A logic of color in the film’s substratum, even if it’s potentially inconsistent.
Tetsu and his immediate allies (Kurata, Umetani) – Blue
Kenji, an apprehensive figure who turns out the true ally – Green
Mutsuko, and her nightclub – Yellow
Otsuka, the antagonist – Red
Evidence for the logic is quite clear. The blue alcove of his apartment, the suit, the car, Kurata’s house, Umetani’s dark blue suit. The yellow backdrop of the nightclub where Mutsuko sings, the color of the sign outside her apartment. Kenji’s green jacket. Otsuka’s signature red suit and other professional paraphernalia. Even the omens are red. When Tetsu is followed by Otsuka’s henchman, a red lantern foreshadows and a red postbox announces.
A possible inconsistency, when perceived immediately, is the backroom of Otsuka’s club painted green, the color associated with Kenji. While this may not be an actual inconsistency, it’s a convenient segue into Suzuki’s intentionality.
In a 2011 interview with the film’s assistant director, Masami Kuzu, he hypothesized that the reason Suzuki chose to shoot the opening scene in black and white and show a broken red toy in color was to symbolize the bloodletting to come in the film. Then it cuts to Suzuki who said he just wanted to start the movie with something different.1
Even if we assume this is true, looking past Suzuki’s tendency to give intentionally misleading and mischievous playful answers to interviews, his preferences have lined up with a certain logic, unconsciously (if assumption).
When one has excluded from art the purpose of moral preaching and human improvement it by no means follows that art is completely purposeless, goalless, meaningless, in short l’art pour l’art – a snake biting its own tail. ‘Rather no purpose at all than a moral purpose!’ – thus speaks mere passion. A psychologist asks on the other hand: what does all art do? does it not praise? does it not glorify? does it not select? does it not highlight? By doing all this it strengthens or weakens certain valuations.… Is this no more than an incidental? an accident? Something in which the instinct of the artist has no part whatever? Or is it not rather the prerequisite for the artist’s being an artist at all.… Is his basic instinct directed towards art, or is it not rather directed towards the meaning of art, which is life? towards a desideratum of life? – Art is the great stimulus to life: how could it be thought purposeless, aimless, l’art pour l’art?2
Supra-Nietzsche, we can never escape valuation as such, for it is valuation of that configuration given the backdrop of possible configurations.
A list of colored logic:
1. Tetsu’s suit: Blue at the beginning, changes to grey in the latter half and finally white.
2. The Brawl at Umetani’s when Kenji warns Tetsu of the true reality of duty and loyalty. There’s a case of blue-on-blue violence, a break in colored logic. Moreover, the bar itself has all the colors: Red, Blue, and Green; the setting is the stage for the logical break (Umetani, at different stages, becomes all the colored positions).
3. In the climactic set, a large donut-like circle hangs from the ceiling. It turns yellow when Tetsu embraces Mutsuko, then he pulls away (literally and figuratively, to be the drifter), the circle turns white. In fact, the set turns red to white when Tetsu kills Otsuka.
4. Purple lighting in Otsuka’s club at the beginning (foreshadowing). When Kurata meets Otsuka, it is lit purple (red + blue).
5. Another case of foreshadowing: the red turns white in the beginning when Tetsu shoots down a henchman.
6. Otsuka’s backroom, in the club, is colored green. He is someone without honor, which Tetsu despises, and later Kenji arrives, who lacks a sense of duty, thus honor in Tetsu’s eyes (not in the same way or degree). As a result, the distrust. A sign of the break in logic to come.
In Tokyo Drifter, a seminal accomplishment becomes the creation of metaphor, the movement of color and the movement of the narrative. Not the typical and immediate symbolism (Red = Angry, Blue = Melancholic, …), rather the metaphor connects the disparate forms of story and color as such.
Appendix
Ten-yard range and the logic of violence. Here, the violence happens in Tetsu getting to the ten-yard line, for once he is there, it is done. That results in creative and comical ways of getting there. At the railway track, he runs towards the bullets and away from the train to dive into the ten-yard range (marked by red paint, inexplicably). In the Nanbu group shootout, he hops crouched and dives until he gets in range. Finally, how he throws his gun into the range and walks up to it in the climactic fight, shoot, shoot. A few minutes later, flings the gun high into the air, at gunpoint from Kurata, as distraction, only to run and catch it within the ten yards to disarm him.
References
1. Hartsell, A. (2025). Tokyo Drifter and the art of not making sense [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLRGyGAh5q0
2. Nietzsche, F. (1968). Twilight of the idols (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). Penguin Books. (Original work published 1889)