Dancing Girl / 舞姫 / Maihime (1951)

Obscure Japanese Film #74

Mariko Okada

  

Namiko (Mieko Takamine) is a ballet teacher married to university prof Yagi (So Yamamura). They have two grown children – Shinako (Mariko Okada), who aspires to be a ballet dancer like her mother, and her brother Takao (Akihiko Katayama). However, the marriage was an arranged one, and Namiko still has feelings for former sweetheart Takehara (Hiroshi Nihonyanagi), whom she still sees regularly, although their relationship is platonic. This puts an increasing strain on the marriage while Shinako and Takao look on uneasily. Meanwhile, Shinako’s disillusionment deepens when she finds herself powerless to help either Kayama – her former ballet teacher whose career has ended due to a war wound (Heihachiro Okawa) – or Tomoko (Reiko Otani), a fellow student reduced to working as a stripper in an effort to help her sick lover. 

Mieko Takamine and Hiroshi Nihonyanagi

 

This Toho production is based on a novel published the same year by Yasunari Kawabata, who in 1968 became the first Japanese writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The novel is not regarded as one of his major works and has yet to be translated into English (although there have been translations in German and Spanish) and it should be noted that Kawabata also wrote a famous story entitled The Dancing Girl of Izu, which is entirely unrelated to this one. The screenplay was written by Kaneto Shindo, who may be the most prolific screenwriter of all time with over 200 credits, but is best known as the director of Onibaba, Kuroneko and The Naked Island. He appears to have made a few changes to the original, some of which may be explained by the fact that films still had to be approved by the occupying Americans in 1951 (presumably not too difficult in this case as Dancing Girl promotes Western culture while also including some anti-war dialogue). The platonic nature of the relationship between Namiko and Takehara appears to have been the same in the original, but the Buddhist theme of the novel is largely absent and there is no mention of Takao’s flirtation with communism or Takehara being married. Unfortunately, Shindo chose to write a new scene in which Shinako visits her former ballet teacher on his deathbed – this scene is incredibly corny and easily the worst bit in the film. 

 

So Yamamura and Mieko Takamine

This sequence aside, director Mikio Naruse does a fine job, appropriately staging many scenes so that his characters have their backs to each other, which serves to emphasize their emotional distance. Ichiro Saito’s Western-style, string-laden score should perhaps have been used more sparingly, although it could be argued that it matches the maudlin tone of the film. The cast are solid across the board and it’s interesting to see Mariko Okada in her film debut even if she was obviously doubled for most of the ballet sequences. Okada would go on to rival Ayako Wakao as one of Japan’s top film actresses and, although her performance here may not quite have the subtlety of her later ones, she acquits herself pretty well in a major role that must have been daunting for an 18-year-old who had been signed as a ‘Toho New Face’ just 20 days before this film went into production.

The Hunting Rifle / 猟銃 / Ryoju (1961)

Obscure Japanese Film #73

Mariko Okada

 

Saiko (Fujiko Yamamoto), the wife of Kadota, a young doctor (Keiji Sada), receives an unexpected visit one day from Hamako (Nobuko Otowa), an emotionally unstable woman accompanied by a 5-year-old girl she claims to be Kadota’s daughter. Hamako dumps the girl, Shoko, on her, saying she is no longer able to raise her by herself and Shoko is Kadota’s responsibility. Shortly after leaving, Hamako commits suicide. Feeling sorry for Shoko, Saiko decides to raise her as her own, but cannot forgive her husband his infidelity and insists on a divorce. 

 

Fujiko Yamamoto

Sometime later, Saiko goes to visit her newly-married cousin, the 20-year-old Midori (Mariko Okada), and meets her much older, pottery-fancying husband, Misugi (Shin Saburi), for the first time. Misugi tricks Saiko into going for a walk alone with him, which leads to a long-running affair. Eight years passes, and Misugi and Saiko still have no idea that Midori has known they’ve been cheating on her almost from the beginning but has chosen to remain silent…

 

Keiji Sada

This Shochiku production is quite a free adaptation of Yasushi Inoue’s highbrow 60-page novella first published in 1949. The original story is introduced by a narrator who has been contacted out of the blue by a hunter (Misugi) after the latter realised that he must have been the inspiration for a man portrayed by the poet in one of his works. Misugi sends him a letter from each of the three women in his life, and it is these letters through which the rest of the story unfolds. Such a literary device was obviously not going to work for the cinema, so it was understandably dropped by screenwriter Toshio Yasumi, who had already collaborated on half a dozen other films with this film’s director, Heinosuke Gosho (and would go on to write a terrific screenplay for Shiro Toyoda’s Portrait of Hell). However, despite the fact that several scenes are replicated faithfully, much of the character motivation evident in the novella is not put across well here. 

 

Shin Saburi upstaged by a lamp

Indeed, The Hunting Rifle features perhaps the most implausible seduction scene in cinema history when Misugi, having known Saiko for what seems like five minutes, poses the question, ‘Being obsessed with Joseon white porcelain is alright, so why shouldn’t I be obsessed by you?’, which is apparently all it takes for her to melt into his arms. In the book, this is not really a ‘scene’ at all, and so is not an issue, especially as Saiko goes on to explain her motivation. Another clumsy moment occurs in the film when Misugi gives Shoko (now played by Haruko Wanibuchi) a book for her 16th birthday, explaining that the contents are all about love. This comes across as inappropriate and creepy here, but not so in the book, in which there is no explanation from Misugi. The filmmakers also neglect to make use of a memorable visual image that occurs in the original when Saiko visits a university and is disturbed by some snake specimens she sees preserved in jars. This leads Misugi to observe that ‘Everyone’s got a snake in him,’ a sentence which haunts Saiko, who comes to believe herself at the mercy of a persistent self-destructive urge which she visualises as a snake coiled in her belly. In the film, we don’t get the scene with the specimens, so the talk of snakes seems merely whimsical. Furthermore, the symbol of The Hunting Rifle itself goes for very little in the film, whereas in the story it is made quite clear that it represents man’s essential loneliness.

 

Nobuko Otowa

Another problem with Gosho’s film is the casting, especially that of Shin Saburi. In his hands, Misugi is not only physically unattractive but completely uncharismatic, making Saiko’s helpless attraction for him baffling. Fujiko Yamamoto is a fine actress, but does not seem at all the sort to stab her cousin in the back, and her somewhat mask-like features are perhaps not the best at expressing complex emotions. It’s the more expressive Mariko Okada who takes the acting honours here – when the story jumps forward by eight years, Midori has changed from a rather naïve, gauche young thing to a sophisticated woman with considerable poise, and Okada not only handles this transformation very well, but is great at revealing the hidden thoughts of her character with a subtle look. The other notable names in the cast – Nobuko Otowa and Keiji Sada – are featured surprisingly little considering their status, but do their usual good work. But the casting of Sada also works against the film – imagine a woman leaving Keiji Sada because he had an affair and then rushing off to have an affair of her own with Shin Saburi! 

 

I found this a real disappointment from director Heinosuke Gosho, whose films are generally good to excellent (I’d especially recommend An Inn at Osaka and An Innocent Witch). Although Inoue’s novella was unsuited to the screen in the first place, that certainly does not excuse all the poor choices here, which also include the truly awful string-laden music score complete with repeated harp glissando that heavily underlines every emotional moment. This is reminiscent of Hollywood at its corniest, and something I found especially grating as I watch Japanese films of this period partly to get away from all that. The culprit, Yasushi Akutagawa, has done good scores too, and I’ve noticed that the work of many Japanese film composers in particular seems to vary a great deal in quality, though I’m unsure why. Anyway, combined with the ham-fisted adaptation and ill-advised casting, the music makes The Hunting Rifle an almost total misfire for me, with only Mariko Okada hitting the target.

 

Magistrate of the Floating World / 着ながし奉行 / Kinagashi bugyo (‘The Magistrate who Dresses Informally’, 1981)

Obscure Japanese Film #72

Tatsuya Nakadai

This Fuji TV movie is a period comedy-drama directed by none other than Kihachi Okamoto and starring his frequent leading actor Tatsuya Nakadai. Koheita Mochizuki (Nakadai) is the new magistrate appointed to clean up Horisoto, a town district on a small island connected to the rest of the town by a single footbridge. Criminals operate freely there, and the town has lost three magistrates in the space of a year due to their inability to deal with the situation. Mochizuki is an eccentric character who takes a radically new approach and decides it is better to be underestimated. Before his arrival, he has somebody spread a rumour that he is better at cavorting with women than he is at martial arts. In fact, although he is a womaniser, he is also a martial arts expert. The staff are awaiting his arrival at the magistrate’s office, but he arrives incognito, avoids the office and begins making friends with the criminals…

 

If the idea of a crime-riddled island sounds familiar from Inn of Evil, this is no coincidence as Magistrate of the Floating World is also based on a story by Shugoro Yamamoto (‘Machi bugyo nikki’, or ‘Town Samurai Diary’). There’s a clever narrative device in use in this version, which has the main action interspersed with scenes featuring a dialogue between two scribes awaiting the arrival of Mochizuki at the office. Functioning almost like a Greek chorus, these two characters discuss the situation throughout and provide useful exposition.

Eitaro Ozawa

 

Kihachi Okamoto also co-wrote the script (with Toshiaki Matsushima), but this was apparently a troubled production as he treated it like a feature film and became so fed up with constantly being told he could not do certain things due to budgetary constraints that at one point he threatened to quit. Considering this, the final result turned out pretty well and I feel that it’s not only better than most of Okamoto’s post-1960s work, but also superior to Dora-heita (2000), Kon Ichikawa’s lacklustre later version based on a screenplay by himself, Keisuke Kinoshita and Akira Kurosawa (written around three decades before the film was finally made). It’s not always as funny as Okamoto seems to think, but it’s dynamic and fast-moving enough that the weaker comic moments are soon forgotten. 

 

Taiji Tonoyama

Nakadai is clearly enjoying himself here in a rare comic role, while other notables among the cast include Eitaro Ozawa and Taiji Tonoyama, the latter as the sidekick constantly reminding Mochizuki to wash his hands. Also featured are several students from Nakadai’s acting school, including Koji Yakusho, who later starred as Mochizuki in Dora-heita. Other adaptations of Yamamoto’s story include Kenji Misumi’s 1959 version starring Shintaro Katsu and Eiichi Kudo’s 1987 film with Ken Watanabe. 

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