Five Sisters / 女の暦 / Onna no koyomi (‘A Woman’s Calendar/Almanac’, 1954)

Obscure Japanese Film #177

Kyoko Kagawa

 

Yoko Sugi

 

Their parents now deceased, two adult sisters now live together in their old family home on an island, Shodoshima, in the south of Japan. The youngest of five sisters, they are Kuniko (Yoko Sugi), a schoolteacher who is reluctant to get married, and Mie (Kyoko Kagawa), who is around nine years younger and has a very different attitude – unbeknownst to Kuniko, she’s in love with a burly pig farmer (Gen Funabashi) and wants to marry him. 

 

Gen Funabashi, Kyoko Kagawa and friend

 

As the anniversary of their father’s passing is approaching, Kuniko and Mie decide that it’s time to have a family get-together, so they invite their three elder sisters to visit. The most senior, Michi (Kinuyo Tanaka), lives in Hiroshima and has five children of her own and a lazy, pachinko-addicted husband (Hisao Toake), while Takako (Yukiko Todoroki), who lives in Tokyo, is married to a man who’s in prison for getting caught up in a demonstration. Finally, there’s Kayano (Ranko Hanai), who lives in Osaka and is unhappily married to Sugie (Masao Mishima), who’s always unfavourably comparing her to his first wife. Will the examples of the three visiting sisters deter Mie from marriage as they have in Kuniko’s case? Or has she been scared into thinking she must get married in order not to end up like Ofuku (Eiko Miyoshi), a crazy old maid who lives on the island? 

 

Kinuyo Tanaka

 

Yukio Todoroki

Ranko Hanai

This Shintoho production was based on a story by Sakae Tsuboi, entitled simply Koyomi (‘calendar’ or ‘almanac’) and first published in 1940. Tsuboi (1899-1967) was the youngest of five daughters from Shodoshima, so she may well have based the character of Mie on herself. She also wrote Twenty-Four Eyes, which is also set on Shodoshima. Her only full-length work to have been translated into English, it was, of course, turned into a highly successful film by Keisuke Kinoshita in 1954. 

 

 

Like Policeman’s Diary (1955), the only other film I’ve seen by director Seiji Hisamatsu, this one is also reminiscent of Kinoshita’s work. Looking back at my review of that film, I described it as ‘a charming, bittersweet comic drama from a more innocent age’, a description which could equally apply to Five Sisters. However, unlike Kinoshita – who had a fondness for slightly gimmicky visual techniques – Hisamatsu’s direction is the kind that never draws attention to itself. Nothing terribly dramatic happens in this film, yet somehow I was never bored, and few films have dealt with the theme of marriage in such a light but thoughtful way.  It was screened in competition at Cannes in 1955, but seems to have rarely been seen since, at least outside of Japan. 

 

 

 DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

 Thanks to A.K.

Deep River Melody / 風流深川唄 / Furyu Fukagawa uta (‘Elegant Fukagawa Song’, 1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #176

Hibari Misora

 

Fukagawa, Tokyo, c.1925. Daughter (Hibari Misora) wants to marry childhood sweetheart (Koji Tsuruta), but he’s got no dosh. Family business runs into financial difficulties. Only way to save it is for daughter to marry repulsive rich dude (Masahiko Naruse).

(For a proper synopsis, see Hayley Scanlon’s review at Windows on Worlds here.)

When boiled down to its bare bones, the plot of this Toei production is not only the same as that of the previous film I reviewed, Golden Demon, but is basically a formula that has been used ad infinitum in Japanese literature and film. However, while in a Hollywood movie you could be almost certain that the childhood sweetheart character would win the girl in the end, in Japanese films it could go either way as audiences there have generally been much more willing to accept an unhappy ending. I’ll leave it to you to guess the outcome in this one.

 

Koji Tsuruta

 

The film was based on a 1935 novel of the same name by Matsutaro Kawaguchi, who was the senior managing director at Daiei when it was made, so it’s a little surprising that a rival studio chose to adapt it. Kawaguchi actually won the first Naoki Prize for the book and went on to write many others, but as far as I’m aware, the only work of his to have been translated into English is Mistress Oriku – Tales from a Tokyo Teahouse. I’ve read a little of that and found it to be literature of a very lightweight and middlebrow variety, so was a little surprised that it had been selected for translation. 

 

So Yamamura

 

Deep River Melody the film is well-made by actor-turned-director So Yamamura, but it’s not as interesting as his earlier picture, The Crab Cannery Ship, which was based on a book by a communist author who fell foul of the authorities and was killed as a result. Perhaps in tribute, Yamamura gives himself a minor role here as a communist who also gets into trouble with the police. Incidentally, Japan’s relationship with communism is an interesting one – the Japanese Communist Party was founded in 1922, outlawed in 1925, then legalised by the occupation forces in 1945. In fact, it was almost encouraged by the Americans for a year or two as an antidote to feudalism before they did a U-turn and began discouraging it but ultimately decided not to ban it… 

 

 

Anyway, back to the film. Despite its rather hackneyed plot, it might have worked well with Ayako Wakao and Toshiro Mifune in the leads, but here we get Hibari Misora and Koji Tsuruta. Hibari was, of course, a huge singing star who mainly appeared in musicals, but even though the Japanese title contains the word for ‘song’, she doesn’t get one in this film and the material tends to expose her limitations as an actress. She had some ability in that department, but unfortunately she just did not have a very expressive face and that’s something that would have been very handy in this type of role. As for Tsuruta, well, he’s just not terribly interesting or charismatic here. 

 

Hibari with Isuzu Yamada

 

Weirdly, it turns out to be Isuzu Yamada who gets to sing a song here, which she does while accompanying herself on the shamisen. She also gives what’s easily the best performance in the film as Hibari’s widowed father’s forthright and not-to-be-messed-with mistress, who at one point actually attacks Hibari's dad for discouraging his daughter from marrying the one she loves. In my view, Yamada was the most versatile character actress in Japanese cinema and the shortcomings of the leads are even more obvious in contrast with her remarkable talents. If she’d had a larger role, I’d recommend watching the film for Yamada alone, but her screen time’s quite limited, so it’s probably not worth suffering through the misguided star pairing of Hibari and Tsuruta, which is to this film what that big lump of ice was to the Titanic. In terms of So Yamamura films, this one’s just… so-so (sorry!).

Golden Demon / 金色夜叉 / Konjiki yasha (1954)

Obscure Japanese Film #175

 

Jun Negami and Fujiko Yamamoto

 

1890. Miya (Fujiko Yamamoto) is a young woman in love with her adopted brother, Kan’ichi (Jun Negami). The feeling is mutual and they plan to marry. However, Miya’s parents want her to marry the wealthy Tomiyama (Eiji Funakoshi) and persuade her that it’s in Kan’ichi’s best interests too as then they’ll be able to afford to send him abroad to study, which will greatly improve his prospects.

 

Eiji Funakoshi

 

Four years later, Miya is trapped in a miserable marriage to Tomiyama who, knowing that he’s not loved, takes every opportunity to bully and humiliate his wife, while Kan’ichi has taken employment as a debt collector for a much-hated female moneylender, Akagashi (Mitsuko Mito), known as ‘Foxy Shark’. She has only given him a job because she wants to seduce him, and he finds himself in the position of having to demand repayment of loans from his former friends…

 

Jun Negami and Mitsuko Mito

 

Based on an unfinished novel by Koyo Ozaki (1868-1903), the plot of this Daiei production must have seemed old hat even in 1954. In fact, there had been numerous silent versions* of the novel as well as previous talkies by Hiroshi Shimizu in 1937 and Masahiro Makino in 1948. The title seems intended to reference the supposed obsession with money which Kan'ichi develops in an attempt to fill his void, but it’s just one aspect of the story that – in this film, anyway – never really convinces and feels like a mere contrivance. Another is his determination to remain so unforgiving towards Miya. What really takes the biscuit though is the fact that these two estranged lovers end up living across the street from each other!

 

Mitsuko Mito

 

Otherwise, the film is quite well-made by director Koji Shima and the performances are good, with Mitsuko Mito clearly having the most fun as the lustful loan shark. It won the 1954 Asia Pacific Film Festival award for Best Film and received some distribution abroad, arguably at the expense of other, better films, but this is probably due to the fact that it was one of the earliest Japanese feature films to be made in colour. A lot of trouble was clearly taken to shoot scenes in picturesque settings, such as a field of cherry blossom trees, a moonlit beach and a lonely road at sunset. Unfortunately, the copy I saw looked like a poor VHS transfer and the colours were horrible, but I did have the feeling that it would probably look great in a good quality copy. 

 

 

*A 1918 version cast future film director Teinosuke Kinugasa (a male) as Miya, while Kinuyo Tanaka played the role in a 1932 film.

The Flesh is Weak / 美徳のよろめき / Bitoku no yoromeki (‘Faltering Virtue’, 1957)

Obscure Japanese Film #174

Yumeji Tsukioka

 

28-year-old Setsuko (Yumeji Tsukioka), a former member of the aristocracy, has come down in the world somewhat after the war and ended up marrying below her class to Ichiro (Rentaro Mikuni), whose uncouth table manners appal her. 

 

Rentaro Mikuni

 

Despite being a wife and mother, she’s unable to forget her first love, Tsuchiya (Ryoji Hayama), especially as she keeps running into him (small place, Tokyo!). When her mother dies, Tsuchiya attends the funeral and, while paying his respects, whispers in Setsuko’s ear that he will be waiting for her the following day at 3 pm at a shrine. They start seeing each other on the sly, but he seems like such a nice guy that she believes it will remain platonic and her conscience will be clear. However, he has a weird fixation with eating breakfast naked… 

 

Ryoji Hayama

 

When Setsuko’s best friend, Yoshiko (Chikako Miyagi) – who is cheating on her own husband – arranges an excuse for Setsuko and Tsuchiya to sneak off to a hotel in Izu together, Setsuko freaks out when her uncle turns up at the hotel with some golfing buddies, stretching this film’s coincidence quota to the limit. Furthermore, Tsuchiya starts having non-platonic thoughts and tries to act on them, but finds himself rebuffed by Setsuko, who feels that she must remain faithful to her husband and certainly doesn’t want to eat breakfast naked with anyone…

 

 

This Nikkatsu production was adapted by Kaneto Shindo from a newly-published bestselling novel by Yukio Mishima (yet to be translated into English, but available in Chinese and Italian). The opening narration by actor Masaya Takahashi goes on for over 10 minutes and betrays the film’s literary origins. However, while the ending is apparently close to that of the novel, what happens in between is quite different, and it appears that Mishima’s original had Setsuko carrying on an extended sexual affair with Tsuchiya which results in two pregnancies, both of which are aborted. They also eat breakfast naked together, but I guess you couldn’t show that in a film in 1957 (so why have them talk about it, you may well ask). Anyway, although Mishima himself did not regard the novel as one of his serious literary efforts, he was not impressed and wrote in his diary that he could not imagine a more stupid movie. 

 

 

It doesn’t help that Setsuko is a self-pitying snob who is unnecessarily stern to her good-humoured maid, making it hard to feel much sympathy for her. Nikkatsu’s biggest female star at the time, Yumeji Tsukioka, does as well as can be expected under the circumstances, but Rentaro Mikuni is wasted in a role with little substance and Ryoji Hayama fails to make much impression as Tsuchiya. 

 

Chikako Miyagi

 

Chikako Miyagi fares better as the cheerfully amoral and flashily-dressed Yoshiko, and it’s nice to see Koreya Senda – who had just played a rare leading role in director Ko Nakahira’s Temptation – pop up again here as Setsuko’s dad. 

 

Koreya Senda

Nakahira also seemed to have a fondness for his namesake, actor Ko Nishimura, who appeared in at least half a dozen of his films, including this one in which he has a small part as a blind masseur who sees things his client (Setsuko) can’t. If only Nakahira could have seen the defects in the script… 

 

Ko Nishimura

 

Thanks to A.K.