Battles Without Honor and Humanity
Kinji Fukasaku completed the epic "Battles Without Honor and Humanity" series of yakuza films. Yoji Yamada introduced the commercially successful "Tora-San" series, while also directing other films, notably the popular "The Yellow Handkerchief", which won the first Japan Academy Prize for Best Film in 1978. New wave filmmakers Susumu Hani and Shōhei Imamura retreated to documentary work, though Imamura made a dramatic return to feature filmmaking with "Vengeance Is Mine" (1979).