Obscure Japanese Film #117
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| Ayako Wakao |
This Daiei production was an attempt to repeat the success of the company’s 1961 film, A Woman’s Medal, and reunites stars Machiko Kyo, Ayako Wakao and Jiro Tamiya in another adaptation of a Toyoko Yamasaki novel (which had just been published as a magazine serial when the film went into production). Like the earlier picture, The Third Will is also a very talky affair involving a variety of scheming characters, although it perhaps also owes something to Masaki Kobayashi’s The Inheritance (1962).
Yachiyo Otori, Machiko Kyo and Chieko Naniwa
When Kazo Yajima (the president of a cotton wholesale company in Osaka) dies, his three daughters assume they will inherit everything between them. The domineering eldest daughter, Fujishiro (Machiko Kyo), tries to take control, but faces rebellion from her younger sisters, Chizu (Yachiyo Otori) and Hinako (Miwa Tanako), and the squabbles begin. Fujishiro seeks advice from her younger dance teacher (Jiro Tamiya), who subsequently seduces her, hoping he can marry Fujishiro for her money. Another family member, Auntie Yoshiko (Chieko Naniwa), comes up with a plan to adopt Hinako, hoping that this will enable her to grab a slice of the pie for herself. Meanwhile, Uichi (Ganjiro Nakamura), the head clerk who has been appointed executor of the will and has a few schemes of his own going, reveals to their dismay that Kazo had secretly been keeping a mistress, Fumino (Ayako Wakao), a former geisha. Although no specific inheritance has been granted to her in the will – which mentions only that she should be treated with generosity – the family conspire to ensure that Fumino is sent packing with nothing. However, this proves to be their undoing, and the story concludes in a satisfying (if predictable) manner.
The Yajima family are an appalling bunch of arrogant, entitled snobs, and your sympathy will be entirely with Fumino here. The acting by the principals is excellent (as one would expect from this cast), and there’s also a notable performance by Chieko Naniwa as the auntie who turns out to be the nastiest of a very nasty lot who treat their servants like dirt and neglect the rental properties that their long-suffering tenants are unfortunate enough to live in.
Jiro Tamiya
The film itself is very similar to A Woman’s Medal in many ways, despite being made by a different director. Kozaburo Yoshimura directed the earlier film rather indifferently, and I suspect that he would not have been a huge fan of a non-literary writer like Yamasaki and that A Woman’s Medal was a project assigned to him by the studio (though this is speculation on my part). This would explain the change of director here,* which in the case of The Third Will is Kenji Misumi, a filmmaker who would become known for his stylish Zatoichi and Lone Wolf and Cub movies but at this stage was still regarded as a jobbing director. This is not the kind of film one associates with Misumi, but he seems to have been a little more engaged than Yoshimura and brings what style he can to the dialogue-heavy scenes. The way he uses the sound of cicadas screaming in the climactic scene is particularly memorable.
Ganjiro Nakamura
The film’s scathing portrayal of the moneyed class and lapses into melodrama have led some to interpret it as a satire, which is not unreasonable. However, if it is intended as satire, I doubt this came from Toyoko Yamasaki, as her formula seldom varied and consisted of straight social commentary intended to expose the hypocrisy and corruption existing behind the scenes in various hallowed institutions.
Given the soap-operatic nature of the plot, it’s understandable that, despite being another success for Daiei, The Third Will has not been remade for the big screen; more appropriately, it has spawned no fewer than eight TV versions in Japan.
*The cerebral haemorrhage that Yoshimura suffered in 1963 is probably not the reason for the change as The Third Will was released in March of that year and Yoshimura’s Bamboo Doll of Echizen (his final film before his 3-year hiatus) was released in October.
Note on the title: The Japanese title translates as ‘Matrilineal Family’, a theme also covered by Toyoko Yamasaki’s earlier novel Bonchi, filmed by Daiei in 1960.
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