Their Legacy / 家庭の事情 / Katei no jijo (‘Family Circumstances’, 1962)

Obscure Japanese Film #243

So Yamamura

Junko Kano and Ayako Wakao

Utako Shibusawa and Mako Sanjo

Upon retiring, widower Misawa (So Yamamura) decides to give each of his four unmarried daughters 500,000 yen to do with as they wish. The eldest, Kazuyo (Ayako Wakao), is regretting having an affair with a married colleague (Jun Negami) and decides to quit and open a café. Second daughter Fumiko (Junko Kano) gives hers to her boyfriend (Jiro Tamiya) so that he can pay off his debts. Third daughter Miyako (Mako Sanjo) only reluctantly accepts the money and just wants to stay at home with her father. The youngest, Shinako (Utako Shibusawa), works in an accounts department and decides to become a moneylender while fighting off the attentions of a persistent co-worker (Hiroshi Kawaguchi). Meanwhile, Misawa has a relationship with gold-digger Tamako (Murasaki Fujima), although a matchmaker (Haruko Sugimura) is trying to interest him in getting married again to Yasuko (Mayumi Kurata)*…

This Daiei production was based on a magazine serial by Keita Genji (1912-85), whose works were also the source for the previously-reviewed Daiei movies The Most Valuable Wife (1959) and Kirai Kirai Kirai (1960), both of which offered similar fare. Like those, this is a light comedy, a genre not typically associated with director Kozaburo Yoshimura or his screenwriter Kaneto Shindo (although it was by no means the only occasion on which either filmmaker dabbled in comedy). Presumably, then, this was a studio assignment, but it’s well-made and entertaining, and I wasn’t left feeling they had just phoned it in.

Although Ayako Wakao – curiously, the only one who seems to be playing it totally straight – is top-billed, in this case she’s really just part of an impressive ensemble cast which also features Eiji Funakoshi, Keizo Kawasaki and Eitaro Ozawa, most of whom make the most out of the material. If you enjoy Daiei films of this era and like these actors, Katei no jijo is an enjoyable time-passer, with Sei Ikeno’s score helping to heighten the comic effect, although the black-and-white rush hour prologue and epilogue, while fun, seem a bit random to me as I couldn’t really see how they related to the main story. (I could also have done without the close-up of Eitaro Ozawa eating...)

Jiro Tamiya

Incidentally, in one impressive scene, real-life karate black-belt Jiro Tamiya gets properly thrown by another real-life karate black belt, Jun Fujimaki, who also appears here playing a love rival to Tamiya’s character.

Keita Genji’s story was remade by Katsumi Nishikawa for Nikkatsu in 1965 as Yottsu no koi no monogatari (‘Four Love Stories’).

*Although both IMDb and eiga.com state that Tamako is played by Yasuko Nakada and Yasuko is played by Murasaki Fujima, this is incorrect.

Murasaki Fujima as Tamako

Mayumi Kurata as Yasuko

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

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

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That Complicated Guy / 複雑な彼 / Fukuzatsu no kare (aka ‘A Complicated Man’,1966)

Obscure Japanese Film #238

Jiro Tamiya

This Daiei production stars Jiro Tamiya as Joji Miyagi, who works as a flight attendant for a Japanese airline. One day, en route to San Francisco, he attracts the attention of a passenger, Saeko (Mariko Taka), the daughter of a banker. Saeko asks around about him and discovers that he has an unusual history, having apparently flitted from one random job to another. Although he also has a reputation as a ladies’ man, she is not put off and manages to engineer another meeting. A passionate love affair begins, but is there a darker side to his strange past?

SPOILER BELOW

Mariko Taka

Based on one of those novels by Yukio Mishima which he knocked out for women’s magazines between more serious efforts, it was faithfully adapted for the screen by the not-especially-distinguished Kimiyuki Hasegawa. Mishima had actually based his protagonist very closely on a friend of his, Joji Abe (1937-2019), a yakuza who had worked for Japan Air Lines in the early 1960s before his background came to light and he was forced to leave. Abe later served time in prison before finally quitting the yakuza in 1981, subsequently becoming a writer himself and even acting in a few films. According to Persona: A Biography of Yukio Mishima by Naoki Inose and Hiroaki Sato,

Mishima had become acquainted with Abe around 1953 when Abe, a member of the yakuza group Ando Gumi [yakuza-turned -actor Noboru Ando’s gang], was working as a bouncer at a gay bar. It was largely because he was impressed by Abe’s handling of a drunken gaijin that Mishima took up boxing when he thought he was ready. He decided he was unfit for the sport and gave it up after about a year, but he kept in touch with Abe.

Mishima admired Abe for what he perceived as his manliness and his readiness to disregard the rules of convention and go his own way. Mishima also knew Jiro Tamiya, who read the book in proof form and pushed to play the part. (Tamiya’s little-known co-star Mariko Taka appeared in half a dozen films for Daiei between 1966-68 before moving to Toei, for whom she mainly did television before getting married in 1974, after which she promptly retired.) Although the film is a fairly lightweight entertainment whose appeal relies partly on the location shooting in San Francisco and Rio de Janeiro, it’s permeated by the author’s far-right ideology and its portrayal of foreigners feels xenophobic.

Mariko Taka

However, director Koji Shima and his DP Akira Uehara – who went on to shoot Man without a Map for Teshigahara and the recently-rediscovered The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch (both 1968) – bring some real visual style to the material with subtle lighting and a strong sense of composition and colour. All in all, a more interesting film than I had expected and certainly an effective vehicle for its star, whose athleticism is also put to good use in a few action scenes. 

Tamiya with Eiko Taki

Bonus trivia: According to Japanese Wikipedia, ‘At the age of 16, Joji Abe went to the Netherlands as a cameraman’s assistant, where he once got into a fistfight with Robert Mitchum over a prostitute.’

DVD at Amazon Japan

Thanks to Coralsundy for the English subtitles

If you enjoy this blog, feel free to buy me a coffee!

Yellow Dog / イエロー・ドッグ (1973)

Obscure Japanese Film #225

 

Jiro Tamiya

 

This oddity is an independent Japanese-British co-production from a company called Akari, which seems to have been formed by star Jiro Tamiya and director Terence Donovan especially for this movie. Tamiya plays Kimura, a secret service man who goes to London on a covert mission. A Professor Bewsley (John Welsh) has found a way to produce synthetic fuel from hydrogen (or sommat) and Kimura must prevent it from falling into the wrong hands – but of course that’s all just a Hitchcock-like MacGuffin to set the plot in motion. Along the way, Kimura forms an uneasy alliance with British secret service man Alexander (Robert Hardy) and is seduced by the mysterious Della (Carolyn Seymour). 

 

Carolyn Seymour

Unfortunately, the plot is convoluted to the point of incomprehensibility at times. The screenplay is by Shinobu Hashimoto, justly famous for his collaborations with Akira Kurosawa among others, but who sometimes seemed to go off the rails when not working from a literary source and left to his own devices (see also Lake of Illusions). Here, Hashimoto has based his story on the fact that Japan had no specific law against espionage at the time, making it a so-called ‘paradise for spies’ (Japan’s State Secrecy Law finally went into force in 2014). It’s perhaps worth noting that, preceding Hashimoto’s screenplay credit, the opening credits state (in this order) ‘New Dialogue by John Bird / Original Translation from the Japanese by Professor Alan Turney / From an Idea by Terence Donovan.’ John Bird (1936-2022) was a very well-known figure in the UK, famous for his satirical writing and comic acting, mainly on television, and was no doubt responsible for making the dialogue more colloquial. In any case, a bizarre climax involving Tamiya rubbing rice balls all over himself and an actual yellow dog (which has been died that colour) is something only the eccentric Hashimoto could have cooked up.

 

Of course, the title is also partly a racial epithet – another strange scene features Kimura pretending to be hopeless at judo before his opponent calls him a ‘yellow Jap’, at which point he snarls, ‘I don’t mind the “Jap” so much, but don’t ever call me “yellow”!’ He then loses it and proceeds to fuck up his opponent by dislocating both his arm and his jaw for him (incidentally, Tamiya was a black belt in karate, so why the filmmakers failed to make use of this real-life skill instead of featuring a judo match is anyone’s guess). Helpfully, Kimura later explains the second word in the title more fully, saying, ‘In Japan, detectives and informers are called dogs – they’re always sniffing around. Not a very polite expression,’ while another canine quirk of this film is that Kimura has a phobia of dogs. However, perhaps a further motivation for the use of ‘dog’ in the title is that Tamiya had starred in the series of nine Inu (‘dog’) films made by Daiei between 1964 and 1967. 

 

Tamiya with Robert Hardy

God knows how Tamiya hooked up with fashion photographer Terence Donovan and chose him as director. Donovan had never made a film before and never would again, with the exception of a number of music videos such as the one for Robert Palmer’s ‘Addicted to Love’. On this evidence, it’s not hard to see why Donovan made no further features. Almost everything falls flat here and, considering Donovan’s background, one might expect the film to look good at least, but most of it’s indifferently photographed and looks like cheap TV. A tragic footnote to this film is the fact that both Tamiya and Donovan suffered from depression and would die by suicide – Donovan not until 1996, but Tamiya in 1978, the year after this film was finally released in Japan (by Shochiku) and flopped both with the critics and at the box office. While Yellow Dog was certainly not the reason for his suicide, it may have been one of many contributing factors. 

 

Tamiya does surprisingly well in terms of his English pronunciation, though his intonation is rather strange and I suspect that he learned his lines phonetically. This must have been quite a challenge, and you can only admire him for taking it on, especially considering that he’s surrounded by such experienced and confident British actors as Robert Hardy and co. Cross-cultural collaborations of this sort rarely turn out well, and this one certainly didn’t, but it’s not entirely without entertainment value as we watch Tamiya as a fish out of water slurping his soup, pretending incompetence and bemusing the Brits, who (I’m ashamed to say) mostly come across as a cold and chauvinistic bunch of entitled snobs. 

 

Robert Hardy and Angela Thorne

 

Kirai Kirai Kirai / 嫌い嫌い嫌い / (‘Hate hate hate’, 1960)

 

Ichiro Sugai

 

Sojuro Shinkawa (Ichiro Sugai) is the elderly chairman of the Shinkawa conglomerate, a position which he was hoping his son, Sotaro (Kenji Sugawara), would succeed him in. However, Sotaro has rebelled and gone off to do his own thing, so Sojuro gathers the presidents of the six companies which make up the conglomerate and asks them each to select their most promising employee and send them to head office, where they will compete to marry his granddaughter, Kikuko (Atsuko Kindaichi), and the winner will be groomed to become the new chairman. 

 

Atsuko Kindaichi

 

The six men chosen run the gamut from the ultra masculine Nagaoka (Ryuichi Ishii) with his impressive chest hair to the effeminate Hirose (Kanji Matsumoto), who drinks only milk, a thermos of which he always carries with him. Other candidates include Sakurai (future director Juzo Itami), who used to be friends with Kikuko as a child, the handsome and modest Tsujimoto (Jiro Tamiya), who appears to be the favourite, and coal miner Fukumitsu (Gen Mitamura), who is conflicted due to his secret love for co-worker Sumiko (Junko Kano)…

 

Jiro Tamiya

 

This Daiei production was based on a novel entitled Hana no sarariman (‘The Flower Salaryman’) by Keita Genji (1912-85), a writer well-known for this type of material whose work also provided the basis for many other films including Masumura’s Blue Sky Maiden (1957) and The Most Valuable Wife (1959). 

 

Junko Kano

 

Sachiko Hidari

For me, the main appeal was that it provided a rare chance to see another film by Hiroshi Edagawa, whose Roses Bloom on The Rose Bush (1959) I liked so much. However, this one is less interesting as it’s basically a piece of fluff, albeit a well-made one which is not unentertaining. It’s an ensemble piece with no real star at the centre, although Jiro Tamiya and Junko Kano were both beginning to get popular at the time and Sachiko Hidari also appears prominently, although in a role that has little bearing on the story, while Kazuko Matsuo pops up singing the title song in a nightclub (to which you can listen on YouTube here). Even Bokuzen Hidari makes an appearance as one of the company presidents - which may well be the most untypical role he ever played. Anyway, for the most part, it's a pleasant enough time-passer, though the gay stereotyping of Kanji Matsumoto’s character is regrettable. 

 

Bokuzen Hidari

 

A note on the title:

Kirai can also be translated as ‘I hate it’, ‘I hate you’, etc, so the tag line on the Japanese posters should probably be read as ‘I hate him because he’s handsome! I hate him because he’s rich! I hate him because he has chest hair! Is that really true?’

 

Kazuko Matsuo

 Watched with dodgy subtitles. 

Ai no kaseki / 愛の化石 (‘Fossil of Love’, 1970)

 

Ruriko Asaoka

Yuki (Ruriko Asaoka) is a textile designer who has studied in Europe and become a big success on her return to Japan. It probably doesn’t hurt that she looks more like a model than a designer and seems to have an inexhaustible supply of à la mode outfits. Perhaps that’s why magazine journalist Junko (Mayumi Nagisa) thinks she’d make a good subject for an article and assigns her hotshot photographer boyfriend Hibino (Etsushi Takahashi) to do the pictures. 

 

Mayumi Nagisa

 

Etsushi Takahashi

However, Yuki is extremely reticent about her private life and something of a control freak, so she makes Hibino promise that they won’t use any photos she dislikes. Having a high opinion of himself, he’s a little insulted by this, but reluctantly agrees, all the time wondering why he’s been given such an assignment. He has ambitions as a serious photojournalist and has covered the conflict in Biafra, a place he intends to head back to as soon as he gets a chance. He gradually learns that Yuki is in the process of getting over a relationship with a man (whom we never see), and there also seems to be something between her and magazine boss Harada (Jiro Tamiya), but he can’t help being drawn to her despite himself…

 

Jiro Tamiya

 

In 1969, the star of this film, Ruriko Asaoka, had a hit single with a song entitled ‘Ai no kaseki’, which you can listen to on YouTube here. Needless to say, this film made to capitalise on that success has precious little connection with the song, other than the vague theme of yearning for a lost love. Although we don’t hear Asaoka sing it during the course of the movie, an instrumental version plays out over the opening credits and the melody recurs at various point throughout. 

 

 

Director Yoshihiko Okamoto (1925-2004), who co-wrote the film with Koichi Suzuki, had a background in socially-conscious TV dramas such as Shinobu Hashimoto’s I Want to Be a Shellfish (1958), for which he had won an award (and which Hashimoto himself would remake for the cinema the following year). Ai no kaseki is the second of just three feature films by Okamoto, following Tsugaru zessho (‘Tsugaru song’, 1970) and preceding Seishun no umi (‘The Sea of Youth’, 1974). In terms of direction, it’s pretty good, and very well-shot mostly (if not entirely) on location by cinematographer Yuji Okumura, who was director Yoshishige Yoshida’s regular cameraman during this period. 

 

Asaoka and Takahashi

 

The problem with Ai no kaseki is the story, which – as one might expect from a film inspired by a pop ballad – is simply too thin and not terribly interesting; it literally goes nowhere. There’s a lot of then-topical talk about Biafra, an eastern region of Nigeria which had seceded from the country in 1967, sparking a civil war which lasted two and a half years, after which it was reintegrated into Nigeria. Around one million people were said to have died as a result of the conflict, many from starvation. Perhaps Okamoto sincerely wanted to draw people’s attention to this, but, if so, having his privileged characters express their concerns about it in this type of film may not have been the best way, and, unfortunately, the issue of whether Hibino really cares about Biafra or just sees it as a means to win awards is never really explored. 

 

 

In terms of the cast, Jiro Tamiya is wasted in a role which gives him little to do and Etsushi Takahashi was a limited actor better suited to action roles. Ruriko Asaoka is fine as usual, but it’s not enough to save this one – not unless seeing her in an endless parade of trendy outfits is enough for you, that is.

The film was produced by Yujiro Ishihara’s company – who had Asaoka under contract at the time – and distributed by Nikkatsu.

Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

Thanks to A.K.