By A Man's Face Shall You Know Him

"Watching a Kato picture is a pure pleasure. He is so much a master of genre that he can play with the conventions with great ease and create films of superb craftsmanship and personal style. "

"Kato raised even routine stories of gangster revenge to dramatic heights using Ozu-esque low angles to give his characters grandeur and filming action scenes with a Kurosawa-like combination of realism and panache. But his style was ultimately his own, as were his strong, passionate heroines…who coolly dispatches male opponents with a short sword."

"Kato himself is both forward looking yet one of the most traditional of Japanese post-war film-makers, nowhere more evident than in this movie. "

"It is highly compelling, dramatic and wonderful looking...."

"[O]ne of the finer revisionist gangster pictures of its period, and a film that successfully traces the break point separating national guilt from personal accountability."

"By a Man’s Face Shall You Know Him is a sprawling, gutsy account of a Korean-Japanese gang’s ruthless rise to power in 1948 Osaka and a local doctor’s unexpected opposition to the hoodlums. Told through vibrant colour cinematography and a complex series of flashbacks, Kato traces the influences of sex, violence, and racism in post-war Japan."