Obscure Japanese Film #92
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| Yoshiko Mita |
Based on a magazine article, this Toei production opens with a shot (inside a church) of a statute of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus. ‘As long as humanity has a conscience, World War III will never happen’ reads the subtitle before the main title flashes up, undermining the previous statement to read: ‘World War III: 41 Hours of Fear’. After the main credits play out against a background of rising smoke, we see several still images of children killed by the atom bomb. This segues into a high school lecture in which the teacher expresses concern that the rise in juvenile delinquency and its accompanying aggressive attitudes could lead to an increased threat of nuclear war in the future. However, subsequent scenes reveal that it’s actually anxiety about nuclear war that is at least partly responsible for the nihilistic outlook fuelling the delinquency, although not all of the students are reacting in the same way.
Norifumi Fujishima
Three young male students take a boat out on Tokyo Bay and talk about sailing to Africa to escape the nuclear threat. When they are caught in a typhoon and have to be rescued, the press use their story as an example of the all-pervading atmosphere of dread the youth are living in. Soon, their worst fears are realised: North Korea shoots down an American plane carrying a nuclear weapon over South Korea, killing thousands on the ground. Events escalate rapidly and it looks like World War III will begin at any moment…
Yayoi Furusato
Given the scant 77-minute running time and the lack of big names among the cast, I had expected a silly B-movie, but was surprised to find a fairly intelligent, well-made, sober film with a deadly serious anti-war message. Although it’s not really a big special effects movie either, there is a bit of that toward the end (combined with stock footage), and what there is of it is well done.
Yoshi Kato (former husband of Isuzu Yamada)
This is an ensemble piece with no real stars, but among the characters whose destinies we follow are a young reporter, Masaki (Tatsuo Umemiya), and his girlfriend, Tomoko (Yoshiko Mita), who works as a nurse, together with high school students Mie (Yukiko Nikaido) and Shigeo (Norifumi Fujishima), his sister Shizuko (Yayoi Furusato) and father (Yoshi Kato), and musician Tonomura (Junji Masuda) and his sick wife, Keiko (Michiko Hoshi). The ending of the film features another scene inside a Christian church in which Keiko is singing a hymn along with the rest of the congregation, but I’m at a loss to account for this film’s emphasis on Christianity. Perhaps the director was a Christian, or maybe they thought it would help distribution abroad. In any case, the acting is generally good, with Michiko Hoshi being a stand-out.
Michiko Hoshi
Michiko Hoshi
Director Shigeaki Hidaka (1916-?) had studied under Teinsouke Kinugasa and worked as Chief Assistant Director to Kenji Mizoguchi on The Lady from Musashino (1951). He directed 18 films between 1955-1962, first for Toho, then for Toei, and on this evidence he clearly knew what he was doing. The brief scenes featuring American actors speaking English were directed by William Ross, an American actor based in Japan.
The film was bought by
an American company who dubbed over the Japanese actors and added scenes from
another Japanese film, Invasion of the
Neptune Men (1961), including – inexplicably – flying saucers! This was
released in the States as The Final War
in 1962, but is now (perhaps thankfully) believed lost. The original, at least,
is a fascinating time-capsule which sheds light on the mindset of the era and
also holds up surprisingly well as a film drama. It may be a little simplistic, but it certainly gets its message across and does so in a compact way without outstaying its welcome.
The following year, Toho released a similarly-themed film entitled Sekai daisenso (aka The Last War), which I've yet to see.
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