Obscure Japanese Film #149
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| Ayako Wakao and Ganjiro Nakamura |
Ganjiro Nakamura and Murasaki Fujima
Mariko (Ayako Wakao) is the daughter of Tsurukichi (Ganjiro Nakamura), a widowed tailor whose business in Shinbashi, Tokyo, has ground to a halt due to his stubborn refusal to cater to changing fashions. It doesn’t help that he’s also an inveterate gambler who pays frequent visits to a mah-jong parlour owned by sexy widow Hama (Murasaki Fujima). With debt collectors calling, Mariko decides to take matters into her own hands and convert part of the shop into an onigiri (rice ball) eatery with a loan from Tsurukichi’s former apprentice, Murata (Keizo Kawasaki).
Hiroshi Kawaguchi
Junko Kano
Meanwhile, her aunt (Sadako Sawamura) thinks it’s time Mariko was thinking about marriage and, hoping that it will push the two together, tells her that her childhood friend Goro (Hiroshi Kawaguchi) is secretly in love with her. However, in reality he’s more interested in Midori (Junko Kano), a dancer who turns out to be Tsurukichi’s estranged daughter from an illicit relationship with a geisha. While all this is unfolding, Mariko is also being pursued by wealthy businessman Tashiro (Yunosuke Ito), who incurs the displeasure of her over-protective and pugnacious chef Sanpei (Jerry Fujio)…
Yunosuke Ito
From an original screenplay by two not very distinguished writers, this Daiei comedy proves to be pretty thinly-stretched and inconsequential stuff. Little more than an excuse to show off its star in another interminable variety of costumes, it’s one for hardcore Ayako Wakao fanatics only and contains one of her least interesting performances. The film is indifferently directed by Shigeo Tanaka, but occasionally enlivened by its supporting cast, with Murasaki Fujima, Yunosuke Ito and Jerry Fujio all quite funny in their very different ways.
Jerry Fujio
Jerry Fujio, who was co-lead with Jo Shishido in A Colt Is My Passport (1967) and also appeared in Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961) and Dodes’ka-den (1970), was an interesting person. Born in 1940 to a Japanese father and an English mother in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, where his family all spoke in English, he moved to Japan with his parents after the war. According to Japanese Wikipedia, he and his mother faced discrimination; she became addicted to alcohol and died aged just 28 clutching a bottle of whisky. If that were not bad enough, Fujio’s father abandoned him shortly after. While still in his teens, Fujio became a bodyguard for a yakuza gang, but in 1957 he gave an impromptu performance of Elvis’ ‘Hound Dog’ in a jazz bar and was signed by an entertainment agency, taking the name of Jerry after American comedian Jerry Lewis. Even after becoming successful as a singer and actor, however, he could not quite shake off his yakuza past; on one occasion, finding himself attacked by three yakuza in the street, he fought back so hard that he broke three of his attackers’ ribs and four of their front teeth before the police showed up and arrested him for ‘excessive self-defence’!
As for the title, how this film became known in English as Triangle Moods, or what that even means, is anyone’s guess…
Thanks to A.K.
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