Kagero ezu / かげろう絵図 (‘The Dragonfly Motif’, aka ‘Stop the Old Fox’, 1959)

Obscure Japanese Film #281

Osamu Takizawa

The 11^th year of the Tenpo era (1840). Sekio Nakano (Osamu Takizawa) is a senior retainer and trusted advisor to Ienari Tokugawa (Eijro Yanagi), the retired shogun, who remains the most powerful of the Tokugawas despite having been succeeded by his son, Ieyoshi (Ichiro Izawa). Nakano is also the adoptive father of Ienari’s senior concubine, Omiyo-no-kata (Michiyo Kogure). When Ienari impregnates the younger lady-in-waiting, Otaki-no-kata (Hiroko Yajima), Nakano arranges for her to have an accident leading to a miscarriage so as not to threaten Omiyo’s position, but when Otaki also dies as a result, the young maid Tomi (Fujiko Yamamoto), who had helped set up the accident, is promoted to take her place.

Michiyo Kogure

Tomi has an identical sister, Toyoharu (also played by Fujiko Yamamoto), who lives with young samurai Shinnosuke (Raizo Ichikawa), who is rather lazy but an expert swordsman. Living next door to him is Ryoan, a friendly, saké-loving doctor (Takashi Shimura), who is called to the castle to examine lady-in-waiting Kikukawa (Michiko Ai) and discovers she’s pregnant. As no men are permitted to enter the Ooku (inner chambers of the palace), this could cause a scandal, so Nakano orders a cover up. Ryoan’s life is now in danger, and Shinnosuke comes to his defence...

Raizo Ichikawa

Most Japanese online reviewers seem to regard this Daiei production as a disappointment, and in general it’s not hard to see why – with a talky and confusing first half, it feels like it takes ages to get anywhere, while eventually ending abruptly with nothing resolved. It was based on a novel by Seicho Matsumoto – better known for his contemporary crime dramas – which was not yet finished and was still in the process of being serialised in the Tokyo Shinbun when the film went into production. Half an hour longer than most Daiei films and helmed by a prestigious director (Teinosuke Kinugasa, whose 1953 film Gate of Hell had been a prize-winning international success), it was planned as the first part of a grand trilogy, but the sequels were never made. According to one online commentator, this was due to objections from Matsumoto, who was displeased with the first film, though on its release Kinema Junpo stated that the opening weekend had been ‘somewhat disappointing’, so this may well have been another factor.

Takashi Shimura

The film was heavily promoted as a vehicle for Daiei’s popular stars Raizo Ichikawa and Fujiko Yamamoto, whose 16^th film this was together, yet Ichikawa is entirely absent for the first 35 minutes and the main protagonist actually seems to be the bald villain Nakano, who was presumably the ‘old fox’ of the film’s silly English title. Unfortunately, as played by the stage-trained Osamu Takizawa – once acclaimed for playing Willy Loman in a theatre production of Death of a Salesman – Nakano is too one-dimensional to be terribly interesting. And although Yamamoto plays two roles, she was hardly an actor known for her versatility, so there’s little discernible difference between the two Yamamotos.

Fujiko Yamamoto x2

Having said all that, there’s actually quite a bit to enjoy here, and things do pick up a bit halfway, with more exterior scenes and more action. Kinugasa’s direction is elegant and makes the most of the excellent art direction and colour cinematography (although everything looked oddly pale and beige in the copy I watched, so I had to tweak the colour settings to make it look its best). The music score by Mizoguchi / Naruse favourite Ichiro Saito veers from bombastic to so subtle it’s almost subliminal, but always helps to heighten the sometimes underpowered drama. On a purely aesthetic level, then, I’d call this one a success and say that the flaws are mostly with the story.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

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Kohitsuji / 小羊 (‘The Lamb’, 1923)

Obscure Japanese Film #280

Tsuzuya Moroguchi

A 19-year-old engineering student, Toshihiko (Tsuzuya Moroguchi), falls in love with a stage actress (Yuriko Hanabusa) and writes her adoring letters, but when he finally summons up the courage to speak to her, she laughs at him and flings his letters back in his face. Heartbroken, he takes to wandering the country alone until he finally arrives in Hokkaido, where he collapses from hunger and exhaustion. He’s rescued by a shepherdess, O-Toyo (Yoshiko Kawada), whose father (Heijiro Osono) takes him in and gives him a job on the farm, but a fellow farmhand, Otokichi – known as ‘the Wolf’ – (Yotaro Katsumi), is jealous and wants to get rid of him…

Yoshiko Kawada, Moroguchi and Yotaro Katsumi

Like the previously-reviewed film Diary of a Drunkard, this Shochiku Kamata production was directed by Zanmu Kako, but in this case the film seems to have survived more or less in its entirety. Also as in that film, Kako elicits natural performances and demonstrates a good eye for composition. However, the downside here is that the overly-contrived plot has dated badly and hinges on a couple of massively unlikely coincidences. It’s also somewhat confusing at times – perhaps at the time some accompanying benshi narration would have made things clearer.

Kohitsuji clearly has a strong Christian influence, even quoting the story of Jacob’s Ladder from the Book of Genesis in the opening and closing title cards, while in the Bible, the lamb is of course a symbol of innocence, purity and sacrifice, although it was unclear to me whether the lamb of the title is supposed to refer to Toshihiko or O-Toyo (or possibly neither). In any case, the rather uninspired message is simply that the wicked will eventually be punished and the good rewarded.

The film is thought to have been based on an unfinished screenplay by one Norikuni Yasuda, who has 19 director credits on IMDb between 1924-29, and shot by Hiroshi Nomura, who later worked for Hiroshi Shimizu, Heinsosuke Gosho and Yasushi Sasaki. The two leads, Tsuzuya Moroguchi and Yoshiko Kawada, were big stars of the day who were frequently cast together – here, they were about halfway through the (at least) 40 films in which they co-starred. However, it’s Yuriko Hanabusa who would go on to have the longest career, racking up 242 credits on IMDb stretching from 1920 until shortly before her passing in 1970. Among these are starring roles in Souls on the Road (1921), often cited as Japan’s first important film, and Naruse’s Wife! Be Like a Rose (1935).

Yuriko Hanabusa

The director and cast came to films from the theatre, where they had worked not in kabuki or Noh, but in the new Western-influenced Shingeki (or Shin-engeki) movement. For further info (in Japanese) and to watch the film (without English subtitles), visit the Eiga Meets Shin-engeki website. 

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Shuchu nikki / 酒中日記 / (‘Diary of a Drunkard’, 1921)

Obscure Japanese Film #279

Yukichi Iwata

Okawa (Yukichi Iwata) has been a teacher on an island in the Inland Sea for three years. Despite the fact that he’s also a self-confessed drunkard, he’s popular with the children and most of the other islanders, especially O-Tsuyu (Chiyoko Mimura), a young woman who has become his mistress. His past is a mystery but he writes his thoughts in a private diary; in flashback, it’s revealed that he was once a respected headmaster on the mainland. However, he once stumbled upon a bag with a considerable amount of money inside (left unattended by the treasurer for the school rebuilding fund) and decided to keep it; when his conscience began to protest too much, he decided to confess publicly and informed his wife of his decision. Unfortunately, before he could carry out his intentions, she had committed suicide and taken their young son with her…

Chiyoko Mimura

This Shochiku Kamata* production was (like the vast majority of silent Japanese films) long thought completely lost until this 25-minute fragment turned up recently. The original film ran for around 66 minutes and would presumably have been screened with live commentary by a narrator, or benshi; of course, that’s also missing here, as is a music score. What survives – which seems to be most of the first half – is in surprisingly good condition, but the film ends abruptly and we never get to see how things turn out. That’s a pity, because this was obviously a film of some quality – the performances are very natural and the photography, though static, is well-composed.

The film was based on a 1902 story by Doppo Kunikida (1871-1908)**, while the screenplay was written by Daisuke Ito, who made his directorial debut with his own version in 1924 (since lost, of course) and went on to become a major filmmaker. Director Zanmu Kako (1869-1938) also came from the theatre, where he had worked as a playwright and stage director. He made around 90 films between 1921 and 1927, almost all of which are entirely lost. That this substantial fragment survived even the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 – which severely damaged the studio where it was made – is a near miracle.

Leading actor Yukichi Iwata (1887-1980), who is excellent here, was a major star of the Japanese silent screen. A former theatre actor, he made his film debut in 1920 and went on to make over 150 films before retiring from the screen around 1942. Today, his most widely-seen film is Ozu’s A Mother Should Be Loved (1934). His co-star, Chiyoko Mimura (1903-74) was recruited from the theatre by Kako and signed to Shochiku. Film critic and historian Junichiro Tanaka (1902-89) singled out her performance in Diary of a Drunkard, saying, ‘She is small and lacks a striking face, but her acting ability is undeniable.’ She became a popular star before retiring to look after her family in 1927. Mimura had married film director Kiyohiko Ushihara in 1922; today he’s remembered (if at all) for The Ghost Cat and the Mysterious Shamisen (1938) and Rainbow Man (1949).

*Shochiku Kamata was a studio founded in Kamata, Tokyo, in 1920 as an off-shoot of the theatre company Shochiku Gomei Kaisha. It lasted until 1936, when noise from nearby factories caused problems in making films in the new talking picture format and led Shochiku to close it down and transfer their operations to Shochiku Ofuna in Kamakura.

**Kunikida is sufficiently well-regarded that some of his stories have appeared in English translation, although I believe that ‘Diary of a Drunkard’ is not among them. 

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Night Ladies / 二匹の牝犬 / Nihiki no mesu inu (‘Two Bitches’, 1964)

Obscure Japanese Film #278

Mayumi Ogawa

 

After Tokyo’s brothels have all been forced to close down by the authorities, ‘bath houses’ and ‘massage parlours’ spring up everywhere, unofficially offering more than just a back rub to their predominantly male clientele, but stopping short of providing the ‘full works’. Asako (Mayumi Ogawa), a country girl desperate to escape an unhappy family life and poverty in rural Chiba, gets conniving former madam Tetsu (Sadako Sawamura) to set her up with a job in such a bath house. Working under the name of Rie, she finds that she can make a lot of money quickly and begins investing through a young stockbroker, Sekine (Naoki Sugiura), who’s keen to take their relationship further. When Asako’s younger half-sister, Natsuko (Mako Midori), turns up, Asako tries to send her back to Chiba, but Natsuko is not only determined to stay but has no qualms about what she might have to do to pay her bills…

Naoki Sugiura

According to Japanese Wikipedia, this Toei production originated from an idea by producer Shigeru Okada, who felt that increasing the erotic content of the studio’s films would be one effective way of luring the dwindling audience away from their TV sets and back into cinemas. This was the studio’s first attempt at doing so, and Okada was proved to be correct as the film was a substantial hit. Of course, although it was strong stuff at the time, it seems fairly tame today compared to countless later films. Nevertheless, the subject matter and content meant that casting established stars in the two leading female parts was virtually out of the question.

Ogawa and Mako Midori

Mayumi Ogawa was a member of the Bungakuza Theatre Company, where she had a strict mentor in Haruko Sugimura. She had done some TV work, but only one previous film, Kaneto Shindo’s Mother (1963), in which she had played a minor role. In this film, Ogawa proves to have real acting ability and to be a strong, charismatic presence who can glower to great effect. She found it hard to shake off the ‘wicked woman’ image she got stuck with as a result, but went on to enjoy a long career before becoming a Buddhist nun in 2008, after which she went into semi-retirement. In 2012, her daughter published a book entitled Poison Mama – A 40-Year War with My Mother, Mayumi Ogawa, which led to their permanent estrangement. She passed away in March 2026 at the age of 86.

Mako Midori

Mako Midori, on the other hand, had taken a TV acting training course, but had not a single credit under her belt – apparently, director Yusuke Watanabe happened to see her photo and gave her a screen test. Despite concern at her lack of experience, she proved to be a natural and went on to win a Blue Ribbon Award for Best New Actress for her performances in this and Watanabe’s similarly-themed follow-ups, Akujo and Mesu (both also released in 1964). However, she was fired by Okada in 1968 for complaining about the types of roles she was given. By this point, though, she had become popular enough for her modern style and willingness to disrobe that she was in demand from other studios and continued to have a successful career.

Sadako Sawamura and Ogawa

As far as the rest of the cast are concerned, many of them, like Ogawa, were members of Bungakuza, who were apparently struggling financially at the time and therefore very glad of the work – in fact, this was likely a bargaining chip used by Okada to help persuade Ogawa to take on a controversial role. However, Sadako Sawamura was not affiliated with the company; usually a fine actor, unfortunately in this case she seems to have seen her role as a crafty old procurer as an excuse to go way over the top.

Ogawa and Sugiura

The original screenplay was written by director Watanabe together with Kikuma Shimoiizaka, whose filmography suggests prolific hack work. The story here hinges on a massive coincidence and things become increasingly melodramatic as the film goes on. Having said that, it’s somewhat remarkable for its undiluted misanthropy in its portrayal of a world in which everyone’s a scumbag; that’s far from unique in Japanese films of this period, but it was seldom seen in Hollywood ones – Sweet Smell of Success (1957) being a notable exception. There are also indications that Watanabe was trying to make something a little classier than expected, and there is some artiness in the camerawork, while, during the climactic catfight, the sound drops out and we hear only a plaintive Spanish guitar, lending a strange air of detachment to the proceedings. All in all, then, no masterpiece, but a well-made, entertaining and interesting film.

Ogawa

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

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Midori

O-Den jigoku / お伝地獄 (‘O-Den Hell’, 1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #277

Eiji Funakoshi and Machiko Kyo

The early Meiji era (1870s). O-Den (Machiko Kyo) and Naminosuke (Eiji Funakoshi) are young villagers recently married. Naminosuke is suffering from a mysterious illness, but they lack the money to pay for proper medical care. Then Daihachi (Taiji Tonoyama), a man who had wanted to marry O-Den, turns up and gives her the necessary money, but then reveals there’s a catch – she has to sleep with him for it. The two argue on a bridge with rotten railings and Daihichi rather conveniently falls to his doom below.

Taiji Tonoyama

The couple hotfoot it to Tokyo, where Naminosuke is treated by a dashing young doctor, Sugimoto (Keizo Kawasaki), who dresses in the newly-fashionable Western style. He gives Naminosuke a medicine which proves very effective in stopping the pain, but he becomes reliant on it and it’s not long before O-Den is sleeping with the doctor in order to get repeat prescriptions – and so begins her fall into immorality...

Keizo Kawasaki

This Daiei production was based on a novel of the same name from 1935 by Kanji Kunieda (1892-1956), who had previously provided the source material for Tamizo Ishida’s Kenka tobi (1939) and Mizoguchi’s Utamaro and His Five Women (1946) among others, but appears to have remained untranslated in English. His novel was itself based on the story of O-Den (or Oden) Takahashi, who was convicted of murder and beheaded in 1879 at the age of 31. Kodansha’s Japan: An Illustrated Encyclopedia contains the following entry on Takahashi:

Murderess, the most notorious dokufu (wicked woman) of the modern era. Accused of several sex-related murders, Oden was the first woman to be executed by beheading after the Edo period (1600-1868). Born in what is now Gumma Prefecture, she was known from girlhood for her beauty and promiscuity. Her life of crime began after her husband contracted leprosy. When the disease proved incurable, Oden allegedly poisoned her husband and embarked on a career of prostitution, larceny and homicide. Arrested in 1876 for slitting the throat of a used-clothing merchant at an inn in Asakusa, she was convicted and ultimately executed. It was the most sensational crime story of the day, and lurid accounts of Oden’s escapades filled the newspapers. The popular author Kanagaki Robun wrote a spicy novel based on her life, Takahashi Oden yasha monogatari (1879, Tale of Takahashi Oden, the She-Devil), which Kawatake Mokuami adapted as a kabuki play.

I can’t vouch for the accuracy of all of the information in the above entry, but it’s certainly clear that O-Den’s life began to be fictionalised in the very year of her death, and few of her chroniclers seem to have worried much about the actual facts since. Surprisingly, this film version features no throat-slitting, no arrest of O-Den and no execution. It’s also worth noting that, although it’s widely believed that she was the last woman to be executed by beheading in Japan, that’s simply not the case – there were at least a further 22 women put to death in this way in the two years following O-Den’s execution.

O-Den had already been the subject of at least half a dozen previous films, including silent pictures now lost, as well as Nobuo Nakagawa’s Dokufu Takahashi Oden (1958), usually known in English as A Wicked Woman, and a 1935 version of Kunieda’s novel directed by Tamizo Ishida. I doubt that Ishida’s film has survived, but the theme song sung by Kiyozo Shinbashi (who appeared in Sadao Yamanaka’s 1935 film The Million Ryo Pot) has, and you can listen to it on YouTube here. Incidentally, the role of O-Den in Ishida’s film was played by Sumiko Suzuki, who had also played her in a 1929 film. Suzuki (1904-85) is largely forgotten today, but may be known to some as the star of The Ghost Cat and the Shamisen (1938) and she apparently cornered the market in ‘ghost cat’ roles.

This film is so unlike Nakagawa’s version of O-Den’s story from only two years previously that it would be easy to miss the fact that they were inspired by the same real-life person. Director Keigo Kimura, who also wrote the screenplay, avoids the obvious exploitation elements of the story and focuses instead on charting the moral downfall of a woman who begins as a model wife trying her best to help her suffering husband. Having been the one to turn Machiko Kyo into a star in his 1949 film A Fool’s Love and worked with her frequently since, he was perhaps also concerned with providing her with a juicy role, which he certainly did. It’s a very sympathetic portrayal of O-Den which views her largely as a victim of circumstance – or fate – and her journey into cynicism is played perfectly by Kyo. In fact, performances are top-notch all round, with Eiji Funakoshi being especially believable in a difficult role as a man frequently almost out of his mind with pain.

Kimura pays considerable attention to period detail, and we see how the then-recent opening up of Japan has introduced various novel experiences to its people, from the eating of beef to having a photograph taken. In terms of style, he uses mainly long- and medium-shots throughout, with few close-ups and slightly longer takes than usual, allowing plenty of freedom to his actors, something which is especially apparent in Kyo and Funakoshi’s final, dramatic scene together. Kimura also seldom cuts to his main characters when transitioning between scenes, opting instead to focus briefly on random people going about their business: a crouching rickshaw driver tapping his pipe on the wheel of his vehicle, a young child fascinated by a sparkler, an old man enjoying a bottle of beer at a festival. As someone who’s always disliked the received wisdom that everything should be there to move the plot along, I heartily approve of these beautiful moments, and it’s these more than anything that, for me, make this an exceptionally fine film.

A note on the title:

The ‘O’ in O-Den’s name is an honorific prefix seldom used today, while the ‘Den’ (伝) can mean ‘legend’ in English, and the film is sometimes listed as ‘The Legendary Hell’, which makes little sense and, as far as I’m aware, was never an official release title. It does seem odd to use to use ‘O-Den Hell’ as a title without the character の, which would indicate that the English should be ‘O-Den’s Hell’ or ‘The Hell of O-Den’; my guess is that O-Den Hell is a sort of nickname, but I haven’t been able to confirm this.

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

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Fudotoku kyoiku koza / 不道徳教育講座 (‘Lectures on Immoral Education’, 1959)

Obscure Japanese Film #276

Shiro Osaka

Fujimura (Shiro Osaka) is an unrepentant criminal released from prison only to find two yakuza whose money he has stolen waiting for him outside. He flees and boards a train bound for Yamashiro, but they follow him onto the train. However, Fujimura finds that he has a doppelganger among the passengers and manages to swap clothes with him while he’s asleep in an effort to shake off his pursuers. It works, but when Fujimura reaches Yamashiro he realises that Bunpei Sagara (also played by Osaka), the man whose identity he has assumed, is a representative from the Ministry of Education whose mission is to deliver a lecture on the importance of morality and decide if the town is worthy of receiving a 10 million yen grant. The town’s VIPs queue up to kiss his butt and Fujimura continues to play the role of Sagara...

Yukio Mishima

If the basic plot of this Nikkatsu production sounds familiar, that’s because it’s an uncredited reworking of Gogol’s play The Government Inspector. However, the credited source is a series of essays by Yukio Mishima originally published in the weekly magazine Shukan Myojo, so it was presumably the screenplay authors (Atsundo Kubota* and director Katsumi Nishikawa) who came up with the idea of raiding Gogol for the storyline. The film retains the title of the essay series which, according to Japanese Wikipedia, ‘is modelled after Ihara Saikaku’s Twenty Unfilial Acts of Japan, which parodies the Chinese Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety and contains carefully selected stories of “unfilial children”.’ Mishima’s essays, which were later collected in book form, have yet to appear in English, but were, apparently, humorous attacks on the hypocrisies of the time. In any case, he clearly approved of the film as he even appears in it as himself in a brief prologue and epilogue.

Hiroyuki Nagato

The upright facade presented by the town of Yamashiro soon proves to be a complete sham, and the place is populated largely by amoral eccentrics: two young students plotting the perfect murder, a high school girl raffling off her virginity, a middle-aged Christian housewife (Chieko Misaki) fantasising about her young muscleman driver, an anti-moral education protest group, and a nerd who claims to be a lady-killer (Pigs and Battleships’ Hiroyuki Nagato). 

Yumeji Tsukioka

The biggest star in the film, Yumeji Tsukioka, is absent for most of the picture but plays a TV star returning to her hometown to think about her future, while leading actor Shiro Osaka was usually found further down the cast list but acquits himself well in the comic double role. Director Nishikawa seems quite at home with all the absurdist comedy and keeps things moving at a steady pace.

Shiro Osaka

*Sometimes incorrectly translated as Atsuto Kubota.

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Chieko Masaki

Convicted Woman / 女犯破戒 / Nyohan hakai (1966)

Obscure Japanese Film #275

Yoko Mihara and Takahiro Tamura

Ushinosuke (Takahiro Tamura) is a Kyoto actor who elopes with a young woman, O-Ume (Mayumi Ogawa), in a small boat. She decides they must die together and attacks him with a knife; the boat capsizes in the struggle and only Ushinosuke survives. Seven years later, in repentance, he has become a monk at Enmei-in Temple in Edo under the new name of Dogyo, but his faith is continually tested by lustful young women like Okura (Reiko Ohara), who apparently find his pompous piety and shaven pate irresistible.

Mayumi Ogawa

One day, Ryuzen (Nobuo Kaneko), who knows about Dogyo’s past, comes to the monastery to train as a monk, but appears to have some form of blackmail in mind. Meanwhile, the elderly head priest is dying but tries to seduce Dogyo on his deathbed. A shocked Dogyo runs off and lets himself be seduced by Okura instead while Ryuzen is finishing off the old priest. For some reason, Dogyo then decides to become the wickedest priest that ever lived...

Nobuo Kaneko with TT

This monksploitation meller from Toei was part of the studio’s drive to lure dwindling audiences back into the cinema with the promise of more erotic content, although said content remains mostly rather tame at this early stage. The fact that it was made in black and white and the star is Takahiro Tamura (who had seldom carried a picture before this one) seems indicative of a low budget, as does the silly script by B-movie hack Kikuma Shimoiizaka. Director Eiichi Kudo of 13 Assassins (1963) fame pulls off a few memorable moments, but the unconvincing characters and over-the-top performances soon prove tiresome, making the film quite a let-down after a strong opening sequence.

Reiko Ohara and TT

A note on the title:

Although Convicted Woman appears to have been an official English title, it doesn’t fit the content; the Japanese title can be translated as ‘Female Transgression’ or ‘Women Breaking the Commandments’, either of which make more sense in light of the story.

Thanks to A.K.

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