Shojo yutai / 処女受胎 (‘Immaculate Conception’, 1966)

Obscure Japanese Film #146

Ayako Wakao

 

This Daiei production stars Ayako Wakao as Aiko, a modernist oil painter who has hit a creative wall. Searching for inspiration, she comes to believe that having a child will solve her problems but, having no desire to get married, she decides to try artificial insemination. One of the sperm donors at the clinic she attends is a student, Satoru (Takao Ito), who likes to feel that his sperm is going to beautiful women. When he sees Aiko visiting the clinic and learns she is a patient, he pressures a nurse, Keiko (Sanae Nakahara), to ensure that it’s his seed that Aiko receives…

 

Based on a novel by Jugo Kuroiwa, (who had also supplied the source material for With My Husband’s Consent), this is a silly story in questionable taste and with a very poor ending. The film relies heavily on its star, who I believe has even more costume changes here than she did in Ojo-san – although in this case some of the clothes look like they could have come from Primark. In fact, the whole thing looks like it was shot on the cheap and in a rush, which may partly be due to shrinking budgets at Daiei at the time. However, the film’s short running time of 82 minutes and total lack of name actors other than Wakao also suggests that it was most likely a B-movie which played at the bottom half of a double bill. 

Takao Ito basks in Shima's trademark sunset lighting

 

Director Koji Shima had a weakness for the orange glow of sunset in his colour films, and this is featured in a number of scenes here. He also liked to make dramatic use of harsher kinds of weather, so it’s no surprise to see a rainstorm at one point. Another Shima trademark is his use of symbolic shots, which are mostly absent from this film, apart from this rather clumsy one which again indicates that haste was the name of the game in making this movie:

Sanae Nakahara and Takao Ito

 

I love a good dream sequence, but the one featured here is pretty mediocre and rather obviously shot through a layer of gauze (as are, for some reason, the scenes at the beginning of the film in which Aiko searches for inspiration in a windy field, at a flamenco dance and at a diving pool). 

 

All in all, Shojo yutai is a very shallow treatment of the theme of artificial insemination which tries to redeem itself with some awkward moralising towards the end before getting really weird in the final scene, when talk of Aiko viewing men as mere ‘fertiliser’ causes one character to act in a most peculiar fashion. 

 

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

DVD at Amazon Japan.

With My Husband's Consent / 『女の小箱』光文社 / Otto ga mita 'Onna no kobako' yori (1964)

Obscure Japanese Film #30

Ayako Wakao

By 1964, Ayako Wakao was around halfway through her 20 films for director Yasuzo Masumura. She had graduated to more serious, mature roles two collaborations earlier with Masumura’s A Wife Confesses (1961), saying goodbye to the cheerful young ingénues she had played in their first films together.

In With My Husband’s Consent, Wakao plays Namiko, the unhappy wife of salaryman Seizo Kawashiro (Keizo Kawasaki), who is seldom at home due to the demands of his job. Kawashiro has been instructed by his boss to prevent the company from being taken over by an outsider buying up shares. Bored and frustrated, Namiko goes out to a bar with a friend one night and attracts the attention of the wealthy owner, Kenichiro Ishizuka (Jiro Tamiya), unaware that he wants to use her to gain information about her husband’s company. Ishizuka is an unscrupulous man who is also having an affair with the bar manageress, Yoko (Kyoko Kishida).

 

Wakao with Keizo Kawasaki

Ironically, Kawashiro is also trying to gain information about Ishizuka by starting an affair with Ishizuka’s secretary, Emi (Kyoko Enami). Ishizuka gets wind of this and informs Namiko of her husband’s infidelity, giving her the address of a hotel where he can be found with his mistress. Namiko goes there and catches Kawashiro in bed with Emi. Later, Kawashiro comes home and tries to excuse his behaviour by saying that he was only doing it for work reasons, but Namiko refuses to accept this, so he slaps her around. When Emi is found murdered at the hotel, Namiko takes revenge by informing the police that her husband had been with Emi on the night of the murder. Although the police do not arrest him, Kawashiro’s job comes under threat when his boss hears he is a suspect. Meanwhile, Ishizuka’s interest in Namiko has become more serious and he proposes that she leave her husband and marry him.

Wakao with Jiro Tamiya

On her return home, Namiko is confronted by her husband, who has discovered that she told the police about him, and he rapes her. Later, he is repentant and begs her to use her relationship with Ishizuka to persuade him to abandon his plans to take over the company. Namiko agrees to this but also decides to leave her husband and accept Ishizuka’s offer of marriage, but finds that Yoko is not inclined to give up her lover so easily.

Based on a then recently-published novel by Jugo Kuroiwa (1924-2003) entitled On'na no kobako (A Woman's Casket / Box^[1]), this is another misanthropic drama of infidelity and betrayal in the vein of Masumura’s earlier films Hanran and Stolen Pleasure, although in this case we do have at least one almost entirely sympathetic character in Namiko. As the film is in no way a crime thriller, the murder of Emi seems rather out of place, while the choice of music is unusual – Tadashi Yamauchi’s melancholy strings lend an air of detachment and inevitability to the unfolding tragedy and are almost only heard when Wakao is on screen. This initially works well but, by the end of the film, I felt that the effect had become repetitive and overused. Tomohiro Akino’s cinematography also takes quite a stylised approach, with walls and items of furniture often taking up nearly half of the widescreen frame, suggesting that Masumura wanted to give the impression of having his characters squashed uncomfortably together.

Although some Japanese films notoriously feature actors slapping each other for real, the slapping in this film is rather poorly done – it’s obvious there’s no contact, yet we’re treated to a sound effect that sounds like a whiplash on sheet metal. It’s nice to know that nobody slapped Ayako Wakao though. I suspect a body double was also used for some of her scenes here.

Wakao with Kyoko Kishida

Jiro Tamiya is an actor I think I have only ever seen playing ruthless types in films such as Satsuo Yamamto’s The Great White Tower and, for Masumura, Black Test Car and Stolen Pleasure, and it’s business as usual for him here. Despite her good looks, Kyoko ‘Woman in the Dunes’ Kishida somehow has a great face for playing slightly mad characters and she also lives up to expectations in this case. She was quickly reteamed with Wakao and Masumura for Manji (also 1964). However, Masumura regular Keizo Kawasaki seemed a little over the top to me, especially in comparison to the admirably restrained Wakao, but on the other hand I hated his character so much it could equally be argued that he is highly effective! 

Overall, I would say that With My Husband’s Consent is not top-rank Masumura, but it’s certainly a strong second-tier effort. 

 

Watched without subtitles.  

 

Update: It's now possible to watch this film with English subtitles courtesy of Ohako Subs, which can be found here: https://ohakosubs.tumblr.com/post/774092230762905600/love-and-greed-aka-the-husband-witnessed

 

DVD at Amazon Japan 

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[1] It’s unclear from the film which meaning is intended.