Wednesday, 9 July 2025

Gyakukosen / 逆光線 / (‘Backlight’, 1956)

Obscure Japanese Film #199

Mie Kitahara

Following on from the commercial success earlier in 1956 of their films Season of the Sun and Crazed Fruit, this was Nikkatsu’s stab at a female-centred ‘sun tribe’ movie - ‘sun tribe’ being a term adopted by the Japanese press in reference to the first film to describe what was then a new phenomenon: rebellious, spoilt teenagers, generally from wealthy families, who despised the older generation and were unapologetically interested only in gratifying their own desires. Like Season of the Sun, this one was directed by Takumi Furukawa, a lesser director than Ko Nakahira, who had made Crazed Fruit, the female star of which was Mie Kitahara, who stars again here. 

 

Kitahara and Shoji Yasui

 

Kitahara plays Reiko, a student who shares a dormitory with other female students and who, in this case, does not seem to be from a wealthy family or even to have a family – certainly no reference is made to one, and she has to take on various part-time jobs to get by. What marks Reiko out as different is her attitude to sex – she likes to take the initiative and, early on in the film, she makes advances to a male student, Maki (Shoji Yasui), literally throwing herself at him and biting the button off his jacket. The two begin having a relationship, but one in which traditional roles are reversed – in this case, it’s the man who wants marriage and complains that she only loves him for his body, while she wants no commitment, only to have a good time. Reiko also has a one-night stand with Teramura (Kyoji Aoyama), incurring the wrath of his fiancé / her classmate Motoko (Misako Watanabe) as a result. But it’s when she begins tutoring a young boy at his home and seduces his father (Hiroshi Nihonyanagi) that she really begins playing with fire… 

 

Hiroshi Nihonyanagi

 

Whereas the previous two films had been based on stories by Shintaro Ishihara, the source for Gyakukosen was a novel of the same name by Kunie Iwahashi (1934-2014). Apparently, on its publication (also in 1956), there was ‘a frenzy of media coverage of her as the female equivalent of Ishihara’ (Japanese Wikipedia). 

 


 

Although it may seem like fairly tame stuff today, there’s no doubt that the sexual frankness of this film and the carefully-calculated moments of uninhibited sensuality on Reiko’s part (another example being the scene in which she takes a drink of water from Teramura’s mouth at a drinking fountain) would have been quite shocking at the time. The problem with the film is that it comes across less as a heartfelt plea for sexual equality and more like a cynically motivated product designed to stir up controversy and extract as many yen as possible from the pockets of Japanese teenagers. The sun tribe genre proved to be extremely short-lived as there was some evidence that a number of rapes and sexual assaults had been committed by youngsters influenced by the films. This led to protests by concerned parents and teachers, who were successful in having the genre effectively banned by the end of the year. As Liam Grealy and Catherine Driscoll point out in an online article, there were really only five sun tribe films proper, all of which were released in 1956, the other two being Kon Ichikawa’s Punishment Room and Hiromichi Horikawa’s Summer in Eclipse.

 


 

One oddity of this film is that it features a great deal of group singing of Russian folk songs by the young people, presumably a reflection of the fact that communism had become popular in Japan during the post-war years and had inspired an interest in Russian culture. Gyakukosen is largely unremarkable in terms of cinematic craft – the ending is really the only part that is visually memorable – and probably only of interest to fans of Mie Kitahara or anyone with an interest in the sun tribe phenomenon. 

 


 


Tuesday, 1 July 2025

Snow Country / 雪国 / Yukiguni (1965)

Obscure Japanese Film #198

 


Shima Iwashita

 

Isao Kimura


 


 

Mariko Kaga


 

fourth of five films with star Shima Iwashita, and it’s fans of Iwashita who are likely to find this film most rewarding.

Unfortunately, the colour photography did not look its best on the rather low-res copy I watched. 

 


 
DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

Saturday, 28 June 2025

Sisters / 姉妹 / Kyodai (1955)

Obscure Japanese Film #197

Hitomi Nozoe and Hitomi Nakahara

 

Keiko (Hitomi Nozoe) and Toshiko (Hitomi Nakahara) are teenaged sisters whose family home is in the mountains close to a hydroelectric dam where their father (Akitake Kono) works. Their three younger brothers stay at home with their mother (Hiroko Kawasaki), but Keiko and Toshiko attend school in the city, so during term time they stay with aunt Otami (Yuko Mochizuki) and uncle Ginzaburo (Jun Tatara).  The relations get on well together, but Ginzaburo is prone to drinking, gambling and cavorting with geisha and Otami sometimes has to hide from creditors. At least Ginzaburo is preferable to their other uncle (Taiji Tonoyama), who beats his wife (Setsuko Shinobu). 

 

Yuko Mochizuki

 

As Keiko’s parents cannot afford to send her to university, they’re already looking for a match for her though she’s only 17. She likes power station worker Oka (Taketoshi Naito) despite his strange passion for dried squid, but his prospects are poor. The more tomboyish Toshiko is only 14 but already has a strong individualistic streak and equally strong opinions. Although the two girls are like chalk and cheese, they’re also unusually close, but seem fated to part sooner or later…  

 

Hitomi Nakahara

 

Shot mostly on location, this character-driven piece produced by the independent company Chuo Eiga has little plot, but plenty of comedy and tragedy in equal measure. Chuo Eiga was something of a haven for leftist filmmakers unable to get their projects accepted by the major studios. Sisters touches on some typical socialist concerns, such as the lay-offs of power station workers, but for the most part wears its politics lightly. The source was a semi-autobiographical 1954 novel by Fumi Kuroyanagi (1912-65), for whom the younger sister, Toshiko, was something of an alter ego. Perhaps for largely practical reasons, the setting has been changed from pre-war Niseko in Hokkaido to post-war Matsumoto in Nagano Prefecture. 

 


 

Director Miyoji Ieki (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Kaneto Shindo) was known for his films focusing on the difficulties faced by young people growing up, and Sisters is typical of his work. Although largely forgotten these days, there’s no doubt that Ieki qualifies as a true auteur due to the consistency of his theme and frequent input in the writing of his pictures. As usual, he elicits fine performances out of his young principals, although it should be noted that Hitomi Nakahara (also featured prominently in Ieki’s All My Children), who plays a 14-year-old most convincingly, was actually 19 at the time and, ironically, one year older than her namesake, Hitomi Nozoe, who plays her older sister. Ieki may not have been the most stylish of directors, but like his films Stepbrothers (1957), All My Children (1963) and The Wayside Pebble (1964), this is an intelligent, sensitive and genuinely moving piece of work.

 


Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)