Obscure Japanese Film #151
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| Hisaya Morishige |
Hidaka (Hisaya Morishige) is a widowed office manager with a grown-up daughter, Keiko (Yuriko Hoshi). Now 50 years old, he has a reputation for strictness and is, in fact, a bit of a bastard who has no sympathy for those less fortunate such as Hamanaka (Seiji Miyaguchi), an employee nearing retirement age who begs to be kept on as he has a sick wife to support.
Yuriko Hoshi
Seiji Miyaguchi
When Hidaka gets promoted to senior manager and is to be sent on a lengthy business trip abroad, he reluctantly agrees to help Hamanaka before he departs, but seems to have an ulterior motive. Hidaka has learned to his horror that Keiko has been seeing Okuda (Kiyoshi Kamoda), whom he regards as his most useless employee, and he wants Hamanaka’s help in ending their relationship.
Kiyoshi Kamoda (not Kodama)
However, upon his return, Hidaka is disconcerted to find that Keiko has not only stubbornly refused to cut ties with Okuda, but encouraged him to marry her in spite of her father’s opposition. Hidaka realises he has no choice but to accept the situation, but as a result he finds himself humbled in the eyes of the big boss (Eijiro Tono) and loses his self-confidence. Beginning to suffer from insomnia and depression, he finds unexpected solace in the arms of streetwalker Sakiko (Reiko Dan)…
Eijiro Tono
This Toho production is the sort of Japanese film not shown very often in the West, probably because Westerners used to marrying whoever they want and not having to kow-tow to their bosses to the extent we see here may find it hard to relate to. An awful lot of arse-kissing goes on in Hidaka’s office, although it’s simply portrayed as perfectly normal and not satirised at all. In fact, I was surprised to see barely a hint of true criticism of the money- and career-obsessed world Hidaka inhabits. However, the very uber-Japaneseness of the film does lend it a certain cultural curiosity value.
Hisaya Morishige
It’s unusual to see a character like Hidaka as the protagonist of a movie. The fact that he’s played by Hisaya Morishige led me to expect a comedy, but I think this is supposed to be a drama, toothless as it may be. Morishige is an actor little-known abroad, but who played leads for director Shiro Toyoda in Marital Relations (1955) and Shozo, A Cat and Two Women (1956). Hidaka is a character who undergoes a complete, almost Scrooge-like transformation by the end of the film. The problem is that none of it is at all convincing. We are in some weird kind of male-wish-fulfilment fantasy land here with the vivacious Reiko Dan as a highly unlikely streetwalker. It’s not Dan’s fault, though, it’s just a whitewashed portrait of someone reduced to this profession – the contrast with Miyuki Kuwano in the same year’s The Shape of Night could not be more pronounced.
Reiko Dan
From an original screenplay by regular Naruse collaborator Toshiro Ide, The Naked Executive is competently but rather blandly directed by Yasuki Chiba, a veteran who was then under contract to Toho. He seems to have been well-regarded in his time, but the only other film I’ve managed to see by him so far is a rather wonderful comedy entitled Tokyo Sweetheart (1952) starring Toshiro Mifune and Setsuko Hara.
Yuriko Hoshi
