Night Ladies / 二匹の牝犬 / Nihiki no mesu inu (‘Two Bitches’, 1964)

Obscure Japanese Film #278

Mayumi Ogawa

 

After Tokyo’s brothels have all been forced to close down by the authorities, ‘bath houses’ and ‘massage parlours’ spring up everywhere, unofficially offering more than just a back rub to their predominantly male clientele, but stopping short of providing the ‘full works’. Asako (Mayumi Ogawa), a country girl desperate to escape an unhappy family life and poverty in rural Chiba, gets conniving former madam Tetsu (Sadako Sawamura) to set her up with a job in such a bath house. Working under the name of Rie, she finds that she can make a lot of money quickly and begins investing through a young stockbroker, Sekine (Naoki Sugiura), who’s keen to take their relationship further. When Asako’s younger half-sister, Natsuko (Mako Midori), turns up, Asako tries to send her back to Chiba, but Natsuko is not only determined to stay but has no qualms about what she might have to do to pay her bills…

Naoki Sugiura

According to Japanese Wikipedia, this Toei production originated from an idea by producer Shigeru Okada, who felt that increasing the erotic content of the studio’s films would be one effective way of luring the dwindling audience away from their TV sets and back into cinemas. This was the studio’s first attempt at doing so, and Okada was proved to be correct as the film was a substantial hit. Of course, although it was strong stuff at the time, it seems fairly tame today compared to countless later films. Nevertheless, the subject matter and content meant that casting established stars in the two leading female parts was virtually out of the question.

Ogawa and Mako Midori

Mayumi Ogawa was a member of the Bungakuza Theatre Company, where she had a strict mentor in Haruko Sugimura. She had done some TV work, but only one previous film, Kaneto Shindo’s Mother (1963), in which she had played a minor role. In this film, Ogawa proves to have real acting ability and to be a strong, charismatic presence who can glower to great effect. She found it hard to shake off the ‘wicked woman’ image she got stuck with as a result, but went on to enjoy a long career before becoming a Buddhist nun in 2008, after which she went into semi-retirement. In 2012, her daughter published a book entitled Poison Mama – A 40-Year War with My Mother, Mayumi Ogawa, which led to their permanent estrangement. She passed away in March 2026 at the age of 86.

Mako Midori

Mako Midori, on the other hand, had taken a TV acting training course, but had not a single credit under her belt – apparently, director Yusuke Watanabe happened to see her photo and gave her a screen test. Despite concern at her lack of experience, she proved to be a natural and went on to win a Blue Ribbon Award for Best New Actress for her performances in this and Watanabe’s similarly-themed follow-ups, Akujo and Mesu (both also released in 1964). However, she was fired by Okada in 1968 for complaining about the types of roles she was given. By this point, though, she had become popular enough for her modern style and willingness to disrobe that she was in demand from other studios and continued to have a successful career.

Sadako Sawamura and Ogawa

As far as the rest of the cast are concerned, many of them, like Ogawa, were members of Bungakuza, who were apparently struggling financially at the time and therefore very glad of the work – in fact, this was likely a bargaining chip used by Okada to help persuade Ogawa to take on a controversial role. However, Sadako Sawamura was not affiliated with the company; usually a fine actor, unfortunately in this case she seems to have seen her role as a crafty old procurer as an excuse to go way over the top.

Ogawa and Sugiura

The original screenplay was written by director Watanabe together with Kikuma Shimoiizaka, whose filmography suggests prolific hack work. The story here hinges on a massive coincidence and things become increasingly melodramatic as the film goes on. Having said that, it’s somewhat remarkable for its undiluted misanthropy in its portrayal of a world in which everyone’s a scumbag; that’s far from unique in Japanese films of this period, but it was seldom seen in Hollywood ones – Sweet Smell of Success (1957) being a notable exception. There are also indications that Watanabe was trying to make something a little classier than expected, and there is some artiness in the camerawork, while, during the climactic catfight, the sound drops out and we hear only a plaintive Spanish guitar, lending a strange air of detachment to the proceedings. All in all, then, no masterpiece, but a well-made, entertaining and interesting film.

Ogawa

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

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Midori

Convicted Woman / 女犯破戒 / Nyohan hakai (1966)

Obscure Japanese Film #275

Yoko Mihara and Takahiro Tamura

Ushinosuke (Takahiro Tamura) is a Kyoto actor who elopes with a young woman, O-Ume (Mayumi Ogawa), in a small boat. She decides they must die together and attacks him with a knife; the boat capsizes in the struggle and only Ushinosuke survives. Seven years later, in repentance, he has become a monk at Enmei-in Temple in Edo under the new name of Dogyo, but his faith is continually tested by lustful young women like Okura (Reiko Ohara), who apparently find his pompous piety and shaven pate irresistible.

Mayumi Ogawa

One day, Ryuzen (Nobuo Kaneko), who knows about Dogyo’s past, comes to the monastery to train as a monk, but appears to have some form of blackmail in mind. Meanwhile, the elderly head priest is dying but tries to seduce Dogyo on his deathbed. A shocked Dogyo runs off and lets himself be seduced by Okura instead while Ryuzen is finishing off the old priest. For some reason, Dogyo then decides to become the wickedest priest that ever lived...

Nobuo Kaneko with TT

This monksploitation meller from Toei was part of the studio’s drive to lure dwindling audiences back into the cinema with the promise of more erotic content, although said content remains mostly rather tame at this early stage. The fact that it was made in black and white and the star is Takahiro Tamura (who had seldom carried a picture before this one) seems indicative of a low budget, as does the silly script by B-movie hack Kikuma Shimoiizaka. Director Eiichi Kudo of 13 Assassins (1963) fame pulls off a few memorable moments, but the unconvincing characters and over-the-top performances soon prove tiresome, making the film quite a let-down after a strong opening sequence.

Reiko Ohara and TT

A note on the title:

Although Convicted Woman appears to have been an official English title, it doesn’t fit the content; the Japanese title can be translated as ‘Female Transgression’ or ‘Women Breaking the Commandments’, either of which make more sense in light of the story.

Thanks to A.K.

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The Sharks / 鮫 / Samé (1964)

Obscure Japanese Film #272

Kinnosuke Nakamura 

The late Muromachi period, c.1467, the beginning of the Onin War. Samé, or ‘Shark boy’ (Kinnosuke Nakamura), is a young shark fisherman who lives as an outcast near a fishing village on the Echizen coast. As itinerants, his family are not accepted by the villagers and he is forced to hand over his catch every day and accept the scraps they allow him to keep for himself. When hostility towards the itinerants increases, their huts are burned and Samé’s mother (Akiko Kazami) killed, so he and an itinerant elder (Yoshi Kato) decide to head for the capital (Kyoto) on foot in search of a better future. 

Yoshi Kato

However, the old man falls ill and passes away en route, after which Samé hooks up with a middle-aged woman (Michiyo Kogure) making the same journey alone. She has a mysterious supply of meat which keeps them going but, horrified to discover that it’s actually human flesh, Samé abandons her and continues on his own.

Michiyo Kogure

Minoru Chiaki

It’s a time of widespread famine, and Samé turns to stealing in order to survive. He’s taken under the wing of Shirasawa (Minoru Chiaki), a one-armed criminal with a black mark on his face, who teaches Samé to be more ambitious in his thievery and even encourages him to kill. Inevitably, the pupil eventually turns on his master and, by the time Samé has become a fully-fledged adult, he’s a ruthless man indeed. 

Daisuke Kato 

He next joins a gang of mercenaries led by Genji of Chikushi (Daisuke Kato) in the hope of receiving not only wealth but a position of power in exchange for the heads he takes in battle. By this time, his willingness to commit evil seems to know no bounds, but when he tries to rape a nun (Yoshiko Mita), her unexpected reaction awakens his lost humanity.

Yoshiko Mita

Based on a best-selling, prize-winning two-part novel of the same name by Nobuhiko Matsugi (1932-2016) and adapted for the screen by director Tomotaka Tasaka’s regular collaborator Naoyuki Suzuki (who also frequently worked for Tomu Uchida), like many of Tasaka’s films, this is a lengthy one, clocking in at around 165 minutes. With former kabuki actor Kinnosuke Nakamura – one of the biggest stars of Japanese cinema at the time – in the lead role, it was a major production for Toei, so it’s surprising that it’s not better known, though this is likely because it was not an award winner and appears to have been out of circulation for many years. At the time, Kinema Junpo ranked it 17^th in the list of best films of 1964, and it was the third most successful of the year in terms of box office.

Nakamura

The film depends heavily on its star, Kinnosuke Nakamura, a talented actor but one who had a tendency to go over the top, which he certainly does here, with his maniacal laugh being overused in the later scenes. It might also have been better to cast a younger actor in the part of Samé as a boy – indeed, it took me a while to realise that the 32-year-old actor was playing a boy at the beginning. Regarding the other cast members, it’s as surprising to see Michiyo Kogure as a cannibal as it is predictable to see the cadaverous Jun Hamamura – who had already tasted ‘monkey meat’ in Fires on the Plain (1959) – desperate for a taste, but it’s the two Seven Samurai veterans, Minoru Chiaki and Daisuke Kato, who come off best as Nakamura’s two mentors of villainy.

Jun Hamamura

Like Nakamura, director Tasaka was left-leaning politically, and the film makes it very clear that Samé is driven to crime by poverty and the merciless feudal system. Although most of Samé’s actions are selfish ones, at one point he clearly takes sides when he attacks some men escorting stocks of rice, liberating the food not for his own benefit, but for all the starving poor to share. This scene is also an example of several complex action sequences involving numerous actors that Tasaka stages quite brilliantly. His usual cinematographer at the time, Masahiko Iimura, makes effective use of colour and widescreen, although I couldn’t help thinking that black and white would have suited such dark material better. There’s also a fitting score by one of Japan’s top film composers, Masaru Sato. However, well worth seeing though it is, I wouldn’t personally make any claims for this film as a lost masterpiece because I found it rather lacking in subtlety both in terms of story and performance, and I didn’t buy Samé’s rather corny religious redemption at the end.

Thanks to A.K.

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Born Wild, Run Free / イタズ 熊 / Itazu kuma (‘Bear’, 1987)

Obscure Japanese Film #264

Takahiro Tamura

1928. ‘One-Shot’ Ginzo (Takahiro Tamura), a matagi, or bear hunter, returns to his home village of Ani in Akita Prefecture after having spent 10 years in the penal colony on Sakhalin Island for fighting. He learns that his son was killed in action in Siberia seven years earlier, and that most of the villagers now work at the new mine. Ginzo’s daughter-in-law, Kimi (Junko Sakurada), is living as a widow with his grandson, Ippei (Hiroshi Miyata).

Junko Sakurada

When a bear kills one of the villagers, Ginzo sets out to kill it and succeeds. However, shortly after this, a bear cub turns up looking for its mother. Ginzo, believing that he has committed a sin against the god of the mountains by making the cub an orphan, resolves to give up hunting and raise the cub to make amends. Ippei is delighted to have a furry new playmate, but of course cute little bears turn into big scary ones and one day they will have to release it back into the wild…

Hiroshi Miyata and friend

This co-production between Toei and the independent Kobushi Productions was made to capitalise on the success of director Toshio Goto’s earlier film The Old Bear Hunter (1982), although this film is aimed more specifically at the family market, with considerable focus on the boy and the bear cub. There are even two montage sequences of the two frolicking together and the bear getting into various mischief over which a female singer croons a cheesy ballad about human-animal friendship. The film is not exactly subtle, then, but it is quite well-made and entertaining, and some of the animal and nature footage is certainly impressive even if the filmmakers occasionally resort to using a fake bear for the more difficult shots (there is some pretty amazing ursine acting at the end, though…)

As with Goto’s other wilderness movies, I would question how much the welfare of the animals was considered here, and I can’t help feeling there’s some hypocrisy in promoting such a film as wholesome family entertainment when some of the various bears used must have had an unpleasant time in certain scenes . Still, I suppose this reflects our generally inconsistent attitude to animals, which easily changes depending on convenience; in this film, bears are both monstrous killers and cute anthropomorphised playmates as the story demands.

It’s perhaps worth saying a few words about this film’s star, Takahiro Tamura (1928-2006), whose father was none other than Tsumasaburo Bando, the sword-fighting star of silent films whose career continued until his untimely death in 1953 at the age of 51. Apparently, Bando died owing money to Shochiku, the studio which had him under contract, and Tamura was urged to follow in his father’s footsteps as a means of repaying his debts, which he agreed to do. However, he refused to be marketed as Tsumasaburo Bando mark II and resisted appearing in period dramas for the most part. He worked for Shochiku from 1953-1963, becoming a regular in Keisuke Kinoshita’s films, then went freelance. Career highlights include his role as Shintaro Katsu’s sidekick in The Hoodlum Soldier series (1965-68), Seisaku in Yasuzo Masumura’s Seisaku’s Wife (1965) opposite Ayako Wakao, the air force commander in Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), and the father in the Oscar-nominated Muddy River (1981). I don’t think Tamura ever became a box office draw, but he was a serious, hard-working actor who managed to avoid typecasting and successfully took on a wide range of roles. His performance in this film may be a tad broad at times, but on the whole he makes a good fist of it and, though Ginzo initially appears unlikeably gruff and aggressive, Tamura gradually reveals the heart of gold that’s concealed beneath the surface.

A note on the title:

イタズ (itazu) means ‘bear’ in the matagi language, but as this would not be understood by most Japanese people, the original title also contains the standard Japanese word for ‘bear’, 熊 (kuma).

English subtitles at Open Subtitles

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The Women around the Shogun / 続大奥 (秘) 物語 / Zoku ooku maruhi monogatari (‘Secret Tales of the Inner Palace Sequel’, 1967)

Obscure Japanese Film #258

Tomoko Ogawa

This Toei production is a sequel to The Shogun and His Mistresses of the same year, and I recommend reading my review of that film first, even though this one has an entirely separate story.

It’s now 1786 and the 10^th shogun, Ieharu (Masao Mishima), is in power. Ochisa (Tomoko Ogawa), the adopted daughter of Lord Abe (Eitaro Ozawa), is sent to serve the shogun at Edo Castle, where her older sister Oshino (Hiroko Sakuramachi) is one of the shogun’s concubines. It’s not long before Ochisa is forced into the same position, but the sisters try not to become enemies despite the bitchy machinations of the other women around them. However, when the shogun suddenly drops dead of a heart attack, Ochisa finds herself sent to a nunnery with the other concubines, where they’re expected to spend the rest of their lives praying for Ieharu’s soul. The head nun (Chieko Hagashiyama) ensures that the women are cut off from the outside world with the result that one goes mad, another turns to lesbianism and a third starts an affair with a priest – but what will become of Ochisa?

Ogawa with Masao Mishima

Dropping the anthology structure of the first film and released just three months later, it’s no surprise that this rushed-into-production sequel is weaker, especially as it relies on an inexperienced actor to carry it – in her first leading role, 18-year-old Tomoko Ogawa was a last-minute replacement for Yoshiko Sakuma (who reportedly objected to what she saw as an increasing sexual emphasis, although the finished product is probably tamer than the first). As if this were not challenging enough, Ochisa is not a terribly interesting character in the first place, although she does eventually reveal another dimension towards the end and Ogawa does a fair job under the circumstances. However, although her performance was well-received and Toei planned to star her in further similar pictures, disappointing box office led them to insist that she do nude scenes from then on, causing her to quit films and turn to singing, where she found considerable success. Incidentally, Yoshiko Sakuma was not the only one to be replaced – shooting began with Michiko Saga as the older sister, but she apparently got in a strop due to too much waiting around and left after three days, forcing Toei to replace her with Hiroko Sakuramachi.

Hiroko Sakuramachi

Casting shenanigans aside, this is still a decent movie, and one which also benefits from the splendidly villainous presence of Ko Nishimura, who instigates an impressively bloody sword fight with multiple opponents at the film’s climax. Composer Sei Ikeno’s score might have been better suited to a horror movie, but it’s not ineffective, while director Sadao Nakajima (who also made the previous film) is adept at extracting the maximum amount of drama from every scene. The original screenplay by Takeo Kunihiro and Takehiro Nakajima might seem too similar to the original at first, but goes off in some interesting directions before finally revealing its surprising theme of an individual rebelling against the oppressive feudal system. Unusually, in this case, the turning worm is no put-upon samurai, but a concubine who has finally had enough of having no say in her own destiny.

Ko Nishimura

DVD at Toei Video (no English subtitles)

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The Naked Sun / 裸の太陽 / Hadaka no taiyo (1958)

Obscure Japanese Film #254

Shinjiro Ebara

Kimura (Shinjiro Ebara) is a young stoker on the railway saving up to marry Yukiko (Satomi Oka), His best friend, Maeda (Tatsuya Nakadai), also works for the railway but is an unhappy man with a reputation for skiving, drinking and gambling. When a colleague’s money goes missing, Maeda is the main suspect and the workers give him a beating until Kimura intervenes and stops it. Later, Maeda asks Kimura to lend him some money, but won’t say what for – Kimura at first refuses, then relents and hands all his savings over to Maeda. Yukiko is furious when she finds out and persuades Kimura that Maeda must have lost it all betting on the bicycle races…

Tatsuya Nakadai

Set in the fictional town of Haginomiya but shot in Utsunomiya, north of Tokyo, this Toei production is the only film to have been based on a novel by the obscure Kazutoshi Himuro. Adapted for the screen by the ubiquitous Kaneto Shindo, it was directed by Miyoji Ieki. Unlike many of Ieki’s better-known films, none of the main characters are children, but otherwise this is fairly typical of his oeuvre in being a work of leftist social realism shot on real locations. Something I don’t remember seeing before in an Ieki film, however, is an accomplished action scene like the one we get here when there’s a fault with the train and Kimura has to climb outside while it’s still moving in order to fix it.

Hitomi Nakahara and Satomi Oka

Toei contract player Shinjiro Ebara had played his first lead in Tadashi Imai’s Rice the year before and went on to marry his co-star, Hitomi Nakahara (aptly nicknamed ‘Bambi’), in 1960. She also appears here as Yukiko’s younger sister. In his hands, Kimura seems quite dull at first and perhaps the filmmakers realised that he was failing to make much of an impression – around 50 minutes in, there’s a scene in which, completely out of the blue, he bursts into a quite extraordinary solo a capella song and dance to which he adds frenzied percussion by slapping himself and anything else near at hand. This is followed by a scene in which he does something weird with his shirt and gives an impassioned speech at a meeting, none of which seemed thinkable from the Kimura featured in the film’s first half. Well, I guess at least nobody was going to accuse him of giving a boring performance after all that...

Less than a year away from stardom, Tatsuya Nakadai’s screen time is quite limited and he’s not yet the assured actor he would soon become as a result of working on The Human Condition. There’s a mystery about his character which is quite intriguing, but ultimately his role feels underwritten, although this may well be the only film in which you’ll see him break down and sob uncontrollably.

The Naked Sun was entered into the 1959 Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Youth Film Award for Best Feature Film Suitable for Young People. This is perhaps a little surprising considering that it was a West Berlin festival in those days and Naked Sun seems like a film that would have been more popular with the Communists in the Eastern sector. However, in this case the workers only grumble a bit about their pay and conditions and are generally shown as quite a cheerful and hard-working bunch.

Toshio Takahara

The film was ranked 5^th best of the year by Kinema Jumpo magazine, the top four being, respectively, Kinoshita’s The Ballad of Narayama, Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, Ozu’s Equinox Flower and Ichikawa’s Conflagration (also featuring Nakadai). I’m a little surprised to see it ranked so highly myself but, while I wouldn’t call the film a masterpiece, it’s certainly an interesting and likeable picture and not just for train buffs.

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

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A Picture of Madame Yuki / 雪夫人繪圖 / Yuki Fujin ezu (1968)

Obscure Japanese Film #227

1949. Teenage orphan Hamako (Sumiko Hasegawa) arrives at a grand residence at Shinobazu Pond in Ueno, Tokyo, to serve as maid to the aristocratic Madame Yuki (Yoshiko Sakuma), whose father, a former viscount, has just died. Various relatives and opportunistic acquaintances flock to the scene like vultures hoping to secure a piece of the carcass for themselves. Among them are Yuki’s husband, Naoyuki (Isao Yamagata), who spends most of his time in Kyoto with his mistress, Ayako (Yuko Hama). However, it turns out that Yuki’s father has left nothing but debts, so the house is sold and the family’s other home in snowy Nagano is turned into an inn. Meanwhile, Yuki has been having an affair with Kikunaka (Tetsuro Tanba), a married writer, but even though she detests her own husband, he retains a mysterious sexual hold over her from which she seems unable to break free...

Isao Yamagata

Although the official English title of this film chooses ‘Picture’ over ‘Portrait’, it is, of course, based on the same novel as the better-known Kenji Mizoguchi film of 1950. The novel, by Seiichi Funahashi* (1904-76), first appeared in serial form between 1948-1950 and remains untranslated into English. To be frank, I can’t stand the story in either film version. One reason is the portrayal of unquestioning devotion, even idolatry, of a servant for her mistress, which seems to give tacit approval to the class system. Although Hamako becomes disillusioned with her mistress and Funahashi may have been trying to make a broader point about the disillusionment of the younger generation in the post-war years regarding the ruling class, the problem is that Yuki is presented as someone to be pitied and, if not deserving of the elevated status she enjoyed, it’s only because of her lack of courage. Indeed, while her self-pitying, acquiescent victimhood is irritating, she’s still painted as a tragic heroine. It also doesn’t help that the bad behaviour of the villains of the piece – the cruel husband and his predictably cheap and vulgar mistress – is so blatant that it’s never convincing.

At heart, the story is an old-fashioned melodrama, and, while the writer-director of this version, Masashige Narusawa – who had been a screenwriter for Mizoguchi on four of the latter’s final films – has for the most part clearly tried to downplay this as much as possible, still it is what it is. He certainly made a very different film to his mentor’s and was, reportedly, more faithful to the original novel. However, well-photographed though it is, it lacks the often inspired camera placement and composition found in the original, and so is not really an improvement overall, only in certain aspects. Transferring the bulk of the story to a snowy location (yuki means snow in Japanese) was a good idea, but it’s those crane shots with the rolling mist by the lake at the end of Mizoguchi’s film that linger in my mind.

Tetsuro Tanba

Compared to the wimpy character portrayed by Ken Uehara in 1950, Tetsuro Tanba is a much more commanding, masculine presence, yet none of the performances in either film are especially notable, perhaps because Funahashi – who also wrote the source novel for The Story of a Blind Woman – failed to put much life into them in the first place. Still, it’s a shame that this proved to be the final film directed by Narusawa as he clearly had talent, even if it’s less evident here than in his previous two pictures.

Produced by Toei, who had been pushing Yoshiko Sakuma as a star of literary erotica since their 1963 film of Tsutomu Mizukami’s Gobancho Yugiri-ro (aka A House in the Quarter), this version was shelved and not released until it was bought by Nikkatsu in 1975.

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

Thanks to Coralsundy for the subtitles, which can be found here.

Thanks to A.K.

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.