YMMV / Nihon No Don

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Yes, a Southeast Asian dictator really did consort with the yakuza and marry a Japanese woman.
• Fair for Its Day: The trilogy features women in roles crucial to the plot compared to most earlier yakuza movies where an actress could expect to be cast as a Satellite Love Interest. Sakura's wife even gets a Yamato Nadeshiko moment in the first film. The most noteworthy example, however, is Naoko Koji (played by Woman in the Dunes star Kyoko Kishida) from the second film is a club madam actively involved in the Nakajima family's attempts to appease President Annata and serves a love interest/Morality Pet for Hiroki Matsukata's Shiro Matsueda.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The ending of the third movie sees Sakura die of a heart attack before he can consolidate his power as Japan's top crime boss. His real-life counterpart, Kazuo Taoka, would suffer from the same fate three years after the films were released.
  • Chillingly, just as filming wrapped up, Taoka himself was the target of an assassination attempt carried out by a rival gang member. Though he survived, this is generally seen as the point his health began to decline, which then led to his death.
  • Furthermore, the scenes of the ailing Sakura and Oyama might hit harder due to the fact that Kanketsuhen was made at the tail ends of Shin Saburi and Chiezo Kataoka's careers. Kataoka passed away in 1983, with Saburi on September 22, 1981 - one day short of two months after Taoka's passing. Like the yakuza boss, Saburi was already suffering health issues that started to act up three years before. Sakura even says, "I was told my heart would work soundly for another ten years."