Samuel Fuller's The Crimson Kimono 1959

In Crimson Kimono Fuller uses the conventional police-thriller genre as a framework for a complex study of racialism
--Lynda Myles, Edinburgh Film Festival, 1969

"Love is a battle and someone has to get a bloody nose."
--Joe Kojaku in The Crimson Kimono.

Joe Kojaku is an outsider in two senses:  a policeman and a Nisei, an American born of Japanese immigrant parents, a term not heard much any more. The Crimson Kimono is a low-budget and powerful film about assimilation and integration in modern America and Joe is at the center of it.  In 1959 many states still had laws prohibiting whites from marrying anyone of a different race, including Asians, and Joe is struggling with his identity as he falls in love with the white woman his partner is courting, a woman they met in their investigation of the murder of a stripper.  As in many Fulller films there are explosions of violence, not only physical but emotional, as the partners -- who live together and work together -- look for the murderer of Sugar Torch, who was working on an erotic Japanese-oriented strip act.

Much of the film was shot on location in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles and includes scenes in a Buddhist temple and a war memorial to Japanese Americans (Joe and his partner were in the Korean War together) as Joe struggles with his identity, blaming his partner Charlie for his own internal confusion and violating the rules of Kendo in his exhibition match with Charlie. There are many effective cameos of those who live and work in Little Tokyo, including karate experts, a Japanese nun, and an alcoholic artist and friend to the two policeman, beautifully played by Anna Lee. 

The film begins with the murder of a stripper as she runs through the streets and ends with the murderer running through the streets during the Japanese New Year's festival, chased by the two policemen. The rough and pulpy exterior of Fuller's film conveys, underneath it,  a sensitivity and an understated desire for everyone to find their own identity in a chaotic and emotional world.