The film that made Ishihara Yujiro a star and the Nikkatsu studio solvent, The Guy Who Started a Storm (Arashi o Yobu Otoko, 1957) features Yujiro as Kokubu Shoichi, a young drummer with a fast pair of hands and fists, who makes good use of both while scuffling in the Ginza jazz world.
His younger brother Eiji (Aoyama Kyoji) supports his ambitions and helps find him a manager in Fukushima Miyako (Kitahara Mie), who is as sassy and smart as she is gorgeous. His mother (Sayo Fukuko), however, is stubbornly opposed to his choice of careers - a constant source of pain for Shoichi and annoyance for the audience.
Miyako takes him into her spacious Western-style house, where he can practice without disturbance. She also begins to take a more than professional interest in him, while maintaining her all-business facade. He feels the same tug - but his first priority is to beat Charley Sakurada (Oida Toshio), the best drummer in the Ginza and an arrogant git with gang connections.
Released in the peak New Year’s season, The Guy Who Started a Storm became the third biggest box-office hit of 1957. It also solidified Inoue’s reputation as a maker of hit musical films. For its young audience, who clapped and cheered as Yujiro sang “Ore wa dorama, yakuza na dorama” (I’m a drummer, a no-good drummer), the film was an event, a generational marker and a much-revived classic. Today it still packs musical excitement - and gives us Japan’s premiere movie star at his most charismatic. Inoue later remade the film for Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong as King Drummer (1967).