Mori no Ishimatsu / 森の石松 (‘Ishimatsu of Mori’, 1949)

Obscure Japanese Film #267

Susumu Fujita

Takashi Shimura 

Ishimatsu (Susumu Fujita, best-known for playing the title role in Kurosawa’s Sanshiro Sugata) is a poor tenant tea farmer fed up with working like a slave for a pittance. After losing the little money he had in a dice game against gambling boss Shimachidori (Takashi Shimura), he resolves – with the encouragement of tea house hostess Oshin (Kyoko Asagiri) – to abandon agriculture and turn to crime despite the objections of his mother (Choko Iida) and best friend Gosaku (Taiji Tonoyama). He finds employment with the famous yakuza Jirocho Shimizu (Komei Minami) but has little success in his new endeavour until, determined to make a name for himself, he shows reckless bravery in a fight but loses an eye in the process. Now with a formidable reputation to live up to, he falls in love with Ofuji (Yukiko Todoroki), but she won’t marry him unless he gives up his life of crime…

Yukiko Todoroki

Mori no Ishimatsu was said to have been a subordinate of the real life Jirocho Shimizu (1820-93), but it’s unclear whether Ishimatsu was, in fact, a real person. In any case, he had already been the subject of at least half a dozen movies by the time this one was made and would go on to inspire many more, most of which seem to be comedies, which is understandable given that Japanese Wikipedia states that he was traditionally portrayed as ‘a lovable character who is a drunken ruffian but has a strong sense of loyalty and compassion, and is somewhat absent-minded.’

This Shochiku production was based on an original screenplay by Kaneto Shindo and directed by his regular associate Kozaburo Yoshimura. Also frequently comic in tone, with a rather dim-witted hero and the sword fighting scenes emphasising the clumsiness and reluctance of the opponents, their film nevertheless has its serious side and criticises both gangsterism and the exploitation of workers by the old feudal system. Indeed, it was probably these themes that saw it approved by the censors of the Occupation authorities, who prevented many period films from being made at the time (this was Yoshimura’s first) as they felt that such stories often gave tacit approval to feudalism, the mindset of which had allowed the military to take over the government of Japan and lead it into war.

Taiji Tonoyama

As a film, this is no lost masterpiece, but it is a well-made and enjoyable watch which clearly had quite a lot of effort put into it – the period details, for example, look quite authentic, and there is some effective use made of real locations, nifty tracking shots (courtesy of Yoshimura’s regular cinematographer at the time, Toshio Ubukata) and a number of complex, well-staged scenes in which elaborate sets and large numbers of extras are also used. Another asset is the cast, in which Shimura makes a fine villain, while Choko Iida stands out as Ishimatsu’s put upon, sutra-chanting mother. Other notables featured are Koji Mitsui, Sadako Sawamura and an almost unrecognisable Chishu Ryu. 

Choko Iida

Chishu Ryu

Note on the title:

Although it’s often translated as ‘Ishimatsu of the Forest’, there’s no sign of a forest; apparently, the ‘Mori’ of the title actually refers to Mori-machi village, in what was then the Enshu region, and is where Ishimatsu was said to be from.

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The Last Trump Card / 最後の切札 / Saigo no kirifuda (1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #193

Keiji Sada

 

Tatsuno (Keiji Sada) is a clothing store owner who has an unusual side hustle – he pretends to be part of a ‘New Religion research group’ with his sidekick Yoshimura (Seiji Miyaguchi), and together they extort money from religious organisations by offering to save them from potential scandals (mostly created by Tatsuno) for a price. In other words, they are blackmailers, and their only motivation seems to be greed. As if this weren’t sleazy enough, Tatsuno also dabbles in a little pimping and procuring on the side, and is having affairs with multiple women including nightclub singer Sonoko (Miyuki Kuwano from The Shape of Night) and TV actress Tsuruko (Keiko Hibino), both of whom he treats with contempt… 

 

Miyuki Kuwano

 

Based on a 1957 novel entitled Niku no boku (‘Servant of the Flesh’ or ‘I am Flesh’) by Hideo Shirasaki (1920-92) and with a screenplay by Kurosawa regular Shinobu Hashimoto, this Shochiku production was directed by Yoshitaro Nomura, who had been an assistant to Kurosawa on Scandal (1950) and The Idiot (1951), and it features a whole host of character actors familiar from Kurosawa pictures, including Miki Odagiri (the girl from Ikiru), Jerry Fujio, Seiji Miyaguchi, Eijiro Yanagi, Taiji Tonoyama and Koji Mitsui. And just when you think Ko Nishimura’s not going to be in it, his macabre little face finally pops up to deliver the rather gruesome ending - it's the sort of role usually played by Michael Ripper in Hammer horror films. However, in my view screenwriter Hashimoto sometimes produced sub-par work when not undert the guidance of a really great director like Kurosawa or Masaki Kobayashi, and here he allows the story to become too talky and complicated (even when watched with pretty good subtitles) while forgetting to give us anyone to root for, resulting in a mostly unengaging movie. 

 

Ko Nishimura

 

Usually cast in nice guy roles, leading man Keiji Sada probably relished the opportunity to play a complete scumbag for a change, something he would go on to do again in his final film, Sweet Sweat (1964). Talking of sweat, there’s also a lot of that in this movie, which is set in Tokyo during a heatwave and has everyone dripping throughout. Director Yoshitaro Nomura – best known for his Seicho Matsumoto adaptations (often adapted by Hashimoto) such as Castle of Sand (1974) – was a very good director, but this is not one of his best and I couldn’t help feeling it’s the sort of material that would have been better in black and white. For all its cynicism, at heart this is a superficial film – if watching a nasty guy do nasty things for 90 minutes before getting his comeuppance is enough for you, you might enjoy it, but it’s really got nothing to say. I doubt that it was a box office success, especially as it appears to be the only film adaptation of a Hideo Shirasaki novel and Japanese film companies tended to raid an author’s work repeatedly if they had made any money from it.

 

Sada with Seiji Miyaguchi

 

Alternative titles: The Grave Tells All / The Cards Will Tell

Thanks to A.K.

A Fool’s Love / 痴人の愛 / Chijin no ai (1949)

Obscure Japanese Film #99

 

Chijin no ai is the earliest film version of the well-known novel of the same name by one of Japan’s most acclaimed writers, Junichiro Tanizaki. First published in 1925, it’s a first-person narrative in which Joji, a salaryman with a well-paid management position, relates the story of his obsession with Naomi, whom he first meets at a café in Asakusa where she works as a waitress. Naomi is only 15 at the time, but the 28-year-old Joji’s respectability enables him to make a deal with her mother whereby he will take her in and pay for her education. He promises not to seek sexual favours from Naomi until she is older and she consents, at which point he will marry her if she agrees. In the meantime, he plans to mould her into his ideal woman. However, this proves to be more difficult than he had bargained for due to Naomi’s wilful and uncooperative behaviour. She soon has Joji wrapped around her little finger, and he remains infatuated despite the humiliations she causes him.  

Jukichi Uno

 

Chijin no ai is often understandably compared to Nabokov’s Lolita, but pre-dates it by 30 years. The similarities between the two appear to be entirely coincidental as Tanizaki’s novel was not translated until 1985, when it appeared in English under the title Naomi. This film version from Daiei studios updates the story to contemporary post-war Japan and begins with Joji (Jukichi Uno) and Naomi (Machiko Kyo) already living together. As Machiko Kyo was already 25 at this point, the age difference between the two characters is much less pronounced than in the book. 

Machiko Kyo

 

This was already Kyo’s fifth picture since being signed as a ‘new face’ by Daei the same year; even before that, she had built up years of stage experience as a member of the Osaka Shochiku Girls’ Opera Company, which she had joined in 1936 at the age of 12. As a member of that company, she had also appeared in two Shochiku films, Tengu daoshi and Danjuro Mitsuyo (both 1944), the latter of which was directed by none other than Kenji Mizoguchi (and is presumably lost as there seems to be very little information about it online).  Although the part of Naomi was not Kyo’s first leading role in a film, in the light of its prestigious literary origin it seems fair to say that it was her first really important one. In any case, the confidence with which this apparent newcomer performs the role is perhaps not so surprising given that she had already been performing for 13 years by the time the film was made. 

Machiko Kyo (right) in Tengu daoshi

 

The director, Keigo Kimura (1903-86) appears to have played a significant part in Kyo’s career. Not only did he choose her to play Naomi, but he had already directed her once previously and would go on to make a total of 10 films with her, including the previously-reviewed Life of a Horse Trader. He would also remake A Fool’s Love in 1960 with Eiji Funakoshi, and Junko Kano as Naomi, and his reasons for doing so were not merely to repeat an earlier success.

DVD cover for the 1960 remake

 

In the original novel, one of the attractions for Joji in pursuing Naomi is that she has a somewhat Western appearance – in fact, he thinks she resembles Mary Pickford! Furthermore, Naomi is, of course, also a female given name in English-speaking countries, and Joji pays for her to have English lessons. While I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that Naomi is simply a metaphor representing Western values, it’s certainly the case that Tanizaki was commenting on the way many Japanese were embracing Western culture at the time, sometimes at the expense of their own. At the end of the book, Joji is completely dominated by Naomi and becomes her willing slave, whereas at the end of the 1949 film, Naomi recognises the error of her ways and submits to Joji, promising to be a good girl from now on. As the film was made during the American occupation, there was no way the authorities were going to approve a film which could be interpreted as a warning about American domination. For this reason – and also because the age difference is much less of an issue than in the book – Keigo Kimura’s first attempt at filming Tanizaki’s novel is considerably compromised. Although I’ve yet to see his later version, I understand that it is indeed more faithful to the book, especially in regard to the ending. 

Masayuki Mori and Machiko Kyo

 

This first version is a little slow at times, with not much sense of pacing, but there are some interesting sequences, such as the montage in which we see the gradual deterioration of Naomi’s stockings reflecting the change in her circumstances after she leaves Joji. The main interest of the film today is likely to be the chance to see Kyo in an early leading role, but Jukichi Uno also gives a good account of himself as do Masayuki Mori and Koji Mitsui as Naomi’s male friends-from-hell, a couple of pleasure-seeking parasites who abandon her as soon she’s down on her luck.

Koji Mitsui and Masayuki Mori

 

Two further film versions were made: Yasuzo Masumura’s 1967 film* starring Shoichi Ozawa and Michiyo Yasuda, which is more of a comedy, and a semi-porn version made in 1980 under the title Naomi and starring Makoto Saito and Yuki Mizuhara.

Intriguingly, the 1934 film version of Somerset Maugham’s novel Of Human Bondage is also known as Chijin no ai in Japanese, and Maugham’s story of a young medical student’s disastrous infatuation with a waitress has many similarities with Tanizaki’s work.

*Often referred to under the poorly-translated title Love for an Idiot in English (A Fool’s Love makes much more sense as it’s Joji who is the fool in Tanazaki’s story, not Naomi).

Gero no kubi /下郎の首 /'Gero's Head' (1955)

Obscure Japanese Film #46

Michiko Saga and Jun Tazaki

 

Writer-director Daisuke Ito’s remake of his own 1927 film Gero (since lost) is a period drama (or jidaigeki) made for Shintoho.[1] Jun Tazaki stars as Geru, a manservant whose master (Minoru Takada) is killed as a result of an argument during a game of go. Geru was fishing with the master’s adult son, Shintaro (Akihiko Katayama), at the time of the incident. By the time they return, the unnamed killer (Eitaro Ozawa) has fled the scene, but they learn that he has nine moles on his face. Geru and Shintaro set off on a quest to find the murderer, but Shintaro falls ill and Geru is forced to become a busker, performing spear dances to support them both. 

Eitaro Ozawa

 

One day, sheltering from the rain outside a house, Geru is lent an umbrella by the inhabitant, Oichi (Michiko Saga, daughter of Isuzu Yamada and star of The Mad Fox), and a friendship develops when he comes to return it. Geru learns that Oichi is the concubine of a man named Sudo. During a later visit, Sudo unexpectedly returns and Geru is shocked to discover that he’s the man with nine moles on his face…

Jun Tazaki

 

In Japanese cinema history, Daisuke Ito – who made his first film in 1920 – is known as the father of the period drama, and there is no doubt that he was an innovative and hugely influential filmmaker. One of his few surviving silent films, Jirokichi the Rat (1931) remains impressive today. Geru no kubi is an extremely well-directed film in the way Ito stages his scenes, co-ordinates the actors, focuses on surprising details and uses dynamic crane and dolly shots combined with strong compositions and depth of field. Ito can be amazingly bold, too; in one scene during a voiceover, he fills the screen with a shot of a blank piece of paper and holds the shot for over two minutes! 

Akihiko Katayama

 

On the basis of this film and the other Ito works I’ve seen, in my opinion Ito’s weakness is that he sometimes either allows or encourages his actors to go over the top. There’s a running ‘gag’ here in which Gero’s legs go dead every time he has to kneel for a while, meaning that he’s unable to walk properly when he gets up. This clumsy slapstick is unfortunate in a film which is otherwise pretty sober in tone even if it lacks the depth to make it a true classic. However, the un-Hollywood like preference in Japanese cinema for a tragic ending is certainly well-catered to and comes after a grand climax in which we finally get a generous helping of chanbara (sword-fighting) action, albeit of the (presumably deliberately) clumsy variety.  

Koji Mitsui

 

Tetsuro Tanba

Also among the cast are the scene-stealing Koji Mitsui in a Lon Chaney-like role as a fake paraplegic beggar and Tetsuro Tanba as a passing samurai Geru and Shintaro manage to offend. The impressive cinematography is by Yoshimi Hirano, who also shot The Life of Oharu (1951). Jun Tazaki is decent enough in the lead, but a little lacking in star quality. However, the film's qualities far outweigh its flaws and Gero no kubi is a good example of why Daisuke Ito's work should be much better known than it is today.

Watched without subtitles.

Michiko Saga

 

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[1] The original was based on a story by one Tokichi Nakamura, who is for some reason uncredited on this version.