“Battles Without Honor and Humanity” (仁義なき戦い), Original Release Japanese Speed Poster 1973, Speed Poster Size (26 × 73 cm) ZA1107

This is an original Japanese speed poster printed in 1973 for the first Japanese theatrical release of Battles Without Honor and Humanity (仁義なき戦い), directed by Kinji Fukasaku and distributed in Japan by Toei. The film stars Bunta Sugawara as Shōzō Hirono and is the groundbreaking first entry in one of the most influential yakuza film series ever made.

Film background
Released in 1973, Battles Without Honor and Humanity transformed the Japanese gangster film. Opening in the black markets of bomb-scarred post-war Hiroshima Prefecture, the film follows Hirono, a former soldier who is drawn into the brutal world of organised crime, shifting alliances, political corruption, revenge, and clan warfare.

Adapted from accounts of real post-war Hiroshima yakuza conflicts, Fukasaku’s film rejected the older, romanticised ninkyō eiga image of honourable gangsters. In its place, it introduced a harsher, faster, documentary-like style: handheld camerawork, abrupt violence, betrayal, and a sense of social collapse. Its success launched a major film cycle and cemented Battles Without Honor and Humanity as a defining work of modern Japanese crime cinema.

Poster design
The speed poster design is a striking vertical collage that captures the film’s chaos, brutality, and moral disintegration. A large halftone-treated body sprawls diagonally across the sheet, as if fallen in the street, leading the eye sharply from top to bottom. Above, anonymous legs stride past, suggesting the relentless movement of violence, revenge, and power.

Pinned “photo” portraits of key characters appear along the left side, each marked by bullet-like punctures, hinting at the film’s web of shifting loyalties and casualties. The ochre-toned background is filled with a mass of faces, evoking post-war crowds, underworld factions, and the ensemble structure of the film.

Bold red vertical copy describes assassination, betrayal, revenge, and men consumed by anger and suffering, while the massive navy brush-calligraphy title 仁義なき戦い anchors the lower portion of the design. The result is a powerful and immediately recognisable piece from Fukasaku’s seminal series.

About speed posters
Japanese speed posters are long, narrow theatrical formats, often used for quick display in cinemas, corridors, and exterior theatre spaces. Because of their smaller production runs and practical display use, surviving examples are often much scarcer than standard B2 posters, particularly for major 1970s genre titles.

Rarity and significance
Original release paper for Battles Without Honor and Humanity is highly collectible, especially in unusual formats such as this speed poster. As the first entry in Fukasaku’s defining yakuza cycle, this poster is an important piece for collectors of Japanese crime cinema, Toei genre films, Kinji Fukasaku, Bunta Sugawara, and 1970s Japanese poster design.

Condition
Excellent. Please review the photos—they show the exact poster for sale.

It is over 53 years old!

It is not a reproduction or a reprint.

Certificate of Authenticity included.