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.

Osho /王将 (‘King of shogi’, 1962)

Obscure Japanese Film #106

 

Rentaro Mikuni

This Toei production stars Rentaro Mikuni as Miyoshi Sakata (1870-1946), an illiterate sandal-maker who went on to become the top player of shogi, a Japanese board game similar to chess. When we first meet him, he’s living by the railroad tracks in the Tennoji area of Osaka around 1900, and he’s so obsessed with shogi that he neglects his wife and children even when the family are struggling to get by. The only things that he can read are the characters on the shogi pieces. 

 

Chikage Awashima

He and his wife Koharu (Chikage Awashima) are followers of the Nichiren sect of Buddhism, but she is more devoted than he; in her despair, she frequently picks up an uchiwa taiko (fan drum) and chants namu-myoho-renge-kyo in an effort to improve their karma (the unhappy wife who seeks solace in this particular form of religion became something of a cliché in Japanese films and may well have originated in the 1947 play by Hideji Hojo upon which this film is based, although the real-life Sakata family were apparently not members of this sect). 

 

Mikijiro Hira

After Sakata loses a game to Kinjiro Sekine (Mikijiro Hira) on a technicality, things get so bad that Koharu comes close to committing suicide on the railway tracks with their children. When her husband realises what he’s nearly driven her to, he throws his shogi board and pieces onto the tracks and vows to give up the game forever. However, shortly after this occurs, a couple of shogi enthusiasts (Taiji Tonoyama and Norio Hanazawa) arrive, announcing they have decided to sponsor Sakata, and his career resumes. As the years pass, he finds himself pitched against his arch-rival Sekine on a number of further occasions, and gradually becomes the leading shogi player in the country, improving his family’s financial situation in the process – but at what cost?

Taiji Tonoyama and Yoshiko Mita

 

This was director Daisuke Ito’s third go at this story. His first had been in 1948 with Tsumasaburo Bando in the lead, and his second in 1955 with Ryutaro Tatsumi (who had originated the role on stage). The film opens with an impressive crane shot of a bustling market lasting nearly two minutes and featuring hundreds of extras (including Tetsuro Tanba as a candy floss seller at the very beginning!).

Tetsuro Tanba

 

Ito is adept at the staging and blocking of scenes, and we are treated to some great camerawork throughout, while Akira Ifukube’s music is also effective. The sets are extremely well-designed and detailed, even featuring a convincing replica of the original Tsutentaku (a tower with neon lights) which overlooked Sakata’s neighbourhood from 1912-43. However, Ito’s weakness, in my opinion, lies in his direction of actors, and he frequently allows or perhaps encourages them to go over the top, a flaw which is certainly evident here. 

Tsutentaku, Mikuni and Awashima

 

Rentaro Mikuni was a highly talented actor, but also an eccentric. In Osho, he gurns and whines his way through his performance, hacking up phlegm and affecting a grating, high-pitched voice. The fact that Sakata also gets physically violent with his grown-up daughter Tamae (Yoshiko Mita) when she tells him a few home truths means that he’s not only incredibly irritating, but entirely unsympathetic too, and in my view this is highly detrimental to the movie. Nevertheless, Mikuni seems to have had a hit in the role and appeared in a sequel (directed by Junya Sato) the following year (based on the play’s two sequels, I believe). It’s also worth noting that the real Sakata was said to have been a dandy rather than the scruffy slob portrayed here. 

Yoshiko Mita

 

The rest of the cast are generally fine, though even Chikage Awashima overdoes it at one point. As Sekine, Mikijiro Hira’s role feels underwritten and he’s left with little to do – presumably this part was beefed up a bit for Tatsuya Nakadai when he played the role in Hiromichi Horikawa’s 1973 remake opposite Shintaro Katsu (which, unlike this version, has Sakata suffering from an eye disease as he did in real life, possibly because Katsu had a knack for playing the visually-impaired). 

Sonny Chiba

 

A young Sonny Chiba appears towards the end as one of Sakata’s disciples; the other is played by Hideo Murata, who had scored a huge hit a year earlier singing a song also entitled ‘Osho’ and concerning the life of Sakata (perhaps it was that success which had led to this version).

If only Ito could have reigned Mikuni in a bit, this film might have been a true classic.

Shroud of Snow / 雪の喪章 / Yuki no mosho (1967)

Obscure Japanese Film #105

Ayako Wakao

The story begins in 1930 in Kanazawa, a city located on the west coast of Japan’s main island and known for its production of gold leaf and heavy snowfall in winter. Taeko (Ayako Wakao) has just married into the Sayama family, who have a successful gold leaf business. Soon after the wedding, her husband, Kunio (Toyota Fukuda), hires a new maid, Sei (Tamao Nakamura), apparently in an act of charity as she’s an orphan and a distant relation of the family. Sei is of a meek disposition, so Taeko is profoundly shocked when she catches Kunio in flagrante with her. Kunio’s mother (Mitsuko Yoshikawa) apologises to Taeko on behalf of her son, but explains pragmatically that it’s better than him spending his money in the red light district. However, Taeko finds herself unable to forgive Kunio so, when one of her husband’s employees, Guntaro (Shigeru Amachi), confesses his love to her, she seems ready to run off to Osaka with him and start a new life. 

Toyota Fukuda

 

When Kunio discovers their plans, Guntaro ends up leaving without her, and Taeko seems to have little choice but to stay with her husband and try to make it work. While resigning herself to her fate, she cannot help having vindictive thoughts, and when a series of tragedies occur – always during a heavy snowfall – she wonders if she has willed them into existence. As the years pass, the family’s fortunes take a dive, the war begins and events lead to an unexpected reunion of sorts with Guntaro…  

Tamao Nakamura

 

Shigeru Amachi

Revolving around the intertwined destinies of the four main characters, Shroud of Snow is not so much the story of a love triangle, but a love square. Despite a number of dramatic events, it’s a strange, enigmatic film in content as the real drama happens inside Taeko’s head. With no voiceover, the film relies heavily on the acting talents of Ayako Wakao; fortunately, she’s adept at expressing the inner thoughts and feelings of her characters, and gives her usual immaculate performance. Nevertheless, I’d love to be able to read the original novel in order to understand the film a little better, but unfortunately it’s never been translated and appears to be out of print in Japan. 

 

The author, Mitsuko Mizuashi (1914-2003), was herself from Kanazawa, where her father ran a gold leaf business before going bankrupt, after which the family moved to Osaka. Yuki no mosho, published in 1962, was her best-known work and the only one to be filmed, although she was a well-regarded writer nominated for both the Akutagawa and Naoki prizes on several occasions. I suspect that the task of adapting her novel must have been challenging and may be why it uncharacteristically took Daiei five years to turn it into a film as well as the reason it has not been filmed since. 

 

The director, Kenji Misumi, is well known for his Zatoichi and Lone Wolf and Cub films. Although Shroud of Snow is far from a typical Misumi film, his direction is impressive while seldom calling attention to itself. He extracts good performances all round and pulls off some difficult shots wonderfully, such as when we see flakes of gold leaf swirling about in the smoke from a fire. Another plus is the score by Sei Ikeno, which is subtle and restrained yet makes the most of the film’s dramatic moments.

Note on the title: A more literal translation of the Japanese title would be something like ‘Snow Mourning Band’. 

Bonus trivia: The gold leaf which covers Kyoto’s famous Kinkaku-ji (the Temple of the Golden Pavilion) was made in Kanazawa.