A Town Not on the Map / 地図のない町 / Chizu no mai machi (aka ‘The Jungle Block’, 1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #127

Yoko Minamida

Ryoji Hayama

 

Shinsuke (Ryoji Hayama) is a young doctor who has had to resign from his post at a hospital after failing to save a patient. Returning to the shanty town where he grew up, he begins assisting the local doctor, Kasama (Jukichi Uno), who is greatly respected by the poor community he serves. 

 

Jukichi Uno

Unfortunately, the local yakuza boss, Azusa (Osamu Takizawa), has managed to obtain a contract to clear the shanty town and replace it with modern apartment blocks. Meanwhile, Shinsuke’s sister Sakiko (Kazuko Yoshiyuki) is out walking one night with her fiancé Kajiwara (Yasukiyo Umeno) when they are attacked by a gang of yakuza and she is gang-raped. Shinsuke is appalled to find that, not only is Kajiwara too spineless to go to the police, but he no longer wants to marry Sakiko. If that wasn’t bad enough, he then learns that not only has his childhood sweetheart Kayoko (Yoko Minamida) become a prostitute, but she has accepted an offer to become Azusa’s mistress instead in order to pay off a debt owed by her father (Jun Hamamura). Shinsuke decides to take matters into his own hands, but what can he do against such a powerful mob?

Osamu Takizawa

 

There’s a lot going on in this Nikkatsu picture, which starts out almost like one of Satsuo Yamamoto’s leftist dramas in which an oppressed community band together to take on their corrupt oppressors, but morphs into a Seicho Matsumoto-style murder mystery at the end. Based on a story by Kaoru Funayama,* it was adapted by director Ko Nakahira and regular Kurosawa collaborator Shinobu Hashimoto. In the film, the story unfolds in a series of consecutive flashbacks (probably Hashimoto’s idea). This is an unusual approach, but one that works well in this instance, with the tension building nicely as events reach their climax. When they do, there is perhaps a twist too many, with the result that things become a little absurd – almost comic, in fact (something I doubt was intended).

Shobun Inoue

 

A Town Not on the Map benefits from a strong all-round cast. In the lead, Nikkatsu contract star Ryoji Hayama makes for a sympathetic hero despite being better known for playing bad guys, while the underrated Yoko Minamida is equally good as the troubled cat-loving heroine, Osamu Takizawa makes a suitably loathsome villain, Jukichi Uno exudes integrity as only he could, Shobun Inoue is convincingly tough as a scar-faced yakuza, and Jun Hamamura manages to look even more like death warmed up than usual. 

 

Jun Hamamura

The score by the great avant-garde composer Toshiro Mayuzumi is surprisingly conventional for him, but nonetheless highly effective. Director Ko Nakahira brings his customary flair to the proceedings, with impressive staging and camerawork (by his regular collaborator Yoshihiro Yamazaki) which is seldom pedestrian and often memorably stylish. 

Yoko Minamida

 

Excellent subtitles by Stuart J Walton can be found here: https://www.opensubtitles.org/en/subtitles/9880312/the-jungle-block-en

*The original story, ‘Satsui no kage’ / 殺意の影 (‘Shadows of Murder’), appeared in Funayama’s 1957 collection Akutoku /悪徳 (Vice).