May Love Be Restored / 五番町夕霧楼 / Gobancho Yugiri-ro (1980)

 

Keiko Matsuzaka

 

A little background may be useful here, so please bear with me before I get to the film…

In July 1950, the famous 500-year-old golden temple known as Kinkaku-ji in Kyoto was deliberately  burned down by an apprentice monk named Yoken Hayashi, who made a suicide attempt immediately after but failed and was sentenced to seven years in prison as a result. His health worsened during his incarceration and he was released early, but died in 1956 aged just 26. Kinkaku-ji was successfully reconstructed in the intervening years and still stands today. Hayashi, who suffered from a severe stutter he was said to have had since the age of 3, never explained the reasons for his actions. 

 

 

In 1956, Yukio Mishima published his novel based on the incident (known in English as The Temple of the Golden Pavilion). Mishima interpreted the crime as the result of an urge to destroy beauty – a recurring theme in his work The novel was filmed in a compromised version by Kon Ichikawa in 1958 as Enjo (aka Conflagration); a more faithful version by Yoichi Takabayashi appeared in 1976. 

 

Eiji Okuda

 

Another writer, Tsutomu Mizukami (or Minakami), had also become interested in the story from a different perspective. Mizukami had himself begun monastic training while still a boy, but was treated badly and quit by the time he was 18. He related to Hayashi, whom he even claimed to have met before the incident, and interpreted the crime as an act of rebellion against the hypocrisy of the temple authorities. Mizukami (who also authored The Temple of Wild Geese, another story involving a disaffected acolyte) carried out a great deal of research on the case and published his own novel inspired by it, Gobancho Yugiri-ro, in 1962. Shortly before committing his act of arson, Hayashi was said to have visited the same prostitute a couple of times in the red light district of Kyoto known as Gobancho, and Mizukami took this detail and created a major character out of her. In his novel, the two are childhood sweethearts from a struggling rural community who end up being sent (separately) to Kyoto by their families for very different reasons – he to train as a monk, she to work as a prostitute in a brothel as her destitute father has too many hungry mouths to feed.

 

Keiko Matsuzaka

 

Gobancho Yugiriro was first filmed in 1963 by director Tomotoka Tasaka. In his version, the prostitute (now named Yuko) is the focus of his film, with Hayashi (now Kunugi) not appearing until quite late on. In contrast, the version we’re concerned with here – directed by Shigeyuki Yamane and produced by Shochiku – balances its story more equally between the two principals. This is likely because Mizukami had published a second book about the Kinkaku-ji incident in 1979. Entitled Kinkaku-enjo (‘The Burning of the Golden Pavilion’), it was a non-fiction account which has yet to be translated into English. The opening credits of this film state that it is based on both books.

 

Yuko Hama

 

Yuko (Keiko Matsuzaka) is treated with apparent kindness by the madam, Katsue (Yuko Hama), whose brothel is named Yugiri-ro (providing the second half of the Japanese title). Although in neither film is this character treated with condemnation, she is, of course, involved in a sleazy business, and she arranges for one of her trusted regulars, the middle-aged ‘Ta-san’ (Hiroyuki Nagato) to take her virginity, and he becomes sexually-obsessed with her. Once that’s out of the way, Yuko takes to her new profession with disconcerting ease, and soon becomes the most popular prostitute in the place – with the clients, that is. Her colleagues soon get tired of being passed over and become envious. Meanwhile, Yuko secretly makes contact with Kunugi (Eiji Okuda), the stuttering apprentice monk she had grown up with and who is the only person she truly loves. She also feels responsible for his affliction as it began when they were children after she had accidentally dropped a snake on him while trying to get it out of a tree with a stick. He begins visiting her at the brothel, where she pays his fees, but, instead of sleeping together, they spend their time talking and singing songs they remember from their childhood. He’s supposed to be looking after the Golden Temple (here called Hokaku-ji), but he’s becoming increasingly disillusioned with his vocation and his relationship with the head priest (Shin Saburi) is deteriorating, while he sees little hope for a future with Yuko…

 

Shin Saburi

 

On the whole, I have to say that I prefer the 1963 version, mainly because I think it’s better cast and acted. Yuko is supposed to be 19 years old when she enters the brothel but, despite the fact that the 27-year-old Keiko Matsuzaka has not even the suggestion of a wrinkle, she somehow fails to convince as a teenager. However, having played leading roles in a number of successful films and TV dramas throughout the 1970s, she was a big star whose popularity was at its peak at the time this film was released. Some of the other performances also suffer in comparison to the earlier film – Hiroyuki Nagato overdoes it here (I preferred Minoru Chiaki in the 1963 version), while, as the madam, Yuko Hama is less memorable than Michiyo Kogure.

 

Hiroyuki Nagato

 

Another issue is that, although the film is set in 1950, it doesn’t always feel like it. A lot of little details don’t seem quite right – for example, the character known as ‘sensei’ played by Tadashi Yokouchi wears a polo-necked sweater and corduroy suit – was anyone really wearing that in 1950? And the cheesy music score which sometimes lapses into anachronistic distorted electric guitar doesn’t help either. 

 

Tadashi Yokouchi

 

The one point on which I felt it improved on the previous film was in its portrayal of the ensemble of prostitutes who share the brothel with Yuko. In Tasaka’s film, we were given what looked like a very rose-tinted view in which it was basically one happy family with perfect manners and barely a hint of conflict or rivalry, whereas Yamane’s film shows the inevitable friction between the women, which even erupts into a catfight at one point, and their excessive make-up and gaudy clothes seem more fitting. But the film has little to say about the burning of the temple – ultimately, it’s simply a confection intended to appeal to those with a taste for romantic tragedies. 

 

 DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

Kiri to kage / 霧と影 (‘Fog and Shadow’, 1961)

Obscure Japanese Film #182

Tetsuro Tanba

 

When Kasahara, a teacher from the local school is found dead at the bottom of a cliff on the Noto Peninsula, it’s assumed that he either slipped or committed suicide. However, his old friend Komiya (Tetsuro Tanba), who works as a reporter in Tokyo, smells a rat – he knows that Kasahara was afraid of heights, so he decides to investigate. In the process, he uncovers a complex (but not terribly interesting) web of conspiracy and corruption…

 

 

This Toei production features the type of story more usually associated with Seicho Matsumoto, but which in this case is actually based on a 1959 novel of the same name by Tsutomu Minakami (or Mizukami), known for Bamboo Dolls of Echizen, The Temple of Wild Geese, and Straits of Hunger among others. The Matsumoto resemblance is no coincidence as Minakami himself said that he had been inspired to write the book after reading Matsumoto’s Points and Lines (also known in English as Tokyo Express). It was Minakami’s first big success as a writer, and he soon proved that he was more than a mere Matsumoto imitator. According to Japanese Wikipedia, a critic named Kazushi Shinoda admired Kiri to kage for portraying the ‘anguish of a man cursed by fate, and the depth of the karma of a man who tries to escape his fate but ultimately cannot’.

 

 

It’s a pity, then, that this aspect of the work is absent from Teruo Ishii’s film, which is strictly B-movie stuff. It has been said that Ishii repeatedly attempted to make Naruse-like dramas early in his career, but these projects were all rejected. He later became a cult director, perhaps mainly due to his willingness to make exploitation films with titles such as Horrors of Malformed Men and Inferno of Torture.  Kiri to kage is well-shot but largely routine apart from the odd eccentric touch such as giving one of Komiya’s fellow reporters the gross habit of picking his nose with his pencil. 

 

 

Despite a reputation for turning up late on set without having learned his lines (and often using cue cards), Tetsuro Tanba was a fine actor, but the early leading role he gets here is the type in which the main thing the actor has to do is simply to find a different way to look surprised each time they receive new information. The remainder of the cast are not especially notable, and Chuji Kinoshita’s unsubtle music score does not help matters either, so I have to mark this one down as another disappointment. If it’s karmic anguish you’re after, watch Tomu Uchida’s adaptation of Minakami’s Straits of Hunger (better-known in English as A Fugitive from the Past) instead.

Watched with dodgy subtitles (I auto-translated from Japanese). 

Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

Clouds at Sunset / あかね雲 / Akane-gumo (1967)

Obscure Japanese Film #169

Shima Iwashita

 

1937. After a prologue in which we see two soldiers deserting – one of whom is quickly captured – the story moves to Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture. Matsuno (Shima Iwashita) is a 19-year-old virgin working as a maid at an inn, where she is best friends with another maid, the older and more experienced Ritsuko (Mayumi Ogawa). When Ritsuko leaves for a better-paid job as a hostess in Yamashiro Onsen 150 kilometres to the south, she invites Matsuno to go with her, but Matsuno decides to stay behind for the time being. 

 

Mayumi Ogawa

Tsutomu Yamazaki

She then meets Kosugi (Tsutomu Yamazaki), a kindly travelling salesman who stays at the inn where she works for a few nights. When she learns that he will also be going on to Yamashiro and can help her find a job there, Matsuno decides to join Ritsuko after all. However, she’s unaware that Kosugi has deserted from the army and has a dogged military policeman (Kei Sato) on his trail… 

Kei Sato

 

Clouds at Sunset was based on an untranslated 1964 novel of the same name by Tsutomu Mizukami (or Minakami), whose work formed the basis for a number of interesting films, including The Temple of Wild Geese, Bamboo Doll of Echizen, A Story from Echigo, A Fugitive from the Past and Lake of Tears. Like the latter two, the film was adapted for the screen by Naoyuki Suzuki, a famously uncompromising screenwriter who frequently collaborated with Tomu Uchida and had won two awards for A Fugitive from the Past. 

 

Directed by Masahiro Shinoda, like many of his films, Clouds at Sunset stars his wife, Shima Iwashita (in fact, the two are still married at the time of writing, aged 93 and 84 respectively). 26 years old when the film was made, she is nevertheless thoroughly convincing as the young and innocent Matsuno and won both the Kinema Junpo and Mainichi Film Concours awards for Best Actress for her performances in this and Portrait of Chieko. The other principals are also good, especially Mayumi Ogawa as her protective older friend (whom chance always seems to make unavailable at the crucial moment!). 

 

As played by Tsutomu Yamazaki (the kidnapper from Kurosawa’s High and Low), Kosugi never comes across like the scumbag one would expect considering the despicable way he later uses Matsuno to save his own skin. It’s made clear that he does this out of desperation rather than malevolence, and Matsuno continues to love him anyway. Somehow, this escapes feeling like the usual dubious male fantasy and Shinoda wisely leaves it open to question whether Matsuno is merely hopelessly naïve or is actually the only one perceptive enough to recognise Kosugi’s better nature.

 

Although distributed by Shochiku, the company for whom Shinoda had been under contract until 1966, the film was the first independent production by Hyogen-sha, Shinoda’s own company. All the more reason, then, to wonder why this excellent film came to fall through the cracks and become perhaps the least-seen of Shinoda’s works in recent years.

Aesthetically, the film looks and sounds great thanks to its subtle Toru Takemitsu score and the often beautiful cinematography of Masao Kosugi which, appropriately, bursts into colour at each sunset.

Thanks to A.K.

 

A Story from Echigo / 越後つついし親不知 / Echigo Tsutsuishi Oyashirazu (1964)

Obscure Japanese Film #107

Rentaro Mikuni and Yoshiko Sakuma

In 1930s Japan, Gonsuke (Rentaro Mikuni) is working at a sake brewery in Fushimi, Kyoto when he receives news that his mother is seriously ill. He is given compassionate leave to return to his village in Echigo (a former province in the snowy area of north-central Japan now known as Niigata Prefecture). As a colleague of Gonsuke’s named Tomekichi (Shoichi Ozawa) is from the same village, Gonsuke asks him if he has a message for his wife, Oshin (Yoshiko Sakuma). Tomekichi asks him to tell Oshin that he’s just been promoted. This is news to Gonsuke, who was already jealous of Tomekichi’s marriage to such an attractive woman as Oshin and is now doubly displeased to hear that he’s been passed over for promotion in favour of Tomekichi. 

 

Eijiro Tono and Mikuni

 

On his way home, Gonsuke stops off at an inn, where he falls into conversation with a fellow customer (Eijro Tono) who it turns out used to be in the army with Gonsuke’s elder brother. This lascivious old man tells Gonsuke tales of the brother’s many sexual conquests while they were stationed in Russia together. Gonsuke gets drunk with him before leaving and begins to brood about his own lack of a sex life before completing his journey home. When he’s nearly reached the village, he encounters Oshin walking home alone from her job weaving tatami mats. He makes a clumsy pass at her but, finding himself rejected, he rapes her in the snow.

While Gonsuke was committing this crime, his mother was dying; when he gets home, it’s already too late. However, he seems not only indifferent to her death, but actually full of himself for having managed to have his way with Oshin when there was nobody around. After his mother’s funeral, he visits her and again makes advances but is again rejected. His vanity wounded, he decides to get revenge by telling Tomekichi that Oshin is having an affair with the foreman at her workplace (Kei Sato)…

Sakuma and Mikuni

 

If that partial synopsis rings a bell, that’s because this is a clever recycling of Othello – the setting and the personalities may be considerably altered, but essentially Gonsuke is Iago, Tomekichi is Othello, Oshin is Desdemona and the foreman is Cassio. Due to the way the plot unfolds, it’s clear that this is no coincidence, especially if we take into account that the film was based on a 1962 novel by Tsutomu Mizukami (or Minakami), who would certainly have been familiar with the major plays of Shakespeare. Mizukami was a fine writer whose other filmed novels include The Temple of Wild Geese, Bamboo Dolls of Echizen, Straits of Hunger (aka A Fugitive from the Past) and Lake of Tears (also starring Yoshiko Sakuma). I recommend the Dalkey Archive’s English translation of The Temple of Wild Geese and Bamboo Dolls of Echizen in one volume if you can find it.

The great thing about this kind of story is that it could happen to people of any era or country, so it has not dated at all and probably never will (unlike some of director Tadashi Imai’s more topical pictures, such as Darkness at Noon, for example). Partly for this reason, A Story from Echigo may be his best film, in my opinion (not that I’ve seen them all). Another reason is that the performances from all three principles are outstanding. Rentaro Mikuni was always at his best in sleazy or unsympathetic roles, and he’s in his element here, utterly convincing as a vulgar man with zero morals or empathy, but who is, deep down, a sad and pathetic individual. Yoshiko Sakuma is every bit as good playing the unfortunate victim of male lust and jealousy who does her best to stand up to Gonsuke, but is ultimately placed in an impossible position. Sakuma has some arduous scenes in this film, and you really have to take your hat off to her. This may well be her most impressive performance. Shoichi Ozawa is perhaps better known for playing leading roles of a more comic type in films like Shohei Imamura’s The Pornographers (1966) and Yasuzo Masumura’s Chijin no ai (A Fool’s Love, 1967). In this more serious role, his character changes dramatically throughout the course of the film, and he portrays this metamorphosis extremely well. Eijiro Tono and Kei Sato make the most of their brief appearances, while the film also benefits from the presence of two wonderful old pros, Taiji Tonoyama and Tanie Kitabayashi, as two of the village elders.

Shoichi Ozawa

 

The story is strong stuff, and even contains a not-so-subtle hint of necrophilia at one point, resulting in the film receiving an ‘Adult’ classification for its original release. At the time it was made, Toei (the studio responsible) were deliberately introducing more sex into their films in an effort to entice people away from their TV sets and back into the cinemas. According to Japanese Wikipedia, it was Toei president Shigeru Okada’s idea to feature Yoshiko Sakuma in a more ‘sexy’ role than she had previously played. Toei certainly promoted A Story from Echigo as an erotic film, though it’s hard to imagine anyone being turned on by anything in it. In any case, perhaps this element explains why such a fine film was largely overlooked as far as awards go, scraping only a Mainichi Film Concours Best Screenplay award (shared with another film) for Yasutaro Yagi (1903-87, not 1906-65 as IMDb states). 

 

Composer Sei Ikeno and Tadashi Imai’s frequent collaborator, cinematographer Shunichiro Nakao, also deserve a nod for their fine work on this great film, which has an ending that is both devastating and perfect. 

 

Note on the title: In the Japanese title, Echigo Tsutsuishi Oyashirazu, Tsutsuishi is the name of the village the principal characters come from, while Oyashirazu refers to the Oyashirazu Cliffs in the same area.

Bonus trivia: The village scenes were shot on location at Itoigawa in Niigata Prefecture.