The Way of Drama / 芝居道 / Shibaido (1944)

Obscure Japanese Film #71

Kazuo Hasegawa

Set during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, this Toho production stars Kazuo Hasegawa as Shinzo, a young stage actor in Osaka whose newfound popularity playing military heroes has gone to his head. He has a sweetheart, Hanaryu (Isuzu Yamada), a shamisen player he is planning to marry, but his master, Heikichi (Roppa Furukawa), thinks he has become too arrogant and will never succeed in the long-term if he allows himself to be distracted by marriage. Heikichi decides to ask Hanaryu to break off the relationship for Shinzo’s own good… 

Isuzu Yamada

 

In his film The Song Lantern from the previous year, director Mikio Naruse had managed to avoid making military propaganda, but by this point it was a case of either spread the message the authorities wanted to put across or don’t make a movie. The Way of Drama was adapted by the prolific Toshio Yasumi based on a novel by Koen Hasegawa (1904-77). It’s unclear whether the propaganda aspect was present in the original, but the film certainly contains a rather obvious message about the importance of self-sacrifice. The character of Heikichi, the theatre director, is portrayed as a very noble man because he puts on plays about heroic soldiers and keeps ticket prices low so that as many people as possible will learn that the goal of destroying the enemy is far more important than one’s own paltry little life. Of course, this is unlikely to strike a chord with many viewers nowadays, but if we can ignore this aspect of the film, there are some pleasures to be found in the fine performances of Hasegawa and Yamada. Incidentally, the one scene in which Hasegawa is really bad is the opening scene in the theatre, where he plays a mortally wounded soldier delivering his patriotic last words as he expires – could Hasegawa and Naruse have been subtly taking the rise out of the military here?

Hasegawa and Eitaro Shindo

 

The supporting cast is also strong and features Takashi Shimura as a rival theatre director, Ranko Hanai as Heikichi’s cheerful daughter and Eitaro Shindo as a seasoned elder thespian. Directed by Naruse, it goes without saying that The Way of Drama is well-made, although working under the constraints and with the limited resources that he was at the time, it is obviously not one of his best. 

Takashi Shimura, Roppa Furukawa and Ranko Hanai

 

Woman Walks the Earth Alone / 女ひとり大地を行く / Onna hitori daichi o yuku (1953)

Obscure Japanese Film #70

Isuzu Yamada

The story begins in 1932. Sayo (Isuzu Yamada) and Kisaku (Jukichi Uno) are a married couple with two young children living in Akita Prefecture. Times are hard and they are struggling to make ends meet. Kisaku decides that the only thing for it is to go off to Hokkaido and work in the coal mines. He very quickly realises his mistake when he witnesses a co-worker being tortured to death by a supervisor. Kisaku decides to run away, but on the day of his escape there’s an explosion at the mine and he is presumed to be among the fatalities. 

Jukichi Uno

 

Hearing nothing from her husband, Sayo travels to Hokkaido with her children, where she is informed of his death. She decides to stay on and work as a miner herself. Eventually, she becomes involved with a male co-worker, Kaneko (Isao Numasaki), but he is drafted into the army and killed in World War 2. After the war, the harsh military regime rapidly collapses and conditions at the mine improve a little, enabling Sayo to get an easier job sorting the coal away from the mine. Her eldest son, Kiichi (Jinkichi Orimoto), hates the life of a coal miner and runs off with a nurse, Fumiko (Yoshiko Sakurai), while her younger son, Kiyoji (Taketoshi Naito), joins the union and starts going out with Takako (Hatae Kishi), but becomes involved in a conflict with her father, who has been collaborating with the bosses. 

Given the subject matter and the fact that one of the screenwriters is Kaneto Shindo, it will be no surprise to learn that this is a very left-wing film. Like some of Satsuo Yamamoto’s similarly-oriented films of the same period, it was made outside the studio system with money raised from thousands of union members each making a small contribution. The production company responsible, Kinuta Productions, had been established with funds paid by Toho Studios to the Japan Film and Theatre Workers’ Union in settlement of a legal dispute. Kinuta Productions had already made Haha nareba onna nareba (something like ‘A Mother is also a Woman’) the previous year, also starring Isuzu Yamada and directed by Fumio Kamei (1908-87). Kamei was a radical who had studied in the Soviet Union and subsequently worked at Toho before the content of his work had angered the Japanese authorities, who actually put him in prison for some time as a result. He also made documentaries, but the fact that he had to work outside the studio system due to his politics seems to have restricted his output more than it did that of his friend Satsuo Yamamoto, partly because Woman Walks the Earth Alone was a commercial failure.

Tanie Kitabayashi

 

As the film was shot on location, the cast and crew stayed with local coal mining families, lending authenticity, but perhaps partially explaining the lack of well-known names among the cast. Aside from Isuzu Yamada and Jukichi Uno, the most familiar faces are probably Kon Ichikawa favourites Tanie Kitabayashi (as a friend of Sayo’s) and Jun Hamamura, the latter in an uncharacteristic role as a bullying supervisor. Although Yamada is the ostensible star, the film spends a lot of time with its other characters and her role is not one of her most memorable. One reason the film is not better known may simply be because, as a non- studio picture, it has fallen through the cracks somewhat, but it would also be difficult to claim this as a forgotten masterpiece. Some of the characters are too one-dimensional, the ending is sentimental, and it occasionally lapses into melodrama, with the brutality of the supervisors particularly being overdone and straight out of the playbook of Soviet propaganda cinema. 

Originally, the film ran at 164 minutes, but an organisation known as the Film Ethics Committee (or ‘Eirin’ for short) objected to the references to the Korean War, and this was apparently the reason why it was cut to 132 minutes (the pressure to increase coal production that leads to the miners’ protest towards the end of the film was originally attributed to aiding the U.S. military in the Korean War, in regard to which Japan was officially neutral). The shorter version is the one I have seen and I feel that it would probably have more impact in the longer cut (which, happily, still survives, although is yet to be released on home video).

Isuzu Yamada

 

The Fir Tree Remains /樅ノ木は残った / Momino ki ha nokotta (1983)

Obscure Japanese Film #69

Tatsuya Nakadai

 

In this Fuji TV movie, Tatsuya Nakadai stars as Kai Harada (1619-71), a samurai magistrate involved in the Daté Uproar (aka the Kanbun Incident), a factional squabble which erupted into violence when the young head of the Daté clan, Tsunamune Daté, was exiled as a punishment for debauchery and replaced by a 2-year-old. It was rumoured that Tsunamune’s punishment was a ruse by the shogunate, who wanted to weaken the power of the feudal lords. 

The Fir Tree Remains is based on an untranslated novel of the same name by Shugoro Yamamoto, a favourite writer of Akira Kurosawa, whose films Sanjuro, Red Beard and Dodes’ka-den were all based on Yamamoto stories. Yamamoto was also a favourite of Yasuko Miyazaki, the former actress who married Tatsuya Nakadai and later became a screenwriter under the name of Tomoe Ryu. Her first script had been a television adaptation of Yamamoto’s Tsuri shinobu back in 1966, while her screenplay for Masaki Kobayashi’s Inn of Evil was based on another of his novels, which she re-adapted for television in 1982 as Jigoku no okite and later as a stage play.

Here we have a complex story to tell in 90 minutes and one that I can’t say I found terribly engaging, although it’s certainly got a few things going for it. One of several period dramas Nakadai made for television under the direction of Akira Inoue around this time, for a 1983 TV movie, it’s surprisingly well-lit and photographed. The acting is also pretty decent on the whole, with Nakadai’s confident restraint being especially effective as the unflappable Kai Harada, who – like the fir tree in his garden – keeps his own counsel while those around him are (literally) losing their heads. According to Japanese Wikipedia, Harada had usually been depicted as a scheming villain prior to Yamamoto’s story; here, he’s portrayed as a sympathetic character with pure motives. 

Eitaro Ozawa

 

Also popping up among the cast are Eitaro Ozawa, one of Nakadai’s acting teachers from his student days, and a young Koji Yakusho, one of his students from his teaching days. 

Some of the music’s a bit clichéd and the subtitles are sometimes a bit odd (“I am sorry about this ruckus. Go away please.”), but on the whole I’d say this is worth a look for Nakadai fans. 

Yamamoto’s novel had previously been filmed for the cinema in 1962 by Kenji Misumi under the title Aobajo no oni (Aoba Castle Demon) in a version starring Kazuo Hasegawa, while other television adaptations were made in 1964, 1970 (with Mikijiro Hira), 1990 and 2010. 

Thanks to Samurai vs. Ninja for making this available on YouTube here.

Revenge / 仇討/ Adauchi (1964)

Obscure Japanese Film #68

 

Shinpachi (Kinnosuke Nakamura) is a low-ranking samurai from a nevertheless prestigious family. His sense of pride has made him quick to take offence so, when a higher-ranking samurai (Shigeru Koyama) from the same clan criticises him for not taking sufficient care over the condition of the weapons, Shinpachi answers back and an argument begins which escalates into a duel. This first duel leads to further duels and Shinpachi finds himself increasingly backed into a corner when those in power decide to rig the game in order to suppress his protest once and for all.

Kinnosuke Nakamura

 

While less well-known overseas than Toshiro Mifune or Tatsuya Nakadai, Kinnosuke Nakamura was an equally big star in Japan. I find him more effective in some films than others, but he’s especially good as the mad Lord Horikawa in Portrait of Hell (1969) and he’s equally good here portraying another character whose sanity is questionable.  While some may feel he goes over the top, for me his twitchy intensity suits the role perfectly.

Tetsuro Tanba

The other actors who make the most impression here are the always-reliable Masao Mishima as the sheriff who finds himself in a difficult position, Tetsuro Tanba as Shinpachi’s formidable second opponent, and, perhaps best of all, Eitaro Shindo as the rather worldly monk at whose temple Shinpachi takes refuge. 

Of the eight films by director Tadashi Imai I’ve seen so far, this may be the strongest, but is certainly not the most typical. Imai made films in a wide range of styles and settings, but this work is reminiscent of the artistically-ambitious samurai films of Akira Kurosawa and Masaki Kobayashi – unsurprising as the original screenplay was written by Kurosawa favourite Shinobu Hashimoto, who also penned Kobayashi’s Harakiri (1962) and Samurai Rebellion (1967). Hashimoto uses a complex flashback structure which works very well and lends a sense of inevitability to the tragic events which unfold. 

The extras on the Eureka Blu-ray by Tony Rayns, Jasper Sharp and Tom Mes are all interesting and well-informed and avoid becoming too dryly academic. I had the impression that the film is generally seen as an attack on authority and the way it oppresses the freedom and dignity of individuals, and this theme certainly fits with Hashimoto’s scripts for Kobayashi. However, although this may well have been the intention, the character of Shinpachi is not terribly sympathetic and I felt that the film made a different point more effectively – the dire consequences which ensue as a result of Shinpachi’s refusal to ignore a criticism show the dangers of placing pride over pragmatism, and he is perhaps just as much at fault as the system he is caught up in. 

Revenge also benefits from a strong score by Toshiro Mayuzumi, who on this occasion strikes a good balance between his desire to use modernist techniques and the necessity of serving the drama.  The black-and-white ‘scope cinematography by frequent Tadashi Imai collaborator Shunichiro Nakao is also first-rate and looks great in Eureka’s release, as does the cover art by Tony Stella. One minor quibble, though – the cast list in the booklet only lists five of the actors, not even including Eitaro Shindo, who plays a major role in the film.

Eureka Blu-ray

Home Sweet Home / 我が家は楽し / Waga ya wa tanoshi (1951)

Obscure Japanese Film #67

Isuzu Yamada and Hideko Takamine

This Shochiku production stars Hideko Takamine as Tomoko, the eldest child of office worker Kosaku Uemura (Chishu Ryu) and housewife Namiko (Isuzu Yamada). As she has three younger siblings, there are a total of six members of the family living together. They are struggling to make ends meet on Kosaku’s modest salary, so Namiko works from home as a seamstress. A cheerfully self-sacrificing woman, she eats bread to save money while serving her family rice and never complains even though her slightly bumbling and absent-minded husband has not exactly set the world on fire.

Chishu Ryu

 

Tomoko is in her early 20s and has ambitions to be a painter. Her fiancé, Saburo (Keiji Sada), is a war veteran with tuberculosis; she goes to visit him regularly in the sanatorium where he is a patient. Tomoko’s 18-year-old sister Nobuko (Keiko Kishi in her film debut) has started to become very popular with the local boys, something which causes some concern for her parents. Meanwhile, Tomoko feels she should probably give up painting and get a job to ease the financial burden on her family, but when Kosaku gets a bonus at work, it seems as if all their problems will be solved. However, just at the moment their hopes have been raised, they hit a run of bad luck and everything starts to go wrong…

Hideko Takamine and Keiko Kishi

 

Cinema audiences of the time must have related strongly to the problems faced by the Uemura family in a Japan that was yet to have recovered economically from the war. As portrayed here by a remarkable cast of then-present and future stars, the whole family are so likeable that you really feel for them when bad luck strikes.

Keiji Sada

 

This is the only film I’ve seen by director Noboru Nakamura (not to be confused with the more Roger Corman-like Nobuo Nakagawa!). Apparently, this was the first film of Nakamura’s to receive a considerable amount of positive attention from the critics of the day. I can’t say that I noticed anything exceptional in his direction, but the film compares well to similar domestic dramas by such filmmakers such as Ozu and Naruse – in fact, screenwriter Sumie Tanaka often wrote for Naruse – and I would certainly recommend it to anyone who enjoys their work.

UPDATE: I've since seen director Noburo Nakamura's Koto (1963), a really excellent film featuring a great dual performance by Shima Iwashita. I haven't reviewed it as I felt I had little to add to Japan on Film's review, which you can read here.