Woman Unveiled / 女であること / Onna de aru koto (‘Being a Woman’, 1958)

 

Yoshiko Kuga

 

Masayuki Mori and Setsuko Hara

Sadatsugu (Masayuki Mori), a lawyer, and his wife Ichiko (Setsuko Hara) are a childless couple who are looking after the daughter of one of Sadatsugu’s clients, who is facing a death sentence, though we never learn precisely what for. The daughter, named Taeko (Kyoko Kagawa), appears to be in her late teens, and is sensitive, timid and rather gloomy, perhaps mostly due to her father’s situation.

 

Kyoko Kagawa

Sadatsugu and Ichiko then find themselves having to look after another young woman of a similar age, Sakae (Yoshiko Kuga), who has run away from home and is the daughter of Ichiko’s best friend. Unlike Taeko, Sakae turns out to be a spoilt, insensitive troublemaker with no filter and no control over her emotions. It’s not long before she’s annoying Taeko with her directness, flirting with Sadatsugu and even coming home drunk and kissing Ichiko on the lips. Meanwhile, Ichiko has a chance meeting with old flame Goro (Tatsuya Mihashi), whom she hasn’t seen for 17 years. Then Sakae finds out and starts sticking her oar in… 

 

Tatsuya Mihashi

 

This production by Tokyo Eiga (a subsidiary of Toho) was director Yuzo Kawashima’s first for them after leaving Nikkatsu. It was based on an untranslated novel of the same name by Yasunari Kawabata originally serialised in the Asahi Shinbun during 1956. Despite the fact that it’s not considered one of future Nobel laureate Kawabata’s most notable works, Kawashima – along with his collaborators Sumie Tanaka (female) and Toshiro Ide (male) – is said to have gone to a great deal of trouble over the screenplay. By all accounts a pretty faithful adaptation, nevertheless Kawashima apparently regarded the film as a failure, feeling that he had failed to make of it any more than an illustrated version of the novel’s key scenes. It’s also likely that some important aspects had to be implied in the film version due to censorship – for example, that Sadatsugu and his wife haven’t slept together much in their ten years of marriage, and that Ichiko’s interest in sex is revived partly due to her kiss with Sakae and partly as a result of meeting Goro again. There’s also some suggestion that Sadatsugu sleeps with Sakae, but it’s not really made clear. However, what’s more frustrating is that we learn nothing of the crime for which Taeko’s father is facing a death sentence and, in fact, never even lay eyes on him – it’s simply a convenient device to give her something to feel troubled about. It seems to me that the inclusion of such a story element rather obliges the writers to expand a little (I would assume that Kawabata went into more detail in his book).

 

Masayuki Mori

 

The film opens with a montage sequence of Yoshiko Kuga shot from behind riding around on her bike and shouting out greetings to various passers-by. This is followed by Akihiro Miwa, the drag queen from Black Lizard (1968), dancing and singing the title song (i.e. ‘Being a Woman’) over the opening credits before two American military planes go roaring overhead, scaring Kyoko Kagawa’s pet bird. It’s hard to know what to make of this opening – apart from whimsy on the part of Kawashima – as none of it seems to bear much relation to what follows. 

 

Setsuko Hara

Though by no means a bad film, Woman Unveiled also features a disappointingly corny, Hollywood-style score by Toshiro Mayuzumi and wraps things up in mostly conventional fashion, although the change undergone by Kyoko Kagawa’s character is somewhat unexpected. The posters promoted Setsuko Hara as the main star, but it’s Yoshiko Kuga who steals this one – the term  ‘charm offensive’ springs to mind here, as she simultaneously manages to be both charming and offensive. Incidentally, the role is strikingly similar to the one she played in the previous year’s Banka (aka Northern Elegy), in which she also caused trouble for a middle-aged and married professional played by Masayuki Mori. For all its flaws, Woman Unveiled remains a well-made and intelligent film arguably more in the Naruse mould than the Kawashima one (if such a thing existed) with a trio of very different but interesting and well-rounded female characters at its centre.

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles) 

 

 

Rats of the Town / 江戸の小鼠たち / Edo no koizumi tachi / (‘Little Rats of Edo’, 1957)

 

Masahiko Tsugawa

 

1832. Jirokichi (Masahiko Tsugawa) is an angry young man living in a tenement in Edo (now Tokyo) at a time when poverty is widespread and corruption is rife. His namesake, the real-life thief Jirokichi (better-known as Nezumi Kozo, or ‘Rat Boy’)* has just been executed. Like many young men, Jirokichi idolises him as a sort of Robin Hood-figure who helped the poor and continually outsmarted The Man.  Unfortunately, his attempts to emulate his hero tend to cause trouble for his fellow tenement-dwellers, and he receives no parental guidance as his mother is dead, while his father (Akitake Kono) is unemployed and gambles away what little money they have. 

 

Izumi Ashikawa

 

The girl next door, Okin (Izumi Ashikawa), works at a teahouse and, to Jirokichi’s annoyance, is courted by a young samurai, Kakusaburo (Hiroyuki Nagato). Jirokichi picks a fight with him and wins, after which the two become friends. Some local yakuza who witnessed the fight decide to employ Jirokichi. Despite the fact that he had previously fought against the yakuza when he saw them ripping off the poor, he’s now happy to work for The Man as the other tenement-dwellers have come to see him as a troublemaker and turned against him. Only Okin still believes in him as she remembers all the times he protected her when she was a young girl…

 

Hiroyuki Nagato

 

This Nikkatsu production was based on a then newly-published novel by Genzo Murakami, a specialist in samurai tales. The two young male stars, Masahiko Tsugawa (17) and Hiroyuki Nagato (23), were not only brothers, but were also both associated with so-called ‘sun tribe’ pictures – Tsugawa with Crazed Fruit and Nagato with Season in the Sun (both 1956). Although this film is by no means a ‘sun tribe’ jidaigeki (period drama), it’s obvious that it was made to appeal to the youth market. 

 

 

Directed by veteran Taizo Fuyushima, who made Joshu karasu (see my review for more on him), like that film, this one is very well-made and entertaining with quite a lot of humour if not a great deal of depth, and also features some excellent cinematography, in this case by Shohei Imamura favourite Shinsaku Himeda. Transposed to another era, Jirokichi is akin to the typical nihilistic young rebel of post-war Japan who felt let down by the older generation (represented by here by his worse than useless father), but the light, conventional tone of the ending negates any impact the film might have had. 

Watched with dodgy subtitles.  

*This historical figure became the hero of various kabuki plays, novels and motion pictures in Japan; of the latter, Daisuke Ito’s Jirokichi the Rat (1931) is the most notable.

Nikkatsu DVD (no subtitles) 

 

 

May Love Be Restored / 五番町夕霧楼 / Gobancho Yugiri-ro (1980)

 

Keiko Matsuzaka

 

A little background may be useful here, so please bear with me before I get to the film…

In July 1950, the famous 500-year-old golden temple known as Kinkaku-ji in Kyoto was deliberately  burned down by an apprentice monk named Yoken Hayashi, who made a suicide attempt immediately after but failed and was sentenced to seven years in prison as a result. His health worsened during his incarceration and he was released early, but died in 1956 aged just 26. Kinkaku-ji was successfully reconstructed in the intervening years and still stands today. Hayashi, who suffered from a severe stutter he was said to have had since the age of 3, never explained the reasons for his actions. 

 

 

In 1956, Yukio Mishima published his novel based on the incident (known in English as The Temple of the Golden Pavilion). Mishima interpreted the crime as the result of an urge to destroy beauty – a recurring theme in his work The novel was filmed in a compromised version by Kon Ichikawa in 1958 as Enjo (aka Conflagration); a more faithful version by Yoichi Takabayashi appeared in 1976. 

 

Eiji Okuda

 

Another writer, Tsutomu Mizukami (or Minakami), had also become interested in the story from a different perspective. Mizukami had himself begun monastic training while still a boy, but was treated badly and quit by the time he was 18. He related to Hayashi, whom he even claimed to have met before the incident, and interpreted the crime as an act of rebellion against the hypocrisy of the temple authorities. Mizukami (who also authored The Temple of Wild Geese, another story involving a disaffected acolyte) carried out a great deal of research on the case and published his own novel inspired by it, Gobancho Yugiri-ro, in 1962. Shortly before committing his act of arson, Hayashi was said to have visited the same prostitute a couple of times in the red light district of Kyoto known as Gobancho, and Mizukami took this detail and created a major character out of her. In his novel, the two are childhood sweethearts from a struggling rural community who end up being sent (separately) to Kyoto by their families for very different reasons – he to train as a monk, she to work as a prostitute in a brothel as her destitute father has too many hungry mouths to feed.

 

Keiko Matsuzaka

 

Gobancho Yugiriro was first filmed in 1963 by director Tomotoka Tasaka. In his version, the prostitute (now named Yuko) is the focus of his film, with Hayashi (now Kunugi) not appearing until quite late on. In contrast, the version we’re concerned with here – directed by Shigeyuki Yamane and produced by Shochiku – balances its story more equally between the two principals. This is likely because Mizukami had published a second book about the Kinkaku-ji incident in 1979. Entitled Kinkaku-enjo (‘The Burning of the Golden Pavilion’), it was a non-fiction account which has yet to be translated into English. The opening credits of this film state that it is based on both books.

 

Yuko Hama

 

Yuko (Keiko Matsuzaka) is treated with apparent kindness by the madam, Katsue (Yuko Hama), whose brothel is named Yugiri-ro (providing the second half of the Japanese title). Although in neither film is this character treated with condemnation, she is, of course, involved in a sleazy business, and she arranges for one of her trusted regulars, the middle-aged ‘Ta-san’ (Hiroyuki Nagato) to take her virginity, and he becomes sexually-obsessed with her. Once that’s out of the way, Yuko takes to her new profession with disconcerting ease, and soon becomes the most popular prostitute in the place – with the clients, that is. Her colleagues soon get tired of being passed over and become envious. Meanwhile, Yuko secretly makes contact with Kunugi (Eiji Okuda), the stuttering apprentice monk she had grown up with and who is the only person she truly loves. She also feels responsible for his affliction as it began when they were children after she had accidentally dropped a snake on him while trying to get it out of a tree with a stick. He begins visiting her at the brothel, where she pays his fees, but, instead of sleeping together, they spend their time talking and singing songs they remember from their childhood. He’s supposed to be looking after the Golden Temple (here called Hokaku-ji), but he’s becoming increasingly disillusioned with his vocation and his relationship with the head priest (Shin Saburi) is deteriorating, while he sees little hope for a future with Yuko…

 

Shin Saburi

 

On the whole, I have to say that I prefer the 1963 version, mainly because I think it’s better cast and acted. Yuko is supposed to be 19 years old when she enters the brothel but, despite the fact that the 27-year-old Keiko Matsuzaka has not even the suggestion of a wrinkle, she somehow fails to convince as a teenager. However, having played leading roles in a number of successful films and TV dramas throughout the 1970s, she was a big star whose popularity was at its peak at the time this film was released. Some of the other performances also suffer in comparison to the earlier film – Hiroyuki Nagato overdoes it here (I preferred Minoru Chiaki in the 1963 version), while, as the madam, Yuko Hama is less memorable than Michiyo Kogure.

 

Hiroyuki Nagato

 

Another issue is that, although the film is set in 1950, it doesn’t always feel like it. A lot of little details don’t seem quite right – for example, the character known as ‘sensei’ played by Tadashi Yokouchi wears a polo-necked sweater and corduroy suit – was anyone really wearing that in 1950? And the cheesy music score which sometimes lapses into anachronistic distorted electric guitar doesn’t help either. 

 

Tadashi Yokouchi

 

The one point on which I felt it improved on the previous film was in its portrayal of the ensemble of prostitutes who share the brothel with Yuko. In Tasaka’s film, we were given what looked like a very rose-tinted view in which it was basically one happy family with perfect manners and barely a hint of conflict or rivalry, whereas Yamane’s film shows the inevitable friction between the women, which even erupts into a catfight at one point, and their excessive make-up and gaudy clothes seem more fitting. But the film has little to say about the burning of the temple – ultimately, it’s simply a confection intended to appeal to those with a taste for romantic tragedies. 

 

 DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)