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.

Tales of the Inner Chambers / 大奥絵巻 / Ooku emaki (1968)

Obscure Japanese Film #173

Yoshiko Sakuma

 

Edo Castle, c.1790. When virginal chambermaid Aki (Yoshiko Sakuma) catches the eye of the shogun (Takahiro Tamura) while taking part in a dance performance, he decides to make her his concubine. Aki’s elder sister, Asaoke (Chikage Awashima), is already employed at the castle, but once Aki enters the inner chambers, all family ties are supposed to be forgotten. 

Takahiro Tamura

 

Aki is extremely reluctant at first, but has absolutely no choice in the matter; fortunately, the shogun treats her better than she expected. This may be because she reminds him of the girl he wanted to marry who died, leading him to become trapped in a loveless marriage of political convenience to Hagino (Hiroko Sakuramachi). Unfortunately, the favouritism of the shogun for Aki and the fact that this is to the advantage of Asaoke is greatly resented by some female members of the court, who split into two factions. 

Chikage Awashima

 

Aki also has a younger sister, Machi (Reiko Ohara), who has a naïve idea of the inner chambers and wants to work there but is discouraged from doing so by her sisters. When the rival faction offer her a position, the scheming between the two groups spirals out of control, leading to blackmail, torture and murder... 

Reiko Ohara

 

Surprisingly, this Toei production is not based on a literary source – the intelligent screenplay was an original work by Masashige Narusawa (who wrote and directed the recently-reviewed Cards Are My Life). In this case, the director is Kosaku Yamashita, perhaps best-known for the same year’s Big Time Gambling Boss. It looks like he put a great deal of care into this, and was ably abetted by cinematographer Juhei Suzuki (13 Assassins), not to mention those responsible for the costumes and art direction, whose combined talents make this film a feast for the eyes which exploits the colour format to the fullest. Ichiro Saito’s orchestral music is also an integral part of the film and is another asset that marks it out as being far from routine. 

Chikage Awashima

 

As far as I can tell, the story itself has little historical basis. It unfolds rather like a Jacobean tragedy and offers a pretty dark view of human nature. As Asaoke (another fine performance from Chikage Awashima) observes, “There is no righteousness or morality here, only female vanity and ostentation. You slay or be slain, kill or be killed.” Indeed, things do get violent, but not gratuitously so, and the film’s comparative restraint may be one reason it’s not better known. In fact, it’s a fine piece of work all round, and the only explanation for its currently criminally low rating on IMDb (5.4) that occurs to me is that maybe some people didn’t get the sexploitation movie they were expecting. 

Yoshiko Sakuma and Hitomi Nozoe

 

I was surprised to see former Daiei star Hitmoi Nozoe in such a minor role as the one she has here, but then realised that she’d left Daiei to have kids in 1962 and had only just begun attempting to resurrect her acting career.

A note on the title: Ooku is the name for the inner palace or chambers of Edo Castle, where the shogun’s harem was kept, while emaki means ‘picture scroll’ rather than ‘tales’.

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

Kokosu sezu / 告訴せず / (‘No Charges Filed’, aka ‘Without Complaint’, 1975)

Obscure Japanese Film #172

Kyoko Enami and Yukio Aoshima

 

Kitani (Fumio Watanabe) is a conservative politician running for re-election with the help of his sister-in-law, Haruko (Kirin Kiki), and adviser, Mitsuoka (Ko Nishimura).  When they need someone to go to Tokyo in order to collect 30 million yen in cash for bribery purposes, Kitani’s brother (i.e. Haruko’s husband), seems the perfect choice. He is Shogo (Yukio Aoshima), a schmuck who works as a chef and does whatever his wife tells him. However, he’s also a big fan of crime fiction, and after picking up the cash he immediately absconds with it, hiding out at a hot spring inn where he hooks up with one of the maids, Shino (Kyoko Enami)…

Fumio Watanabe

 

Based on an untranslated 1973 novel of the same name by prolific crime writer Seicho Matsumoto, this co-production between Toho and their affiliate, Geiensha, treats the material like a comedy, although it’s seldom very funny. The casting of Yukio Aoshima in the lead and the way he plays the role suggested to me that director Hiromichi Horikawa was looking for a new Keiju Kobayashi, who had starred in many of his earlier films. However, as this film revolves partly around the world of politics and takes a swipe at the way that elections are influenced by money, it’s also possible that Aoshima was cast due to his other career – he had actually entered politics as a Member of the House of Councillors in 1968 and, in 1971, “criticised the large amount of political donations made to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party by the business community” (Japanese Wikipedia). He eventually became Governor of Tokyo from 1995 until 1999, when he lost out to another celebrity politician, Shintaro Ishihara. Like Ishihara, he also dabbled in many different fields, being at various times a screenwriter, lyricist, TV personality, novelist, singer and even film director. His independent 1966 film Kane (The Bell), which he wrote, produced, directed and starred in, screened at Cannes, but sounds like a terribly self-indulgent affair – IMDb offers the following synopsis: “Yukio Aoshima and several of his friends go to the seashore for a weekend, and Yukio films them as they enjoy the sand, the surf, and each other.” (Don’t think I’ll be rushing to seek that one out…) In any case, he’d never been called on to carry a movie before, and on this evidence it’s not hard to see why, as he’s clearly nobody’s idea of a leading man and lacks Keiju Kobayashi’s subtlety and range as well. 

The obligatory Eitaro Ozawa appearance

 

One of the more interesting aspects of the film is that it features something called a futomani ritual, which I’ve never seen before. It’s a Shinto method of divination in which the shoulder-blade of a stag is heated over a fire until it cracks, at which point the pattern of the cracks is interpreted for fortune-telling purposes. Incidentally, in the film this is performed by a priest played by Jun Hamamura, who looks almost healthy for once. 

Jun Hamamura

 

Overall, though, this film just doesn’t really know what it wants to be. A sequence featuring some weird freeze frames around halfway through does not help and made me think there was a technical fault at first. And if it was supposed to be a comedy – which seems to have been the intention – you have to wonder why on earth they would choose to go with the ending this film is lumbered with. It’s an acceptable time-passer, sure, but on the whole I’d have to call it a misfire.