365 Nights / 三百六十五夜 / Sambyaku-rokujugo ya (1948)

Obscure Japanese film #34

Hideko Takamine

 

After making his feature film debut as director[1] with the Shintoho production A Flower Blooms (1948) starring Hideko Takamine and Ken Uehara, Kon Ichikawa was assigned the task of directing another vehicle for the same two stars. He was handed a screenplay by Kennosuke Tateoka based on a 1946 novel by Masajiro Kojima (1894-1994)[2] entitled 365 Nights. Although unimpressed with the script, he agreed in the hope that a studio-pleasing success would enable him to make a film version of Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s short story ‘In a Grove’, but he was to be disappointed in this as Akira Kurosawa pipped him to the post and used the story as the basis for Rashomon (1950). Ichikawa allegedly rewrote the screenplay for 365 Nights with his newly-wed wife Natto Wada while leaving Tateoka sole credit. However, in my view he failed to raise it above the level of melodramatic tosh and I lost count of the number of coincidences on which the overly-contrived plot relies. 

Ken Uehara

 

Kawakita (Ken Uehara) is an up-and-coming young architect being relentlessly pursued by spoilt rich bitch Ranko (Hideko Takamine), who claims to love him for his ‘sincerity’ (this seems unlikely – the real reason is perhaps that he shows not the slightest interest in her). In order to avoid Ranko, Kawakita changes address, lodging with a middle-aged woman and her attractive daughter, Teruko (Hisako Yamane), with whom he quickly falls in love. However, the young couple’s hopes of marriage and future happiness are foiled by Kawakita’s old enemy, Tsugawa (Yuji Hori), an unscrupulous businessman who wants to marry Ranko and hates Kawakita partly out of jealousy, but mainly because the idealistic Kawakita regards him with contempt for his crass materialism. 

Hisako Yamane

 

Tsugawa is such a comic-book villain I’m sure Ichikawa would have had him twirling his moustache had it been longer, while the actions of Kawakita and Teruko are so foolish throughout that one soon loses patience with them. The fact that these three characters are so unrealistic makes it difficult to assess the abilities of Uehara, Yamane and Hori on this evidence. However, it’s no surprise that the best performance here comes from the great Hideko Takamine – as egotistical and arrogant as her character is, she at least resembles a real human being for whom it’s possible to feel some sympathy. It’s also Takamine with whom Ichikawa chooses to end the movie rather enigmatically practising golf. As this is a Western sport, it may be symbolic, especially as Ranko is always seen dressed in Western clothes, while Teruko – the embodiment of purity – is usually shown in Japanese dress. Takamine left Shintoho in 1950 and went freelance, but surprisingly never worked for Ichikawa again after 365 Nights. 

Yuji Hori

 

For his part, despite his failure to rescue the script, Ichikawa does impress as a director, staging many sequences with considerable flair – there is a terrific prolonged fight scene when Kawakita confronts a burglar, for example, and he even breaks the rules by having Tsugawa rant directly to the camera at one point. Ichikawa is ably assisted by the fluid camerawork of Akira Mimura, although the music by Tadashi Hattori is cloying and has not dated well. 

Hideko Takamine

 

Like Ichikawa’s later picture, The Burmese Harp (1956), the film was originally released in two parts. The first half (set in Tokyo) appeared in cinemas on 21 September 1948, the second half (set in Osaka) a week later, running 78 minutes and 73 minutes respectively. The following year, a re-edited omnibus edition was released running 119 minutes – this is apparently the only version to have survived. Personally, I felt that this shorter version felt overlong, but then again sentimental tearjerkers of this type are not my favourite genre. However, 365 Nights was very popular in its day and was remade in 1962 by director Kunio Watanabe with Ken Takakura as Kawakita and Hibari Misora as Ranko. On the whole, I would say that the original remains worth seeing for some interesting direction by Ichikawa and for Hideko Takamine.

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[1] Ichikawa himself did not count his earlier A Thousand and One Nights at Toho, made under a pseudonym.

[2] Sometimes mistranslated as Seijiro Kojima

 

Night Butterflies / 夜の蝶 / Yoru no cho (1957)

Obscure Japanese Film #33

Machiko Kyo

 

Opening in documentary style as it takes us on a whistle-stop night-time tour around the upmarket bars of Tokyo’s Ginza district, Night Butterflies features intermittent narration by the world-weary Shuji (Eiji Funakoshi, best known for his leading role in Fires on the Plain), a failed musician turned ‘hostess-broker’. He finds bar hostess jobs for young women, many of whom have come to the capital due to the difficulty of earning a decent wage in the country. More spiv than pimp, Shuji treats the girls reasonably well and does not take advantage of them. 

Fujiko Yamamoto

One of his best clients is Mari (Machiko Kyo), a bar owner from Osaka, where people are said to be more outspoken and down-to-earth than in Tokyo, and this is certainly true in her case.  Mari’s bar is thriving, but she is displeased to hear the news that Okiku (Fujiko Yamamoto) has just arrived in the area and will shortly be opening a bar of her own. Okiku is originally from Kyoto, a city often seen as the polar opposite to Osaka and whose inhabitants have something of a reputation for pretentious and snobbish behaviour. The two women have a history revealed in black-and-white flashbacks – seven years previously, Mari had discovered that her late husband was cheating on her with Okiku. Initially, the two rivals are frostily polite to each other, but their mutual loathing simmers away beneath the surface before eventually boiling over, leading to tragedy. 

Machiko Kyo and Eiji Funakoshi

 

Like the previously-reviewed Beauty is Guilty, Night Butterflies was based on a novel by Matsutaro Kawaguchi[1] and adapted by Sumie Tanaka, although the two films seem to mark the extent of their collaborations. Director Kozaburo Yoshimura (1911-2000) was a well-respected filmmaker who specialised in drama but occasionally experimented with comedy, as in The Fellows Who Ate the Elephant (1947). An Osaka Story (1957) is perhaps the most impressive of his accessible films. While well-executed, Night Butterflies is interesting mainly for its story, subject matter and two female stars. Shot in academy ratio during the last days of that format in Japan before widescreen became standard, it left me feeling that the latter format usually makes for more arresting compositions even in dramas of this sort, despite Fritz Lang’s famous apocryphal quote that Cinemascope was only good for photographing funerals and snakes. If Yoshimura’s film had been shot in widescreen, it would closely resemble the work of fellow Daiei director Yasuzo Masumura, especially in its misanthropic outlook (although a Masumura version would probably have featured Shuji slapping the girls around and taking advantage of them).  

There is one extremely jarring transition in the film – around 50 minutes in, we suddenly find ourselves observing a new character, a doctor (Hiroshi Akutagawa), squeezing blood out of a prostrate rabbit while his lab assistant fiancée (Mieko Kondo) reluctantly helps. It’s like suddenly finding yourself watching a completely different movie, although the connection to the main story does become apparent in the end. Otherwise, the film holds no major surprises, but the climactic tragedy is well-staged and it’s an effective cautionary tale about the dangers of pursuing revenge. It’s also worth viewing to see the face-off between Osaka and Kyoto personified by two of Japan’s top female stars.

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[1] Kawaguchi’s novel had the same title and was published the same year the film was released. It was based on the real-life rivalry between Rumiko Kawabe (1917-1989), proprietress of a bar called Espoir, and Hide Ueha, also known as Osome (1923-2012), who owned a bar of the same name financed by a politician. Matsutaro Kawaguchi was a regular customer at Osome. However, the feud between Kawabe (the model for Mari) and Okiku (the model for Osome) did not end in tragedy and it was even said they eventually became friends. Ueha appeared as herself in Yuzo Kawashima’s The Balloon (1956).

House of Wooden Blocks / 積木の箱 / Tsumiki no hako (1968)

Obscure Japanese Film #32

Yoshiro Uchida and Ayako Wakao

In the 18^th of her 20 films for director Yasuzo Masumura, Ayako Wakao plays a supporting character for the first time in their collaboration since the 1961 picture A Lustful Man. Even for a supporting role, the character she portrays in House of Wooden Blocks is not very interesting and certainly presents no challenge to her acting skills, so one wonders whether she would have agreed to the part had the choice been hers. The Japanese film studios at the time worked their stars very hard and would generally sooner put a star into a minor role than have them not working, so (unlike in Hollywood) it was not unusual to see them in around 10 films a year flitting between leads, supports and the odd cameo. It was also very difficult for stars to say no if they were under contract, as can be seen from the case of one of Daiei Studios’ other big female stars, Fujiko Yamamoto, whose film career came to an abrupt end in 1963 when she rebelled. Of course, it’s possible that Wakao may have felt some loyalty towards Masumura, but he was later to describe her as a ‘cold and calculating woman’ (whether or not this assessment is fair, I have no idea).

Kayo Matsuo and Yoshiro Uchida

 

The main character in House of Wooden Blocks is Ichiro (Yoshiro Uchida), a boy of around 14 who is shocked one day to see his elder sister Namie (Kayo Matsuo) rolling around naked on the bed with his father, Goichi (Asao Uchida). He subsequently discovers that Namie is not actually his sister, but was adopted by his father as a child and later became his mistress. Now wanting to avoid his own family, Ichiro finds himself drawn to Hisayo (Ayako Wakao), a single mother who runs a local shop, and he becomes like an older brother to her young son. Meanwhile, Ichiro’s easygoing teacher, Sugiura (Ken Ogata), is also attracted to Hisayo, sparking feelings of jealousy in his pupil. Sugiura has noticed a change in Ichiro, who has become increasingly moody since realising the true nature of the relationship between his father and Namie. However, Sugiura’s efforts to help are rebuffed by Ichiro, who begins to wonder why Hisayo always avoids his father…

Ayako Wakao, Yoshiro Uchida and Ken Ogata

A more literal translation of the Japanese title would be ‘Box of Wooden Building Blocks’, but it seems to be a metaphor akin to the English ‘House of Cards’ in the sense that Goichi has built his family on shaky foundations and it won’t take much to send it all crashing down, which indeed proves to be the case. 

Ken Ogata and Ayako Wakao

 

Dealing with a young man’s simultaneous disillusionment and sexual awakening, Masumura apparently described this work as ‘a boy’s Vita Sexualis’, this being the title of a classic 1909 novel by the Japanese author Ogai Mori, best-known for the story on which Kenji Mizoguchi’s Sansho the Bailiff was based. However, this film was adapted by Masumura and Ichiro Ikeda from a just-published novel of the same name by Ayako Miura, who also supplied the source material for Satsuo Yamamoto’s Freezing Point (1966) starring Ayako Wakao. Masumura frequently adapted new novels and without a translation it’s hard to know how faithfully he did so, but I expect that much of the misanthropic vision to be found here and in other Masumura adaptations like Hanran comes from him as it’s such a common thread in his work.

House of Wooden Blocks features a restrained classical-style score by Tadashi Yamauchi, who had composed the music for a number of Masumura's other pictures, while the photography by another regular collaborator, Setsuo Kobayashi, looks a bit more rushed than in their previous work – perhaps a result of Daiei’s dwindling finances. The cast is also less distinguished than usual. A young and surprisingly skinny Ken Ogata tries hard as the too-good-to-be-true teacher, but it’s not much of a part. At the other end of the scale, shameless scene-stealer Kayo Matsuo certainly gives value for money as bitchy nympho Namie, but the characters here are simply too one-dimensional for the film to really hit home.

My Way /わが道/ Waga michi (1974)

Obscure Japanese Film #31

Nobuko Otowa

Taking place between 1966-1971, this is a work of social realism based on a true story and starring director Kaneto Shindo’s usual leading actress (also mistress and later wife), Nobuko Otowa. She plays Mino Kawamura, who lives in a neglected rural community badly in need of ‘levelling up’ where she runs a noodle shop with her husband, Yoshizo (played by Shindo’s other main regular, Taiji Tonoyama). The couple are in their 60s and struggling to get by as they have hardly any customers and both have health issues. In desperation, Yoshizo takes a trip in the hope of finding some temporary work as a labourer, but Mino becomes worried when his bag is found abandoned and sent back to her. She visits the police and reports him missing, but is repeatedly given the brush-off and spends the next nine months trying to find answers until she sees his photo in a collection of pictures of unidentified corpses at the police station. She then discovers that the corpse has been given to a medical university to dissect. There is a terrible moment when she insists on viewing the dissected body to ensure it really is her husband inside the cheap wooden box at the university. To make matters worse, Mino learns that, despite the presence of receipts in the dead man’s wallet which would have made it fairly easy to identify the body, no real effort had been made to do so. She refuses to let the matter lie and campaigns to expose the negligence of the system that has failed her so miserably. 

Two great actors: Nobuko Otowa and Taiji Tonoyama

 

Shot in academy ratio, My Way is not a very cinematic film, but it’s well-made and acted as one would expect from this filmmaker, while Hikaru Hayashi’s percussive music score helps to create a feeling of suspense. The problem is that, once we learn the fate of Yoshizo about an hour in, the narrative loses much of its interest and most of the second half is taken up by an interminable court case in which sundry sweaty policemen and doctors try to worm their way out of responsibility. This is simply too repetitive, predictable and over-extended.

Shindo clearly wanted to bring attention to the plight of those living in failing communities, and there are a couple of subplots involving women who resort to prostitution after their husbands have fled. These hardly help to lighten the tone, which is pretty grim on the whole despite the presence of various characters who rally round Mino and give her their support. One has to admire the incredibly prolific Shindo for tackling such difficult, uncommercial subjects and somehow getting them made, but in this case the second half is too flawed for the film to be counted a success.