eiga.com/movie/39185/)
## Production
The film was made at Nikkatsu from an original screenplay by Hisashi Yamauchi, with Shinsaku Himeda as cinematographer and Toshiro Mayuzumi composing the score; the crew also included [Masaki Kobayashi](https://www.edgepedia.org/masaki-kobayashi)'s future collaborator Kiriro Urayama as assistant director.[6](https://www.foodwatch.jp/screenfoods0025) • [5](https://www.nikkatsu.com/movie/20503.html) Location shooting took place in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, including Dobuita Street, Anpu, and the seaside park.[5](https://www.nikkatsu.com/movie/20503.html) The National Film Archive of Japan credits the film's editing to Miyajima Yoshitomo and lists Kazuo Hasegawa among the staff.[4](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/wp-content/uploads/a619a6bbade20707d02d8f37b80d9233.pdf)
## Themes and style
The title's two nouns carry the film's central metaphor: the pigs stand for Japan and the battleships for the United States.[9](https://www.daito.ac.jp/education/cr_att/0013/11631_193815_010.pdf) Imamura depicts a mutually exploitative relationship between the American military and the lower elements of Japanese society around the base, and he directs his satire at the local Japanese as much as at the Americans, showing a dependency in which the host country's own criminal element and authorities are complicit.[10](https://etd.ohiolink.edu/acprod/odb_etd/ws/send_file/send?accession=wright1666111211767339&disposition=inline) One scene shows three piglets cramped in a roped cart while a schoolboy's voiceover reads that "Japan has become a modern, independent state", an irony underlining Japan's subordination.[11](https://doi.fil.bg.ac.rs/pdf/journals/fdu_zr/2023-43/fdu_zr-2023-43-2.pdf) The film also includes a scene in which Haruko is assaulted by three drunk U.S. sailors, an episode a scholarly study of base films reads as demonstrating the powerlessness of the Japanese in relation to the American occupiers and their local allies.[10](https://etd.ohiolink.edu/acprod/odb_etd/ws/send_file/send?accession=wright1666111211767339&disposition=inline)
The pig as a figure for greedy, honorless men runs from the opening credits, with trucks of pigs, to the climax.[11](https://doi.fil.bg.ac.rs/pdf/journals/fdu_zr/2023-43/fdu_zr-2023-43-2.pdf) The Washington Post's 1986 review described the film as a "dyspeptic, scabrously funny gangster farce, loaded with metaphors about America's post-war exploitation of Japan", shot in a swift, Hollywood action-movie style with stylized camera and editing.[12](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1986/08/15/pigs-vision-of-a-ruined-world/9b327e74-1703-43f4-a66a-55625e7cd8b6/) The National Film Archive of Japan calls it the first full flowering of the earthy, near-comic style for which Imamura became known, and notes that it lays bare the underside of defeated Japan.[4](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/wp-content/uploads/a619a6bbade20707d02d8f37b80d9233.pdf)
## Reception and aftermath
Kinema Junpo ranked the film 7th in its Best Ten for 1961.[5](https://www.nikkatsu.com/movie/20503.html) According to a review by the film scholar John Berra, the film caused enough controversy on release that Nikkatsu suspended Imamura from directing for two years; contractual conditions kept him writing screenplays at the studio, and he returned with *The Insect Woman* (1963). Berra notes it is possible the suspension owed less to the film's depiction of American-Japanese relations than to angering executives by going over budget on the action scenes.[13](https://www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk/reviews/2011/07/05/pigs-and-battleships/)
Later assessments treat the film as the start of the run of works, including *The Insect Woman* (1963) and *Intentions of Murder* (1964), through which Imamura won his decisive critical reputation; he went on to win the [Palme d'Or](https://www.edgepedia.org/palme-dor) at Cannes twice, for *[The Ballad of Narayama](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-ballad-of-narayama-1983-film)* (1983) and *[The Eel](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-eel)* (1997).[14](https://jfdb.jp/person/29331) The film has been released on home video in a 2003 Geneon box set of Imamura's Nikkatsu works and on Blu-ray and DVD by Eureka Entertainment in 2011, paired with his debut feature *Stolen Desire*.[15](https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA70880037) • [13](https://www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk/reviews/2011/07/05/pigs-and-battleships/)
## References
1. [豚と軍艦 (Hogs and Warships), Japanese Film Database (JFDB)](https://jfdb.jp/title/7365)
2. [Hogs and Warships a.k.a. Pigs and Battleships, Nikkatsu Corporation international sales](https://intl.nikkatsu.com/sales/73.html)
3. [Pigs and Battleships: Review & Analysis, The Cinema Archives](https://www.jcablog.com/post/pigs-and-battleships-review)
4. [National Film Archive of Japan program notes on 豚と軍艦](https://www.nfaj.go.jp/wp-content/uploads/a619a6bbade20707d02d8f37b80d9233.pdf)
5. [豚と軍艦, Nikkatsu official film page](https://www.nikkatsu.com/movie/20503.html)
6. [映画の中の豚「ブタがいた教室」「豚と軍艦」, FoodWatch Japan](https://www.foodwatch.jp/screenfoods0025)
7. [豚と軍艦: 作品情報・あらすじ, 映画.com](https://eiga.com/movie/39185/)
8. [日本映画レビュー 1960年](https://nanaelibrary.jpn.org/movie/nihon/1960_n.html)
9. [「豚と軍艦」, Daito Bunka University teaching material (PDF)](https://www.daito.ac.jp/education/cr_att/0013/11631_193815_010.pdf)
10. [John Richard Walker, Big Screen Empire: What Foreign Films Reveal About the Perceptions of U.S. Military Bases in Affected Host Nations, Wright State University thesis, 2022](https://etd.ohiolink.edu/acprod/odb_etd/ws/send_file/send?accession=wright1666111211767339&disposition=inline)
11. [Human as Animal: The Films of Dušan Nakavec and Shohei Imamura, Belgrade journal article (PDF)](https://doi.fil.bg.ac.rs/pdf/journals/fdu_zr/2023-43/fdu_zr-2023-43-2.pdf)
12. ['Pigs': Vision of a Ruined World, The Washington Post, 15 August 1986](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1986/08/15/pigs-vision-of-a-ruined-world/9b327e74-1703-43f4-a66a-55625e7cd8b6/)
13. [Pigs and Battleships review by John Berra, Electric Sheep magazine, 5 July 2011](https://www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk/reviews/2011/07/05/pigs-and-battleships/)
14. [今村昌平 (1926–2006), Japanese Film Database (JFDB)](https://jfdb.jp/person/29331)
15. [豚と軍艦, CiNii Books bibliographic record (Geneon 2003 DVD)](https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA70880037)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Crime, thriller, and mystery films (individual works) › 1960s films*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license