Obscure Japanese Film #90
Fujiko Yamamoto
Yushima, Tokyo, 1902. Otsuta (Fujiko Yamamoto) is a geisha who has left her profession to become the wife of promising young scholar Hayase (Koji Tsuruta), who is helping his mentor, Professor Sakai (Masayuki Mori), to compile the first German-Japanese dictionary. Otsuta and Hayase have not yet been married officially as Hayase is waiting for an opportune moment to tell the Professor about their union. Having lost his parents in the fire which destroyed much of downtown Shizuoka in 1889, Hayase was adopted by the Professor, and so is under a great obligation to him. However, as the Professor thinks highly of Hayase, the young couple are confident that he will approve their union even though Hayase is expected to marry the professor’s daughter, Taeko (Yoshiko [not Sumiko] Fujita). Unfortunately, Otsuta becomes implicated in a theft despite being innocent. When this is reported in the newspaper, Professor Sakai learns about the secret marriage and is furious, seemingly forgetting the similar relationship he had had in his own youth with Koyoshi (Haruko Sugimura), who is actually the madam at the geisha house where Otsuta had been employed…
Masayuki Mori
This Daiei production
has the sort of determinedly tragic story that is (or at least was) especially
popular in Japan. I found it rather clichéd and predictable, but it should be
noted that it’s a faithful adaptation of a 1907 novel by Kyoka Izumi, so it’s
quite possible that Izumi’s work felt fresh at the time and it was only when
others copied aspects of it that they became clichés. What now seems a quaintly
old-fashioned story was also once considered progressive in its attack on the
institution of the arranged marriage. Although it’s not one of the few Izumi
works to have been translated into English (he’s reputedly difficult to translate),
it was one of his most popular and became a successful stage play only a year
after publication. There had also been previous film versions – in 1934 with
Kinuyo Tanaka and Joji Oka, followed by a two-part version in 1942 with Isuzu
Yamada and Kazuo Hasegawa. Remakes followed in 1959 and 1962, while it was
also adapted for television on a number of occasions, including in 1966 with Fujiko Yamamoto repeating her role.
Koji Tsuruta
The male lead, Koji Tsuruta, is not a name likely to ring many bells outside of Japan, but he was actually one of the country’s biggest male stars of the era. Some readers may know him for playing Toshiro Mifune’s opponent, Kojiro Sasaki, in Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai trilogy, or perhaps for his starring role in Kinji Fukasaku’s Sympathy for the Underdog (1971). He could probably relate well to the part he plays in The Romance of Yushima given that his own romance with actress Keiko Kishi was nipped in the bud in 1952 by Shochiku, the studio to whom he was under contract at the time. He attempted suicide shortly after, but fortunately survived only to be badly beaten by a yakuza member the following year because his manager had offended them. The attack had involved both a whisky bottle and a brick; Tsuruta required 11 stitches, but luckily was not disfigured and resumed his career, which continued almost until his passing from lung cancer in 1987.
Haruko Sugimura
The performances in The Romance of Yushima are solid if unexceptional. The omnipresent Eitaro Ozawa also pops up as a colleague of Sakai’s, but it’s actually Daisuke Kato who steals it as a cheeky fishmonger sympathetic to Otsuta.
Daisuke Kato
The print I saw was a just-about-watchable VHS transfer, so there’s no doubt that the film would benefit greatly from a higher quality digital version. However, I wouldn’t call it a lost masterpiece as the story hasn’t dated well and the music (a combination of choral singing, harp and strings) is overused and far from ideal. For those reasons, I feel that this is my least favourite of the films I’ve seen by director Teinosuke Kinugasa (the others being A Page of Madness, Gate of Hell, New Tales of the Heike: Three Women around Yoshinaka and Actress).
Note: the Japanese title translates as ‘Genealogy of Women: White Plum Blossoms of Yushima’
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