Obscure Japanese Film #172
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| Kyoko Enami and Yukio Aoshima |
Kitani (Fumio Watanabe) is a conservative politician running for
re-election with the help of his sister-in-law, Haruko (Kirin Kiki), and adviser,
Mitsuoka (Ko Nishimura). When they need
someone to go to Tokyo in order to collect 30 million yen in cash for bribery
purposes, Kitani’s brother (i.e. Haruko’s husband), seems the perfect choice.
He is Shogo (Yukio Aoshima), a schmuck who works as a chef and does whatever
his wife tells him. However, he’s also a big fan of crime fiction, and after
picking up the cash he immediately absconds with it, hiding out at a hot spring
inn where he hooks up with one of the maids, Shino (Kyoko Enami)…
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| Fumio Watanabe |
Based on an untranslated 1973 novel of the same name by prolific
crime writer Seicho Matsumoto, this co-production between Toho and their
affiliate, Geiensha, treats the material like a comedy, although it’s seldom
very funny. The casting of Yukio Aoshima in the lead and the way he plays the
role suggested to me that director Hiromichi Horikawa was looking for a new
Keiju Kobayashi, who had starred in many of his earlier films. However, as this
film revolves partly around the world of politics and takes a swipe at the way
that elections are influenced by money, it’s also possible that Aoshima was
cast due to his other career – he had actually entered politics as a Member of
the House of Councillors in 1968 and, in 1971, “criticised the
large amount of political donations made to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party by the business community” (Japanese
Wikipedia). He eventually became Governor of Tokyo from
1995 until 1999, when he lost out to another celebrity politician, Shintaro
Ishihara. Like Ishihara, he also dabbled in many different fields, being at
various times a screenwriter, lyricist, TV personality, novelist, singer and
even film director. His independent 1966 film Kane (The Bell), which he
wrote, produced, directed and starred in, screened at Cannes, but sounds like a
terribly self-indulgent affair – IMDb offers the following synopsis: “Yukio
Aoshima and several of his friends go to the seashore for a weekend, and Yukio
films them as they enjoy the sand, the surf, and each other.” (Don’t think I’ll
be rushing to seek that one out…) In any case, he’d never been called on to
carry a movie before, and on this evidence it’s not hard to see why, as he’s clearly
nobody’s idea of a leading man and lacks Keiju Kobayashi’s subtlety and range
as well.
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| The obligatory Eitaro Ozawa appearance |
One of the more
interesting aspects of the film is that it features something called a futomani ritual, which I’ve never seen
before. It’s a Shinto method of divination in which the shoulder-blade of a
stag is heated over a fire until it cracks, at which point the pattern of the
cracks is interpreted for fortune-telling purposes. Incidentally, in the film
this is performed by a priest played by Jun Hamamura, who looks almost healthy
for once.
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| Jun Hamamura |
Overall, though, this
film just doesn’t really know what it wants to be. A sequence featuring some
weird freeze frames around halfway through does not help and made me think
there was a technical fault at first. And if it was supposed to be a comedy –
which seems to have been the intention – you have to wonder why on earth they
would choose to go with the ending this films is lumbered with. It’s an
acceptable time-passer, sure, but on the whole I’d have to call it a misfire.
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