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.

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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.

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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)

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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)

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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.

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Sazae-san no seishun / サザエさんの青春 (‘Sazae-san’s Youth’, 1957)

Obscure Japanese Film #246

Chiemi Eri

This third film in the Toho series kicked off by the previously-reviewed Sazae-san was the first to be shot in colour, but otherwise director Nobuo Aoyagi repeats much the same recipe, even down to Chiemi Eri dancing along the street singing ‘Bippidi-Boppidi-Boo’, as she had also done in the first film, although there are fewer songs this time around. 

Here Sazae-san becomes engaged to her long-term sweetheart, Fuguta (Hiroshi Koizumi), and tries to prepare herself for married life by taking on the household chores, helping to look after her cousin’s new baby and getting a job in a department store to contribute to the household income. Of course, she makes a mess of all three, and disaster is only narrowly averted when a female customer at the store takes a liking to Sazae and invites her round for tea – it turns out that she’s the wife of Sazae’s father’s boss and sees Sazae as a possible future wife for her son…

Released just in time for New Year, this would have been intended as a film that the whole family could enjoy together, and it retains an old-fashioned innocence and charm, while the new colour photography suits the material well, making it look appropriately more cartoonish than it did in black and white.

After skipping the second film, Tatsuya Nakadai reappears here as Sazae-san’s cousin, but has only one brief scene around 35 minutes in, in which he’s at a hospital waiting to see his newborn child for the first time (typically, Sazae-san manages to mix it up with someone else’s baby to comic effect). Incidentally, Nakadai is not the only Kurosawa favourite to pop up in these films – also present is Kamatari Fujiwara, who appeared in no fewer than 12 Kurosawa pictures, and even made it to Hollywood on one occasion, appearing in Arthur Penn’s underrated Mickey One (1965).

Also deserving a mention is Tomoko Matsushima, who plays Sazae-san’s big-eyed younger sister and is pretty funny in these films. Everyone knows about Johnny Cash’s famous prison gig, but Matsushima performed at Sugamo Prison in 1950 at the age of 5 and apparently reduced around 1,000 war criminals to tears with her rendition of a Japanese song entitled ‘The Cute Fishmonger’. Later in life, she became a TV presenter and was attacked twice by big cats – once by a lion, another time by a leopard, luckily surviving both incidents without major harm. It has been speculated that her large eyes may have been a reason for the attacks as it’s inadvisable to look a dangerous predator in the eye and presumably, therefore, even less of a good idea if you have big eyes...

Watched without subtitles.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles).

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Sazae-san / サザエさん (1956)

Obscure Japanese Film #245

Chiemi Eri

Kamatari Fujiwara and Nijiko Kiyokawa

Sazae (Chiemi Eri) is a young woman still living at home with her father (Kamatari Fujiwara), mother (Nijiko Kiyokawa) and two younger siblings. She applies for a job at a women’s magazine but, after being directed to the wrong door by the handsome young Fuguta (Hiroshi Koizumi), she accidentally ends up working for a literary publisher instead. Her first task is to deliver the proof of a book to an author, but he turns out to be the same man she had had an embarrassing misunderstanding with in a department store and she is fired. Fuguta suggests she try to get a job at a detective agency instead – unexpectedly, she succeeds, but her first assignment happens to be to spy on her cousin, Norisuke (Tatsuya Nakadai), as his fiancee’s mother wants him investigated before agreeing to the marriage. She disguises herself as an old woman and begins to follow him around…

Chiemi Eri

This Toho production was their first in a series of ten musical comedies starring singing sensation Chiemi Eri as Sazae-san, a daydreaming tomboy with a strange hairdo. It was based on a comic strip by Machiko Hasegawa (1920-92), Japan’s first professional female manga author, which first appeared in 1946 and ran in various newspapers until 1974. There have been various other adaptations, most notably an anime TV series which has been running since 1969, making Sazae-san a true Japanese institution, albeit one that’s remained little-known in the West.

One of the ironies of Japanese cinema is that, the more westernised the characters, the less likely a film has been to receive distribution abroad. The overseas market has tended to favour tales of samurai, geisha and yakuza, and (as far as I’m aware), Sazae-san has never been distributed in Europe or the U.S. At the end of the film, we see the family celebrating Christmas – which, of course, is not a Japanese festival, and the film is full of instances of Japanese people attempting to emulate westerners. The most extreme example of this is seen in the department store, where none of the mannequins look remotely Japanese.

The film was released in December of 1956 as the main feature in a triple-bill which also included two Tenten Musume pictures of under an hour each – very similar fare directed, like Sazae-san, by Nobuo Aoyagi, who had earlier made the excellent World of Love and the previously-reviewed Hyoroku’s Dream Tale (both 1943), but by this stage in his career seemed happy to be directing anything. In this case, there’s little to say about his direction except that it’s competent. Still, there’s some fun to be had from Sazae-san’s antics, and Chiemi Eri proves herself an adept comedienne as well as singer. Incidentally, in her daydreams, Sazae has a sensible haircut, glamorous attire and sings American-style jazz songs.

Tatsuya Nakadai

It’s also amusing to see a young Tatsuya Nakadai as Sazae’s slightly slow-witted cousin in the days when he still had to take whatever roles he could get. It’s difficult to think of a less typical Nakadai role than this one, and it has to be said that he doesn’t look entirely comfortable singing along to Jingle Bells at the film’s climax. He managed to avoid the second film, but was roped back in for the third in the series before escaping for good.

Watched without subtitles.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

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