The Pass – Last Days of the Samurai / 峠 最後のサムライ / Tōge saigo no samurai (2020)

Obscure Japanese Film #123

Koji Yakusho

This Shochiku production stars Koji Yakusho, well-known for his leading roles in international hits such as Shall We Dance? (1996), The Eel (1997) and, most recently, Perfect Days (2023). Here, he plays Tsugunosuke Kawai (1827-68), a senior samurai retainer preparing for civil war while simultaneously doing everything he can to prevent it, even though it means being called a coward by many of his peers as a result. The story is set in the years 1867-68 when the influence of America and Europe is beginning to make itself felt in Japan, and Kawai has been inspired in his neutral stance by the example of Switzerland. However, the film certainly has an ambivalent attitude towards the West as the opening narration suggests that everything would have been fine in Japan if only the Western world had left them alone. Indeed, Kawai himself is a rather contradictory character – despite sticking his neck out in the hopes of maintaining peace, he ends up gleefully mowing down his opponents with a Gatling gun! (Incidentally, although such a weapon may seem out of place in a samurai movie, it is a historical fact that Kawai purchased a Gatling gun, though whether he used it himself in battle I can’t say.)

 

The Pass is based on a 1968 novel by Ryotaro Shiba (1923-96), whose work also provided the basis for films such as Castle of Owls (1963), Assassination (1964), Hitokiri (1969) and Gohatto (1999). The film appears to be a faithful adaptation as far as one can tell without reading the book, which is yet to be translated into English (though some of Shiba’s work has been). 

Kyoko Kagawa

 

The man responsible for the adaptation is writer-director Takashi Koizumi, a former assistant director to Akira Kurosawa who had made After the Rain (1999) from Kurosawa’s script after his mentor’s death. Among the cast are long-in-the-tooth Kurosawa veterans Tatsuya Nakadai (b.1932), Kyoko Kagawa (b.1931) and Hisashi Igawa (b.1936), though they are given nothing very challenging to do and their parts are cameos of the “wheel ‘em out for old times’ sake” variety. Still, we have to be thankful for any appearance by these greats of Japanese cinema these days. 

Hisashi Igawa

 

The historical accuracy of the piece seems generally solid with the exception of the casting – Koji Yakusho, then 64, is playing a 40-year-old, while his former acting teacher Tatsuya Nakadai, then 87, plays Kawai’s boss, samurai lord Tadanori Makino (1844-75), who died at the age of 30! Perhaps wisely, no attempt has been made to make Nakadai look half a century younger – the filmmakers’ presumably thought that only a few history nerds would notice the discrepancy. 

Tatsuya Nakadai

 

The Pass is often very impressive visually and looks like it must have been given a generous budget, with the large-scale battle scenes being especially well done. On the other hand, its quieter moments are sometimes a bit too fussy and picture-postcardy for their own good, with some scenes feeling pretty lifeless as a result. The music is also a mixed bag, varying from sentimental light classic piano to more dramatic and effective orchestration for the battle scenes. However, for me it is mainly in the script department that this film is lacking as, not only does it present us with a nostalgic, rose-tinted view of the past, but we have to suffer dialogue like, “Your samurai spirit will inspire countless others. You are our ideal. You shall live on in history!” For me at least, the film is ideologically dubious in the way it seems to lament the passing of feudalism. While it may be true that, under the Tokugawa Shogunate, Japan enjoyed 260-odd years of peace and stability during the Edo period (1603-1868), this was only achieved by enforcing a policy of isolationism and a rigid social hierarchy. Such a situation may have been comfortable for the aristocracy, but was doubtless a lot less pleasant if you were one of the oppressed, and the film never shows us this side. 

Takako Matsu as Kawai's wife, Suga

 

Despite these quibbles, it’s a shame that The Pass has yet to receive a proper release overseas. While uneven, its best bits make it worth seeing and it features an engaging performance by Yakusho in the lead. Kawai was also certainly an interesting figure worthy of a movie (I believe this was the first feature film in which he was the main character, though there had been TV dramas before).

The film’s release was delayed until 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

For a more detailed synopsis, see Hayley Scanlon’s review here.

The Fir Tree Remains /樅ノ木は残った / Momino ki ha nokotta (1983)

Obscure Japanese Film #69

Tatsuya Nakadai

 

In this Fuji TV movie, Tatsuya Nakadai stars as Kai Harada (1619-71), a samurai magistrate involved in the Daté Uproar (aka the Kanbun Incident), a factional squabble which erupted into violence when the young head of the Daté clan, Tsunamune Daté, was exiled as a punishment for debauchery and replaced by a 2-year-old. It was rumoured that Tsunamune’s punishment was a ruse by the shogunate, who wanted to weaken the power of the feudal lords. 

The Fir Tree Remains is based on an untranslated novel of the same name by Shugoro Yamamoto, a favourite writer of Akira Kurosawa, whose films Sanjuro, Red Beard and Dodes’ka-den were all based on Yamamoto stories. Yamamoto was also a favourite of Yasuko Miyazaki, the former actress who married Tatsuya Nakadai and later became a screenwriter under the name of Tomoe Ryu. Her first script had been a television adaptation of Yamamoto’s Tsuri shinobu back in 1966, while her screenplay for Masaki Kobayashi’s Inn of Evil was based on another of his novels, which she re-adapted for television in 1982 as Jigoku no okite and later as a stage play.

Here we have a complex story to tell in 90 minutes and one that I can’t say I found terribly engaging, although it’s certainly got a few things going for it. One of several period dramas Nakadai made for television under the direction of Akira Inoue around this time, for a 1983 TV movie, it’s surprisingly well-lit and photographed. The acting is also pretty decent on the whole, with Nakadai’s confident restraint being especially effective as the unflappable Kai Harada, who – like the fir tree in his garden – keeps his own counsel while those around him are (literally) losing their heads. According to Japanese Wikipedia, Harada had usually been depicted as a scheming villain prior to Yamamoto’s story; here, he’s portrayed as a sympathetic character with pure motives. 

Eitaro Ozawa

 

Also popping up among the cast are Eitaro Ozawa, one of Nakadai’s acting teachers from his student days, and a young Koji Yakusho, one of his students from his teaching days. 

Some of the music’s a bit clichéd and the subtitles are sometimes a bit odd (“I am sorry about this ruckus. Go away please.”), but on the whole I’d say this is worth a look for Nakadai fans. 

Yamamoto’s novel had previously been filmed for the cinema in 1962 by Kenji Misumi under the title Aobajo no oni (Aoba Castle Demon) in a version starring Kazuo Hasegawa, while other television adaptations were made in 1964, 1970 (with Mikijiro Hira), 1990 and 2010. 

Thanks to Samurai vs. Ninja for making this available on YouTube here.

Under the Northern Lights / Pod severnym siyaniyem / オーロラの下で (1990)

Obscure Japanese Film #50

Koji Yakusho

This Japanese-Russian co-production stands very much in the shadow of Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala (1975), the Russian film which had rescued the great director from a 5-year dry spell and returned him to international success with an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Like Dersu Uzala, Under the Northern Lights is another wilderness adventure set in the early years of the 20^th-century. 

 

Junko Sakurada

 

The leading role is played perfectly by Koji Yakusho, a student of Tatsuya Nakadai’s who would go on to international success himself a few years later as the star of Shall We Dance? (1996) and The Eel (1997). Here, he is Genzo, a hunter and fur trapper who slips across to eastern Siberia in the hope of collecting enough hides to buy back his fiancée (Junko Sakurada) from the geisha house into which she has been sold by her poverty-stricken family. When some locals rob him, he is helped by a Russian, Arseniy (Andrei Boltnev), with whom he forms an unlikely friendship. Arseniy lives with his widowed sister Anna (Marina Zudina) and her child, and Genzo develops a bond with them too. However, the difficulties he faces mean that it takes him a long time to raise the money necessary to fulfil his dream.

Tetsuro Tanba

 

Returning to Japan after an absence of 5 years, he discovers that, believing Genzo to be dead, his former fiancée has married and had a child. In the meantime, the Russian Revolution breaks out and the Japanese government is concerned about the possibility of it spreading to Japan. Genzo, having learned to speak Russian, finds himself heading back to Siberia after being recruited as a spy by a government official (Tetsuro Tanba). On his return, he checks in on Arseniy, who turns out to be so ill that he is confined to his bed. Genzo attempts to nurse him back to health, but Arseniy dies. Genzo then has to fulfil his friend’s last wish – to deliver a vital serum to combat an epidemic in the remote rural community where Anna and her daughter are now living. In order to get there, Genzo has to travel by dog-sled and finds himself battling for survival in the harsh Siberian winter. Along the way, he receives some unlikely help in the shape of Buran, a dog which is half-wolf and which he had previously tried to kill for bounty.

If the serum part sounds familiar, it’s probably because the producers incorporated elements of a true story which occurred in Alaska in 1925 involving a Siberian Husky that later served as the basis for the animated American film Balto (1995). This part was not in the 1971 children’s book by Yukio Togawa upon which Under the Northern Lights is based, and I felt that the producers were over-egging the pudding a little by adding it. 

Maksim Munzuk (Dersu Uzala) in a cameo

 

For some reason, IMDb credits three directors on this film, although the film’s own credits list only Toshio Goto as director. I suspect that Sergey Vronski, a cinematographer, shot some second unit footage and Petras Abukiavicus, who co-wrote the screenplay, directed the Russian actors. In any case, Goto had experience with this challenging type of movie, having made The Old Bear Hunter (1982) and Born Wild, Run Free (1987), two films also mostly shot in remote locations and featuring wild animals. Animal welfare did not seem especially high on his agenda, though, and Under the Northern Lights features numerous scenes of animals attacking each other – it’s certainly not a film that could convincingly claim that ‘no animals were harmed in the making.’ These scenes may have prevented the film from being passed by the censor in some countries and may well be the reason why it seems to have had little or no release in the English-speaking world.   

As one would expect from a Russian-Japanese co-production shot in Siberia with a half-dog, half-wolf as one of the main actors, the film had an immensely troubled and protracted shoot. While it certainly has its impressive aspects – most notably, the photography of the Siberian wilderness – the story is all over the place, and the music (full of cymbal crashes and swelling strings) strains too hard for emotion. Worth seeing, then, but certainly not on a par with Dersu Uzala.

Watched with subtitles I auto-translated from Serbian (they didn’t come out well). The Japanese dialogue had Russian narration over the top.