The Flute-Playing Warrior / 笛吹若武者 / Fuefuki wakamusha (1955)

Obscure Japanese Film #98

Hibari Misora

This Toei production set in the Heian period stars singing sensation Hibari (‘Skylark’) Misora as Princess Tamaori, a young noblewoman who travels to Kyoto with her mother, Lady Tsubaki (Chiaki Tsukioka), to meet her estranged father, Lord Tsunemori (Makoto Usami), for the first time. On the way, she stops to sing a song and attracts the attention of Prince Atsumori (Hashizo Okawa), a music-loving member of the Heike clan who whips out his flute and joins her in a duet. It’s a case of love at first sight, but when she reaches Kyoto, she’s shocked to learn that Atsumori is her half-brother by a different mother. 

 

Chiaki Tsukioka

Meanwhile, her mother is having an affair with Lord Tokitada (Masao Hori), a wily schemer who has a plan to gain power and influence by arranging a marriage between Tamaori and Konoe Motomichi (Akashi Ushio), the chief advisor to the Emperor. Atsumori has his own troubles, too – he's being pursued by Princess Katsura (Michiko Hoshi), who is determined to marry him and won’t take no for an answer. As these personal affairs become increasingly problematic, war breaks out between the Heike clan and their rivals, the Genji clan…

 

Hashizo Okawa

Although technically this could be labelled a musical, there are no big Hollywood-style production numbers, just occasional pauses for Hibari to sing part of a song. Like her counterpart Chiemi Eri (born the same year), Hibari also had some acting ability, and she’s especially convincing in a scene towards the end in which she suffers an emotional breakdown. For the rest of the picture, she seems more subdued than usual, perhaps because she’s playing quite an unhappy character. On the other hand, maybe she was just knackered as she was starring in ten films a year at this point. In any case, it’s Michiko Hoshi who steals the film here as her tactless, insinuating, bitchy rival. She comes as something of a breath of fresh air in contrast to the other characters, who are mostly solemn and rather dull, especially the flute-playing warrior himself. At the time of writing, Michiko Hoshi is still with us at the age of 97.

 

Michiko Hoshi

The literary source is a play by Hideji Hojo (1902-96), who based many of his works on The Tale of Genji, which seems also to have been the case here. The director, Yasushi Sasaki (1908-93), was a veteran who specialised in period films and directed around 20 Hibari vehicles. With a reputation for working quickly and making commercially successful movies, he was highly valued by the studios he worked for, but made little dent on film history. Nevertheless, The Flute-Playing Warrior remains an enjoyable piece of entertainment from a bygone era.

 

Nemuri Kyoshiro – Journal of an Outlaw / 眠狂四郎 無頼控 / Nemuri Kyôshirô burai hikae (aka The Lonely Swordsman Part 1, 1956)

Obscure Japanese Film #97

Koji Tsuruta

This Toho production was the first film based on the series of novels about Kyoshiro Nemuri, a fictional swordsman created by Renzaburo Shibata (1917-78) in the same year this film was released. The character later became the hero of a series of films starring Raizo Ichikawa – these are known in the West as the Sleepy Eyes of Death series (‘Nemuri’ actually means ‘sleep of death’ according to Merlin David’s first-rate subtitles here). Shibata appears to have modelled his character partly on Ryunosuke Tsukue, the anti-hero of Kaizan Nakazato’s novel Dai-bosatsu toge, portrayed most memorably by Tatsuya Nakadai in Sword of Doom. However, in the hands of actor Koji Tsuruta (see The Romance of Yushima), Nemuri simply comes across as an oddly unlikeable hero, especially considering the fact that he rapes Mihoyo (Keiko Tsushima) a few minutes into the film. Of course, she falls in love with him as a result (I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen this dodgy cliché in Japanese films). Although there is some compensation in the fact that the women get to do some of the fighting too (which is probably the best thing about this film), unfortunately the swordfights are never very convincing and feature neither cutting sounds nor blood. This would change forever post-Yojimbo and Sanjuro, but even though those game-changing movies were still a few years away at this point, I felt that director Shigeaki Hidaka (who also made World War III: 41 Hours of Fear) could have done a little better on the action front than what we see here. 

Keiko Tsushima

 

Talking of Kurosawa, the screenplay was written by his frequent collaborator Hideo Oguni and features two of his regular actors, Kamatari Fujiwara and (all too briefly) Bokuzen Hidari. It’s by no means a bad film, but I found it disappointing on the whole and the plot felt both over-complicated and implausible (this is why I couldn’t face writing a synopsis). The character of Kiheita, ‘the flying squirrel’ (Shin Tokudaiji) is especially daft – he’s a hunchbacked swordsman who is supposedly Nemuri’s deadliest rival and can leap really high into the air (i.e. be pulled up by wires). 

Kamatari Fujiwara

 

Shin Tokudaiji

Koji Tsuruta starred in two sequels before Toho dropped the series in 1958. Part 2 was shot back-to-back with this one and features many of the same cast members, but adds Koji Mitsui and Setsuko Wakayama, while the second sequel was shot in widescreen with a new director and a particularly impressive supporting cast including Isuzu Yamada, Haruko Sugimura and Michiyo Kogure. Daiei studios revived the character with Raizo Ichikawa and greater success in 1963 in a series which continued for 12 films and probably ended only due to the premature death of their star in 1969.

Koji Tsuruta

 

Tarao Bannai - Thirteen Demon Lords / 多羅尾伴内 十三の魔王 / Tarao Bannai – Juzo no mao (aka The Man with Thirteen Eyes, 1958)

Obscure Japanese Film #96

Chiezo Kataoka as Tarao Bannai

When a nightclub singer is killed under mysterious circumstances at a racetrack, master detective Tarao Bannai (Chiezo Kataoka) adopts a number of disguises in an attempt to unmask the killer. The suspects include Dr Izumaru (Eitaro Shindo), his wife (Mieko Takamine), his assistant (Michiko Hoshi), the dead girl’s ex-lover (Ken Takakura), crooked businessman Togame (Takashi Shimura) a nightclub owner (Masao Mishima), and a nightclub hostess (Mitsuko Miura). 

Michiko Hoshi

 

Eitaro Shindo

Masao Mishima

Mitsuko Miura

The character of Tarao Bannai was created for the movies in 1946 by screenwriter Yoshitake Hisa (1904-81) in order to provide a new vehicle for veteran star Chiezo Kataoka. After the war, the occupying Americans had banned sword-fighting films in the belief that they encouraged feudalism, leaving Kataoka unable to perform the type of roles for which he was famous. Fortunately for Kataoka, the first film was a hit with the public if not with the critics.  He starred in four Tarao Bannai pictures for Daiei in the late ‘40s; when he later fell out with the studio, he made a further seven films featuring the character for Toei between 1953 and 1960. Thirteen Demon Lords was the first of these to be shot in colour and widescreen, and perhaps for that reason it boasts a remarkably strong cast including a young Ken Takakura, veteran star and respected actress Mieko Takamine, and Kurosawa favourite Takashi Shimura. However, despite such stiff competition, this is Kataoka’s show all the way. 

Ken Takakura

 

Mieko Takamine

Takashi Shimura

 

Outside of Japan, Chiezo Kataoka is perhaps best-known for his leading roles in a number of Tomu Uchida films, the most widely-seen of which is probably Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji, though he also played the nihilistic samurai Ryunosuke Tsukue in Uchida’s three-film version of the novel Daibosatsu Toge – a character later immortalised by Tatsuya Nakadai in Sword of Doom. He was a wonderfully versatile actor as we can see from his performance (or performances) in Thirteen Demon Lords. Although the disguises that his character adopts (an Indian magician, a beatnik artist, etc) are often utterly ridiculous, the extent to which Kataoka not only changes his appearance, but subtly alters his voice and body language each time is impressive. If it’s not too confusing, it should perhaps be noted that the character of Tarao Bannai himself is actually another alter-ego – the ‘real’ person behind the different faces is one Daizo Fujimura, a former jewel thief who has turned his back on his criminal past to become a crusader for justice. 

Chiezo Kataoka

 

Chiezo Kataoka

Kataoka as Daizo Fujimura

With its unlikely nick-of-time escapes and evil criminal mastermind who relishes the use of poison gas and dripping acid, this recalls the serials of the 1920s and ‘30s and is, of course, pure hokum, but it’s also pretty good fun if you’re in the mood. However, I’m not sure I’d want to sit through the other ten movies in the series as they apparently followed a pretty rigid formula, with Bannai adopting the same number of disguises each time (always seven) and departing in the same manner at the end of each film, although this very repetition seems to have become an element that the Japanese audiences of the time enjoyed.

Director Sadatsugu Matsuda (1906-2003) directed most of the entries in the series and divided his time between this sort of film and chanbara flicks. The character was briefly revived for two films in 1978 starring Akira Kobayashi, but did not catch on.

Watched with dodgy subtitles. 

Joshu karasu / 上州鴉 ('Crow of Joshu', 1951)

Obscure Japanese Film #95

Denjiro Okochi

 

This Daiei production stars silent screen veteran Denjiro Okochi as Takizo, a wandering samurai and master swordsman who returns incognito to the town where he was born, hoping to shake off some men pursuing him. Once there, he meets Sahei (Koichi Katsuragi), a widowed farmer, to whom he will later confess that his mother (now deceased) was a maid who became pregnant by a criminal and had to give birth to him in a warehouse. 

Michiko Hoshi

 

Sahei has two daughters, Okimi (Michiko Hoshi) and Omitsu (Kazuko Takamori). Unable to pay the annual tax, Sahei asks government official Yamagataya (Ryanosuke Higashi) to take Omitsu in as an indentured servant instead. Yamagataya agrees, but secretly intends to pimp her out.

 

Kotaro Bando

 

Ramon Mitsusaburo

Meanwhile, Inoyuki (Kotaro Bando) visits a gambling den owned by Hikigoro (Ramon Mitsusaburo from The Mysterious Edogawa Ranzan) in an attempt to raise money so that his sick wife Okichi (Mitsuko Mito) can take a rest, but he loses and is tricked into signing Okichi over to Hikigoro. Observing the way the innocent townspeople are abused and cheated by the powerful and corrupt, Takizo decides that it’s time to for him to come out of hiding and intervene…

Mitsuko Mito

 

Based on an original work by Shintaro Mimura, the screenplay was written by Kaneto Shindo, who must not only have been the most prolific screenwriter of all time, but who also maintained an impressively high standard throughout his 70-year career. Director Taizo Fuyushima (1901-81) was new to me, but on this evidence he seems worthy of further investigation as Joshu karasu features excellent mobile camerawork courtesy of Yasukazu Takemura, some very well-co-ordinated and complex staging, a lively sense of rhythm in the editing and a strong ensemble cast, including that reliable old scene-stealer Daisuke Kato as a travelling con artist. 

Daisuke Kato

 

Atsushi Watanabe and Toshiaki Konoe

Atsushi Watanabe and Toshiaki Konoe are also great fun as a couple of oddball palanquin carriers, one of whom has a topknot with a life of its own. The fight scenes are well above-average for 1951, too – one even takes place in heavy rain, which would soon become a Kurosawa trademark (not the only time this film brought Kurosawa to mind). 

Denjiro Okochi

 

It’s a marvel how the Japanese cinema of this period appears to have been populated with an almost endless number of excellent directors of whom we’ve never heard. Taizo Fuyushima’s career stretched back to 1926 and he directed over 90 films, mainly period dramas, but he seems to be almost completely forgotten. After his retirement, he made kabuki paper dolls, at which he was considered a master, and took on a number of pupils.

Denjiro Okochi and Koichi Katsuragi

 

Watched without subtitles. 

Available on YouTube here.