Monday, 13 October 2025

Kenka tobi / 喧嘩鳶 (‘Fighting Firemen,’ 1939)

Obscure Japanese Film #222

 

Kazuo Hasegawa

 

This Toho Eiga production was based on a newspaper serial novel by Kanji Kunieda (1892-1956), who specialised in stories set in the Edo period and also wrote the source novel upon which Mizoguchi’s  Utamaro and His Five Women (1946) was based. The story of Kenka tobi concerns the genuine historical phenomenon of the samurai firefighting gangs of the Edo period, who were often in fierce competition with each other. 

 

Isuzu Yamada

 

The film features four of the big stars of Japanese cinema in the late 1930s: Kazuo Hasegawa, Isuzu Yamada, Ranko Hanai and Yataro Kurokawa. Directed by Tamizo Ishida, who also made Fallen Blossoms (1938) and the previously-reviewed Flower-Picking Diary (1939), it was a big budget production originally released in two parts and featuring impressively large sets (much of which goes up in flames) and hundreds of extras. 

 

Ranko Hanai

 

Kenka tobi zenpen (‘Fighting Firemen Part 1’) ran 73 minutes and, while I was unable to find a reliable running time for Part 2 (Kenka tobi kohen), I think it’s safe to assume it was a similar length. What we are left with is an 89-minute version cobbled together from the two original parts, so it’s likely that nearly an hour has been chopped out, and there are certainly elements of the story that are a little unclear. 

 

Yamada and Hasegawa

What remains has Kichigoro (Hasegawa), a firefighter from the Kaga-tobi gang, coming to the rescue of Omon (Hanai) when some villains try to abduct her in the street. Omon is the sister of the Ha-gumi gang’s Jirokichi (Kurokawa). She falls in love with Kichigoro, but this is complicated as he belongs to the rivals of her brother’s gang (shades of Romeo and Juliet) and also because Koina (Yamada), a geisha who knows him as a client, is already in love with him…

 

Hasegawa and Yataro Kurokawa

 

Although it’s a meller aimed squarely at the box office, there’s a good deal of subtlety in Ishida’s direction here, and it’s really very well staged and shot throughout, while performances are free from the hamminess you might expect from this type of material. With so few early Japanese talkies available in such good quality before it mostly became military propaganda, Kenka tobi is a rare treat. I doubt that we’ll ever get to see the original two parts in full and would not be surprised if they no longer exist – it was quite common in the Japanese cinema at the time for studios to make two-part films, then edit them down to a single feature and apparently bin the rest. Other examples that spring to mind are Kon Ichikawa’s 365 Nights (1948) and The Burmese Harp (1956), and The Spider Man (1958).

A remake appeared in 1961 under the title Edokko-hada, directed by Masahiro Makino. 

 


Thanks to A.K. 

Watch on my YouTube channel here (with English subtitles) 

Wednesday, 8 October 2025

Towering Waves / 波の塔 / Nami no to (1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #221

 

Ineko Arima and Masahiko Tsugawa

Miyuki Kuwano

 

Koji Nanbara and Kyoko Kishida

 

Hiroshi Nihonyanagi

 

Ineko Arima

 


Sunday, 5 October 2025

Asu wa Nihon bare / 明日は日本晴れ (‘Tomorrow will be Fine Weather in Japan’, 1948)

Obscure Japanese Film #220

 

Michitaro Mizushima and Wakako Kunitomo

 

Like writer-director Hiroshi Shimizus earlier Mr Thank You (1936) and Dawn Chorus (1941), this film is set almost entirely in (or at times just outside) a bus and was shot on location. In this case, there are similarities with Maupassants famous story Boule de Suif, which had also served as the basis for Mizoguchis  Oyuki the Virgin (1935) and John Fords Stagecoach (1939) and had appeared in Japanese translation by 1938 (if not earlier). Although most internet sources credit Shimizu with the screenplay, the opening titles of the film credit Shin’ichi Sekizawa. ‘Mingo’ at Filmarks.com states that Sekizawa used John Steinbeck’s 1947 novel The Wayward Bus as inspiration, but points out that the film has little in common with it (other than the basic idea of a bus full of random people having their journey interrupted). 

 

Wakako Kunitomo

 

In any case, like Maupassant, Shimizu and Sekizawa throw together a motley assortment of characters to represent a microcosm of society specifically, post-war Japanese society in this instance. The tart with a heart is Waka (Wakako Kunitomo), who happens to be an old flame of bus driver Seiji (Michitaro Mizushima), and was forced to prostitute herself during the war to provide for her sick father. Her presence is resented by bus conductress Sachi (Sachiko Mitani), who of course is in love with Seiji, but if this all sounds like a terrible bunch of old clichés so far, don’t let that put you off. 

 

Shinobu Araki

 

More unexpectedly, a former general (Shinobu Araki) is portrayed very sympathetically as a man carrying a burden of sincere guilt and attempting to make amends. Also on the bus are a masseur who was blinded in the war (Shin’ichi Himori), a porter who lost a leg in it (well played by real-life amputee Gosho Shoichi, who also appeared in Shimizu’s Children of the Beehive and its first sequel) and Mie, a teenage girl who was orphaned by it. Intriguingly, the only character portrayed in an unsympathetic light is a fortune-teller (Seijiro Mayama), who is depicted as lazy and selfish. Why Shimizu and Sekizawa chose a character of this particular profession to be so negative about we can only speculate, but my theory is that he represents the empty promises of a better future that were made to the Japanese people by their militaristic government; virtually everyone on the bus is in some way a victim of the misplaced trust they put in authority. 

 

Shin'ichi Himori and Gosho Shoichi

 

Running just over an hour and lacking any big stars, this might be a modest little movie, but Shimizu makes excellent use of the restricted setting and mountain road locations, while the acting is remarkably strong all round. It’s also a thoughtful film with a positive, humanist message, but it wears it lightly and Shimizu was not one to beat you round the head with it. 

 

Seijiro Mayama

 

If it seems surprising that a film by Hiroshi Shimizu should be quite so obscure, that’s because it was considered lost until 2022, when it was finally found in a Shochiku warehouse (strange, as it was an independent production distributed by Toho) and screened for the first time in 74 years.

Watch on my YouTube channel with English subtitles here

Thanks to A.K. 


Sunday, 28 September 2025

Kirai Kirai Kirai / 嫌い嫌い嫌い / (‘Hate hate hate’, 1960)

 

Ichiro Sugai

Atsuko Kindaichi

 

Jiro Tamiya

 

Junko Kano

 
Sachiko Hidari

Bokuzen Hidari

 

Kazuko Matsuo