Obscure Japanese Film #9
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| Sachiko Hidari preparing to shoot a scene for The Far
Road |
Sachiko Hidari (1930-2001), the director, producer and star of The Far Road, began her acting career at Shintoho Studios in 1952 and spent most of the ‘50s playing cute, cheerful, giggly young women. However, her off-screen personality was quite different – she was serious, intelligent, unusually outspoken and keen to do meaningful work. In 1959, she married the now largely forgotten ‘New Wave’ director Susumu Hani and soon became a highly respected actress, winning no less than three major Japanese film awards for her performances in Hani’s She and He and Shohei Imamura’s The Insect Woman (both 1963). Other memorable roles included the prostitute who falls in love with Rentaro Mikuni’s fugitive in Tomu Uchida’s Straits of Hunger (1965) and the war widow trying to uncover the truth of her husband’s death in Kinji Fukasku’s no-punches-pulled Under the Flag of the Rising Sun (1972). Unfortunately, her success made it difficult for her to find enough time to look after her daughter, so her younger sister, Kimiko Nukamura, stepped in to help out, but this led to an affair between Kimiko and Hani which caused Hani and Sachiko to divorce the same year The Far Road was released.
With The Far Road, Hidari became the first female feature film director in Japan since Kinuyo Tanaka, who had last directed in 1962. Hidari’s film was an independent production financed by the National Railway Workers’ Union. This type of alternative to studio financing had been pioneered by director Satsuo Yamamoto after he was blacklisted by the studios in 1950 for over a decade due to his Communist Party membership – he had responded by obtaining his budgets from various union organisations and carrying on regardless. Given this set-up, it’s no surprise that Hidari’s film has a strong pro-union, anti-capitalist stance and features a combination of experienced actors and railway workers. In fact, it’s very much the Japanese equivalent of a Ken Loach movie.
In a rare leading role, Hisashi Igawa (star of Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Pitfall) plays Ichizo, a railway worker in Hokkaido who has just completed 30 years’ service and receives a watch and a bonus as a reward. The fractured narrative then jumps back and forth between the past and the present, with flashbacks detailing the struggles of Ichizo and his long-suffering wife, Satoko (Hidari), to raise their two children and make enough to get by.
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| Hisashi Igawa and Sachiko Hidari |
Hidari is fine, but the acting honours here go to the underrated Igawa, who is so convincing that it’s hard to believe he even is acting. Rarely has an actor been prepared to make himself so unsympathetic, although – despite his bullying, drunkenness and insensitivity – Ichizo has his good points and stands up for his colleagues in disputes with the bosses. Also notable in the cast is the wonderful Taiji Tonoyama, the bald, jug-eared, weary-eyed star of Kaneto Shindo’s The Naked Island (1961), here playing a veteran colleague of Ichizo’s who treats the bosses with barely-concealed contempt. Another distinguished actor, Hideji Otaki, also pops up, though in quite a small part.
The Far Road benefits from a strong modernist score courtesy of Minoru Miki although, while the cinematography is decent enough, the overcast Hokkaido skies and railway yard settings make for a rather drab visual experience. Furthermore, while the film is certainly well-made, Hidari seems to have paid little attention to keeping the audience engaged and there are some scenes of speeches and union debates which are, frankly, downright tedious. Indeed, the narrative seems all over the place and would have benefitted from a tighter structure – I suspect that some scenes may have been improvised, which would partially account for this. However, one has to admire the way Eijanaika writer Ken Miyamoto manages to work Hashima Island into the story by having Ichizo’s daughter’s fiancé a former inhabitant of the place who wants to show his future in-laws where he was brought up. Located off the coast of Nagasaki, Hashima is a small abandoned island once populated by coal miners living in concrete apartment blocks which even today cover the majority of the land there. The facility used forced labour during the war but continued production in the post-war years until its final abandonment in 1974. The conclusion of The Far Road has Ichizo and Satoko wandering around this gargantuan, haunting symbol of exploitation which must be one of the most hideous places on Earth.
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| Hashima Island |
While I doubt that The Far Road would have resurfaced were it not for the current interest in female directors, it is in many ways a remarkable achievement by Hidari despite its flaws and certainly has some memorable scenes.
Seen as part of the British Film Institute’s Japan 2021 season.
Link to the DVD on Amazon Japan (no English subtitles listed)
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