Story of a Blind Woman /女めくら物語 / Onna mekura monogatari (1965)

Obscure Japanese Film #130

Ayako Wakao

This Daiei production stars Ayako Wakao as Tsuruko, an orphan who loses her sight at the age of 16 and has little choice but to work as a masseur (the traditional occupation for the blind in Japan). She goes to work for a small school / agency owned by Arifu* (played by Ganjiro Nakamura – always a red flag!), who is also blind, although some of his other masseurs have partial eyesight. They all live together and are called out to inns when requested by customers. 

Ken Utsui

 

One night, a troubled businessman named Kigoshi (Ken Utsui) saves Tsuruko first from a fall and then later from some drunks. She falls in love with him, but he disappears. Meanwhile, needing another masseur as they are often short-handed, Arifu is persuaded against his better judgment to hire Itoko (Mayumi Nagisa), who at first pretends to be blind in order to get the job. It soon becomes obvious that she’s just out to grab what she can and doesn’t care what she has to do to get it – as long as there’s no actual work involved, that is. It’s not long before Itoko has pissed off her colleagues so much that some of them quit in protest.

Mayumi Nagisa and Ganjiro Nakamura

 

When Tsuruko is again prevented from falling down some steps – this time by a young man passing in the street – she is reminded of Kigoshi, and so feels well-disposed towards him when it turns out that he’s looking for a job as a masseur. This apparent good Samaritan is Kenkichi (Junichiro Yamashita), who is blind in one eye. Tsuruko persuades Arifu to hire him, but unfortunately she lives to regret it…

Junichiro Yamashita

 

Based on a 1954 novel by Seiichi Funahashi** (who, ironically, went blind himself shortly after this film came out), Story of a Blind Woman felt rather contrived to me, with one credibility-stretching coincidence around halfway through and characters often seeming to act in the interests of the plot rather than their own best interests. However, Ayako Wakao makes for a very sympathetic tragic heroine and is quite convincing in her blindness. She mostly achieves this by avoiding eye contact with her fellow actors and by using her hands to feel her way along walls, etc (Ganjiro Nakamura uses the simpler method of just keeping his firmly eyes closed throughout, but of course this film would not have worked had we been unable to see Wakao’s eyes). 

 

Performances are decent all round, with Mayumi Nagisa especially effective as a person so smug in her selfishness that I’m sure even Mahatma Gandhi would cheerfully have throttled her with his bare hands given the chance. Nagisa also played the anti-Wakao character in One Day at Summer’s End.

Mayumi Nagisa

 

Story of a Blind Woman benefits from a cliché-free music score by Seitaro Omori which uses traditional Japanese instruments in a modernist or avant-garde kind of way. The whole thing is also very nicely shot by director Koji Shima and his DP Kimio Watanabe – I especially loved the shot of Wakao walking towards the camera with which the film ends.

 

*I’m not sure if this name is correct. 

**Sometimes listed as Funabashi, but I think that’s incorrect. 

Thanks to A.K.

The Human Wall / 人間の壁/ Ningen no kabe (1959)

Obscure Japanese Film #113

Kyoko Kagawa

Fumiko (Kyoko Kagawa) is a teacher at an elementary school in Saga Prefecture in the south of Japan. Her pupils are mainly from poor families in which the men are employed at the nearby coal mine or work as fishermen. When the local council wants to cut costs by laying off 259 staff, Fumiko comes under pressure to resign from her bosses, who explain that, as she is married, she has her husband’s income to fall back on, and that’s why they’ve singled her out. However, the real reason is that they suspect her husband, Kenichiro (Shinji Minamibara), of being a communist. Fumiko loves her job and refuses to resign. Kenichiro is an executive committee member of the local teacher’s union, but he’s a careerist rather than an idealist, and the relationship between the couple worsens when he wants to use their savings to bribe an official so that he can get elected chairman. 

Shinji Minamibara

 

Jukichi Uno

Meanwhile, Fumiko’s colleague Sawada (Jukichi Uno) has troubles of his own – catching three of his pupils bullying a disabled classmate, he pushes them away, but then finds himself accused of assault. This situation is exploited by the Liberal Democratic Party, who attempt to use him as a political pawn. The school’s other self-sacrificing teachers also continue to be treated unfairly, but eventually – led by Fumiko – they learn the power of collective action…

Kyoko Kagawa

 

Based on a novel by Tatsuzo Ishikawa (1905-85) which was itself based on real events that occurred in 1957, this independent production was made by director Satsuo Yamamoto’s own company and financed by the Japan Teachers’ Union, who were encouraged by the success of Yamamoto’s previous film (Ballad of the Cart-Puller) and the fact that he had a distribution deal with Shin-Toho. After being blacklisted by the studios as a communist in 1950, Yamamoto had managed to produce a number of high-quality and often commercially-successful films mostly financed by unions – a remarkable feat which would eventually see him re-employed by the studios, who could not ignore his impressive track record. In 1962, he made the hugely successful Shinobi no mono for Daiei, launching both the ninja genre and a series which ran to nine films, the first three of which are soon to be released on Blu-ray by Radiance Films.

 

One reason that The Human Wall is languishing in obscurity today may be that the topical nature of the material appears to make it of little contemporary relevance. However, I would argue that similar things continue to happen to people today and the film still works well as an effective piece of drama. At the time, it was a critical as well as a commercial success, ranked 6^th best film of the year by Kinema Junpo and winning three Mainichi Film Concours awards: Jukichi Uno for Best Supporting Actor, Yamamoto for Best Director (for this and Ballad of the Cart-Puller) and Hikaru Hayashi for Best Score (for this, Ballad and Lucky Dragon No.5). It’s a shame that Kurosawa favourite Kyoko Kagawa was overlooked, as she gives an excellent performance and carries the film in what must be one of her best movie roles. At the time of writing, Kagawa is still with us at the age of 92 and has only recently retired. 

 

Eitaro Ozawa

Tanie Kitabayashi

Masao Mishima

Among the familiar faces in the supporting cast are Ken Utsui, Eijiro Tono, Eitaro Ozawa, Taiji Tonoyama, Tanie Kitabayashi, Masao Mishima, Teruko Kishi and Yunosuke Ito, but the most surprising performance for me was that of Sadako Sawamura, an actress I can only remember previously seeing as downtrodden types, but who here plays a strong, no-nonsense woman most effectively. 

Sadako Sawamura

 

Director Satsuo Yamamoto sometimes phoned it in when working on later studio assignments such as Zatoichi the Outlaw (1967) and The Peony Lantern (1968), but he clearly took a lot of care over projects close to his heart such as this one, and it shows, especially in his sensitive direction of the child characters and his impressive skill in the way he manages to coordinate large groups of them on location. While this film could easily have been a worthy bore, good work in all departments prevents this from being the case, and the excellent cast bring their characters vividly to life.

 

Bonus trivia: Author Tatsuzo Ishikawa also provided the literary sources for the later Yamamoto films Kizudarake no sanga (aka The Tycoon, 1964) and Kinkanshoku (1975).

Twilight Saloon / たそがれ酒場 / Tasogare sakaba (1955)

 Obscure Japanese Film #28

Left to right: Jun Tatara, Daisuke Kato and Eijro Tono

Depicting the shattered dreams of a disparate range of characters struggling to survive in the chaos of post-war Japan, Tomu Uchida’s second film after a hiatus of over a decade spent in exile may well be his most personal work. Twilight Saloon takes place entirely inside a bar during the course of one day from the start of business until closing time. Entertainment is provided by veteran pianist Eto and his young singer and protégé, Kenichi (played respectively by real-life musicians Hiroshi Ono and Takuya Miyahara in their only film roles). Both are down on their luck, as is stripper Emy Rosa (Keiko Tsushima), who began her career as a ballet dancer, but now provides the bar’s most popular part of the show.

 

Keiko Tsushima

Meanwhile, waitress and singer Yuki (Hitomi Nozoe, star of Yasuzo Masumura’s Giants and Toys) loves Masumi (Ken Utsui) but has unfortunately attracted the attention of yakuza Morimoto (Tetsuro Tanba), who won’t take no for an answer. 

Hitomi Nozoe

 

Tetsuro Tanba (seated) and Ken Utsui (right). Takuya Miyahara and Hitomi Nozoe are in the back ground.

Other customers include a group of beret-wearing pseudo-intellectual beatniks who prattle about existentialism, and gambler and ex-soldier Kibe (Daisuke Kato), who is surprised when his former commander, Colonel Otsuka aka ‘The Demon’ (Eijiro Tono), walks in. Otsuka is an embittered man who claims to be working as a real-estate broker but is clearly short on funds. However, the most important character is Umeda, a regular who used to be a painter but now makes a living of sorts playing pachinko. From his usual stool at the end of the bar, Umeda regards the tragedies that unfold around him with kindness and pity and is quick to help those in need when he can.

Isamu Kosugi

Umeda is memorably played by Isamu Kosugi,[1] star of many of Uchida’s pre-war films, in his only appearance in the director’s post-war work. The character must have had a great deal of resonance for both star and director  – at one point, he talks of how he gave up painting due to feelings of guilt for having glorified war in his work. Kosugi had appeared in a number of propaganda films during the war years, while in 1942 Uchida went to China to work for the Manchukuo Film Association, a company which produced mainly pro-Japanese propaganda. Although Uchida apparently never completed a film for the company himself, it is clear that he later regarded this decision as a grave error of judgement on his part. Towards the end of Twilight Saloon, Umeda tells the pianist Eto, ‘We have to overcome resentment and sorrow,’ which I suspect was the main message that Uchida wished to convey in this film.

Despite the unlikely incongruity of a bar offering an entertainment programme which begins with opera and ends in a strip show, the film has much to recommend it. Uchida's co-ordination of the many characters and story threads is impressive, as is his use of a single set, which he inventively exploits to maximum advantage. The way in which major characters continue to do their thing in the background while the focus is on somebody else is especially good. One bizarre highlight is Kenichi’s rendition of ‘The Toreador Song’ from Bizet’s Carmen, during which Umeda and the bar’s resident freeloader Kurishima, aka ‘Suckerfish’ (Jun Tatara), break into a spontaneous dance with Umeda as the toreador and Suckerfish as the bull.

Isamu Kosugi and Jun Tatara

The screenplay of Twilight Saloon is by Senzo Nada, a name with no other credits on IMDb. Tempting as it is to conclude that this is Uchida working under a pseudonym, the evidence refutes this; as David Baldwin has pointed out in his piece on his Uchida website (see below), Nada does have a few other credits on the Japanese Movie Database. Furthermore, when I dug a little deeper, I found information suggesting that Nada had been a novice screenwriter at the time and that his script somehow found its way to Uchida, with whom it obviously struck a chord. How much the director may have altered it is, of course, anyone’s guess. Nada also wrote for television and a collection of his screenplays was published in 1986. One Japanese source states that he was born in 1931 and died in 1985, while another (probably more reliable) gives his date of birth as 1918, but seems to agree with the year of death. I also found a list of TV credits for Nada, which include a new adaptation of Twilight Saloon made in 1961 and running 45 minutes; the following year, Uchida directed a TV adaptation of his 1939 film Earth, for which he employed Nada to write the script. 

For more on Twilight Saloon and Tomu Uchida, please visit http://www.uchidatomu.com/twilight-saloon-tasogare-sakaba-1955/

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[1] Kosugi became a director of B-movies after the war while continuing his acting career.