Sanmon yakusha / 三文役者 (‘Third-Rate Actor’, 2000)

Obscure Japanese Film #257

Taiji Tonoyama

This late film by the prolific writer-director Kaneto Shindo (best known for his 1964 picture, Onibaba) tells the story of Taiji Tonoyama, an actor who appeared in most of Shindo’s films before his death at the age of 73 in 1989. Tonoyama was a short, prematurely bald Yoda lookalike with sad, baggy eyes, so he was usually to be found among the supporting casts of the many films he appeared in, in roles of various sizes – the only leading roles played by him that I’m aware of were in two Shindo films: The Naked Island (1960) and the previously-reviewed Libido (1967).

Naoto Takenaka

Shindo recreates scenes from the actor’s life with Naoto Takenaka as Tonoyama, placing the focus on his relationships with his first wife, Asako (Hideko Yoshida), and second wife, Kimie (Keiko Oginome), whom he meets when he is 36 and still married to Asako and Kimie is 17 and working as a waitress. Tonoyama was an unlikely womaniser and we also see him picking up various barmaids with apparent ease while simultaneously fighting a lifelong battle with the demon drink. Shindo intersperses these dramatisations with scenes from the films they made together and a straight-to-camera interview with Nobuko Otowa, Shindo’s mistress and eventual wife who frequently acted alongside Tonoyama (Otowa died in 1994, so Shindo must have been sitting on this for at least 6 years). Towards the end, there is also some very brief interview footage with fellow directors Shohei Imamura, Hiromichi Horikawa and Seijiro Koyama.

Nobuko Otowa

Shindo had already written a book about Tonoyama, who had also written a number of books himself, notably a 1966 volume whose title translates as The Irresponsible Ramblings of a Third-Rate Actor (unsurprisingly, these have not made it into English).While I’ve long been a fan of Tonoyama myself, I’m not really sure that Shindo has done his memory a lot of favours by making this film. Although Naoto Takenaka’s performance seems a pretty good Tonoyama impression for the first couple of minutes, he goes on to deliver every line with exactly the same throaty, drawn-out intonation, and it gets old fast. The film is also way too long at over two hours – a one-hour documentary would have been far more preferable in my view, especially as the end result feels so superficial and sentimental, with the repetitive piano and violin music-by-numbers score delivering the coup de grâce to what is easily the weakest Shindo film I’ve seen.

Keiko Oginome

A note on the title:

The film is frequently listed as ‘By Player’ in English, but I’m sure this was never an official release title. It’s also meaningless, and I can only assume that somebody somewhere came up with ‘bit player’ as a translation for ‘sanmon yakusha’ and somehow managed to confuse ‘bit’ with ‘by’.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

English subtitles at Open Subtitles

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Will to Live / 生きたい/ Ikitai (1999)

Obscure Japanese Film #64

Rentaro Mikuni

 

Yasukichi (Rentaro Mikuni) is an ageing widower who can no longer control his bowels. He wants to continue living in his own house but is forced to consider moving to an old people’s home, partly out of consideration for his manic-depressive daughter, Tokuko (Shinobu Otake), with whom he lives. His situation leads to an obsession with a folk tale, The Legend of Mount Obasute, which tells of how the inhabitants of a remote mountain village used to abandon their elderly at the top of the mountain. 

Mikuni with Shinobu Otake

 

The Legend of Mount Obasute was the basis of the 1956 story 'The Ballad of Narayama' by Shichiro Fukasawa, filmed by Keisuke Kinoshita in 1958 and by Shohei Imamura in 1983. Both versions, though differing greatly in treatment, are masterpieces of Japanese cinema. In this later film, writer-director Kaneto Shindo has chosen to incorporate lengthy black-and-white sequences which retell the same story, so the parallels with Yasukichi’s situation could not be more explicit. I’m not sure we needed to see this story again, although the most memorable images in Will to Live come from these parts of the film. 

Hideko Yoshida and Masayuki Shionoya

 

In my view, the tone of light comedy which prevails in the rest of the picture seems inappropriate for the subject matter and prevents it from ever really becoming emotionally involving in the way it should have been. I was also unconvinced by the portrayal of what used to be called manic depression and is now known as bipolar disorder; admittedly I’m no expert, but in my limited experience based on people I’ve known, I think it usually manifests itself much more subtly than we see here. 

I would recommend Masahiro Kobayashi’s Haru’s Journey and Japan’s Tragedy as being far more convincing and effective films on the theme of the problems of ageing in Japan. 

Hideko Yoshida