The Spider Man / 蜘蛛男 / Kumo-otoko (1958)

Obscure Japanese Film #89

Susumu Fujita

 

Based on a 1929 novel of the same title (yet to be translated into English) by Edogawa Ranpo, this low-budget thriller stars Susumu Fujita in the role of Ranpo’s regular detective character, Kogoro Akechi. Fujita – best-known for playing the title role in Akira Kurosawa’s debut feature Sanshiro Sugata (1943) – first appears around 30 minutes in when Akechi is called in to investigate a gruesome murder. A young woman has been abducted and killed while attending a job interview, after which her dismembered body was found concealed inside a number of body sculptures. Akechi is soon on the trail of mad master criminal Dr. Kuroyanagi (Joji Oka), who gets his kicks out of murdering young women resembling the wife who betrayed him. He next sets his sights on movie star Yoko (Chikako Miyagi). However, using a series of increasingly bizarre disguises culminating in an outsize Cyrano de Bergerac nose, he continually eludes capture. His fiendish schemes reach their strange climax when he abducts a whole busload of young beauties and forces them to be models in a tableau of hell he presents before a live audience. 

Joji Oka

 

The Spider Man was originally released in two parts – the first entitled Satsujinki Kumo-otoko (literally ‘Murderer Spider Man’) running 97 minutes, the second Kumo-otoko no gyakushu (‘Spider-Man’s Counterattack’), which I haven’t been able to find a running time for. The version I saw displayed the title of part 1 in the opening credits, but was actually a re-edit of both parts combined. It appears that each part was edited down to around 55 minutes and simply spliced together, making a total running time of 109 minutes. The print was a fairly low-res VHS transfer which is watchable but far from ideal. 

Chikako Miyagi

 

The picture was directed by one Hiroyuki Yamamoto (1908-?), a name that could hardly be any more obscure. Oddly, it was his first film since 1943 and was also to be his last, perhaps because the production company (Shin Eiga) folded shortly after this was released. He first directed in 1937, and it appears that the majority of his 11 previous films were military propaganda works. 

 

The Spider Man is quite fast-paced, entertaining hokum which was evidently shot quickly and cheaply. For this reason, it never fully realises its potential and fails to make the most of its hell-tableau climax, which could have been far more memorable with a little extra care. Overall, the film is a fairly tame affair despite the potential nastiness of the story, and it’s perhaps just as well that it remains the only version of this particular Ranpo novel given how explicit a treatment it might have been given in more recent years. 

Joji Oka

 

Susumu Fujita had played Akechi before in a 1948 film, Issunboshi (now lost), but mostly phones it in here. Much better value is Joji Oka, who attacks his role with a gusto appropriately reminiscent of Lionel Atwill. Intriguingly, Oka had played Ranpo’s detective himself in a 1950 film entitled Tsurara no bijo, which received a limited Japanese DVD release in 2016 courtesy of collectors’ magazine publisher DeAgostini.

Watched without subtitles.

 

Portrait of Chieko / 智恵子抄 / Chieko-sho (1967)

Obscure Japanese Film #88

Shima Iwashita

This Shochiku production was based on a 1941 poetry collection of the same name by Kotaro Takamura (1883-1956) together with a 1957 novel entitled Shosetsu Chieko-sho by Haruo Sato, which were themselves based on the true story of Takamura’s wife, Chieko (1886-1938), a painter and feminist. The story begins in 1911, a time when it was fashionable among the upper-middle class of Japan to cultivate an interest in Western art. Painter and sculptor Kotaro Takamura (Tetsuro Tanba) has recently returned from studying in Paris when he agrees to take on a disciple, Chieko (Shima Iwashita). The two gradually fall in love and get married. Although both are from fairly wealthy families, their chosen occupation of art means they often struggle to get by. Nevertheless, for the following 20 years they are mostly happy and their love remains undiminished. Then an unexpected tragedy occurs, causing Chieko to receive a severe shock, in the wake of which she begins to act strangely. It soon becomes apparent that she is suffering from the onset of mental illness…

Shima Iwashita

 

By 1967, sentimental love stories of this sort were becoming a rarity in Japanese cinemas flooded with yakuza flicks and monster movies, but Shochiku must have felt confident enough in the popularity of this particular story to give it the green light – an earlier film had been made in 1957 starring Setsuko Hara and So Yamamura, while there had also been a TV series, a radio drama, a number of popular songs and various books and stage plays based on the lives of Kotaro and Chieko.

Tetsuro Tanba

 

I found the first hour of the film to be a rather bland, picture-postcard type of love story briefly enlivened by a moment of unintentional humour when an overly-earnest young artist slashes a painting to ribbons in a gallery, then jumps out the window Father Ted-style. However, it’s mostly a matter of watching Kotaro and Chieko being very happy together, which – let’s face it – is seldom the sort of thing to make for interesting viewing, so things improve dramatically (in both senses of the word) once events take a tragic turn. 

Shima Iwashita

 

The film’s greatest strength is the performances of Tetsuro Tanba and Shima Iwashita, who are both perfect in their roles, with Iwashita deservedly winning a couple of awards for her highly convincing performance in a challenging part, while Tanba is equally good in his less showy role. Although better known for her collaborations with her director husband, Masahiro Shinoda, this was actually one of ten films that Iwashita made for director Noboru Nakamura. The only other one of these I’ve seen is Koto (1963), a superior film to this one (in my opinion). 

Shima Iwashita

 

Portrait of Chieko was Japan’s entry for the year’s Best International Feature Film Oscar, but lost out to Jiri Menzel’s Closely Observed Trains. It’s hard to argue with the Academy’s choice because, although I found it on the whole to be a well-made and moving film, with decent music by Masaru Sato and cinematography by Hiroshi Takemura, in  my view it’s too calculated in its sentimentality to be a great film. The character of Taro ‘the Howling Dog’ (Tetsuo Ishidate), the village idiot constantly banging a tin in an attempt to summon his lost love, I could especially have lived without; the true story of Kotaro and Chieko is already more than sufficiently sad to satisfy the demands of the most avid tearjerker fan without resorting to such a crude device. 

Thanks to rarefilmm for making this available here.

Suzakumon / 朱雀門 (aka The Love of a Princess, 1957)

Obscure Japanese Film #87

Ayako Wakao

1858. Princess Kazu no Miya (Ayako Wakao), the sister of the Emperor, has been engaged to Prince Arisugawa (Raizo Ichikawa) since childhood. Her maid, Yuhide (Fujiko Yamamoto), is more like a best friend than a servant, and it’s assumed that she will become the Prince’s concubine if the Princess fails to produce a male heir. Although the two women seem to have little problem with this, the Prince disagrees with the practice. However, it turns out to be irrelevant as their plans go awry in the wake of the signing of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce with the United States. As this action was undertaken by the Tokugawa Shogunate without the Emperor’s blessing, relations between the Shogunate and the Imperial Palace take a turn for the worse. 

 

Eijiro Tono

Yuhide’s father, Tomofusa (Eijiro Tono), spots an opportunity to improve his own position by putting forward a scheme to politician Tomomi Iwakura (Eitaro Ozawa) and daimyo Tadaaki Sakai (Masao Mishima) to arrange a marriage between the Princess and the new shogun, Iemochi Tokugawa (Yoichi Funaki), in order to cement ties between the shogunate and the palace. The Princess finds herself under pressure to break her engagement; aided by Yuhide, she attempts to flee, but this is anticipated by Tomofusa and the plan fails. Meanwhile, Yuhide is dealing with her own feelings for the Prince as well as suspicions about her own parentage when Tomofusa puts her life in danger but she is protected by a mysterious wandering monk (Eijiro Yanagai)… 

Fujiko Yamamoto

 

Produced at their Kyoto studios, this Daiei production was based on a 1953 novel entitled Kojo Kazu no Miya (literally ‘Imperial Princess Kazu of the Palace’) by Matsutaro Kawaguchi (father of actor Hiroshi Kawaguchi), who also happened to be head of production at Daiei. Although most of the characters are real historical figures, Yuhide, Tomofusa and the monk seem to be fictional inventions. The real Princess Kazu no Miya (1846-77) was only 12 in 1858, when this story begins, although that’s not apparent here, nor is the fact that the real events covered took place over a period of nearly 20 years. 

Ayako Wakao

 

Ayako Wakao is associated with contemporary roles to such an extent that it seems a little strange to see her in period costume, although it’s by no means the only occasion she appeared in a historical drama. This must also be the wimpiest role she ever played; as portrayed in Suzakumon, Kazu no Miya is a fragile and tragic victim of events, rather than a protagonist who instigates any of the action. Wakao is fine as always, but it’s hard to believe this is the same actress who played the tough prostitute out for revenge in Irezumi (1966). 

Raizo Ichikawa

 

Director Kazuo Mori (1911-89) was a competent but not especially distinguished filmmaker who had worked as an assistant to Daisuke Ito and later directed episodes in the Shinobi no mono and Zatoichi series as well as the previously-reviewed The Saga of Tanegashima, also featuring Ayako Wakao (in fact, he directed Wakao nine times). I found Ichiro Saito’s score quite beautiful and atmospheric at first, but unfortunately it is overused here and becomes repetitive and sometimes cloying.  It’s visually that this film stands out the most, and it’s no surprise that the colour cinematography by Kazuo Miyagawa (a favourite of Mizoguchi and Kurosawa) won a couple of awards, although I thought that the colour timing in the copy I saw could be improved. 

L-R: Eitaro Ozawa, Eijiro Tono and Masao Mishima

 

Suzakumon probably seemed quite old-fashioned and sentimental even in 1957 (the year of Masaki Kobayashi’s Black River and Yasuzo Masumura’s debut, Kisses) and there’s little in the way of action. However, it has enough good qualities to make it worth seeing for fans of Japanese period dramas, including alongside its star trio a strong supporting cast featuring Eijiro Tono, Eitaro Ozawa and Masao Mishima, three stalwarts from Haiyuza, the theatre company and acting school which also produced Tatsuya Nakadai; Tono has the juiciest role of the three here and certainly makes the most of it. 

 

Note on the title:

It’s unclear why the title of the novel was not used but, according to Wikipedia, “The Suzakumon was the main gate built in the center of the south end of the imperial palaces in the Japanese ancient capitals of Fujiwara-kyō, Heijō-kyō, and later Heian-kyō. The placement followed the ancient Chinese palace model requirements at the time, where Suzaku, the Vermilion Bird was the Guardian of the South. It was said to be the site where foreign dignitaries were received by the Emperor.”