Sanshiro Sugata / 姿三四郎 (1977)

Obscure Japanese Film #48

Tomokazu Miura and Kumiko Akiyoshi

 

Sanshiro Sugata (1943) was, of course, the directorial debut of a certain Akira Kurosawa, who had persuaded Toho Studios to buy the rights to Tsuneo Tomita’s just-published novel of the same name. Sugata is a fictional character based on Shiro Saigo (1866-1922), an early practitioner of judo who became one of the masters of the art. Tomita himself was the son of another judo champ, Tsunejiro Tomita, who had been an associate of Saigo’s. Kurosawa’s commercial instincts had proven sound on that occasion – so much so, in fact, that the studio pressured him into making a sequel, which was released just as the war was coming to an end. Between that film and this 1977 version, there had been a further four remakes, including a 1965 film produced by Kurosawa himself. This was apparently a scene-for-scene remake of the first two films, but it was not well-received by the critics and seems to have all but destroyed the career of its young director, Seiichiro Uchikawa, whose previous film (Samurai from Nowhere) had shown definite promise.

Kihachi Okamoto (right) on set

 

Kihachi Okamoto was an eccentric and often brilliant director whose work suffered a sharp decline in quality as the ‘60s ended and the ‘70s began. The reasons for this are debatable, but in my opinion none of his films from 1970 onwards really work, and his talent became less and less evident as time went on. This is a pity, because his mid-period movies such as Sword of Doom, Oh Bomb! and The Human Bullet are stunning. Unfortunately, his remake of Sanshiro Sugata (newly released on DVD in Japan) proves not to have been a return to form. In fact, it copies a great deal from the Kurosawa original, from the blurry point-of-view shot seen through the eyes of a nearly knocked-out opponent to the climactic fight on the windswept hill. There is one scene in which Okamoto subverts our expectations – in the original, Sugata had thrown away his geta (wooden sandals) when volunteering to drive judo master Shogoro Yano’s rickshaw; Kurosawa had used this to create a striking montage sequence in which we see what happens to one of the geta with the passage of time. In Okamoto’s version, he is about to throw them away, but thinks better of it and ties them to the rickshaw handle. Some of the fight scenes could be said to be an improvement on Kurosawa’s, but the shot of an opponent flying through the air worked in 1943 because it was so brief, whereas Okamoto makes it completely absurd by extending the shot and adding a ridiculous sound effect. Indeed, this Sanshiro Sugata, with its pop song theme tune, jaunty score and broad performances suggests that the intended audience was 10-year-old boys. Incidentally, the lame music is by none other than Masaru Sato, who had once given us one of the great film scores of all time for Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. 

Tatsuya Nakadai

 

That Okamoto assembled an all-star cast mostly goes for very little. Tatsuya Nakadai is fine as Sugata’s teacher, Shogoro Yano (played by Toshiro Mifune in 1965), but it’s hardly one of his better roles. Nevertheless, he clearly did some of his own stunts and looks more convincingly formidable than Denjiro Okochi did in the 1943 film. We also get Kumiko Akiyoshi as the love interest, Tomisaburo ‘Lone Wolf’ Wakayama as her father (Takashi Shimura in the original), Kyoko ‘Woman in the Dunes’ Kishida as an older woman who tries to seduce Sanshiro, Atsuo Nakamura as Gennosuke Higaki (the main villain of the piece), Kunie Tanaka as Sanshiro’s best friend and Tetsuro Tanba in an especially thankless role as a senior member of Yano’s school. 

 

Daisuke Ryu

Nakadai’s real-life acting student Daisuke Ryu also makes his film debut as one of the attackers whom Nakadai hurls into the canal. The lead is played by the boyish Tomokazu Miura, a teen heartthrob type who could act a bit; he’s adequate, but never really convinces as a man of the 19^th-century and I prefer Susumu Fujita in the original. 

Kunie Tanaka, Akiyoshi and Miura

 

The film was mostly shot with a handheld camera long before it became de rigeur, but I can’t say it adds much and it’s really only the fact that it’s in Panavision that prevents this looking like a TV drama. The screenplay was co-written by Okamoto and Nakadai’s wife, Yasuko Miyazaki. The first hour and 40 minutes follow the first Kurosawa film, while the final 40 minutes feature the karate-schooled brothers of Gennosuke Higaki who are out for vengeance and appeared in Kurosawa's 1945 sequel. The role of the heroine has been greatly expanded (the character was little more than a cipher in Kurosawa’s films) and the new character of Sanshiro’s best friend is given quite a few scenes, in one of which he is brutally attacked by Gennosuke Higaki and left with a permanently twisted arm. No longer able to fight, he later turns up with a gun! One wonders if this role was created especially for Kunie Tanaka, who must have been double-jointed as his broken limb is so convincing and is, in fact, the highlight of this otherwise disappointing movie. 

Watched without subtitles. 

 

Kemono no tawamure / 獣の戯れ/ The Frolic of the Beasts (1964)

Obscure Japanese Film #47

Ayako Wakao

 

Koji (Takao Ito) is a student working at a ceramics shop in Tokyo owned and run by middle-aged author Ippei, a writer of highbrow literature (Seizaburo Kawazu). Despite having a beautiful younger wife, Yuko (Ayako Wakao), Ippei is also a philanderer who condescendingly boasts of his affairs to Koji. However, the shoe is soon on the other foot when Koji begins an affair with his boss’s wife…

Takao Ito

 

One evening, Koji escorts Yuko home only to discover that Ippei is there in bed with a stripper. When Yuko protests, Ippei slaps her around, causing Koji to lose his temper. He pulls out a wrench he happened to have in his pocket and attacks Ippei with it. Ippei survives, albeit in a brain-damaged state, while Koji goes to prison. 

Seizaburo Kawazu

 

Meanwhile, Yuko breaks with convention and becomes Koji’s sponsor, enabling him to be released into her care after serving two years. She is now living with the disabled Ippei in a coastal village on the Izu Peninsula, running a flower farm where Koji will work. This strange triangle results in an emotional hothouse which can only end in tragedy. 

Ito, Wakao and Kawazu

 

This brief synopsis simplifies the non-linear narrative of both the film and the book it is based on, a short 1961 novel by Yukio Mishima which finally appeared in English translation in 2018. Screenwriter Kazuo Funahashi (1919-2006) also wrote the screenplays for Listen to the Voices of the Sea (1950), The Temple of Wild Geese (1962) and another Mishima adaptation, Sword (aka Ken, 1964). His adaptation is pretty faithful to the book, although some of the subtle psychological nuances are inevitably lost, resulting in a slightly more conventional melodrama than the original. For example, when Koji finds the wrench, he conceals it from Yuko in the book, but not in the film as, without the insight into Koji’s mind that the text provides, this would have made it appear that his attack on Ippei was premeditated. According to translator Andrew Clare, Mishima’s original is also filled with references to the Noh theatre, but whether this would have been apparent to the average reader or viewer even in Japan is questionable. 

Ayako Wakao

 

The other main departure from the novel is the ending. This is more surprising given that the story originally ended with Yuko, but for some inscrutable reason the filmmakers chose not to give the final scene to their star. Incidentally, Ayako Wakao had acted opposite Mishima in Yasuzo Masumura’s Afraid to Die a few years earlier and was an actress that the author – an avid moviegoer – greatly admired. She later appeared in both stage (1970) and film (2005) versions of his novel Spring Snow.

Ito and Masao Mishima

 

Aside from Wakao, the most familiar member of the cast is Masao Mishima, who pops up as a much more benevolent priest than the one he played in The Temple of Wild Geese. However, Seizaburo Kawazu (1908-83), who plays Ippei, had a long career in the movies stretching back to 1928 and appeared in Yojimbo as the gang boss Seibei. In what was probably one of his best later roles, he’s very good here playing a character who undergoes a dramatic change.

Seizaburo Kawazu and unknown

 

The subtle music is the third and final film score by avant-garde composer Yoshiro Irino (1921-80), whose contribution to the picture is tastefully sparse and restrained, while the director, Sokichi Tomimoto (1927-89), is about as obscure as it gets. He was a Daiei contract director forced into TV work a few years after this and few of his films are accessible. On this evidence, he certainly had some talent at least as the film is well-staged and shot throughout even if there is little evidence of a particularly individual style. The following year, he worked with Wakao again on a Seicho Matsumoto adaptation, Forest of No Escape. 

Watched without subtitles.  

DVD on Amazon Japan

 

Ito and Wakao

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.

The Lost Alibi / 黒い画集 あるサラリーマンの証言 / Kuroi gashu: Aru sarariman no shogen ('Black Art Book: An Employee’s Confession', 1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #45

Keiju Kobayashi

Based on a 1958 Seicho Matsumoto short story entitled Shogen (‘Testimony’) published as part of his ‘Black Art Book’ (Kuroigashu) series, this crime drama stars Keiju Kobayashi as Ishino, a procurement manager for a fabric company. The film spends the first 8 minutes showing us how uninteresting the life of this faceless executive and family man is before revealing his secret – not only does he have a mistress, but the pretty young female in question is an employee who works under him. Chieko (Chisako Hara), is a bubble-headed good-time girl living in a love nest paid for by Ishino. Given the fact that Ishino has a sweet-tempered and still-attractive wife (Chieko Nakakita) as well as two children, he really has no justification for his behaviour, but he seems to have no qualms as long as he’s able to keep it secret and avoid losing face. Leaving Chieko’s apartment after one of his evening visits, he bumps into a neighbour, Sugiyama (Masao Oda), who works as a door-to-door salesman. When Sugiyama becomes a murder suspect, his only alibi is the chance meeting with Ishino, who is extremely reluctant to admit having seen him as he believes it may expose his philandering…

Chisako Hara

 

The story takes some ingenious twists and turns which are all the more effective for being quite plausible. The excellent script is by Shinobu Hashimoto, who collaborated with Kurosawa on numerous occasions, wrote the screenplay for Hara-Kiri (1962) and skilfully adapted the work of Satsuo Matsumoto for a number of films directed by Yoshitaro Nomura.

Ko Nishimura

 

The cast is uniformly good, and also features Ko Nishimura as the detective on the case and Kin Sugai as Sugiyama’s wife. A specialist in downtrodden characters, in one scene she breaks down and begs Ishino for help in an exhibition of raw emotion so powerful it’s uncomfortable for the viewer as well. 

Kin Sugai

 

The star of the film, Keiju Kobayashi, was best-known in Japan at the time for salaryman comedies, so his casting here is interesting in the way it subverts his usual image, as would Kihachi Okamoto’s Elegant Life of Mr Everyman (1963) in a rather different way. He was also an excellent dramatic actor whose other notable performances include Happiness of Us Alone (1961), in which he and Hideko Takamine portrayed a deaf-mute couple with admirable sensitivity, and his cameo as the samurai locked in the cupboard in Sanjuro. Kobayashi had already scored a hit for this film’s director, Hiromichi Horikawa, in The Naked General (1958), for which Kobayashi had won a Best Actor Award. The two would go on to collaborate on a number of further occasions, including on Shiro to kuro (1963), a film not dissimilar to this one and which involved many of the same people. Horikawa described Kobayashi as ‘an irreplaceable actor whose extraordinary performances burst out from an extremely ordinary person.’ Horikawa himself was highly rated by Akira Kurosawa, for whom he had often worked as an assistant director and, on the basis of The Lost Alibi and Shiro to kuro, Horikawa is the Japanese director whose work I would most like to be able to see more of. 

 

Masao Oda and Kin Sugai

The Lost Alibi appears to have been pretty successful and spawned several TV remakes, including a 1965 version starring Rentaro Mikuni. In the case of Horikawa’s version, there is more to it than just a clever crime drama. While not explicitly discussed, Japan’s post-war trauma is evident throughout, the characters embodying the moral vacuum the country seemed in danger of becoming after the seismic cultural shock of defeat, the atom bomb and the American occupation, all of which challenged the people’s long-held values and in some cases led them to embrace materialism or lead lives of hedonistic excess. In this example, the character of Ishino is so far gone that it is made quite explicit at the end of the film that he merely considers himself to have been unfortunate and has learned precisely nothing – a discomfiting ending, to say the least.