Kazuyuki Izutsu’s The Second Is A Christian (1985) is a yakuza comedy starring the legendary Etsuko Shihomi as Sister Kyoko; a Catholic nun who runs a small orphanage in Kobe. The film is broken up into two parts. The first part focuses on Detective Kumashiro (Akira Emoto) and yakuza boss Haruhiko Tenryu (Koichi Iwaki) competing for Sister Kyoko’s affections. The second half of the film follows Sister Kyoko as she continues to lead Tenryu’s yakuza clan and instill in them Christian values.
The Second Is A Christian is a film of dramatic and thematic dichotomies. It is from these juxtaposing views and styles that much of the comedy in the film is derived. In the first half the funniest scenes center around Kumashiro navigating Kyoko’s Catholicism and the inevitable conflict of faith between Christianity and Buddhism. Tenryu, for his part, is already Christian but he must adapt the teachings of Christ to suit the yakuza lifestyle.
Kyoko’s suitors dominate the first half of the film, relegating her to the position of the wilting wallflower; the virtuous object of desire. Kyoko gets a few melodramatic scenes at the orphanage that help establish her character but the camera still only sees her as Tenryu and Kumashiro do. While this fits with the misogyny of its moment, it is also a deliberate narrative device that has some pay off later.
In the second half of The Second Is A Christian the focus is entirely on Kyoko. Having wed Tenryu and been widowed all in the same day, Kyoko is given control of the Tenryu gang. This portion of the film relies on “fish out of water” comedy stylings as Kyoko’s yakuza adapt to being pacifist Christians. It’s a clever way of lampooning the yakuza genre that is more reflexive and self-aware than the theological humor of the first half of the film.
Of course a balance cannot be struck between Catholic values and yakuza codes, resulting in an all out gang war. With the exception of some ill conceived slapstick moments, this section of The Second Is A Christian functions as a traditional yakuza drama. Kyoko, pushed to the brink, casts off her habit and literally picks up a sword to dish out Holy vengeance on her enemies. Until this point Shihomi has played her part with a gentle sensitivity and naive humor. Now, at the bloody climax of The Second Is A Christian, she plays Kyoko as desperate and terrified; subtly undermining the usual macho posturing of the genre.
Izutsu’s direction is workmanlike, proving to be unable to meet the task of unifying all of these different ideas and stylistic impulses within The Second Is A Christian coherently. The Second Is A Christian is never as engaging as it ought to be nor as funny as it could be. It has its moments of course, but overall it is the charismatic performance of Etsuko Shihomi that keeps the viewer watching.
