Hirate Miki / 平手造酒 (1951)

Obscure Japanese Film #49

Ranko Hanai

Hirate Miki (c.1814-1844) was a swordsman who became a bodyguard for a yakuza boss and died in a fight with a rival gang. There were numerous films about him throughout the 1920s and ‘30s, but these abruptly ceased at the time that Japan entered WW2, presumably because Miki was killed at a young age and his story would have been seen as defeatist. His first reappearance in a movie after the war was as a supporting character in Shintoho’s Tenpo suiko-den: Otone no yogiri (1950), in which he had also been played by So Yamamura, the star of this film. 

So Yamamura

 

Hirate Miki is reminiscent of Kurosawa’s Sanshiro Sugata (1943) in that the heroes of both are martial arts experts who undergo a spiritual crisis which causes them to stray from the path of righteousness before they finally redeem themselves. Aside from the choice of martial art and the lighter ending of Kurosawa’s film, the main point of difference between the two works is that Miki, as played by Yamamura, is an unlikeable and charmless character; ‘He must have quit smiling in the womb!’, one character aptly comments. Yamamura seems an odd choice as he was already 41 when this was made and is clearly too old for the role. 

 

Miki starts out as an idealistic young man whose skill sees him move quickly up the ranks. However, he is frustrated in his romantic ambitions and becomes bitter about the importance of money and status. One night, he gets drunk, trashes a restaurant and loses a lucrative new position as a result. Admonished by the head of his dojo, he nevertheless continues to be insufferable, frequently beating the crap out of his poor students with his bamboo practise sword.  Eventually, he runs off with a geisha, Masuji (Ranko Hanai from Kurosawa's Sanshiro Sugata). She is another disappointed idealist, having worked hard for years to become a top shamisen player only to find that her male clients have little interest in that particular skill. Meanwhile, Miki falls ill with tuberculosis and ends up working for a yakuza boss. There’s a splendidly ironic moment when Miki begins coughing up blood after slaying a bunch of rival gang members; his friend, standing amid the corpses, finally decides the moment has come to shout for a doctor.

 

The narrative of the film is rather choppy to say the least – hardly surprising as the version I saw ran 64 minutes, and it seems there was originally a longer 107-minute version. With 43 minutes missing, it’s not really possible to judge this film fairly in my opinion, but what remains is certainly worth a look for the fine cinematography (by Kikuzo Kawasaki) and a number of nice touches, such as the paper crane made by Masuji which finally softens the heart of old misery-guts Miki. 

 

Further Kurosawa connections include a cameo by eccentric geriatric-specialist Bokuzen Hidari as a priest and the fact that this was the second script by the great screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto to be filmed (Rashomon being the first). Director Kyotaro Namiki does fine work here but is remembered, if at all, for a couple of horror films he made towards the end of his career, The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty (1957) and Vampire Bride (1960).