Lake of Tears / 湖の琴 / Umi no koto (1966)

Obscure Japanese Film #14

Katsuo Nakamura and Yoshiko Sakuma

 

Saku (Yoshiko Sakuma) is a teenage girl who comes to work at a silk farm situated between Lake Biwa and its much smaller neighbour, Lake Yogo, the ‘Lake of Tears’ of the English-language title.[1]  This particular silk farm specialises in the making of shamisen strings from silk. The day after her arrival, a young male apprentice named Ukichi (Katsuo Nakamura) arrives and the two soon fall in love. When Ukichi is called up for military service, he stops eating and drinks large quantities of soya sauce in the hope that he will fail the medical and be able to stay with Saku; his scheme fails, but Saku promises to wait for him. In his absence, Monzaemon, a famous shamisen master, pays a visit and takes a shine to her; she is persuaded to leave the silk farm and study the shamisen with him in Kyoto. As the master musician is played by Ganjiro Nakamura – the dirty old man from Odd Obsession and others – it’s no surprise that his interest in Saku is not entirely altruistic, and we’re all set for a tale which seems engineered to fulfil the tragic promise of its title. 

Yoshiko Sakuma and Ganjiro Nakamura

Donald Richie once said that the conflict between giri (obligation) and ninjo (inclination) provides the basis of all Japanese drama. ‘All’ might be going a bit far, but Lake of Tears is certainly a prime example of this – the young couple’s plans are ruined due to Ukichi’s obligation to his country and Saku’s obligation to Monzaemon, which puts her in a very difficult position, especially when she incurs the wrath of his jealous mistress (Michiyo Kogure). 

Ganjiro Nakamura

Set in the mid-1920s, Lake of Tears is one for those with an interest in the traditional side of Japan, and it’s probably this emphasis which led to it being selected as Japan’s submission for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars that year. Considerable attention is given to details of silk production and the string-making process, while there’s much playing of the shamisen when the story moves to Kyoto.

The film was based on a then newly-published novel written by Tsutomu Minakami, whose stories The Temple of the Wild Geese and Bamboo Dolls of Echizen had already been filmed in Japan and would later be translated into English and published by The Dalkey Archive. In the novel, Saku apparently becomes pregnant by Monzaemon, while in the film it’s merely implied that he has forced himself on her, making her final actions rather baffling. The screenplay is by Naoyuki Suzuki, who had also adapted Minakami’s A House in the Quarter for the same director (Tomotaka Tasaka) in 1963, as well as his Straits of Hunger for Tomu Uchida’s excellent film known in the West as A Fugitive from the Past (1965). 

 

Yoshiko Sakuma

 

Yoshiko Sakuma (the female lead in Samurai Banners) is ideal as the unfortunate Saku, while Katsuo Nakamura is decent enough in a rather one-dimensional role, but it’s difficult to understand why he won two Best Supporting Actor awards in Japan for his efforts. He was a brother of Kinnosuke Nakamura and is best known abroad as Hoichi the Earless in Kwaidan. The cast also features Kihachi Okamoto favourite Kunie Tanaka and a young Kirin Kikki as fellow silk spinners. Late in her career, Kikki became a favourite of Hirokazu Koreeda and her talent is already evident here from the way she reacts so well to her fellow actors. 

Katsuo Nakamura and Kirin Kikki

Director Tomotaka Tasaka indulges in some interesting flourishes, at times showing us what his characters are imagining. The most striking example of this is an all-yellow sequence illustrating a fantasy playing out in Monzaemon’s head, while when he improvises a song inspired by Saku, Tasaka cuts to an elaborate montage of flowers and silk-spinning. 

Ganjiro Nakamura and Yoshiko Sakuma

 

I’ve seen two other films by this director (Five Scouts and A Slope in the Sun) and it’s difficult to think of anything they have in common. One interesting fact I managed to uncover is that he was in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing, but was saved from death due to a timely trip to the toilet (although he suffered health issues on and off for the rest of his life as a result of exposure to radiation). Anyway, I would say it is his creativity – along with the excellent colour ‘scope photography of Masahiko Iimura – which makes Lake of Tears worth seeing despite a sentimental, drawn-out and predictable story.

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[1] Confusingly, the Japanese title, Umi no koto, refers to a type of Japanese harp known as a koto.

The Hunter's Diary / 猟人日記 / Ryojin nikki (1964)

Obscure Japanese Film #13

Cover of the Japanese DVD release (no English subtitles)

 

This crime mystery from Nikkatsu Studios concerns Ichiro Honda (Noboru Nakaya), a businessman who takes advantage of the travelling necessitated by his job to repeatedly cheat on his wife, Taneko (Masako Togawa), with a series of women he picks up for one night stands. He regards these women as his ‘prey’ and records the details of each conquest in his ‘hunter’s diary’, but when two of these women are murdered, he begins to wonder whether this could really be a coincidence or if somebody’s out to frame him.  

Noboru Nakaya as Honda finds his next 'prey'

 

The film begins in documentary style with a lecture on how different blood types can be used to identify criminals, but it ends – surprisingly – with a song, and I found that this unexpected contrast gave the ending an emotional power it would otherwise have lacked. The director, Ko Nakahira, is only familiar in the West for his debut, Crazed Fruit, which saw him labelled as a member of the ‘new wave’ and helped to create the ‘sun tribe’ genre discussed in my last review (for Season of the Sun).  He had previously worked as an assistant for Akira Kurosawa on Scandal (1949) and The Idiot (1951); the two filmmakers reportedly enjoyed a good relationship which continued for many years. Aside from Crazed Fruit, I have seen one other Nakahira film, the terrific Mikkai aka The Assignation / Secret Rendezvous (1959), a drama of infidelity with a truly shocking denouement. In The Hunter’s Diary, he uses a combination of real locations and studio work to have fun with a clever but implausible mystery. In 1967, Nakahira began travelling to Hong Kong to make films for the Shaw Brothers, including a remake of The Hunter’s Diary under the title Lie ren (aka Diary of a Ladykiller). He was dismissed from Nikkatsu in 1968 for drinking on the job while directing The Spiders’ Great Advance, a vehicle for Japanese Beatles clones The Spiders. Forced to go independent, his output dwindled and he managed to complete only six films in the 1970s before his premature death from cancer in 1978.

Masako Togawa

 

Honda appears to have been a rare starring role for actor Noboru Nakaya, although he played a couple of other leads for Nakahira around this time. Nakaya was married to Kyoko Kishida (star of The Woman in the Dunes), but in the film his character’s wife – an artist who paints bizarre pictures in the style of Dali – is played by Masako Togawa in her only major film role. Togawa was the author of the novel upon which the film was based and was also a well-known singer. She gives a strong performance in the film while Nakaya, though an able enough actor, is perhaps a little nondescript. Also notable among the cast are Shohei Imamura favourite Kazuo Kitamura as a genial lawyer and Yukiyo Toake, who is wonderfully expressive as his naïve assistant. 

Kazuo Kitamura and Yukiyo Toake

 

There is much to enjoy here, so let’s hope that the film gains a wider audience and more of Ko Nakahira’s work surfaces outside Japan.

Seen in a 35mm print with English subtitles at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, on 6 February 2022.

Season of the Sun / 太陽の季節 / Taiyo no kisetsu (1956)

 Obscure Japanese Film #12

 

Yoko Minamida and Hiroyuki Nagato

A bit of background may be useful here, so please bear with me before we get to the actual film…

Shintaro Ishihara, who died at the age of 89 two days before I write this, was a far-right politician who served as Governor of Tokyo from 1999-2012. He was also a writer who had won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize whilst still a student in 1956 for his short story Season of the Sun. This was a controversial choice and the prize jury themselves had been divided over the selection.

Having just read the English translation published by Tuttle in 1966 under the new title Season of Violence, I personally felt the story to be devoid of literary merit and found it more akin to a hastily-written first draft of a synopsis than a finished work of literature. If it has any value, it’s in the portrayal of a certain type of post-war Japanese teenager which became known as the ‘sun tribe’. These were the sons and daughters from well-to-do families who approached life with little concern for morality, living only to indulge their own hedonistic impulses. While Ishihara does not necessarily glamorise these characters, he certainly refuses to take a disapproving stance in regard to their casual cruelty and promiscuity. It was this that led Ishihara’s work to find favour with another right-wing writer with similar thematic concerns (the more talented Yukio Mishima), but also raised the hackles of the older generation, and there is some evidence to suggest that a certain amount of young Japanese at the time saw the ‘sun tribe’ life as something to aspire to. The controversy was, of course, great publicity for Ishihara, and the film rights to his story were immediately snapped up by Nikkatsu, who wasted no time in producing their adaptation.

With the exception of one notorious sexual scene which had to be omitted, the film is faithful to the story and even adds a little flesh to the bones. Tatsuya is a student who abandons basketball in favour of boxing. Despite his young age, he’s already a womaniser, but meets his match when he becomes involved with Eiko, a young woman who claims she’s unable to fall in love. They have an on-again, off-again relationship, which at one point sees Tatsuya (without Eiko’s knowledge) taking 5,000 yen from his brother, Michihisa, in exchange for leaving the two alone so that Michihisa can attempt to seduce her. The story is apparently based on gossip related to Ishihara by his brother, Yujiro. 

Tatsuya is played by Hiroyuki Nagato, best-known in the West as the lead in Shohei Imamura’s Pigs and Battleships, a film in which his co-star, Yoko Minamida, also appeared. Season of the Sun was their first picture together, but far from their last – they became a couple and went on to co-star in around 25 films. Fortunately, they were also more faithful than their on-screen counterparts; they married in 1961, remaining so until Minamida’s passing in 2009. 

Yujiro Ishihara (centre) in his film debut.

 

Season of the Sun is also notable for marking the film debut of Yujiro Ishihara, the brother of Shintaro, who appears in a small role as a fellow member of the boxing team, while Shintaro himself is briefly seen as a footballer. When Shintaro’s story Crazed Fruit was to be filmed the same year, he insisted that Yujiro be cast in the lead. The studio agreed and Yujiro Ishihara rapidly became one of Japan’s biggest movie stars as a result. Meanwhile, Shintaro Ishihara also played the lead in a couple of films, but was a good deal less successful – the response to his performance in A Dangerous Hero (Kiken na eiyu, 1957) was so poor that it effectively ended his film career. 

Shintaro Ishihara in his cameo as the footballer.

 

The director of Season, Takumi Furukawa, enjoys little in the way of reputation, although his later picture Cruel Gun Story (Kenju zankoku monogatari, 1964) popped up in Criterion’s Nikkatsu Noir box set some years ago. However, he makes good use of some still-life shots while staging all scenes effectively. Even if it’s not as strong a piece of work as Ko Nakahira’s Ishihara adaptation (the aforementioned Crazed Fruit), the film certainly impressed me more than the original story. Another plus is Masaru Sato’s restrained Spanish guitar score, which makes a nice change from the typical orchestrated movie music and may have begun the vogue for Spanish guitar in Japanese films of this period. Although the characters in the film seem shallow and unlikeable at first, the strong performances from the two leads lend them some much-needed depth and suggest an emotional vulnerability and confusion bubbling away beneath the surface.