Four Sisters / 山麓 / Sanroku (‘The Foot of the Mountain’, 1962)

Obscure Japanese Film #167

Isuzu Yamada

 

Yoshiko Mita

Sonny Chiba

 

Modern-day Tokyo. Masako (Yoshiko Mita) is a young woman who wants to marry mountaineer Shinkichi (Sonny Chiba), but her domineering mother (Isuzu Yamada) wants her to wed the more financially solvent Sakurai (Fumio Watanabe). Once Sakurai begins courting her, Masako finds herself warming to him and becomes torn between the two men, so she begins to consider the marriages of her three older sisters in order to help her decide what to do. 

 

Chikage Awashima

 

Ko Nakahira

The eldest, Kikuno (Chikage Awashima), has been trapped in an unhappy and childless marriage to the wealthy Mitsumine (Ko Nishimura) for the past 10 years. Mitsumine loves her but has constant affairs on the side which he thinks Kikuno should just accept. The next sister, Misao (Chikage Ogi), is happily married to Igarashi (Tetsuro Tanba), with whom she has two children. Third sister Kanako (Kaneko Iwasaki) has angered their mother by eloping with Asayama (Hiroshi Minami), but leads a cheerful life with him in their small apartment and is newly pregnant.

 

Chikage Ogi and Kaneko Iwasaki

 

Chishu Ryu

 

The father of the four sisters (Chishu Ryu) is a classic henpecked husband who failed in business and now keeps his head down, busying himself with his bonsai while letting his wife make all the decisions. However, a family crisis is provoked when Kikuno – who had married Mitsumine at her mother’s urging – decides she’s had enough and leaves him, which will cut off an important source of income for the family…

 

 

As the IMDb page for this film not only contains a poster and a few stills in black and white, but also states that the film was shot that way, I was surprised to find that it’s actually in colour and, in fact, rather nicely shot by cinematographer Masahiko Iimura. A Toei production, it’s based on a just-published novel by Fumio Niwa, who also wrote the novels on which The Beloved Image (1960) and Women of Tokyo (1939) were based. The adaptation is by Zenzo Matsuyama, who had recently become a director himself, but this one is helmed by Masaharu Segawa (1925-2016), a director best-known for comedies, which this certainly ain’t. It’s the only film I’ve seen by Segawa, but it’s made with a sure hand and features consistently clever blocking of scenes and good performances across the board. The tasteful music by Ichiro Saito is also a plus. 

 

 

The mountain serves as a metaphor for marriage here, which is seen as a difficult journey that many abandon before reaching the peak, so the youngest sister is at ‘the foot of the mountain’ which was also the title of the novel and film in Japanese. The climax of the film involves a literal mountain, and this part does get a little melodramatic and corny, it has to be said, but not fatally so. 

 

 

Among a strong cast, the chameleon-like Isuzu Yamada delivers the finest performance as the apparently cold and materialistic queen bitch matriarch who, deep down, is actually insecure about both her position and her fading looks. Surprisingly, she was not even nominated for an award for this, but perhaps it’s simply because she’d already won a handful.

The film also features a cameo by popular singer Kazuko Matsuo, who appears crooning the film’s theme song in a nightclub. 

 

Kazuko Matsuo

 

Ai sureba koso / 愛すればこそ / (‘Only If You Love’, 1955)

Obscure Japanese Film #166

Isuzu Yamada

This omnibus film comprised of three stories was an independent venture co-produced by two companies. One, Kindai Eiga Kyokai, was formed by director Kozaburo Yoshimura, screenwriter Kaneto Shindo and actor Taiji Tonoyama in 1950. The first episode is directed by Yoshimura, written by Shindo and features Tonoyama in a minor role as a bartender. 

 

Taiji Tonoyama

 

The other company involved, Chuo Eiga, was established in 1952 by Akihiro Hoshino, who wanted to encourage cultural exchange between Japan and the Soviet Union and was responsible for distributing The Battleship Potemkin (1925) for the first time in Japan in 1955. Given these facts, it should be no surprise that episodes 2 and 3 are directed by Tadashi Imai and Satsuo Yamamoto respectively – both Communist Party members.

Shot in 10 days with cast and crew apparently all working for free, it’s a well-made film which packs so much into its scant 83-minutes that it’s not really possible to get bored. The individual stories are as follows:

 

Yoshiko Machida

 

Flower Girl

Michie (Nobuko Otowa) is a Ginza bar waitress who takes pity on Tamiko (Yoshiko Machida), a young girl out selling flowers in the rain one night. When tragedy strikes them both in similar ways, the two end up forming an unlikely friendship…

 

Nobuko Otowa and Takashi Kanda

 

 

 

Kyoko Kagawa

The Bride Who Jumped In

Factory worker Kono (Taketoshi Naito) is surprised to be woken up by his landlady (Toyo Takahashi) one morning and informed that he has a visitor who turns out to be Kuniko (Kyoko Kagawa), a young woman whom his family have arranged to be his wife without his knowledge…

 

Kyoko Kagawa and Taketoshi Naito

 

Isuzu Yamada

Only If You Love 

Yaeko (Isuzu Yamada) is an ageing widow who works as a cleaner at the racetrack and has developed a stoop from her years of menial labour. Her son, Shigeru (Kei Taguchi), is in prison for clashing with police during a student protest, so Yaeko is left on her own to deal with an unhappy 27-year-old daughter, Toshiko (Hatae Kishi), whose marriage is on hold until Shigeru gets out, and her equally unhappy younger sister, Minako (Sanae Nakahara). One day, their uncle, Goro (So Yamamura), turns up and says that all Shigeru has to do to get released is express repentance for his actions… 

 

Hatae Kishi, Sanae Nakahara and Isuzu Yamada

 

The first two stories are heart-warming enough, though slight, while Yamamoto and his screenwriter (and fellow communist) Yusaku Yamagata – who also wrote episode 2 – attempt something more ambitious in part 3. Unfortunately, it’s shameless propaganda in which the message is that it’s preferable to ruin the lives of those close to you than it is to be thought of as having betrayed your principles. Still, at least we get an excellent lead performance from Isuzu Yamada – I can’t think of another Japanese actress who went from being a leading lady to becoming such a versatile character actor – and a last-minute cameo from Yoshiko Kuga as Perfect Communist Girlfriend. The film was released in the Soviet Union in 1957. 

 

Yoshiko Kuga

 

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

The Gate of Youth / 青春の門 / Seishun no mon (1975)

Obscure Japanese Film #165

Tomohiro Tanabe and Sayuri Yoshinaga

 

Based on the first part of a bestselling doorstop novel by Hiroyuki Itsuki (b.1932) and running over three hours, this big-budget Toho production spans a period of over 30 years from 1918 to the 1950s, and tells the story of Shinsuke, the son of a Fukuoka coalminer, as he is raised alone by his stepmother (after his father is killed attempting to rescue some trapped Korean miners), survives the Second World War, grows into a man and has his first sexual and romantic experiences. 

 

Tatsuya Nakadai

The first half hour focuses on Shinsuke’s father, Juzo, a tough, brawling miner with a sense of justice, who not only tries to save the exploited Koreans, but had earlier fought against the army as they tried to suppress the workers’ rebellion during the rice riots of 1918. Played in full scenery-chewing mode by Tatsuya Nakadai, he is known as the ‘climbing spider’ and sports a large spider tattoo on his back à la Ayako Wakao in Irezumi (1966). He completely dominates the opening scenes, then departs with a fart gag and is only briefly glimpsed again in a couple of flashbacks. 

 

Once Juzo dies, Shinsuke and his stepmother become the focus. As the character grows from a very young child into a man during the course of the movie, Shinsuke is played by a number of actors, but mainly by Tomohiro Tanabe as a pre-teen and teenager, and by Ken Tanaka as an adult. His stepmother, Tae, is portrayed by Sayuri Yoshinaga, a big star in Japan who has remained little-known abroad but delivers the film’s most convincing performance. 

Sayuri Yoshinaga

 

The beginning of the movie, with its use of speeded-up film and voiceover from a narrator (Shoichi Ozawa) who sometimes even pops up on screen (once during a sex scene, of which there are some weird ones) made me wonder if I was in for some irreverent, Kihachi Okamoto-inspired wackiness, but these eccentric touches ultimately proved too intermittent to seem anything other than occasional bits of whimsy on the part of the director, Kirio Urayama. A former assistant to Shohei Imamura, Urayama had won the Blue Ribbon Award for Best New Director for his debut film, Foundry Town (1962), also starring Sayuri Yoshinaga. Subsequently, he appeared to struggle to find enough work and only managed to complete 10 films before his death at 54 in 1985. Perhaps personal hygiene may have been a reason for his lack of employment, as his Japanese Wikipedia page states:

He hated baths, and when he went to Seijun Suzuki's house while drunk, he was locked naked in the bathroom by Seijun and his common-law wife (whom he later married) because of the terrible smell. However, he managed to escape naked through the bathroom window.

The film proved to be a huge hit at the Japanese box office, leading not only to a sequel two years later, but to a remake (with its own sequel) a mere six years after the original as well as a number of TV adaptations. 

Ken Tanaka

 

Shot in academy ratio, the film looks pretty good, making effective use of real locations and suggesting close attention to historical details in the dressing of the sets, etc. However, I found the character of Shinsuke unsympathetic and many of the performances too broad, while I felt that the writing never rose above the standard of melodrama, the music was uninspired and the whole thing too vulgar and sentimental. In fairness, though, I should point out that a lot of people seem to like this movie and other opinions are available… 

 

Watched with dodgy subtitles.

Thanks to A.K.