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.