Libido / 性の起原 / Sei no kigen (‘The Origin of Sex’, 1967)

Obscure Japanese Film #253

Taiji Tonoyama

An unnamed 51-year-old man (Taiji Tonoyama) suffering from some kind of nervous breakdown is recuperating in a mental hospital when he learns about the death of an old friend. Feeling depressed, he wants to prove to himself that he’s still alive, so he tries to have sex with the young female patient he’s sharing a room with (Kayo Matsuo). She’s not too pleased about this when she wakes up to find him on top of her, so she fights him off and runs for the doctor (Naoyuki Kanno aka Tadahiko Sugano). When the doctor arrives, he tells the man he has to leave immediately. The man’s wife (Nobuko Otowa) comes to take him home and, although dismayed by what her husband has done, she remains surprisingly sympathetic.

Kayo Matsuo

The couple have a son (Hideki Hayashi) and daughter (Miyoko Akaza) in their late teens who pay little attention to their usually meek father. However, when the son learns from the doctor what his father has done, he decides to track down the female patient and attempt to seduce her himself…

Miyoko Akaza and Hideki Hayashi

Writer-director Kaneto Shindo throws any pretence at realism out of the window here – of course, no mental hospital would have a male and female patient sharing the same private room, and there are numerous other issues one could take with the story, but he seems entirely unconcerned with such matters here. One matter he does seem concerned with is the generational differences he perceives regarding male-female relationships. Throughout the film, Shindo contrasts the relationship between the father and his wife with that of the developing one between the son and the young woman, and seems to be suggesting that the son believes himself to have the upper hand, but doesn’t – although he may have the strength to make a woman submit physically, that’s all he has, and it’s she who retains power over him. However, this is not really what stays with you at the end of the film.

Tonoyama and Nobuko Otowa

Regular Shindo collaborators composer Hikaru Hayashi and cinematographer Kiyomi Kuroda help to make both the sound and visuals of this typically eccentric work consistently interesting throughout. At times, the film plays like a comedy, and certainly parts of it are quite funny, the comic highlight being when Tonoyama has to give a guided tour to the world’s most taciturn man (Hideo Kanze). Ultimately, though, this is not a film likely to leave anyone smiling, and perhaps the laughter is supposed to catch in our throats as we see the apparently ridiculous protagonist struggling to come to grips with ageing, failure and mortality, while his wife’s devotion remains unshakeable. So, while it appears that Shindo set out to make a film with a sexual theme, it becomes more concerned with the father’s mid-life crisis (which, admittedly, is partly due to his impotence, yet not in merely sexual terms). However, it’s also possible that this was what Shindo intended all along, and the sex angle was simply a means of selling the film to the public – the poster promised Awakened sexuality! Lost sexuality! A groundbreaking and controversial film from the genius director Shindo, known for Instinct! A film exploring humanity through the theme of ‘sex’. (Instinct refers to Shindo’s previous film, which was also known as Honno or Lost Sex, so it seems that that film must have been successful at the box office in Japan anyway.)

Taiji Tonoyama, who was indeed 51 at the time but looked older, had co-founded the production company (Kindai Eiga Kyokai) which made this film together with Shindo and Kozaburo Yoshimura in 1950. Tonoyama appeared in most of Shindo’s films, but – being a short, bald man with sad, bulging eyes – he rarely had such a substantial one as this and its great to see him featured more prominently for a change. He has a staggering 346 credits on IMDb and is probably best-remembered for another rare lead he played in Shindo’s Naked Island (1960). He died in 1989, but Shindo liked him so much that he subsequently wrote a book about him, which he followed with a feature film Sanmon yakusha (2000). The title means ‘third-rate actor’ which is how Tonoyama had referred to himself in the title of his own 1966 book, which translates as The Irresponsible Ramblings of a Third-Rate Actor.

Bonus trivia:

The title sequence featuring lava lamp bubbles was designed by the famous artist Taro Okamoto, who also did the titles for Shindo’s Mother (1963), Onibaba (1964) and Yoshida’s Escape from Japan (1964).

Thanks to A.K.

If you enjoy this blog, feel free to Buy Me a Coffee!

Forever, My Love / 佳人 / Kajin (‘Beautiful Woman’/ ‘Good Person’, 1958)

Obscure Japanese Film #252

Ryoji Hayama

1943. Shigeru (Ryoji Hayama) is a student returning from Tokyo to his hometown of Toyooka in Hyogo Prefecture on western Honshu (then part of the San’in region). There, he will have a farewell party before going off to war, but most of all he hopes to see his childhood sweetheart, Tsubura (Izumi Ashikawa), who has been unable to walk since contracting polio at an early age. This has caused her to be largely housebound and live rather like one of the dolls in glass boxes we see in her home.

Jukichi Uno and Sachiko Murase

On the train, Shigeru replays memories from their childhood when, as a boy (played by Hayama’s own kid brother, Kunio Yamaguchi), he would visit her and her kindly mother (Sachiko Murase), while her stern father (Jukichi Uno) looked on disapprovingly. Shigeru would often stop off at the tofu shop, where the girl, Tokie (Miori Karuhata), was jealous of his love for Tsubura. One day, she lured him into the back and seduced him despite the fact that he was yet to reach puberty (the film later backtracks on this somewhat and suggests that they did not go all the way).

Nobuo Kaneko

Izumi Ashikawa

Tsubura gives Shigeru three stones in a pouch, which he carries with him throughout the war. When he finally returns, it’s on the very day that she’s to be married to the local villain, Tachio (Nobuo Kaneko), who had previously run off with Tokie before abandoning her after six months. Now, he’s taken advantage of Tsubura and her mother’s hardship after her father’s death and pressured her into marriage in order to improve his social status. When Shigeru tries to visit her, Tachio won’t even let him in the house, so there’s little he can do but accept the situation. As he walks off despondently, he runs into Tokie (now played by Misako Watanabe), who is now working as a bar hostess (and, it’s implied, is also engaged in some form of prostitution). Initially, she tries to seduce him again, but he’s still too much in love with Tsubura. When Tokie is offered a job keeping the books for Tachio, she becomes a go-between for Shigeru and Tsubura, delivering messages between the two. Meanwhile, although it’s always been assumed that Tsubura is unable to have sex, she finally has her first period – something her mother hopes to keep secret from Tachio, who has begun bringing prostitutes home and forcing Tsubura to watch while he has sex with them...

Ryoji Hayama and Misako Watanabe

This Nikkatsu production was based on the debut novel of Shigeo Fujii (1916-79), who worked in magazine editing and had managed to get it published as a magazine serial the year before. According to Japanese Wikipedia, it ‘was highly praised by Yasunari Kawabata and nominated for the Akutagawa Prize’. When Nikkatsu bought the rights, he quit his day job and devoted himself full time to writing. Wikipedia also notes that, ‘During his lifetime, he believed that, "If I have saké, I don't need anything else." His clumsy and impulsive personality made him feared by editors, and sometimes even made them dislike him.’ Three further films (all obscure B-movies) were adapted from his work, but he’s remained unknown outside Japan. Like his protagonist, Fujii was also from Toyooka and apparently coached the actors in the local dialect. Unfortunately, I have to say that I found the story to be a contrived and excessively sentimental one, though it seems that such fare was eagerly lapped up by quite a large part of the Japanese cinemagoing audience at the time.

Izumi Ashikawa

The emerging new wave filmmakers of the era, on the other hand, had little patience for this kind of material and, although the sexual frankness of the piece is something you wouldn’t see in a Hollywood picture of this era, it sits awkwardly in what is at heart an old-fashioned (even for its day) tearjerker. As I’ve come to expect from director Eisuke Takizawa, the film is very well-made and it’s hard to find fault with the direction, only in what is (to me, anyway) the poor choice of material.

In terms of the cast, nominal star Izumi Ashikawa first appears 33 minutes in (the childhood prologue is a lengthy one) and I almost felt sorry for her in being stuck with such a role – Tsubura is so ridiculously self-sacrificing it’s actually kind of annoying. For his part, Jukichi Uno manages to escape his nice guy image briefly and play a bit of a bastard pretty well (intriguingly, his name does not appear on the poster, whereas Chishu Ryu’s does, suggesting that Uno took his role; perhaps it was felt that the gentle father of the Ozu films would not be accepted in such a part). However, the best performance comes from Misako Watanabe, who makes the perhaps unlikely character of Tokie feel more like a real human being than anyone else manages to do here. Watanabe, who won a Blue Ribbon Award for her performance in Shohei Imamura’s Endless Desire the following year and is also a well-respected stage actress, is still with us at the time of writing at 93 and has been acting as recently as 2024.

Misako Watanabe

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

If you enjoy this blog, feel free to Buy Me a Coffee!

Asa no hamon / 朝の波紋 (‘Morning Ripples’, 1952)

Obscure Japanese Film #251

Hideko Takamine

Atsuko (Hideko Takamine) is a young woman living at home with her mother (Hisako Takihana) and nephew Kenichi (Katsumasa Okamoto), whose father was killed in the war and whose mother (Kuniko Miyake) works at a hotel in Hakone. Kenichi has become very attached to a stray dog he adopted but which his mother disapproves of due to its habit of stealing the neighbours’ shoes (the implication is that Kenichi feels rather like a stray dog himself). Atsuko works at a small trading company, where one of her ambitious male colleagues, Kaji (Eiji Okada), has developed a crush on her. One day she meets the less serious Inoda (Ryo Ikebe), who has befriended Kenichi and works for a larger trading company, and the two hit it off. However, Kaji’s jealousy, together with a dispute between the two rival companies over a client, threatens to destroy their burgeoning romance…

Ryo Ikebe

Kuniko Miyake

Distributed by Shintoho, this was the second production by director Heinosuke Gosho’s independent production company Studio 8. It was based on a novel of the same name by Jun Takami (1907-65), whose work also provided the basis for the previously-reviewed Love in the Mountains (1959), a similarly modest and sentimental love story about ordinary people.

Although this was far from star Hideo Takamine’s most interesting role, she and Ryo Ikebe make for an appealing pair as they search the post-war rubble of Asakusa in search of Kenichi after he runs away – Asakusa, most of which had been destroyed by bombs, was evidently not yet fully rebuilt in 1952, the final year of American occupation. Incidentally, Takamine speaks English in several scenes here as the company Atsuko works for does most of its business with foreigners. Her modern, independent personality and ability to do her job well is not always appreciated by her male colleagues, including Kaji. who are at times quite condescending towards her.

Eiji Okada

The film is full of quietly effective little moments, such as when Inoda takes a break on the stairwell with his colleague, looks down to see the cleaning woman on the floor below, then turns to look up at the sun shining through the window; although the influence of Western culture is apparent everywhere in the lives of these characters, such mundane details feel a long way from Hollywood.

Among the supporting cast, the best-known face is that of future Akira Kurosawa favourite Kyoko Kagawa, who appears here briefly as a nun.

The copy I watched was a low-res VHS transfer viewable on YouTube here, but I assume the Japanese DVD is better quality. English subtitles courtesy of Coralsundy can be found here.

If you enjoy this blog, feel free to Buy Me a Coffee!

The Last Judgment / 最後の審判 / Saigo no shinpan (1965)

Obscure Japanese Film #250

Tatsuya Nakadai

Masao Mishima

Jiro (Tatsuya Nakadai), the manager of a pool hall owned by Asai (Masao Mishima), has been having an affair with Masako (Chikage Awashima) since her wealthy engineer husband went to oversee a construction project in Vietnam two years earlier. The husband in question, Riichiro (Fujio Suga), also happens to be Jiro’s cousin. When he returns from abroad, it becomes very difficult for the lovers to continue meeting, especially as Riichiro is not only a jealous and suspicious type, but has a short fuse to boot.

Fujio Suga

Jitsuko Yoshimura

Meanwhile, Asai wants to sell the pool hall and Jiro wants to buy it but lacks the funds. He also has little time to find them as the local yakuza want to buy the place, but then he thinks of a clever solution to his problems. This will involve both seducing a waitress, Miyoko (Onibaba’s Jitsuko Yoshimura), and getting Riichiro to use his explosive temper against himself. But will Jiro be able to stay one step ahead of dogged police detective Kikuchi? (This latter is played by Junzaburo Ban, who played a similar character in the same year’s A Fugitive from the Past.)

Junzaburo Ban

This Toho production was based on the 1949 novel Heaven Ran Last by William P. McGivern (1918-82), who also wrote the novels on which Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat (1953) and Robert Wise’s Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) were based. Heaven Ran Last, though, was never filmed by Hollywood and, like Kurosawa basing High and Low (1963) on Ed McBain’s novel King’s Ransom, it’s an indication of how much American pulp was being translated into Japanese in the post-war years that it came to the attention of director Hiromichi Horikawa. In this case, apart from transferring the story from America to Japan, screenwriters Zenzo Matsuyama and Ichiro Ikeda have stuck pretty closely to the book – too closely, perhaps, according to some Japanese reviewers who have commented that the characters don’t behave like Japanese people. In any case, I found it to be one of the better plots I’ve seen in this type of film as the twists don’t become too far-fetched, as is so often the case.

Chikage Awashima

Several of the same talents from Horikawa’s excellent 1963 noir Shiro to kuro (‘White and Black’, aka Pressure of Guilt) returned for this one, including Japan’s top film composer Toru Takemitsu as well as cast members Chikage Awashima, Masao Mishima, Eijiro Tono and, of course, star Tatsuya Nakadai. The Last Judgment makes an excellent vehicle for Nakadai, who looks very cool driving around in an MG Roadster in his shades and fur-lined jacket and is obviously having a field day being very bad indeed. However, Jiro is saved from becoming a one-dimensional villain not only by Nakadai’s charismatic performance but the fact that his love for Masako, at least, does seem to be genuine.

One of the great things about Takemitsu as a composer was that he knew when to shut up, an all-too-rare talent which is well in evidence here, while Horikawa makes excellent use of industrial noises to heighten the tension in a number of scenes. Another plus is the dark, shadowy cinematography of Tokuzo Kuroda. All in all, The Last Judgment is a very satisfying noir that has been kept in the dark for far too long.

Thanks to A.K.

If you enjoy this blog, feel free to Buy Me a Coffee!

Kanashiki kuchibue / 悲しき口笛 (‘Sad Whistling’, 1949)

Obscure Japanese Film #249

Hibari Misora

Mitsuko (Hibari Misora) is a homeless child who hangs around with the day labourers at the docks in the Sakuragicho district of Yokohama. They look after her and she keeps them entertained by singing, for which she has a remarkable talent. Mitsuko dresses as a boy, but it’s never explained whether this is simply because it was easier for her to get hold of boy’s clothes or for some other reason. However, she is soon adopted and dressed in girl’s clothes by a waitress named Kyoko (Keiko Tsushima) and her father, Osamu (Ichiro Sugai), a classical violinist reduced to busking to make a living.

Keiko Tsushima

Ichiro Sugai

Meanwhile, Mitsuko’s older brother, Kenzo (Yasumi Hara), a musician, has finally made it back to Yokohama after being posted overseas during the war and is searching for his sister but has also become involved in a smuggling racket. One night he runs into Osamu, who is extremely drunk and singing a song which Kenzo wrote but never published. Kenzo knows that Osamu could only have heard the song from Mitsuko, but Osamu is too intoxicated to provide any useful information. When Osamu subsequently goes blind as a result of drinking bootleg liquor containing methanol, Kyoko’s efforts to raise money to pay his medical bills result in her being forced into helping the same gang of smugglers that Kenzo is involved with...

Yasumi Hara

Although it lacks big Hollywood-style production numbers, this Shochiku production has enough songs that it certainly qualifies as a musical. It was based on a story by the prolific Toshihiko Takeda (1891-1961), whose work also provided the basis for Tomu Uchida’s Policeman (1933) and Hiroshi Shimizu’s Why Did These Women Become Like This? (1956). It was the third film to be directed by Miyoji Ieki, who would become known for films dealing with childhood, although this particular film has the feel of an assignment, and its main raison d’être was probably to function as a vehicle for singing prodigy Hibari Misora. She was 12 at the time but looks younger; it was her fifth film appearance but her first starring role. Here, she comes across as a sort of Japanese Shirley Temple, which might not be entirely by chance – its worth remembering that the film was produced during the occupation when filmmakers needed the approval of the American authorities. As well as Hibari’s singing, Keiko Tsushima – a trained dancer as well as actor – also gets to strut her stuff.

Kanashiki kuchibue is a contrived and sentimental tale but it’s quite well-made and lent a little interest due to its portrayal of a chaotic post-war world in which people are forced to do whatever they can to survive.

Hibari Misora

Sung by Hibari, the title song was released about a month before the movie and became a huge hit.

DVDat Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

If you enjoy this blog, feel free to Buy Me a Coffee!

Shirobamba / しろばんば (1962)

Obscure Japanese Film #248

Toru Shimamura

This Nikkatsu production was based on the autobiographical novel of the same name by one of Japan’s major writers, Yasushi Inoue (1907-91). The book was translated into English by Jean Oda Moy in 1991, but Inoue’s sequel, Zoku Shirobamba, has been neither filmed nor translated, and the fact that Nikkatsu never made the sequel suggests that this film was not especially profitable. The story concerns Inoue’s own childhood in Izu in the early Taisho period (1912-26) when Inoue was around seven years old, and the title refers to the white aphids that the children would try to catch in the autumn.

Izumi Ashikawa

Inoue’s alter ego is Kosaku (played here by Toru [later Miki] Shimamura), whose rural upbringing is unusual in that his parents, though living, are absent, and he’s brought up by his late great-great uncle’s mistress, known as Granny Onui (Tanie Kitabayashi). He’s all she’s got, so she spoils him, and he’s very attached to her as a result. The only other person he really likes is Sakiko (Izumi Ashikawa), whom he calls his elder sister although she’s actually his aunt. Unfortunately, she looks down on Onui and there’s no love lost between the two women. Sakiko lives in the ‘Upper House’ nearby with Kosaku’s other relations, but he feels uncomfortable there and avoids them. Kosaku gets the highest grades in his year at school and his family has a higher social status than his classmates’, so he feels different to the other boys and great things are expected of him.

Jacket of the novel in English translation

Reading the novel in translation a while ago I was reminded of the films of Keisuke Kinoshita and wondered if the book had ever been filmed; looking it up, I found that not only had it been, but that the screenwriter was none other than Keisuke Kinoshita himself. However, it’s directed not by him, but by Eisuke Takizawa, who seems to have been Nikkatsu’s director of choice for their more prestigious literary adaptations during this period (not a genre they’re widely remembered for).

Jukichi Uno

I had high hopes for this film but, although its superficially faithful, one of the strengths of the book is its lack of sentimentality, and it was disappointing to see the story sentimentalised as it has been here, especially in regard to composer Takanobu Saito’s clichéd use of mandolin and harp. There’s also been an overall softening of tone – to give a couple of examples, in the book, the schoolteachers think nothing of dishing out corporal punishment, and Sakiko is an arrogant snob, while here the teachers (one of whom is played by a twinkly-eyed Jukichi Uno in old man make-up) are far more genial and Sakiko – perhaps partly due to the casting of popular star Ishikawa – is a much gentler character.

Tanie Kitabayashi

Talking of casting, I felt that a lack of imagination was evident in hiring 51-year-old character actress Tanie Kitabayashi to do her old granny act yet again when Sachiko Murase would have been a far better fit for the complex character described by Inoue. Well-made though it is, ultimately I couldn’t help feeling that the film would have had more depth if it had been cast and scored differently and directed by Kinoshita or Miyoji Ieki instead of Takizawa.

A note on the title:

The title can be written as Shirobamba or Shirobanba in English; the character ん is usually written as ‘n’ in translation, but when pronounced before a ‘b’, it’s natural to close the mouth more fully, so it comes out sounding more like an ‘m’. This is also the reason why both Tetsuro Tanba and Tetsuro Tamba can be considered correct.

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

If you enjoy this blog, feel free to Buy Me a Coffee

The Beast Must Die: Mechanic of Revenge / 野獣死すべし 復讐のメカニック / Yaju shisubeshi: fukushu no mekanikku (1974)

Obscure Japanese Film #247

Hiroshi Fujioka

At the end of The Beast Must Die (1959), Kunihiko Date (Tatsuya Nakadai), a highly intelligent but amoral student leading a double life as a thief and murderer, escapes the clutches of the police and jets off to America. In this sequel (loosely based on author Haruhiko Oyabu’s 1960 sequel to his original book) he’s back from the States and is now a Moby Dick-obsessed literature professor, but is still killing and stealing in his spare time. Although it’s unclear whether exactly 15 years have passed in story terms, it does look like 1974, and he’s now played by the 28-year-old Hiroshi Fujioka (Nakadai – who had been playing a little younger than his real age in the first film – was 41 by this point and perhaps deemed too old. It should also be noted that he does not appear in this film despite a credit on IMDb).

Date, who was already pretty nasty, has become even nastier (burning a man’s face, casually killing a woman who’s helped him, etc) but has also been given a personal motive for his crimes. This time round he’s targeting the businessmen who drove his father to suicide and took over his company. In my view, despite the fact that this element seems to have been present in the book, this was a mistake – Date is someone who simply does not care about other people, so it makes no sense that he would care about his father so much that he would go to all the trouble he does here to get revenge (in the superior first film, Date does what he does because he views himself as a sort of Nietzschean superman above normal standards of morality).

Mako Midori

Hiroshi Fujioka, previously a supporting actor in movies but a star in TV, fails to make much of the character and, while the supporting cast are decent enough, they only have so much to work with. Mako Midori – something of a cult actress in Japan – is among them, but her screen time is limited and she has been better served in other films, such as Yasuzo Masumura’s The Great Villains (1968). Akemi Mari, who plays the other main female role, had been married to this film’s director, Eizo Sugawa, since 1969. She’s fine here, but her film career never really took off, although she had some success on TV.

Akemi Mari

The film is also rather cheap and drab-looking – I suspect that Toho had limited faith in it and only allowed Sugawa (who had also made the first film) a pretty low budget. Incidentally, Sugawa made other unrelated films with the word ‘beast’ in the title, including his previous film, Beast Hunt (1973, aka The Black Battlefront Kidnappers) and the excellent Beast Alley (1965).

On the plus side, the soundtrack features a cool combination of classical and jazz courtesy of composer Kunihiko Murai, who was better known as a producer of pop music, though he also composed the soundtrack for Tampopo (1985). Running a taut 86 minutes, the film also has an appealing leanness about it, and its misanthropic tone is certainly of a piece with its director’s other best-known works so, while it’s certainly not as good as the first film, it’s not a total wash-out. (Incidentally, one of the screenwriters, Yoshio Shirasaka, had also worked frequently with that other great misanthropic director of the era, Yasuzo Masumura).

Starring Yusaku Matsuda, Toru Murakawa’s 1980 remake of the 1959 original is more impressive (if more self-indulgent) than this sequel and recently received the deluxe Blu-ray treatment courtesy of Radiance Films, while a further remake and sequel (neither of which I’ve seen) appeared in 1997 starring Kazuya Kimura as Date.

It’s a bit low-res, but you can watch the film on YouTube with English subtitles here.

Hear part of Kunihiko Murai's original soundtrack on YouTube here.

If you enjoy this blog, feel free to Buy Me a Coffee!