Obscure Japanese Film #279
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| Yukichi Iwata |
Okawa (Yukichi Iwata) has been a teacher on an island in the Inland Sea for three years. Despite the fact that he’s also a self-confessed drunkard, he’s popular with the children and most of the other islanders, especially O-Tsuyu (Chiyoko Mimura), a young woman who has become his mistress. His past is a mystery but he writes his thoughts in a private diary; in flashback, it’s revealed that he was once a respected headmaster on the mainland. However, he once stumbled upon a bag with a considerable amount of money inside (left unattended by the treasurer for the school rebuilding fund) and decided to keep it; when his conscience began to protest too much, he decided to confess publicly and informed his wife of his decision. Unfortunately, before he could carry out his intentions, she had committed suicide and taken their young son with her…
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| Chiyoko Mimura |
This Shochiku Kamata* production was (like the vast majority of silent Japanese films) long thought completely lost until this 25-minute fragment turned up recently. The original film ran for around 66 minutes and would presumably have been screened with live commentary by a narrator, or benshi; of course, that’s also missing here, as is a music score. What survives – which seems to be most of the first half – is in surprisingly good condition, but the film ends abruptly and we never get to see how things turn out. That’s a pity, because this was obviously a film of some quality – the performances are very natural and the photography, though static, is well-composed.
The film was based on a 1902 story by Doppo Kunikida (1871-1908)**, while the screenplay was written by Daisuke Ito, who made his directorial debut with his own version in 1924 (since lost, of course) and went on to become a major filmmaker. Director Zanmu Kako (1869-1938) also came from the theatre, where he had worked as a playwright and stage director. He made around 90 films between 1921 and 1927, almost all of which are entirely lost. That this substantial fragment survived even the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 – which severely damaged the studio where it was made – is a near miracle.
Leading actor Yukichi Iwata (1887-1980), who is excellent here, was a major star of the Japanese silent screen. A former theatre actor, he made his film debut in 1920 and went on to make over 150 films before retiring from the screen around 1942. Today, his most widely-seen film is Ozu’s A Mother Should Be Loved (1934). His co-star, Chiyoko Mimura (1903-74) was recruited from the theatre by Kako and signed to Shochiku. Film critic and historian Junichiro Tanaka (1902-89) singled out her performance in Diary of a Drunkard, saying, ‘She is small and lacks a striking face, but her acting ability is undeniable.’ She became a popular star before retiring to look after her family in 1927. Mimura had married film director Kiyohiko Ushihara in 1922; today he’s remembered (if at all) for The Ghost Cat and the Mysterious Shamisen (1938) and Rainbow Man (1949).
*Shochiku Kamata was a studio founded in Kamata, Tokyo, in 1920 as an off-shoot of the theatre company Shochiku Gomei Kaisha. It lasted until 1936, when noise from nearby factories caused problems in making films in the new talking picture format and led Shochiku to close it down and transfer their operations to Shochiku Ofuna in Kamakura.
**Kunikida is sufficiently well-regarded that some of his stories have appeared in English translation, although I believe that ‘Diary of a Drunkard’ is not among them.
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