Wandering Shore / 流離の岸 / Ryuri no kishi (1956)

Obscure Japanese Film #180

Terumi Niki

 

Sachiko Murase

Chiho (Terumi Niki) is a young child left alone in the country to be raised by her grandmother , Uta (Sachiko Murase), because her mother, Hagiyo (Nobuko Otowa), has left her father and is getting remarried. Chiho is a sensitive but also somewhat wilful and proud child who misses her mother but doesn’t like to admit it. Uta sends Chiho to take food to her neighbour, Okichi (Sachiko Soma), whom Uta has known since childhood. Uta is now a penniless old lady living in a shack; according to Uta, she has ended up this way because she was frivolous in her relationships with men and spent her life doing what she wanted without regard for the consequences. 

Mie Kitahara and Nobuko Otowa

 

After a year, Chiho goes to live with her mother and stepfather, Takakura (Nobuo Kaneko), who has a son of his own, but Chiho’s status is lower and she feels it. Ten years pass, and Chiho (now played by Mie Kitahara) is a high school student living with her uncle (Taiji Tonoyama) and his wife (Yoshiko Tsubouchi). When Chiho wakes up one day with a strange pain in her finger, she goes to see her friend’s father, a doctor, but he’s out, so the doctor’s son, a newly graduated medical student, Ryukichi (Rentaro Mikuni), attends to her instead. An instant mutual attraction soon leads to marriage plans, but Ryukichi has not been entirely honest with her about his past…

Rentaro Mikuni

 

Mie Kitahara

Released four months after Love is Lost (see review below), this is another Nikkatsu production written and directed by Kaneto Shindo and featuring some of the same cast, with Nobuko Otowa taking a supporting role here and Taiji Tonoyama and Jun Hamamura popping up as expected. Again, the screenplay was not an original – in this case it’s an adaptation of a novel first published in 1953 by Yoko Ota (1906-63),* whose childhood seems to have been similar to that of Chiho’s. 

 

The film is a little less successful than Love is Lost – although it also features the work of composer Akira Ifukube and cinematographer Takeo Ito, their contributions here are less memorable. For his part, Shindo was perhaps a little too faithful to the novel as the story feels more complicated than it needed to be. However, while Terumi Niki (from the previous year’s Policeman’s Diary) growing up to be Mie Kitahara is a stretch, the attraction between Chiho and Ryukichi is convincing. The film is also quite powerful in putting across its message, which I would summarise as a cautionary one about the irreparable damage that can be caused to a relationship when one party deceives the other – especially when that other is a sensitive soul like Chiho, whose fractured childhood has left her more emotionally vulnerable than most.

 

*Ota was a Hiroshima survivor and her 1948 novel City of Corpses on this theme is available in English translation in Hiroshima: Three Witnesses (Princeton University Press, 1990). She also has a short story in the collection Fire from the Ashes: Short Stories about Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Readers International, 1985).

Thanks to A.K. 

Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

Love is Lost / 銀心中 / Gin shinju (‘Silver Double Suicide’, 1956)

Obscure Japanese Film #179

 

Jukichi Uno and Nobuko Otowa

Tokyo, c. 1942. Sakie (Nobuko Otowa) and her husband Kiichi (Jukichi Uno) run a barbershop together and agree to take Kiichi’s nephew Jutaro (Hiroyuki Nagato) as a live-in apprentice. When Kiichi is called up to join the army, his absence brings Sakie and Jutaro closer during his absence, but it’s not long before Jutaro is also conscripted. One day, a messenger arrives to inform Sakie that her husband has been killed in battle in the Philippines. After living out the remainder of the war with her brother (Akitake Kono) and his resentful wife (Harue Tone) in the country, Sakie returns to Tokyo to find the barbershop in ruins, but is reunited with Jutaro. Their relationship soon turns romantic and they vow to rebuild the business, but the course of true love never runs smooth…  

Otowa with Hiroyuki Nagato

 

This Nikkatsu production was based on a 1952 short story of the same title by Torahiko Tamiya (male, 1911-88), whose work also provided the basis for Miyoji Ieki’s Stepbrothers (1957) among other films. Written and directed by Kaneto Shindo, as usual it stars his long-term mistress, Nobuko Otowa, who gives a typically fine performance in the lead role. The rest of the cast also acquit themselves well and it’s always good to see Shindo’s stock company of his favourite  character actors, including Taiji Tonoyama, Tanie Kitabayashi and – very briefly as a barbershop customer – Jun Hamamura. However, I did think that the actress playing Umeko, the alcoholic, gambling-addicted harlot went way over the top – I finally realised that this role was also being played by Nobuko Otowa! This is cleverly shot and edited, with Taiji Tonoyama playing a scene with both Otowas. 

Taiji Tonoyama with Otowa as Sakie

 

TT with Otowa as Umeko

This film has its flaws and gets a bit too repetitive in its latter stages, with virtually the same scene playing out several times, and it would be easy to dismiss it as just another rather hokey tragic love story. However, it also provides a powerful depiction of the sense of futility and waste that the Japanese felt after the war, and how this inevitably led to widespread disillusionment, bitterness, cynicism and nihilism. In one scene which has no bearing on the plot, the bombed-out Sakie and Jutaro take shelter with other newly-homeless Tokyo residents in the subway and look on as two men chase a screaming woman through a tunnel. Nobody intervenes or even offers a comment. For me, this type of seemingly-irrelevant scene which actually speaks volumes is the mark of a great filmmaking talent, which I think Shindo certainly was. The excellent cinematography of Takeo Ito (an award-winner for Kurosawa’s Drunken Angel) and score by Godzilla composer Akira Ifukube also help to make this a film worth seeking out.

Otowa as Sakie

 

Otowa as Umeko

Thanks to A.K.

On Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

Structure of Hate / 黒い画集 第二話 寒流 / Kuroi gashu dainibu: Kanryu (1961)

Obscure Japanese Film #178

Ryo Ikebe

 

Okino (Ryo Ikebe) is a hard-working Tokyo bank employee who is entrusted with a promotion to manager of the Ikebukuro branch by his boss, Kuwayama (Akihiko Hirata). However, Okino is disliked by his wife (Michiko Araki) and two children because he’s so focused on his work that he largely ignores them. Soon after starting his new job, he’s approached for a bank loan by restaurant owner Nami (Michiyo Aratama) and a mutual attraction soon leads to an affair. As such a relationship with a customer of the bank could cost Okino his job, he must be especially careful to keep it a secret – something that becomes increasingly difficult when Kuwayama meets Nami and decides to pursue her himself. Then Okino begins to wonder if Nami has just been using him for her financial benefit…

 

Michiyo Aratama

 

The Japanese title of this Toho production translates as ‘Black Art Book Episode 2: Cold Current’ as ‘Cold Current’ was the title of Seicho Matsumoto’s story first serialised in the Weekly Asahi in 1959 before being included in the collection Black Art Book 2, published later that year.* Harenchi Gakuen helpfully explains on Filmarks.com that, ‘The cold current refers to the side streams and those who have been demoted.’ This makes perfect sense as Okino certainly finds himself sidelined in this film version by screenwriter Tokuhei Wakao and director Hideo Suzuki. Unfortunately, the original story is not available in English, but apparently the ending was changed significantly. It’s a little different from your typical Seicho Matsumoto tale – there’s not even a murder – and the plot went off in directions I failed to anticipate, but did enjoy, culminating in a highly unusual ending in which we are deliberately kept in the dark about exactly what happened.

 

Akihiko Hirata

 

It’s a refreshingly unsentimental film which takes a pretty dim view of human nature. Having said that, the two main characters are not entirely despicable. It’s common in Japan for men to put work before family as Okino does here, and although Nami is the business-minded, pragmatic type, she’s put in a difficult position with which it’s hard not to sympathise, while it’s also clear that their relationship begins to trouble her conscience. In this role, the underrated Michiyo Aratama delivers the film’s best performance and it’s good to see her show what she could do when given a meatier part than the typical ‘nice girl’ roles she’s better-known for in films such as The Human Condition. 

 

Jun Hamamura

 

Seiji Miyaguchi

The film has some wonderful cameos by familiar faces such as Jun Hamamura as a doctor who looks like he could use some of his own medicine, Seiji Miyaguchi as a private detective who looks like he hasn’t had a client for years, Tetsuro Tanba as a yakuza boss and, best of all, Takashi Shimura as a shark-like banking bigwig who exudes an aura of self-confidence and power and is appropriately trailed everywhere by his silent, pilot-fish-like mistress (Machiko Kitagawa). 

 

Tetsuro Tanba and friends

 

Takashi Shimura

This is the only film I’ve seen so far by director Hideo Suzuki (1916-2002), who worked as a contract director first for Daiei (1947-52), then Shintoho (1953) and finally Toho (1954-67) before finishing his career in TV. Although he is said to have had a limited amount of choice in the films he was assigned to direct and he worked in a variety of genres, he is apparently highly regarded by some for his thrillers and suspense movies, and on the evidence of Structure of Hate, I, for one, am keen to see more, especially as there’s more to this film than mere suspense. It’s also a portrait of a sick society in which people have become foolishly obsessed with position and material wealth while forgetting what’s really important in life. 

 

Michiyo Aratama

UPDATE: I've since watched Suzuki's Woman of Design (Sono basho ni onna arite, 1962), an equally unsentimental picture about women struggling to compete in the male-dominated advertising industry. It shows a similar disregard for the usual conventions of movie plotting, but for me it was a film to be admired rather than enjoyed as I found it a tad boring. It's also burdened with an odd score by composer Sei Ikeno which might have worked if used more sparingly but is repeated ad infinitum even over many of the dialogue scenes.
 

*Toho had made Black Art Book: An Employee’s Confession aka The Lost Alibi the previous year and Black Art Book: A Certain Disaster aka Death on the Mountain earlier in 1961. Structure of Hate was the final entry in the series.

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

Five Sisters / 女の暦 / Onna no koyomi (‘A Woman’s Calendar/Almanac’, 1954)

Obscure Japanese Film #177

Kyoko Kagawa

 

Yoko Sugi

 

Their parents now deceased, two adult sisters now live together in their old family home on an island, Shodoshima, in the south of Japan. The youngest of five sisters, they are Kuniko (Yoko Sugi), a schoolteacher who is reluctant to get married, and Mie (Kyoko Kagawa), who is around nine years younger and has a very different attitude – unbeknownst to Kuniko, she’s in love with a burly pig farmer (Gen Funabashi) and wants to marry him. 

 

Gen Funabashi, Kyoko Kagawa and friend

 

As the anniversary of their father’s passing is approaching, Kuniko and Mie decide that it’s time to have a family get-together, so they invite their three elder sisters to visit. The most senior, Michi (Kinuyo Tanaka), lives in Hiroshima and has five children of her own and a lazy, pachinko-addicted husband (Hisao Toake), while Takako (Yukiko Todoroki), who lives in Tokyo, is married to a man who’s in prison for getting caught up in a demonstration. Finally, there’s Kayano (Ranko Hanai), who lives in Osaka and is unhappily married to Sugie (Masao Mishima), who’s always unfavourably comparing her to his first wife. Will the examples of the three visiting sisters deter Mie from marriage as they have in Kuniko’s case? Or has she been scared into thinking she must get married in order not to end up like Ofuku (Eiko Miyoshi), a crazy old maid who lives on the island? 

 

Kinuyo Tanaka

 

Yukio Todoroki

Ranko Hanai

This Shintoho production was based on a story by Sakae Tsuboi, entitled simply Koyomi (‘calendar’ or ‘almanac’) and first published in 1940. Tsuboi (1899-1967) was the youngest of five daughters from Shodoshima, so she may well have based the character of Mie on herself. She also wrote Twenty-Four Eyes, which is also set on Shodoshima. Her only full-length work to have been translated into English, it was, of course, turned into a highly successful film by Keisuke Kinoshita in 1954. 

 

 

Like Policeman’s Diary (1955), the only other film I’ve seen by director Seiji Hisamatsu, this one is also reminiscent of Kinoshita’s work. Looking back at my review of that film, I described it as ‘a charming, bittersweet comic drama from a more innocent age’, a description which could equally apply to Five Sisters. However, unlike Kinoshita – who had a fondness for slightly gimmicky visual techniques – Hisamatsu’s direction is the kind that never draws attention to itself. Nothing terribly dramatic happens in this film, yet somehow I was never bored, and few films have dealt with the theme of marriage in such a light but thoughtful way.  It was screened in competition at Cannes in 1955, but seems to have rarely been seen since, at least outside of Japan. 

 

 

 DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

 Thanks to A.K.