Shunsetsu / 春雪 / (‘Spring Snow’, 1950)

Obscure Japanese Film #164

Yasuko Fujita

 

Takako (Yasuko Fujita) is a young woman who works on the ticket desk at her local train station in Denenchofu on the outskirts of Tokyo. The eldest child of a father (Takashi Shimura) who has been made redundant - though he doesn’t tell his family for a month - she hopes to wed train driver Toshio (Shuji Sano), but they cannot yet afford to marry. Not only are the family are struggling to get by, but Takako’s mother (Yuriko Hanabusa) is unwell and her younger brother (Teiji Takahashi) has started hanging out with a bad crowd. But when Takako’s younger sister Tomoko (Akiko Sawamura) finds work as a maid to a wealthy orchestra conductor (Ichiro Ryuzaki) who takes a shine to Takako, it looks like the family’s problems could be solved if she would only forget Toshio and marry him instead…

Takashi Shimura

 

Shuji Sano

 

Teiji Takahashi

Akiko Sawamura

This Shochiku production is unrelated to the later Yukio Mishima novel which shares its English title and was written as an original screenplay by Kaneto Shindo, one of around 40 he wrote for the director of this film, Kozaburo Yoshimura. I don’t remember the war itself being mentioned, but the poverty of the post-war years is emphasized throughout, and the family even try to grow vegetables in their garden to save a few yen. They tend to put up a  cheerful front when together, but often fall into depression on their own. We see Takiko riding a train and staring at the tracks as it speeds along as if seeing her life laid out before her in a straight line leading to nowhere, while her father eats his packed lunch in the ruins of the steelworks where he used to be employed and which was, presumably, demolished due to the war ending. Typically for Japanese drama, the story revolves around a classic giri (obligation) versus ninjo (inclination) conflict – in this case, if Takako marries the rich guy, her family will be saved. As it was made during the American occupation, however, the film also promotes western culture and values, and on one occasion we see Takako attending a ballet, while on another she and Toshio are seen sitting outside a Christian church where a wedding is taking place and admiring the sound of the choir singing a hymn within. 

 

Yasuko Fujita

The star of this film, Yasuko Fujita, was a theatre actress who had been hand-picked by Yoshimura to play the lead role despite never having appeared in a film before. It’s an impressive debut, and she not only looks the part, but acts it in such a way that she seems like a natural for the movies, betraying not even a hint of theatricality in her performance. Unfortunately for the Japanese cinema, she married a well-known music promoter in 1953 and retired from acting having made a dozen films, the most widely-seen of which is probably Yoshimura’s Clothes of Deception (1951), in which she co-starred opposite Machiko Kyo. Her Japanese Wikipedia page contains the enigmatic comment that ‘She reportedly made the most of her good looks when interacting with foreign celebrities.’ Yasuko Fujita passed away in 2015 aged 88.

Among the rest of the cast, the most notable is Takashi Shimura, and it’s nice to see that he’s not totally wasted here as he was so often when not working with Kurosawa. In Spring Snow, he gets to play a character with more than one dimension who goes through his own struggle against both himself and his circumstances. 

 

Although I wouldn’t go as far as to claim it as any kind of forgotten masterpiece, Spring Snow has quite a lot going for it, including the cinematography of Toshio Ubukata (who also worked for Kurosawa) and the mostly well-developed characters, who feel worth spending time with.

Thanks to A.K.

Why Did These Women Become Like This? / 何故彼女等はそうなったか / Naze kanojora wa so natta ka (aka Girls’ Reform School, 1956)

Obscure Japanese Film #163

Kyoko Kagawa and Masako Nakamura

This social conscience picture from Shintoho studios stars Kyoko Kagawa as Miss Oda, a kindly teacher at a reform school for wayward teenage girls that stands in the shadow of a castle. Among the girls are Hiroko (Masako Nakamura), a new arrival who comes from a wealthy family but has begun behaving badly after discovering that she was an illegitimate child; Yoneko (Akiko Mie), who is secretly pregnant; Tomiko (Konomi Fuji), whose good behaviour at the school sees her sent back home only to receive a cold reception from her stepmother (Wakako Kunimoto), causing her to run away again and end up back at the reformatory; and Chiyo (Junko Ikeuchi), who is in danger of being sold into prostitution to a brothel-keeper (Chieko Naniwa, who I’m sure has played this type of role in a number of films).

Chieko Naniwa

 

Somewhat surprisingly, the film was based on a 1952 novel by a male author, Toshihiko Takeda 1891-1961). However, he had some experience in these matters, having co-founded the Association for the Improvement of Children in 1947 and established an actual ‘Girls’ Home’ in 1949 in Muragame on the northern tip of Shikoku island. (Incidentally, Muragame does have a castle, although I’m uncertain if it’s the one we see in the film.)

 

Kyoko Kagawa

The supposed bad behaviour of the girls seems pretty mild today – this is not exactly a female Scum – but, then, writer-director Hiroshi Shimizu clearly wants us to view them with unreserved sympathy. The real bad behaviour is on the part of the uncaring parents, etc, who made them this way, and the unforgiving, self-righteous communities who deny them a second chance. The Japanese aphorism deri kugi wa utareru (‘the nail that sticks out gets hammered down’) springs to mind here. 

 

Akiko Mie

The film certainly gets its message cross, but feels like fairly minor Shimizu. The religious-sounding choral music which sounds as if it has come from a corny Hollywood Christmas movie has not dated well, and the film misses a trick in failing to provide Miss Oda with any backstory, though Kyoko Kagawa gives her usual fine performance in a role similar to that which she played in the later picture The Human Wall (1959). The acting is pretty good across the board, in fact, though of the young actresses who play the girls only Junko Ikeuchi went on to stardom and sustained a long career.

Shimizu incorporates some symbolism into the film - the castle walls which form a backdrop for the opening credits suggest a safe place where the inhabitants are protected from the hostile world outside, while the girls' employment involves painting Okame masks, which represent a woman who brings good fortune to the man she marries. This is, of course, apt as the young women here are clearly hoping to emerge from the establishment with a more positive identity. 

Junko Ikeuchi and Masako Nakamura

 

Thanks to A.K.

Kodomo no me / 子供の眼 / (‘Eyes of a Child’, 1955)

Obscure Japanese Film #162

Hideko Takamine

Kiyoko (Hideko Takamine) is a young woman living in Tokyo with her older brother, Shunji (Hiroshi Akutagawa), and his second wife, Sachiko (Mieko Takamine – no relation to Hideko), a dentist. They have a 10-year-old son, Osamu (Koji Shitara), by Shunji’s deceased first wife, and it’s left to Kiyoko to take care of him. 

 

Hiroshi Akutagawa

However, when Sachiko’s ageing father (Chishu Ryu) begins to have health issues, Shunji gets offered a promotion which involves moving to Nagoya, and Kiyoko receives a promising marriage proposal from factory worker Fujita (Minoru Oki), it becomes clear that this arrangement cannot last indefinitely and tensions arise… 

Mieko Takamine

 

Minoru Oki

This Shochiku production was directed by Yoshiro Kawazu, a former assistant to Keisuke Kinoshita who also often co-wrote screenplays with the writer of this film, Zenzo Matsuyama (who married Hideko Takamine the year this was made). Kawazu directed 24 films between 1955 and 1969, then went into TV when film work dried up before passing away at the early age of 46 in 1972 (I don’t know the cause). He won the 1956 Blue Ribbon Award for Best Newcomer for this film and Namida (‘Tears’), while the film itself shared the 1955 Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film with Dreyer’s Ordet (Denmark),  Michael Cacoyannis’ Stella (Greece), Laslo Benedek’s Sons, Mothers and a General (West Germany) and a Mexican film called Curvas Peligrosas (‘Dangerous Curves’) which has fallen into a profound obscurity. For some reason, this particular award was usually shared among entries from several countries at the time, but it’s still surprising that a modest little movie like Eyes of a Child would be submitted, let alone win. 

Koji Shitara

 

Kawazu’s film (his second) was based on a then newly-published novel of the same name by Ineko Sata (1904-98; incorrectly listed on IMDb as ‘Ineko Sada’), a feminist and former member of the Communist Party who was eventually expelled for criticising the party. The presence of Chishu Ryu and child actor Koji Shitara recalls the films of Ozu, and this domestic drama is in a similar vein, though it mostly lacks the contemplative, bittersweet quality of Ozu’s work. There’s so little drama in the first half that it all seems rather inconsequential, but it does become more interesting once an element of conflict is introduced later in the film. Although the title suggests that the story is told through the eyes of a child, this is not the case, but there is more attention paid to his feelings than in most other films of its type. Keisuke Kinoshita’s brother Chuji provides a surprisingly low-key music score (used sparingly), there’s a cameo by famous rakugo storyteller Sanyutei Kinba III (1894-1964) and a gloriously weird modern ballet performance by the ‘Youth Ballet Group’. 

Sanyutei Kinba III

 

And, of course, there’s Hideko Takamine – not in one of her most interesting roles, perhaps, but still demonstrating the naturalness and subtlety of expression that made her one of the cinema’s finest actors. 

 

Junpaku no yoru / 純白の夜/ (‘Pure White Nights’, 1951)

Obscure Japanese Film #161

Michiyo Kogure

Ikuko (Michiyo Kogure) is a young woman happily married to Tsunehiko (Seizaburo Kawazu), a banker. At a party, she dances with one of his friends, Kusunoki (Masayuki Mori), a dapper businessman. Afterwards, she’s surprised to discover that Kusunoki has slipped a note into her bag confessing his love for her. Ikuko informs her husband, who finds the situation amusing and advises her to ignore it and carry on as if nothing has happened. However, Kusunoki proves to be persistent and Ikuko begins to develop feelings for him in spite of herself. 

Masayuki Mori

 

Meanwhile, Ikuko’s younger sister, Tsuyuko (Keiko Tsushima), wants to marry a penniless actor-playwright (Keiji Sada), but her mother (Sachiko Murase) won’t allow it and wants her to marry Tsunehiko’s colleague, Sawada (Kinzo Shin). Ikuko regards Sawada with contempt but, unfortunately for her, he finds out that she has been seeing Kusunoki behind her husband’s back. During a storm, he gets Ikuko drunk and uses his information to pressure Ikuko into sleeping with him…

Keiko Tsushima

 

This Shochiku production was the first ever film version of a Yukio Mishima novel. Junpaku no yoru was first published as a magazine serial the previous year and has yet to be translated into English. Although not regarded as one of his major works, it seems to have been more than a mere job to pay the rent, and Shochiku’s publicity quoted Mishima as saying the following:

Junpaku no yoru is my favourite of the works I wrote last year. Works that are too overtly ambitious can have a certain vulgarity about them, but this one has relatively little of that, which is probably why the author likes it so much. However, since it is a novel that focuses more on psychology than plot, when I heard about the possibility of making it into a movie, I wondered if it could actually be done. This is because psychological portrayal is one of the weakest points of film.

The last sentence of Mishima’s quote is especially relevant here – although the film is quite effective in communicating the thoughts of the characters via the facial expressions and gestures of the characters as well as the dialogue, it basically adds up to scene after scene of people talking in rooms, and director Hideo Oba is not always inventive enough in his direction to make this very interesting. It probably doesn’t help that none of the main characters are terribly sympathetic, and it seems implausible that Ikuko would give herself to someone as repellent as Sawada even while drunk on a stormy night. Kinzo Shin – surely one of the gauntest faces in cinema – gets one of his better roles here as the smirking, chuckling, leering Sawada, but (from what I could gather by reading a translated synopsis), the Sawada of the book seems to have been a more sympathetic, slightly comic character. 

Kinzo Shin

 

Incidentally, other differences from the book are that Kusonoki no longer has a sick wife, a younger sister to Ikuko and Tsuyuko has disappeared, and the character played in the film by a young Keiji Sada was portrayed in the novel as being a spoilt, jazz-obsessed playboy.

Keiji Sada

 

Like The Ball at the Anjo House (1947), this is one of those post-war Japanese films in which the characters seem to live like wealthy foreigners in big, Western-style houses and are highly cultured with an interest in European art. I wonder how many people in Japan really lived like that at the time or to what extent audiences could relate to such people – perhaps it was some kind of aspirational fantasy? 

Michiyo Kogure

 

This is one of four films directed by Hideo Oba that I’ve seen now, and so far it’s hard to see him as anything other than competent but undistinguished.

Supposedly, Mishima appears as an extra in the ball scene, but if you can spot him, you have a sharper eye than mine.