Wounded Beast / 傷つける野獣 / Kizu tsukeru yaju (1959)

Obscure Japanese Film #195

 

Tamio Kawaji

Kasahara (Tamio Kawaji) is a young man who bungles an attempt to rob a bank in Yokohama, shooting one of the staff in the process, and is forced to flee the scene without the loot. Detective Kizaki (Hideaki Nitani) is assigned to the case and soon discovers that the bullet matches a gun stolen from a detective killed in Osaka a few days before. Kasahara seeks refuge in the house of his sister (Tomoko Ko), but the police soon arrive and he only just manages to give them the slip. 

 

Hideaki Nitani

 

Kizaki’s investigations reveal that Kasahara was orphaned during the war and subsequently slid into a life of delinquency and petty crime. He loves Yoshiko (Hisako Tsukuba), who reciprocates his feelings, and we learn that he attempted the bank robbery after happening to see a vox pop interview in a cinema newsreel in which Yoshiko was asked by a reporter what it was she most wanted and replied ‘Money!’ The police now realise that all they have to do is follow Yoshiko and Kasahara will turn up sooner or later…

 

Hisako Tsukuba

 

This Nikkatsu noir credits notable future director Kei Kumai with its screenplay (his first) and has a separate credit for the prolific Hajime Takaiwa for ‘adaptation’, although it seems not to have had a literary source. Director Hiroshi Noguchi* directed his first eight feature films for Nikkatsu between 1939 and 1941, after which the war led to the studio becoming part of Daiei until 1954, when Noguchi became a director again, having spent most of the intervening years as an A.D. at Shochiku. He never made the top tier and remained a B-picture man until his premature death from a heart attack in 1967 at the age of 54, shortly after having completed his 85th film, Nikkatsu’s only monster movie, Gappa, the Triphibian Monster. However, if Wounded Beast is anything to go by, he was clearly not without talent, as it’s a fast-moving, stylish and entertaining piece of work. 

 

Joe Shishido

The majority of the cast are not terribly well-known (at least outside Japan), but – as one of the detectives – it does feature a young Joe Shishido, who appears to have begun but not yet completed the cheek augmentation surgery that would eventually lead to him resembling a hamster with the mumps. The underrated Yoko Minamida also pops up as Detective Kizaki’s girlfriend. 

 

Yoko Minamida

 

The opening credits sequence benefits from a cool jazz theme by composer Teizo Matsumura featuring what sounds like metal pipes being struck; this is followed by an abrupt silence and an attention-grabbing opening shot of a gun pointed directly at the camera. Noguchi also makes effective use of real locations and handles the action sequences very well. However, the most surprising aspect of the film is the amount of sympathy it has for Kasahara, even though he’s killed two people, one of whom was a police detective. The film’s liberal message is clearly that he’s really just a scared kid who’s had a lousy life and is desperately trying to act tough because he lacked a positive role model. 

*Aka Haruyasu Noguchi, real name Shigeichi Noguchi

Bonus trivia: Hisako Tsukuba later produced Piranha (1978) and several of its sequels.

Watched with dodgy subtitles

Amazon Japan (no subtitles)

 

Mikkokusha /密告者 (‘The Informer’) 1965

Obscure Japanese Film #54

 

Jiro Tamiya

 

This Daiei thriller stars Jiro Tamiya as Segawa, a bankrupt stockbroker now reduced to working as a salesman. He has a huge debt to pay off, but unfortunately he’s been unable to sell a single one of the ‘electric massagers’ he’s supposed to be flogging, so he decides to ask his boss, Sawai (Yusuke Takita), if he can try selling something else instead. Sawai confesses that the massagers are just a front for an industrial espionage agency he’s running, then offers Segawa some well-paid work spying on a pharmaceutical company run by Ogino (Akira Natsuki), also confessing that this was the real reason he had recruited Segawa in the first place and that he has been waiting for the right moment to tell him. Sawai knows that Segawa used to be engaged to Ogino’s wife, Eiko (Kaoru Izumi), and hopes that this connection will give Segawa a valuable ‘in’ through which he can begin gathering information. Segawa finds the task easier than expected and soon begins getting results, but it all goes wrong when he finds himself the prime suspect in a murder case. However,  Eiko’s sister, Toshiko (Shiho Fujimura), seems convinced of his innocence and willing to do anything she can to help him…

Shiho Fujimura

Mikkokusha sees Jiro Tamiya in a typical role as an ambitious womaniser who’s not too big in the morals department – see also Black Test Car, Stolen Pleasure and, most notably, The Great White Tower (among others). Tamiya excelled at playing such characters, and was also an athletic type and proficient in karate – a useful skill when called upon to perform in action scenes, of which this film has a number of good ones in the second half. Unfortunately, his film career would soon go off the rails. In 1968, he complained to the bosses at Daiei studios about having been relegated to fourth billing on the posters for Tadashi Imai’s The Time of Reckoning (1968) below Ayako Wakao, Mariko Kaga and Mariko Okada despite having the lead role. Daiei changed the billing but fired him. Due to an arrangement between the five big film companies in Japan, this meant that none of the other studios would sign him and he had to make do with TV work and roles in occasional independent films (something similar had happened to Fujiko Yamamoto in 1963). In the following years, Tamiya embarked on a number of unsuccessful business ventures and suffered from health issues culminating in depression and a mental breakdown. He committed suicide with a hunting rifle in 1978 aged just 43.

Director Shigeo Tanaka (1907-1992) is generally regarded as a journeyman, but it’s an indication of the quality of Japanese cinema during this period that even the so-called hacks were, at the least, highly competent. Tanaka enjoyed a long career, making his first film in 1931, and his last in 1980. He’s probably best remembered for the ‘Woman Gambler’ series starring Kyoko Enami (who apparently replaced Ayako Wakao when the latter had to pull out for health reasons). Enami also appears here as Segawa’s girlfriend, but the plum female role goes to Shiho Fujimura, who is especially effective in her final scene. Yusuke Takita is also memorable as the suave and slippery Sawai.

Yusuke Takita

 

The industrial espionage thriller became a subgenre of its own in 1960s Japanese cinema, although Mikkokusha focuses mainly on the murder mystery aspect of the plot. This is quite convoluted but pretty clever, and overall the film has a lot going for it, including some fine black-and-white ‘scope photography by Fujio Morita, who went on to shoot many of Hideo Gosha’s films. 

The screenplay by Hajime Takaiwa was based on a just-published novel of the same name by Akimitsu Takagi later published in English translation by Soho Press in 2001 as The Informer. Takaiwa's adaptation is pretty faithful; although the aforementioned action scenes are not present in the book, they are a welcome addition as the story would have made for an overly talky film without them. 

Thanks to Coralsundy for the English subtitles, which can be found here.

DVD on Amazon Japan.