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.