The Perennial Weed / 昭和枯れすすき / Showa kare susuki (1975)

Obscure Japanese Film #157

Kumiko Akiyoshi and Hideki Takahashi

Harada (Hideki Takahashi) is a young police detective assigned to the Nishi-Shinjuku precinct of Tokyo. He lives with his younger sister, Noriko (Kumiko Akiyoshi), and the two are very close as they’ve had nobody else to rely on since their mother left and their father died years before. Originally from the country, they’ve been living in Tokyo for some years due to Harada’s career. 

Hideki Takahashi

 

One day, Noriko fails to come home and Harada is shocked to see her walking in the street the following morning with a young yakuza thug, Yoshiura (Atom Shimojo). Harada begins tailing his sister and discovers that she has quit the fashion school she’s supposed to be studying at and is leading a double life. As if that were not troubling enough, a murder then occurs in which she may be implicated… 

 

The splendidly-named Atom Shimojo

 

This Shochiku production was adapted by the omnipresent Kaneto Shindo from an untranslated story entitled ‘Yakuza na imoto’ (‘Yakuza Sister’) by Shoji Yuki, a prolific and popular writer best known for his hard-boiled crime fiction, but who worked in a variety of genres. Other adaptations of his work include the previously-reviewed Doro inu (1964) and Kinji Fukasaku’s Under the Flag of the Rising Sun (1972), though the only one of his books which seems to have made it into English is a children’s picture book entitled I’m Not a Dog. 

 

Atom Shimojo and Kumiko Akiyoshi

 

The Japanese title of this film means something like ‘withered Showa-era silvergrass’, which bears no direct relation to anything in it. The title comes from a 1974 hit single by a duo known as Sakura and Ichiro which was also used as a theme song for the movie (and which the curious can listen to on YouTube here). The male and female singers compare themselves to withered silvergrass, observe how ‘even when trampled on, we endured’, and express their wish to ‘die beautifully’. Presumably, the inner feelings of Harada and his sister are supposed to be reflected in the song, but it was no doubt mainly a ploy to help sell the picture. In any case, the English title of The Perennial Weed has even less to do with the content of the film. 

 

Hideki Takahashi and Mizuho Suzuki

 

Directed by Yoshitaro Nomura, a filmmaker best-known for his Seicho Matsumoto adaptations such as Castle of Sand (1974), this features his usual semi-documentary approach to shooting on real locations wherever possible, something which is used to good effect here. The sparing use of music in this film is also an asset – most of what we hear on the soundtrack is actually the ambient sounds of the city, especially those of passing trains and traffic, which adds appropriately to the sense of realism. 

 

Hideki Takahashi and Kumiko Akiyoshi are well-cast in the leading roles and give a good account of themselves. There’s an occasional suggestion that Harada’s feelings for his sister may be more than just brotherly, but Nomura ultimately leaves it an open question and seems much more concerned with the effect that city life has on his principal characters – especially Harada, who is suffering to a similar malaise to that of Robert Ryan in On Dangerous Ground (1951). Harada and Noriko are two refugees from rural Japan who have come to Tokyo for a better life but found a soul-crushing world of sleazy neon-lit bars and rundown, cramped apartment buildings among which criminals flourish and become arrogant while the police are dispirited and can only carry on by getting drunk every night after work. Harada has to deal with the reality that his sister has not lived up to his ideals and become the paragon of virtue he had hoped for, and many of the other characters – most of whom have also fled the countryside to live in Tokyo – express a similar sense of disillusionment. This is shown in its most extreme form at a murder scene Harada visits, where a loving father has killed his daughter rather than allow her to marry a man he knows is bad news. This has nothing to do with the plot, but the implication is that Harada could end up in a similar situation in regard to Noriko. 

 

While this may be one of the director’s lesser-known works, it’s very well-achieved, keeps you watching and does offer some food for thought beyond a mere murder mystery. I’ve also rarely seen a specific side of a city’s atmosphere captured as well as it is here by Nomura’s regular cinematographer Takashi Kawamata. However, The Perennial Weed was perhaps too downbeat for most audiences and was reportedly a commercial failure.  

 
Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

Asakusa no yoru / 浅草の夜 (‘Asakusa at Night’, 1954)

Obscure Japanese Film #156

 

Ayako Wakao and Machiko Kyo

Setsuko (Machiko Kyo) is a dancer at a theatre in Asakusa, where she’s been having a relationship with the in-house playwright, Yamaura (Koji Tsuruta), for the past three years. He’s a nice guy whose idealism is beginning to give way to disillusionment as he realises that the bosses will always prioritise putting bums on seats over art. Setsuko has a younger sister, Namie (Ayako Wakao), who has fallen in love with a young painter, Shisui (Jun Negami). 

 

Koji Tsuruta

Jun Negami

 

Setsuko is against the relationship and tries to force Namie into breaking it off, citing Shisui’s low social status as an adoptee as the reason. However, this seems to be merely an excuse because Shisui was adopted by Tsuzuki (Osamu Takizawa), a successful painter who is likely to make Shisui his heir. Things are further complicated when Komakichi (Hideo Takamatsu), the son of the yakuza boss who owns the theatre (Takashi Shimura), makes an unexpected offer of marriage to Namie…

Hideo Takamatsu

 

This Daiei production was based on a novel by Matsutaro Kawaguchi, who – perhaps not entirely coincidentally – was executive director of Daiei Studios. The novel had been published in serial form in Bungei Shunju magazine, but seems never to have made it into book form. Like the protagonists of this film, Kawaguchi grew up in Asakusa. He also went to school with director Kenji Mizoguchi, later writing or co-writing many of Mizoguchi’s films (as well as directing a few films of his own in the early 1930s), and was the father of Daiei star Hiroshi Kawaguchi.  He must have been quite a guy, and was well-respected as a writer, even having a collection published in English (Mistress Oriku – Tales from a Tokyo Teahouse). 

Jun Negami, Osamu Takizawa and Ayako Wakao

 

I was hoping for something a little grittier from this film, more along the lines of Yuzo Kawashima’s Suzaki Paradise: Red Light District (1956). Instead, what we get is a rather contrived melodrama with a plot hinging on a massively unlikely coincidence. The film was written and directed by Koji Shima, and occupies something of a middle ground among his films, being neither total hack work nor anything especially impressive artistically, although he throws in a few of his trademark symbolic shots (in this case including rolling pachinko balls and a broken sake bottle) and there's also a well-staged fight scene which takes place in heavy rain.

Machiko Kyo

 

Machiko Kyo fans will probably enjoy this, especially as she had worked as a revue dancer herself earlier in her career and gets to strut her stuff here. Ayako Wakao fans, however, are likely to find the film considerably less rewarding as she doesn’t have much of a role, although that shouldn't be too surprising as this was still early in her career and she wasn't yet a major star. 

 

The remainder of the cast are fine but unremarkable, with the exception of Takashi Shimura, who seems determined to steal each of his few scenes by any means necessary, and is variously seen limping, massaging his foot, smoking with a cigarette holder, using a lucky cat as an ashtray, and pruning his bonsai. It’s a masterclass in the actor’s guiding principle of there being ‘no small parts.’

 

Takashi Shimura

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

Sweet Sweat / 甘い汗 / Amai ase (1964)

Obscure Japanese Film #155

Machiko Kyo

Kyo with Sadako Sawamura

Umeko (Machiko Kyo) is a 36-year-old unmarried mother of a teenage daughter, Takeko (Miyuki Kuwano). They live in poverty in a cramped dwelling shared with her brother’s family and their mother (Sadako Sawamura). Umeko is used to trading on her looks in various ways to get by but has an unfortunate habit of drinking too much. She thinks she has it made when sleazy bartender Fujii (Shoichi Ozawa) fixes her up with wealthy art dealer Gondo (Eitaro Ozawa), who intends to make her his long-term mistress, but Gondo kicks her out when he discovers that she has not been entirely straight with him. Another chance of salvation seems to present itself when she runs into old flame Tatsuoka (Keiji Sada), but this is a world in which there are no fairly tale endings… 

 

Kyo with Shoichi Ozawa

On 1 July 1964, Fuji TV broadcast an original 1-hour drama entitled Abura deri (‘Oily Weather’) as part of their Theatre of 10 Million People series. Marking the first appearance of Machiko Kyo in a TV drama, it was written by Yoko Mizuki, a screenwriter known for her collaborations with film directors Mikio Naruse and Tadashi Imai. Sweet Sweat, released on 19 Sep 1964, is an expanded version of the same story with a screenplay also written by Mizuki. It’s impressive that Tokyo Eiga, the studio that produced it, were able to have an entirely new 2-hour version in cinemas just three and a half months later, especially as their film betrays no sign of having been knocked out in a hurry. On the contrary, it gives the impression of having been made with a great deal of care and attention to detail by everyone involved, not least Shiro Toyoda, a director known for bringing a high level of visual flair to his films, many of which were literary adaptations. 

Kyo with Eitaro Ozawa

 

Yoko Mizuki won a Kinema Junpo Award for Best Screenplay for this film, while Kyo deservedly won both the Kinema Junpo Award and the Mainichi Film Award for Best Actress. She’s first seen here having a drunken cat-fight with another bar hostess, but we quickly learn that Umeko herself is a consummate actress – when she puts on her best kimono and visits Gondo for the first time, he’s initially convinced that she really is the demure victim of misfortune she appears to be. It’s the type of role that’s a gift for an actress, and Kyo is a joy to watch when she gets a role like this one that doesn’t require her to be too restrained. 

Kyo with Keiji Sada

 

It’s also interesting to see Keiji Sada subverting his usual nice guy image in his final film role before his untimely death in a car crash. Sada seemed keen to stretch himself in his later films – Escape from Hell being another example – so it would have been interesting to see what he would do next had he lived. At one point in Sweet Sweat, his character even throws salt at Umeko as if she’s an evil spirit he must ward off, though she would perhaps be more justified in throwing salt at him. Also notable in the cast is 22-year-old Miyuki Kuwano, who is entirely convincing as a 17-year-old high school student. Although this may not seem much of an acting feat, when compared with her leading role in The Shape of Night the same year, it becomes obvious that she was also a versatile talent. 

 

Kyo with Miyuki Kuwano

Mostly set in the run-down Tokyo neighbourhood of Shimokitazawa, then being torn apart for redevelopment, this is a terrific film with a tangible atmosphere of discomfort; everyone seems to be constantly fanning themselves or wiping the sweat off. It also benefits from the nicely unintrusive music score by Hikaru Hayashi and excellent cinematography of Kozo Okazaki. Newly released on DVD in Japan, this is a film ripe for rediscovery and one which I think will start to receive more attention in the near future.

 

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)