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.

When Women Lie / 嘘 / Uso (‘Lies’, 1963)

Obscure Japanese Film #160

L-R: Eiko Takashiro, Junko Kano, Nobuko Otowa

Following the template of their earlier picture A Woman’s Testament (1960), this omnibus comedy from Daiei studios is essentially three separate half-hour films by different directors cobbled together with no linking story, only a loose theme to unite them. 

 

Takashi Nakamura and Eiko Takashiro

Episode 1, ‘Playgirl’, written by Yoshio Shirasaka and directed by Yasuzo Masumura:

Mariko (Eiko Takashiro) is a young woman dating four different men but carefully preserving her virginity as she works out which is the best candidate for marriage. She keeps detailed notes on each one and even adopts a different persona depending on the tastes of the man she is meeting next. However, her cool calculations are upset when she discovers that she has a rival (Kyoko Enami) for her current favourite (Jerry Fujio)… 

Junko Kano

 

Episode 2, ‘Mistress on the Books’, written by Ryozo Kasahara and directed by Kozaburo Yoshimura:

Shinko (Junko Kano) is a soap opera actress dismayed to learn that her character has suddenly been killed off because she’s considered a ‘daikon’ (white radish, meaning ‘bad actor’). She complains to the show’s sponsor, who is also the head of a pharmaceutical company and her sugar daddy, but she’s been milking him for too much money, so he’s considering cutting her loose and sends one of his minions (Keizo Kawasaki) to deal with the situation…

Nobuko Otowa

 

Episode 3, ‘Three Women’, written by Kaneto Shindo and directed by Teinosuke Kinugasa

A woman enters an apartment and shoots a man dead. When she is questioned by a police officer (Ken Utsui), it emerges that the woman, Michiyo (Nobuko Otowa), had left her live-in job at an inn to come and live in the apartment with a salesman, Tashiro (Eiji Funakoshi), and that she had shot him when he wanted to break it off. We also learn that Tashiro had a wife (Mitsuko Mori) who forced him to stop seeing Michiyo. But where did Michiyo get the gun?   

Eiji Funakoshi

 

The English title of this picture seems almost unfair as the men here do quite a bit of lying themselves! In fact, the unifying theme might more accurately be described as infidelity rather than lying, but in any case the tone is one of comic irony with a dash of cynicism. With its moody lighting and camera angles, Kinugasa’s episode briefly threatens to become more serious, but not for long. 

Mitsuko Mori

 

What the picture may lack in depth, it makes up for in entertainment value, and I would certainly recommend it to fans of Daiei movies of this era. The three female stars all acquit themselves well, but Junko Kano in particular gets one of her best roles and proves a dab hand at comedy. She never quite reached the heights of Daiei’s top female stars Machiko Kyo, Ayako Wakao and Fujiko Yamamoto, perhaps partly because she started later (1957) and retired at the height of her popularity in 1963 due to an eye issue which was exacerbated by working under the bright studio lights. At the time of writing, she’s still alive at 88. 

 DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

The Crab Cannery Ship / 蟹工船 / Kanikosen (1953)

Obscure Japanese Film #159

So Yamamura

Based on the 1929 novel of the same name by communist writer Takiji Kobayashi (tortured to death by the police in 1933 aged just 30), this independent production depicts the harsh conditions on board the titular vessel, where the men are not much better off than the crabs they’re tasked with catching. The ship itself is closely modelled on the real-life Hakuai maru, which had started life as a hospital ship before being purchased by a fishing company. The crab-catching is carried out using smaller boats, which then return to the ship, where the catch is processed and canned on board. According to Japanese Wikipedia, this put the ship in a legal grey area as the usual naval laws did not apply to a factory ship, and neither did the labour laws that applied to factories based on land. Of course, this makes it easy for the owners to exploit the workers mercilessly and without fear of legal consequences. Many of those doing the canning are mere children, while the men are worked like slaves, frequently beaten and occasionally lost overboard with no attempt being made to rescue them. This brutal regime is overseen by Asakawa (Ko Mihashi), who even gives orders to the weak and ineffectual ship’s captain (Minosuke Yamada), whom he forbids to respond to an SOS call from another ship. 

Ko Mihashi

 

Minosuke Yamada

The Crab Cannery Ship was the first of six films to be directed by So Yamamura, an actor perhaps most familiar outside Japan for playing Admiral Yamamoto in Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). He gives himself a small part here as a fugitive who has joined the crew to escape the police. Yamamura also wrote the screenplay and invested his own money into the production. 

 

So Yamamura

It was the second film made by Gendai Eigasha, an independent company established in 1951 by former Toho employee Tengo Yamada (1916-88) to produce such left-wing, social conscience works as this and Tadashi Imai’s Darkness at Noon (1956). Since Yamada’s death, the company has been headed by his widow, Hisako Yamada (b.1932), and, although its output has been sporadic, continues to produce films at the time of writing. 

Jun Hamamura (left) and unidentified others

 

Unsurprisingly for this kind of story, there are no shades of grey to be found in the characterisations – everyone is either victim or victimiser, and the acting is pretty broad throughout. There is no star part, and the strengths of the film are in the realism of its setting, its fast pace and its often impressive camerawork. Cinematographer Yoshio Miyajima (who won an award for his work here) crowds the screen with grim, shadowy faces, lending the picture an almost tangible sense of claustrophobia while tilting the camera horizontally left and right appropriately (the film is not recommended to anyone prone to seasickness). Meanwhile, Akira Ifukube’s music is so ominous it sounds like he’s warming up for the following year’s Godzilla.

 

Ko Mihashi and unidentified others

Japan’s later economic recession led to the novel becoming a surprise best-seller again in 2008, and a remake appeared the following year. 

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)