Hachi hyakuman goku ni idomu otoko / 八百万石に挑む男 (‘The Man Who Made an 8 Million koku Challenge’, 1961)

Obscure Japanese Film #191

 

Utaemon Ichikawa and Katsuo Nakamura

1729. Ten’ichibo (Katsuo Nakamura, brother of Kinnosuke Nakamura) is a young man who drifts from town to town gambling and drinking. He carries an antique dagger and letter explaining that the knife is an heirloom given to him as he is the illegitimate son of the eighth shogun, Yoshimune Tokugawa (Shin Tokudaiji), but nobody believes him and Ten’ichibo himself is uncertain of the truth. However, both the letter and the weapon look authentic and when the story comes to the attention of once-powerful samurai vassal Iganosuke (Utaemon Ichikawa), he cares little whether it’s true or not, but sees an opportunity to take over the shogunate by claiming Ten’ichibo as the rightful heir. It’s a high stakes gamble which could cost Ten’ichibo and Iganosuke their lives if they fail, but win them 8 million koku if they succeed (koku being a unit of measurement of rice, which was how wealth was calculated at the time). The shogun’s advisor, Matsudaira (So Yamamura), is also unconcerned about the truth of Ten’ichibo’s parentage, but wants to discredit him anyway to retain the power of the current regime… 

 

So Yamamura

 

Inspired by a real historical event and based on an original screenplay by regular Kurosawa collaborator Shinobu Hashimoto, this Toei production was directed by Nobuo Nakagawa, best remembered today for horror movies such as The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959), though the genre accounted for only eight out of his nearly 100 films. Many of his pictures tended to be quite low budget, but this one looks comparatively expensive, boasting elaborate costumes and impressive sets. Typically for a Hashimoto script, it’s full of cruel ironies and highlights the hypocrisy of the feudal system. 

 

Utaemon Ichikawa

 

Most (if not all) of the cast had theatre backgrounds, and the acting is rather stagey, with many of the actors projecting their voices as if worried about not being heard in the back row.   Given the formal context of most of the dialogues, the stiffness of some cast members is perhaps inevitable, but I’m not sure there’s much excuse for Utaemon Ichikawa, who – with his demoniacal laugh – is such an old ham he’d make Tod Slaughter blush. It’s also a very male-dominated movie, and the one female character (played by Hiroko Sakuramachi) has very little to do except be a victim. Fans of chanbara (sword-fighting films) should be warned that there is very little action (with the climax even taking place off screen), but, on a more positive note, the battle of wills between the two sides is tense enough to hold the interest for the most part, and there’s a fine score by Chumei Watanabe. 

 

Hiroko Sakuramachi

 

The story of the Ten’ichibo jiken, or ‘incident’ (as it is often referred to in Japan), has been filmed many times – there were numerous silent versions (now lost) as well as various TV versions made subsequent to this film. However, the most notable other feature film version is Daisuke Ito’s Suronin makaritoru (1947), the first period drama made after the war, starring Tsumasaburo Bando as Iganosuke and Akihiko Katayama as Ten’ichibo, which is available on DVD (without English subtitles) here. The real Ten’ichibo was arrested, charged with being an imposter, sentenced to death and executed.  

Thanks to A.K.

 

The Great Journey / 大いなる旅路 / Oinaru tabiji (1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #110

Rentaro Mikuni and Michiko Hoshi

Morioka, Iwate Prefecture, mid-1920s. Kozo Iwami (Rentaro Mikuni) works for the railway as a stoker but wants to become a driver. After failing the exam, he becomes despondent and seeks solace in saké and the arms of bar hostess Koharu (Michiko Hoshi). 

 

Akiko Kazami

One day, Yukiko (Akiko Kazami), a young woman rushing home to see a dying relative, is permitted to ride the freight train on which Kozo is working. This chance meeting leads to marriage, but Iwami fails to change his ways and continues seeing Koharu, hardly even bothering to hide the fact from his wife. However, when an avalanche causes Kozo’s train to derail and the driver is killed, Kozo undergoes a personality change. 

Mikuni

 

It’s not entirely clear why this occurs, but perhaps it’s just due to the fact that he now realises how lucky he is to be alive. In any case, he stops seeing Koharu and begins taking his job more seriously, eventually becoming a driver as a result. 

 

Ken Takakura

The years pass, and Kozo and Yukiko have four children: Tadao (Hiroshi Minami), who gets called up for military service in China and is soon killed; Shizuo (Ken Takakura), who follows in his father’s footsteps and joins the railway; Sakiko (Mitsue Komiya), who marries the wrong type of guy; and Takao (Katsuo Nakamura), who voluntarily enlists in the army but later returns embittered and in poor health. 

Katsuo Nakamura

 

Mikuni

 

Spanning three decades, this features Mikuni in another role in which he has to age considerably over the course of the movie, as he had previously done in Stepbrothers (1957) and Ballad of a Cart-Puller (1959). However, this was the first time he had won an award for such an effort, namely the Blue Ribbon for Best Actor. Kozo is a complex character and our feelings about him change as the story progresses; at first, seeing him as an uncouth worker in a wintry location who gets passed over for promotion, I thought he was going to be another Gonsuke from A Story from Echigo. However, though he can be unforgiving and even violent at times, Kozo usually regrets his actions almost immediately and sometimes displays a generosity of spirit. Mikuni made another railway picture, Oinaru bakushin, for the same director, Hideo Sekigawa, later the same year, but he played a different character and the stories were not connected, although both screenplays were written by – you guessed it (or not) – that one-man screenplay-machine, Kaneto Shindo. While many of Sekigawa’s films appear to have been routine assignments, he directed a couple of notable anti-war films: Listen to the Voices of the Sea (1950) and Hiroshima (1953), and he does a good job here, with the location shooting being particularly impressive, although the story has not dated well and must have seemed old-fashioned even at the time. 

Takakura and Mikuni

 

The first half hour of the film is the most interesting – once Kozo changes his attitude after the accident, it becomes a sentimental family saga which unfolds all too predictably, while Ichiro Saito’s music lays on the harps and strings a bit thick. Like the previous film I reviewed, this is another with a strongly conservative message: everyone learns the error of their ways, and hard work and dedication to duty are rewarded in the end. This ideology is especially surprising coming from a couple of leftists like Sekigawa and Shindo.

Michiko Hoshi

 

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the film is the fact that they actually wrecked a real train in order to make it, a feat made possible due to Toei president Hiroshi Okawa, a former railroad employee who had maintained good connections with Japan’s national railway. 

The omnipresent Eijiro Tono

 

Note on the title: The film is sometimes referred to as 'The Great Road', which makes little sense as tabiji means 'journey' rather than 'road'. It's also clear from the film that 'journey' has the double meaning of a railway journey and the journey of life.

Stepbrothers / 異母兄弟 / Ibo kyoudai (1957)

 Obscure Japanese film #23

Kido (Rentaro Mikuni) with his two eldest boys.

Covering a period of 25 years, Stepbrothers begins in 1921 as we see a military officer returning home on horseback. Upon being greeted by his servant, he dismounts and slaps the poor fellow so hard that he knocks him down. This introduction to Hantaro Kido provides an accurate first impression of a character who is to remain entirely unambiguous. Indeed, Kido proves to be not only an arrogant bully, but a humourless bore to boot. Who better to play him, then, than Rentaro Mikuni, an actor never afraid to be unsympathetic and who even seemed to revel in such roles.

Kinuyo Tanaka in a highly symbolic shot.

Kido has two nasty young sons who are chips off the old block and a terminally ill wife who has left him sexually frustrated. When a new maid arrives in the form of Rie (Kinuyo Tanaka), she’s barely begun work before he rapes her in the stable, and his wife passes away soon after. After learning that Rie is pregnant with his child, Kido initially plans to kick her out, but his superior officer hears about the pregnancy and asks him what he plans to do to avoid a scandal. Purely to impress the commander, he says he will marry Rie, and the unfortunate woman is doomed to a life of near-slavery as she has no other options. Another son, Tomohide, soon follows, and both her children are continually treated with contempt by their stepbrothers, although a scene in which one of the elder boys watches Rie laughing and having fun with her two young ones makes it clear that a degree of jealousy is involved. As the years pass, the Second World War begins and the focus of the narrative moves on to the teenage Tomohide (Katsuo Nakamura, who later played Hoichi the Earless in Kwaidan), the only boy in the family who has no wish to be a soldier. Tomohide falls in love with a maid, Haru (Hizuru Takachiho), but she is kicked out by Kido for singing and sold into prostitution (evidently, this was still happening in Japan as late as the 1940s).

Hizuru Takachiho and Katsuo Nakamura.

Like the young hero of the only other film I’ve seen directed by Miyoji Ieki, The Wayside Pebble (1964), Tomohide’s life is ruined as a result of living in an oppressive, semi-feudal, patriarchal society. The characters are as black and white as the images themselves, and perhaps it might have been preferable to make them a little more complex, but then again this may have diluted the strength of Ieki’s message that a society founded on such values is ultimately destructive for all involved.

Rentaro Mikuni

Kinuyo Tanaka is too old for her role in the early stages, but her casting makes more sense as the years pass. Her appearance remains the same, while Mikuni gradually transforms into a decrepit old git as he would also do in Satsuo Yamamoto’s Ballad of the Cart-Puller a couple of years later. The organ music by Kon Ichikawa favourite Yasushi Akutagawa has a very churchy feel and seems a strange choice, but then again Stepbrothers is certainly a solemn piece of work.

The film is based on a then recently-published novel of the same title by Torahiko Tamiya (1911-88), while the screenplay is co-written by Kenji Mizoguchi’s regular collaborator Yoshikata Yoda (who also wrote the screenplay for the aforementioned Ballad of the Cart-Puller) and the lesser-known Nobuyoshi Teruda. Stepbrothers shared the main prize at Czechoslovakia’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival with Sergei Gerasimov’s epic And Quiet Flows the Don.