Ishihara Yujiro’s second film with Masuda Toshio, Akai Hatoba (Red Quay, 1958) was a reworking of Pépé Le Moko, with Kobe, a port city in Western Japan, standing in for the Casbah section of Algiers. Ishihara plays a hitman who comes to Kobe to hide out with his club hostess girlfriend (Nakahara Sanae) after a successful job. A local detective (Osaka Shiro) is soon on his trail for the Tokyo hit, but can prove nothing - for the moment.
While waiting for the heat to cool, Ishihara falls for a straight girl (Kitahara Mie) who knows nothing of his past or occupation. Then the rival Tokyo gang gets wind of his whereabouts and sends its own hitman to Kobe to dispatch him. Meanwhile, another, more intimate enemy makes a move. Ishihara realizes that his days in Kobe are numbered, but before he can escape to Taiwan a crisis erupts - and he heads straight for a cleverly concealed trap.
Akai Hatoba not only solidified Ishihara’s romantic loner image, but set the pattern for future Nikkatsu mukokuseki (borderless) action films with its cosmopolitan setting and sophisticated tone. Masuda would later remake it with Watari Tetsuya in what is probably his best known Nikkatsu film abroad: Kurenai no Nagareboshi (The Velvet Hustler, 1967).