A Rainbow at Every Turn / 虹いくたび / Niji ikutabi / (1956)

Obscure Japanese Film #132

Machiko Kyo and Ayako Wakao

Before I begin, I should point out that, although I don’t usually write a synopsis that includes the ending, on this occasion I will be discussing the ending and its differences from the book… 

 

Momoko (Machiko Kyo) and Asako (Ayako Wakao) are half sisters still living at home with their widowed father, Mizuhara (Ken Uehara). The mother of Momoko, the older of the two, committed suicide, while Asako’s mother died of illness. However, Mizuhara actually has a third daughter, Wakako (Yasuko Kawakami), born out of wedlock, who lives in Kyoto and whose mother, Kikue (Haruyo Ichikawa) is still alive. Asako – warm, sensitive and compassionate and with a desire to help others – is keen to meet Wakako, but the rather cold, bitter and cynical Momoko advises her not to meddle. 

Ken Uehara

 

Momoko’s family believe that she is suffering from a broken heart due to the suicide of her mother and also because her boyfriend, Keita (Keizo Kawasaki), was killed at Okinawa during the war, but there is more to it than that…

Keizo Kawasaki

 

In a flashback sequence, we learn that before Keita left for a probable death, he had persuaded Momoko to let him make a tea bowl from a mould of her breast, which he could take with him to the front line and enjoy his final drink from. During the same evening, he persuaded her to sleep with him, after which he unexpectedly insulted her and left, leaving her shocked and confused. 

 

 

Now, Momoko has been attempting to fill the void by having an affair with Takemiya (Hiroshi Kawaguchi), a student several years her junior, but he is a highly emotional young man who can’t take it when he realises that Momoko is not serious about their relationship. When he commits suicide, Momoko not only has yet another tragic death to process, but finds herself pregnant with his child. 

Hiroshi Kawaguchi and Machiko Kyo

 

Meanwhile, Keita’s brother, Natsuji (also played by Keizo Kawasaki), wants to meet his dead brother’s girlfriend, but Momoko hates him on sight due to his strong resemblance to his brother… However, Natsuji ends up becoming friendly with Asako instead, and relations between the families of Momoko and Keita continue. Keita’s father, Aoki (Bontaro Miake), apologises to Momoko for the conduct of his son, explaining that Keita had insulted her only because he loved her so much and didn’t want her to grieve if he was killed.  He even persuades her to keep Takemiya’s child, and Momoko’s heart finally thaws… 

Bontaro Miake and Machiko Kyo

 

Koji Shima’s film starts out very faithful to Yasunari Kawabata’s 1951 novel of the same name, which has recently appeared in English for the first time as The Rainbow. However, much of Kawabata’s novel consists of conversations the characters have about flowers, art and architecture, etc, which have little direct bearing on the plot, so it’s understandable that the film dispenses with most of these. The film also provides a clear explanation of Keita’s motivation for insulting Momoko, whereas in the book this can be perhaps be inferred but is never spelt out. But the most significant difference is in the ending. In the novel, Momoko is subtly manipulated by her father and Aoki into having her baby aborted and hates herself for having gone along with it. The book ends with Momoko finally being formally introduced to her other half sister Wakako, but the meeting is stiff and awkward. It’s not hard to see why Daiei wanted to change this ending – even though sad endings are far more common in the Japanese cinema than in Hollywood movies, such an unsentimental finish was unlikely to have been well-received. 

Hiroshi Kawaguchi

 

In the film, the baby represents the possibility of future happiness for Momoko, whose meeting with Wakako – with the whole family present – is far warmer and more satisfactory. Momoko thinks she sees a rainbow, and then everyone rushes to the window to see it, but there’s nothing there and they all laugh cheerfully. However, the very last shot is of a military jet flying past the window. This is rather puzzling, and I’m not sure I would have understood why Shima did this if I hadn’t read the book (and even now I’m speculating to some extent). It should also be noted that we hear a military jet fly over off-screen around 8 minutes into the film. There are no jets in the book, but there is some talk about the A-bomb and the fact that the characters are now living in the nuclear age. For this reason, I believe that the final shot was Shima’s attempt to temper the apparently optimistic ending with a little uncertainty so as not to entirely betray Kawabata’s intentions. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work in my view and just seems a bit random and baffling. 

 

Having recently reviewed Shima’s The Beloved Image (1960), I can see some similarities between the two films – both star Machiko Kyo, both are adapted from serious works of literature, both make good use of weather, and both feature a number of shots which are clearly symbolic; in A Rainbow at Every Turn, Kyo’s face is deliberately obscured on a couple of occasions by a sliding shoji, characters are separated at certain moments by a conveniently-placed post or similar, and at one point a close-up of Kyo’s face through a venetian blind seems to be equating her situation to the caged bird featured in the same shot. However, the devastating ending of The Beloved Image is clearly not compromised at all, and I believe that it was in that later film that Shima was able to achieve exactly what he wanted. 

 

After seeing these two films, it’s also clear that, although Shima was one man, he was in effect two directors – the journeyman who made not particularly intelligent commercial fare like The Phantom Horse and Warning from Space, and the artist who had loftier aspirations and was at least sometimes able to realise these very well, as he does partially in this film and fully in The Beloved Image. Before he became a director in 1939, Shima had been a star actor who had worked for distinguished directors such as Kenji Mizoguchi and Tomu Uchida, so it’s safe to assume he had learned a thing or two from them. In A Rainbow at Every Turn, Shima uses few close-ups and keeps the camera mostly – but not entirely – static, while the only music is some classical style piano featured over the opening credits and finally being reintroduced during the final scene. This sober, unshowy style works in the film’s favour for the most part, while Machiko Kyo and Ayako Wakao are perfect casting as the two sisters – as a result of their fine performances, these two characters feel more substantial than they do in Kawabata’s novel. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Hiroshi Kawaguchi, an actor better suited to comic roles who is miscast here and unconvincing when required to break down emotionally. Overall, though, this is another film that provides strong evidence to suggest that Shima is a director worthy of further investigation – once the films he made purely to pay the rent have been weeded out, anyway.

Ayako Wakao

 Thanks to A.K.

Thanks also to Coral Sundy for the English subtitles, which can be found here. 

Ojo-san / お嬢さん (‘Young Miss’, 1961)

Obscure Japanese Film #131

Ayako Wakao

Kasumi (Ayako Wakao) is a young woman of marriageable age prone to daydreaming who believes that arranged marriages are better than love matches, while her best friend Chieko (Hitomi Nozoe) thinks the opposite. However, Kasumi finds herself strangely drawn to womaniser Sawai (Hiroshi Kawaguchi) despite the fact that her father (Masao Shimizu) thinks that one of his company’s employees, Maki (Jiro Tamiya), is the most promising candidate for her hand…

Hitomi Nozoe

 

This Daiei comedy is clearly intended mainly as a vehicle for Ayako Wakao, who not only receives a great many close-ups, but also gets to wear a different outfit in each scene – in fact, she apparently designed all 22 of these herself, and they were popular enough that one women’s clothes store in Tokyo even had an ‘Ojo-san’ section for a while.

Hiroshi Kawaguchi

 

Surprisingly, this project came about due to Wakao’s association with Yukio Mishima, who wrote the 1960 novel on which it was based. Although Mishima is famous as a writer of highbrow literature, he also wrote more lowbrow novels and stories to make a quick yen (most of which have not been translated into English). Ojo-san is clearly an example of the latter as it was originally published in serial form in a women’s magazine and the story is complete fluff. I have nothing against light comedies, but the film seemed neither particularly funny nor clever to me, and I found the whole thing rather pointless, although watchable enough. However, young women in Japan in the early 1960s may well have felt that it spoke to them in some way. 

Jiro Tamiya

 

Wakao had first met Mishima when she appeared in a film version of his novel Nagasugita haru in 1957. He admired her greatly and, when he starred in Afraid to Die (1960) for Daiei, he requested Wakao for his co-star. It was during the course of making that film that the two discussed Ojo-san – Wakao said she would like to play the part, and Mishima sold the rights to Daiei on the condition that the role went to her. He even wrote two essays about her: ‘Ayako Wakao – The Woman on the Cover’ (1960) and ‘In Praise of Ayako Wakao’ (1962), although apparently they weren’t to see each other again after Mishima left Japan in November 1960 to spend a couple of months travelling with his wife. Later, Wakao appeared in film versions of Mishima’s Frolic of the Beasts (1964) and Spring Snow (2005) as well as in his play Rokumeikan on stage in 1988. 

 

Here is a rough translation of some extracts from Mishima’s essay ‘In Praise of Ayako Wakao’:

During the shooting [of Afraid to Die], I first discovered (although it was a very late discovery) that "Ayako Wakao is no ordinary actress."… What I will never forget is her performance at the climax of the film, when, after being thoroughly beaten by me, a tough, weak yakuza, she still refuses to abort the baby she is carrying, showing her womanly determination… The instinct, naturalness and strength of her performance, which delivers and enriches all the emotions required by the role, and also blends the three stages of stylistic change in between realistically to build up to a perfect climax, is absolutely magnificent, and as I watched, I felt that I had fallen 100% in love with her in my role.

People just can't resist that strawberry-like frozen taste [she has]. Because of this, she has always been popular but, at the same time, I think it was a major detriment to her acting talent being recognised… An actor has to fight against their looks. The more the public loves their looks, the more they have to fight against this. Ayako Wakao fought against this, and won splendidly.

The director of Ojo-san, Taro Yuge (1923-73), joined Daiei as an assistant director in 1947 but had to wait until 1960 to become a director himself. In the meantime, he had worked under Yasuzo Masumura and Kon Ichikawa among others, but his career was not terribly distinguished and ended when the studio went bankrupt in 1971. He went missing the following year and his body was discovered a year after that, his death believed to have been a suicide. This sad event is probably emblematic of how difficult the collapse of Daiei must have been for a great many of its employees at the time. Of course, on a more positive note, the wonderful thing is that their films are not mouldering away in a vault, but have been well-preserved and are more accessible outside Japan now than they have ever been before.

Thanks to A.K.

 

Story of a Blind Woman /女めくら物語 / Onna mekura monogatari (1965)

Obscure Japanese Film #130

Ayako Wakao

This Daiei production stars Ayako Wakao as Tsuruko, an orphan who loses her sight at the age of 16 and has little choice but to work as a masseur (the traditional occupation for the blind in Japan). She goes to work for a small school / agency owned by Arifu* (played by Ganjiro Nakamura – always a red flag!), who is also blind, although some of his other masseurs have partial eyesight. They all live together and are called out to inns when requested by customers. 

Ken Utsui

 

One night, a troubled businessman named Kigoshi (Ken Utsui) saves Tsuruko first from a fall and then later from some drunks. She falls in love with him, but he disappears. Meanwhile, needing another masseur as they are often short-handed, Arifu is persuaded against his better judgment to hire Itoko (Mayumi Nagisa), who at first pretends to be blind in order to get the job. It soon becomes obvious that she’s just out to grab what she can and doesn’t care what she has to do to get it – as long as there’s no actual work involved, that is. It’s not long before Itoko has pissed off her colleagues so much that some of them quit in protest.

Mayumi Nagisa and Ganjiro Nakamura

 

When Tsuruko is again prevented from falling down some steps – this time by a young man passing in the street – she is reminded of Kigoshi, and so feels well-disposed towards him when it turns out that he’s looking for a job as a masseur. This apparent good Samaritan is Kenkichi (Junichiro Yamashita), who is blind in one eye. Tsuruko persuades Arifu to hire him, but unfortunately she lives to regret it…

Junichiro Yamashita

 

Based on a 1954 novel by Seiichi Funabashi (who, ironically, went blind himself shortly after this film came out), Story of a Blind Woman felt rather contrived to me, with one credibility-stretching coincidence around halfway through and characters often seeming to act in the interests of the plot rather than their own best interests. However, Ayako Wakao makes for a very sympathetic tragic heroine and is quite convincing in her blindness. She mostly achieves this by avoiding eye contact with her fellow actors and by using her hands to feel her way along walls, etc (Ganjiro Nakamura uses the simpler method of just keeping his firmly eyes closed throughout, but of course this film would not have worked had we been unable to see Wakao’s eyes). 

 

Performances are decent all round, with Mayumi Nagisa especially effective as a person so smug in her selfishness that I’m sure even Mahatma Gandhi would cheerfully have throttled her with his bare hands given the chance. Nagisa also played the anti-Wakao character in One Day at Summer’s End.

Mayumi Nagisa

 

Story of a Blind Woman benefits from a cliché-free music score by Seitaro Omori which uses traditional Japanese instruments in a modernist or avant-garde kind of way. The whole thing is also very nicely shot by director Koji Shima and his DP Kimio Watanabe – I especially loved the shot of Wakao walking towards the camera with which the film ends.

 

*I’m not sure if this name is correct. 

Thanks to A.K.