The Great Villains / 大悪党 / Dai akuto (1968)

Obscure Japanese Film #111

Mako Midori and Kei Sato

 

Yoshiko (Mako Midori) is a naïve country girl now living in Tokyo as a student. As she doesn’t believe in sex before marriage, her boyfriend gets frustrated and dumps her at a bowling alley. Seeing her left alone, Yakuza scumbag Yasui (Kei Sato) seizes the opportunity and slithers over to her. He takes her to a bar where he slips her a spiked drink, then takes her back to his apartment, rapes her and photographs her naked while she’s unconscious. When she awakes the next morning, he’s still asleep, so she leaves quietly, but within a few days he arrives at her apartment and shows her the photos, threatening blackmail. However, he offers to give her the negatives and all copies if she will sleep with pop idol Teruo Shima (Isao Kuraishi), explaining that Shima will pay him for providing a beautiful woman he can have no-strings sex with. Having no other choice, Yoshiko agrees but, when she goes to meet Shima, Yasui is hiding in the apartment filming them. Although Yasui keeps his promise and returns the photos and negatives to Yoshiko, she now has the film to worry about instead. Meanwhile, Yasui pays a visit to Shima to blackmail him, but Shima’s manager (Asao Uchida) hires unscrupulous lawyer Tokuda (Jiro Tamiya) to make the problem go away. Yasui finds that Tokuda is not easily intimidated – has  he finally met his match? 

Jiro Tamiya and Mako Midori

 

This Daiei production was based on the novel Akutoku bengoshi (‘Unscrupulous Lawyer’) by Masaya Maruyama (1926-2004), who also provided the source material for director Yasuzo Masumura’s A Wife Confesses (1961). The fact that Maruyama was himself a lawyer is unsurprising considering that Tokuda’s legal shenanigans in the film seem unusually well thought-out, even if certain other aspects of the story do not entirely convince, such as Yoshiko’s rather sudden transition at the end. Some of the violence is not terribly convincing either, and we have scenes of slapping where there is clearly no contact but the patented sound of what sounds like a whiplash on sheet metal is dubbed on.

It’s impossible not to feel sympathy for Yoshiko, which begs the question of whether the police would really be as rough on a woman in such circumstances as they are here. Even Yoshiko’s mother seems to care little for her daughter’s welfare, and is far more concerned that Yoshiko has disgraced the family. It’s debatable to what extent these elements reflect real cultural differences or are clichés common to Japanese drama – certainly, similar scenes can be found in many other Japanese films of the era.

Although not one of Yasuzo Masumura’s most impressive films, The Great Villains has a compelling story and three strong lead performances, with Jiro Tamiya in another of the slippery manipulator roles he played so well and Kei Sato equally convincing as one of the most loathsome characters I’ve seen in a film for some time. Mako Midori, who resembles Mie Kitahara here, has probably the most difficult role and uses her eyes and body language most effectively in a part which gives her only limited opportunities for dialogue. She had just been fired from Toei at the time for complaining about the types of roles she was being obliged to play; she later went on to star in Masumura’s Blind Beast (1969).

The surprisingly stately classical music score by Tadashi Yamauchi suggests an attempt to lend the film both class and gravity, although Daiei’s dwindling budgets at the time are evident in the almost anonymous supporting cast and the fact that the work of Masumura’s regular cameraman Setsuo Kobayashi is less impressive than usual. Nevertheless, this is good second-tier Masumura worth seeking out for fans of the director, the three stars or Japanese crime dramas in general. 

 

Note on the title: As there are no plurals in Japanese, it is debatable whether the title should be translated as The Great Villains or The Great Villain. Perhaps because the film is also known as The Evil Trio, whoever gave the film its English title has chosen the plural version. However, while the character of Yasui clearly qualifies as a villain and this term could also be applied to that of Tokuda, it certainly doesn’t fit Yoshiko unless intended ironically.

The Great Journey / 大いなる旅路 / Oinaru tabiji (1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #110

Rentaro Mikuni and Michiko Hoshi

Morioka, Iwate Prefecture, mid-1920s. Kozo Iwami (Rentaro Mikuni) works for the railway as a stoker but wants to become a driver. After failing the exam, he becomes despondent and seeks solace in saké and the arms of bar hostess Koharu (Michiko Hoshi). 

 

Akiko Kazami

One day, Yukiko (Akiko Kazami), a young woman rushing home to see a dying relative, is permitted to ride the freight train on which Kozo is working. This chance meeting leads to marriage, but Iwami fails to change his ways and continues seeing Koharu, hardly even bothering to hide the fact from his wife. However, when an avalanche causes Kozo’s train to derail and the driver is killed, Kozo undergoes a personality change. 

Mikuni

 

It’s not entirely clear why this occurs, but perhaps it’s just due to the fact that he now realises how lucky he is to be alive. In any case, he stops seeing Koharu and begins taking his job more seriously, eventually becoming a driver as a result. 

 

Ken Takakura

The years pass, and Kozo and Yukiko have four children: Tadao (Hiroshi Minami), who gets called up for military service in China and is soon killed; Shizuo (Ken Takakura), who follows in his father’s footsteps and joins the railway; Sakiko (Mitsue Komiya), who marries the wrong type of guy; and Takao (Katsuo Nakamura), who voluntarily enlists in the army but later returns embittered and in poor health. 

Katsuo Nakamura

 

Mikuni

 

Spanning three decades, this features Mikuni in another role in which he has to age considerably over the course of the movie, as he had previously done in Stepbrothers (1957) and Ballad of a Cart-Puller (1959). However, this was the first time he had won an award for such an effort, namely the Blue Ribbon for Best Actor. Kozo is a complex character and our feelings about him change as the story progresses; at first, seeing him as an uncouth worker in a wintry location who gets passed over for promotion, I thought he was going to be another Gonsuke from A Story from Echigo. However, though he can be unforgiving and even violent at times, Kozo usually regrets his actions almost immediately and sometimes displays a generosity of spirit. Mikuni made another railway picture, Oinaru bakushin, for the same director, Hideo Sekigawa, later the same year, but he played a different character and the stories were not connected, although both screenplays were written by – you guessed it (or not) – that one-man screenplay-machine, Kaneto Shindo. While many of Sekigawa’s films appear to have been routine assignments, he directed a couple of notable anti-war films: Listen to the Voices of the Sea (1950) and Hiroshima (1953), and he does a good job here, with the location shooting being particularly impressive, although the story has not dated well and must have seemed old-fashioned even at the time. 

Takakura and Mikuni

 

The first half hour of the film is the most interesting – once Kozo changes his attitude after the accident, it becomes a sentimental family saga which unfolds all too predictably, while Ichiro Saito’s music lays on the harps and strings a bit thick. Like the previous film I reviewed, this is another with a strongly conservative message: everyone learns the error of their ways, and hard work and dedication to duty are rewarded in the end. This ideology is especially surprising coming from a couple of leftists like Sekigawa and Shindo.

Michiko Hoshi

 

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the film is the fact that they actually wrecked a real train in order to make it, a feat made possible due to Toei president Hiroshi Okawa, a former railroad employee who had maintained good connections with Japan’s national railway. 

The omnipresent Eijiro Tono

 

Note on the title: The film is sometimes referred to as 'The Great Road', which makes little sense as tabiji means 'journey' rather than 'road'. It's also clear from the film that 'journey' has the double meaning of a railway journey and the journey of life.

Girls in the Orchard / 花の中の娘たち / Hana no naka no musumetachi (1953)

Obscure Japanese Film #109

Mariko Okada

Toho’s first feature film in full colour concerns the Ishii family, who live in the rural area of Kanagawa, an hour away from Tokyo by train. The head of the household, Sahei Ishii (Makoto Kobori), grows pears and takes great pride in his work, stubbornly refusing to take the easy option and sell his land for what would be a considerable profit. It is assumed that his eldest son, Seitaro (Kiyoshi Kamoda), will inherit the land and continue the family business. 

 

Yoko Sugi

The older of Sahei’s two daughters, Yoshiko (Yoko Sugi), commutes to Tokyo, where she is employed at a hotel with hideously garish décor presumably designed to show off the new Fujicolor process. She has a boyfriend, Junichi (Hiroshi Koizumi), who works at the hotel as an electrician, but he’s been offered a better job in far-off Okinawa and wants her to join him. 

Keiju Kobayashi

 

Yoshiko’s younger sister, Momoko (Mariko Okada), is rather bored with country life and dreams of the bright lights of Tokyo. She’s also starting to become interested in the opposite sex so, when Kitakoji (Akihiko Hirata), a music student from the capital, moves in next door, she quickly falls in love with him and his fancy Tokyo ways. Then Seitaro gets hit by a truck and dies, so Sahei puts pressure on Yoshiko to marry Katsuzo (Keiju Kobayashi), a young local whose only ambition is to grow pears…  

Yoko Sugi

 

This is a very conservative film whose drama revolves around the classic Japanese formula of giri (obligation) versus ninjo (inclination), especially in the case of Yoshiko, who feels a strong sense of duty towards her family but wants to go off to Okinawa with Junichi. The film also pits the countryside against the city. Ultimately, giri and the countryside win – almost nobody gets what they thought they wanted, but it all works out alright in the end. Wanting to go off to Tokyo is seen as youthful folly, i.e. something the young naturally have to get out of their system before they can become sensible and mature human beings. The roles of the two sisters are reversed at the end when Momoko gets a job in Tokyo, but there’s a sense that sooner or later she’ll become disillusioned with city life and return to Kanagawa. 

Yoko Sugi and Mariko Okada

 

There’s also a subplot involving a Japanese-American woman at the hotel who is married to an American the cops want to arrest for fraud. This distrust-of-the-foreigner element may be partly due to the fact that the American occupation had ended the year before, so Japanese filmmakers were now free to be critical of the Americans again. However, Toho rather wants to have its cake and eat it on this point, as the music score by Raymond Gallois-Montbrun could hardly be less Japanese and smacks of Hollywood. 

 

Despite its questionable ideology, Girls in the Orchard is not without its charms, and most of the characters – which also include Eijiro Tono as a drunken uncle – are likeable and easy to care about. The success of the colour process is difficult to judge given the poor quality of the copy I watched, but it’s certainly not one of the more subtle uses of colour I’ve seen.

Girls in the Orchard was co-written and directed by Kajiro Yamamoto (1902-74), a director whose name has survived mainly as a footnote; he was Akira Kurosawa’s mentor, and few of his own films are easily accessible today.

Bonus trivia: The film contains an early example of blatant product placement in a couple of scenes featuring Lion toothpaste, a Japanese brand. 

Hiroshi Koizumi, Yoko Sugi and Lion Toothpaste

 

Note on the title: The Japanese title translates more accurately as ‘Girls in Blossom’ (although another possibility would be ‘Blooming Girls’, which of course is much better).

Break Down That Wall / その壁を砕け / Sono kabe o kudake (1959)

Obscure Japanese Film #108

Izumi Ashikawa and Yuji Odaka in foreground

Saburo (Yuji Odaka) is a young Tokyo garage mechanic who has been working hard and saving diligently for three years in order to buy a car and get married. His fiancée, Toshie (Izumi Ashikawa), is a nurse in Niigata. Feeling full of himself, Saburo drives through the night in his new car to join her, and passes through a village where someone has just been murdered in the course of a burglary. This bad timing leads to him being pulled over and arrested by ambitious local cop Moriyama (Hiroyuki Nagato). Unfortunately, Saburo's luck takes a further turn for the worse when he’s taken to the scene of the crime and identified as the culprit by the murdered man’s wife (Mrs Koreya Senda, Teruko Kishi), who is still suffering from concussion. 

Hiroyuki Nagato

 

Although it seems that Saburo will be the protagonist of the story, he largely disappears once he gets thrown in jail, and the focus shifts onto Moriyama, who turns out to have a little more depth than we first suspect. (This is good news for the viewer as he’s a more interesting character, and Hiroyuki Nagato – perhaps best known for playing the lead in Pigs and Battleships – is also a more interesting actor.) However, Moriyuma’s colleagues are less sensitive individuals and it’s not the first Japanese film I’ve seen in which most of the cops are more interested in saving face than getting the right man. It’s even implied they would lose their jobs if found to have made a mistake. Does this reflect reality or is it dramatic license? I’m not sure. In any case, the apparently simple story goes off in some unexpected directions, with Moriyama making a trip all the way to Sado island at one point to see Sakiko (Misako Watanabe), a woman for whom he seems to have had romantic feelings, but who has eloped with a labourer (Shigeru Koyama in an early appearance). 

Misako Watanabe

 

Working from an original screenplay by the unstoppable Kaneto Shindo, director Ko Nakahira pulls off an excellent chase sequence involving a train and, while the film’s finale is not much of a surprise, also manages to avoid a clichéd ending, making it far more memorable than it might have been. 

Ko Nishimura and Izumi Ashikawa

 

A Nikkatsu production, the film also benefits from an effective music score by Akira Ifukube and the stylish noir camerawork of Shinsaku Himeda, as well as a strong supporting cast which includes Ko Nishimura as Moriyama’s boss, Kinzo Shin as a judge and Hideji Otaki in a tiny role. 

Ko Nishimura and Hiroyuki Nagato

 

A Story from Echigo / 越後つついし親不知 / Echigo Tsutsuishi Oyashirazu (1964)

Obscure Japanese Film #107

Rentaro Mikuni and Yoshiko Sakuma

In 1930s Japan, Gonsuke (Rentaro Mikuni) is working at a sake brewery in Fushimi, Kyoto when he receives news that his mother is seriously ill. He is given compassionate leave to return to his village in Echigo (a former province in the snowy area of north-central Japan now known as Niigata Prefecture). As a colleague of Gonsuke’s named Tomekichi (Shoichi Ozawa) is from the same village, Gonsuke asks him if he has a message for his wife, Oshin (Yoshiko Sakuma). Tomekichi asks him to tell Oshin that he’s just been promoted. This is news to Gonsuke, who was already jealous of Tomekichi’s marriage to such an attractive woman as Oshin and is now doubly displeased to hear that he’s been passed over for promotion in favour of Tomekichi. 

 

Eijiro Tono and Mikuni

 

On his way home, Gonsuke stops off at an inn, where he falls into conversation with a fellow customer (Eijro Tono) who it turns out used to be in the army with Gonsuke’s elder brother. This lascivious old man tells Gonsuke tales of the brother’s many sexual conquests while they were stationed in Russia together. Gonsuke gets drunk with him before leaving and begins to brood about his own lack of a sex life before completing his journey home. When he’s nearly reached the village, he encounters Oshin walking home alone from her job weaving tatami mats. He makes a clumsy pass at her but, finding himself rejected, he rapes her in the snow.

While Gonsuke was committing this crime, his mother was dying; when he gets home, it’s already too late. However, he seems not only indifferent to her death, but actually full of himself for having managed to have his way with Oshin when there was nobody around. After his mother’s funeral, he visits her and again makes advances but is again rejected. His vanity wounded, he decides to get revenge by telling Tomekichi that Oshin is having an affair with the foreman at her workplace (Kei Sato)…

Sakuma and Mikuni

 

If that partial synopsis rings a bell, that’s because this is a clever recycling of Othello – the setting and the personalities may be considerably altered, but essentially Gonsuke is Iago, Tomekichi is Othello, Oshin is Desdemona and the foreman is Cassio. Due to the way the plot unfolds, it’s clear that this is no coincidence, especially if we take into account that the film was based on a 1962 novel by Tsutomu Mizukami (or Minakami), who would certainly have been familiar with the major plays of Shakespeare. Mizukami was a fine writer whose other filmed novels include The Temple of Wild Geese, Bamboo Dolls of Echizen, Straits of Hunger (aka A Fugitive from the Past) and Lake of Tears (also starring Yoshiko Sakuma). I recommend the Dalkey Archive’s English translation of The Temple of Wild Geese and Bamboo Dolls of Echizen in one volume if you can find it.

The great thing about this kind of story is that it could happen to people of any era or country, so it has not dated at all and probably never will (unlike some of director Tadashi Imai’s more topical pictures, such as Darkness at Noon, for example). Partly for this reason, A Story from Echigo may be his best film, in my opinion (not that I’ve seen them all). Another reason is that the performances from all three principles are outstanding. Rentaro Mikuni was always at his best in sleazy or unsympathetic roles, and he’s in his element here, utterly convincing as a vulgar man with zero morals or empathy, but who is, deep down, a sad and pathetic individual. Yoshiko Sakuma is every bit as good playing the unfortunate victim of male lust and jealousy who does her best to stand up to Gonsuke, but is ultimately placed in an impossible position. Sakuma has some arduous scenes in this film, and you really have to take your hat off to her. This may well be her most impressive performance. Shoichi Ozawa is perhaps better known for playing leading roles of a more comic type in films like Shohei Imamura’s The Pornographers (1966) and Yasuzo Masumura’s Chijin no ai (A Fool’s Love, 1967). In this more serious role, his character changes dramatically throughout the course of the film, and he portrays this metamorphosis extremely well. Eijiro Tono and Kei Sato make the most of their brief appearances, while the film also benefits from the presence of two wonderful old pros, Taiji Tonoyama and Tanie Kitabayashi, as two of the village elders.

Shoichi Ozawa

 

The story is strong stuff, and even contains a not-so-subtle hint of necrophilia at one point, resulting in the film receiving an ‘Adult’ classification for its original release. At the time it was made, Toei (the studio responsible) were deliberately introducing more sex into their films in an effort to entice people away from their TV sets and back into the cinemas. According to Japanese Wikipedia, it was Toei president Shigeru Okada’s idea to feature Yoshiko Sakuma in a more ‘sexy’ role than she had previously played. Toei certainly promoted A Story from Echigo as an erotic film, though it’s hard to imagine anyone being turned on by anything in it. In any case, perhaps this element explains why such a fine film was largely overlooked as far as awards go, scraping only a Mainichi Film Concours Best Screenplay award (shared with another film) for Yasutaro Yagi (1903-87, not 1906-65 as IMDb states). 

 

Composer Sei Ikeno and Tadashi Imai’s frequent collaborator, cinematographer Shunichiro Nakao, also deserve a nod for their fine work on this great film, which has an ending that is both devastating and perfect. 

 

Note on the title: In the Japanese title, Echigo Tsutsuishi Oyashirazu, Tsutsuishi is the name of the village the principal characters come from, while Oyashirazu refers to the Oyashirazu Cliffs in the same area.

Bonus trivia: The village scenes were shot on location at Itoigawa in Niigata Prefecture.