Magistrate of the Floating World / 着ながし奉行 / Kinagashi bugyo (‘The Magistrate who Dresses Informally’, 1981)

Obscure Japanese Film #72

Tatsuya Nakadai

This Fuji TV movie is a period comedy-drama directed by none other than Kihachi Okamoto and starring his frequent leading actor Tatsuya Nakadai. Koheita Mochizuki (Nakadai) is the new magistrate appointed to clean up Horisoto, a town district on a small island connected to the rest of the town by a single footbridge. Criminals operate freely there, and the town has lost three magistrates in the space of a year due to their inability to deal with the situation. Mochizuki is an eccentric character who takes a radically new approach and decides it is better to be underestimated. Before his arrival, he has somebody spread a rumour that he is better at cavorting with women than he is at martial arts. In fact, although he is a womaniser, he is also a martial arts expert. The staff are awaiting his arrival at the magistrate’s office, but he arrives incognito, avoids the office and begins making friends with the criminals…

 

If the idea of a crime-riddled island sounds familiar from Inn of Evil, this is no coincidence as Magistrate of the Floating World is also based on a story by Shugoro Yamamoto (‘Machi bugyo nikki’, or ‘Town Samurai Diary’). There’s a clever narrative device in use in this version, which has the main action interspersed with scenes featuring a dialogue between two scribes awaiting the arrival of Mochizuki at the office. Functioning almost like a Greek chorus, these two characters discuss the situation throughout and provide useful exposition.

Eitaro Ozawa

 

Kihachi Okamoto also co-wrote the script (with Toshiaki Matsushima), but this was apparently a troubled production as he treated it like a feature film and became so fed up with constantly being told he could not do certain things due to budgetary constraints that at one point he threatened to quit. Considering this, the final result turned out pretty well and I feel that it’s not only better than most of Okamoto’s post-1960s work, but also superior to Dora-heita (2000), Kon Ichikawa’s lacklustre later version based on a screenplay by himself, Keisuke Kinoshita and Akira Kurosawa (written around three decades before the film was finally made). It’s not always as funny as Okamoto seems to think, but it’s dynamic and fast-moving enough that the weaker comic moments are soon forgotten. 

 

Taiji Tonoyama

Nakadai is clearly enjoying himself here in a rare comic role, while other notables among the cast include Eitaro Ozawa and Taiji Tonoyama, the latter as the sidekick constantly reminding Mochizuki to wash his hands. Also featured are several students from Nakadai’s acting school, including Koji Yakusho, who later starred as Mochizuki in Dora-heita. Other adaptations of Yamamoto’s story include Kenji Misumi’s 1959 version starring Shintaro Katsu and Eiichi Kudo’s 1987 film with Ken Watanabe. 

Thanks to Samurai Vs Ninja for making this available on YouTube here.