Obscure Japanese Film #174
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| Yumeji Tsukioka |
28-year-old Setsuko (Yumeji Tsukioka), a former member of the aristocracy, has come down in the world somewhat after the war and ended up marrying below her class to Ichiro (Rentaro Mikuni), whose uncouth table manners appal her.
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| Rentaro Mikuni |
Despite being a wife and mother, she’s unable to forget her first love, Tsuchiya (Ryoji Hayama), especially as she keeps running into him (small place, Tokyo!). When her mother dies, Tsuchiya attends the funeral and, while paying his respects, whispers in Setsuko’s ear that he will be waiting for her the following day at 3 pm at a shrine. They start seeing each other on the sly, but he seems like such a nice guy that she believes it will remain platonic and her conscience will be clear. However, he has a weird fixation with eating breakfast naked…
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| Ryoji Hayama |
When Setsuko’s best friend, Yoshiko (Chikako Miyagi) – who is cheating on her own husband – arranges an excuse for Setsuko and Tsuchiya to sneak off to a hotel in Izu together, Setsuko freaks out when her uncle turns up at the hotel with some golfing buddies, stretching this film’s coincidence quota to the limit. Furthermore, Tsuchiya starts having non-platonic thoughts and tries to act on them, but finds himself rebuffed by Setsuko, who feels that she must remain faithful to her husband and certainly doesn’t want to eat breakfast naked with anyone…
This Nikkatsu production was adapted by Kaneto Shindo from a newly-published bestselling novel by Yukio Mishima (yet to be translated into English, but available in Chinese and Italian). The opening narration by actor Masaya Takahashi goes on for over 10 minutes and betrays the film’s literary origins. However, while the ending is apparently close to that of the novel, what happens in between is quite different, and it appears that Mishima’s original had Setsuko carrying on an extended sexual affair with Tsuchiya which results in two pregnancies, both of which are aborted. They also eat breakfast naked together, but I guess you couldn’t show that in a film in 1957 (so why have them talk about it, you may well ask). Anyway, although Mishima himself did not regard the novel as one of his serious literary efforts, he was not impressed and wrote in his diary that he could not imagine a more stupid movie.
It doesn’t help that Setsuko is a self-pitying snob who is unnecessarily stern to her good-humoured maid, making it hard to feel much sympathy for her. Nikkatsu’s biggest female star at the time, Yumeji Tsukioka, does as well as can be expected under the circumstances, but Rentaro Mikuni is wasted in a role with little substance and Ryoji Hayama fails to make much impression as Tsuchiya.
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| Chikako Miyagi |
Chikako Miyagi fares better as the cheerfully amoral and flashily-dressed Yoshiko, and it’s nice to see Koreya Senda – who had just played a rare leading role in director Ko Nakahira’s Temptation – pop up again here as Setsuko’s dad.
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| Koreya Senda |
Nakahira also seemed to have a fondness for his namesake, actor Ko Nishimura, who appeared in at least half a dozen of his films, including this one in which he has a small part as a blind masseur who sees things his client (Setsuko) can’t. If only Nakahira could have seen the defects in the script…
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| Ko Nishimura |
Thanks to A.K.
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