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 - an idea that Shima may have nicked from Tomu Uchida's A Hole of My Own Making (1955) - 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.