Obscure Japanese Film #188
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| Masaya Takahashi |
Three stories set in the vast and labyrinthine inner chambers of Edo Castle during the reign of the sixth shogun, Ienobu Tokugawa, who held the title from 1709-12. (Nearly 50 at the time, Tokugawa is portrayed here as a somewhat younger man by the 37-year-old Masaya Takahashi.) With the exception of the shogun, only women are permitted in the inner palace, where power plays and factional battles are the norm…
Junko Fuji (left) and Reiko Hagi
In the first story, Fusa (Reiko Hagi) is brought to the castle at the request of concubine Okon (Junko Miyazono), who is in poor health and no longer able to bear children, in the hope that she will catch the eye of the shogun and have his child, thus weakening the position of the rival faction of women headed by Osume (Naoko Kubo). However, the shogun prefers the maid that Fusa brought with her instead, Omino (Junko Fuji). But when Osume gets pregnant first, Omino conspires with Okon’s senior attendant Matsushima (Isuzu Yamada) to get pregnant secretly by another man and claim that it’s the shogun’s child…
Kyoko Kishida (left) and Tomoko Ogawa
In the second story, the shogun has his eye on the innocent Shinonoi (Tomoko Ogawa) for his next bed partner, but she enters into a lesbian relationship with her mistress, Urao (Kyoko Kishida, in another lesbian role after Manji). But Shininoi has no choice but to obey when summoned to the shogun’s boudoir, which leads Urao to become dangerously jealous…
Kaneko Iwasaki (lying) and Yoshiko Sakuma
In the third story, Ochise (Yoshiko Sakuma), a maid to senior lady-in-waiting Asukai (Kaneko Iwasaki), is about to finish her three years of indentured servitude, after which she plans to leave the castle and marry fabric dyer Chokichi (Kunio Murai). No prizes for guessing what happens when she too catches the eye of the lustful shogun…
Kunio Murai and Yoshiko Sakuma
This Toei production was based on an original screenplay with four contributors, none of whom are especially well-known. Its director, Sadao Nakajima, started out as an assistant director around 1959 at Toei’s Kyoto studios – which meant that most of the films he worked on early on had period settings – before directing his first film, Female Ninja Magic, in 1964. With this debut, he (together with Kyoto studio head Shigeru Okada) was responsible for introducing a new eroticism to the jidaigeki (costume drama) genre, something which is also in evidence in The Shogun and His Mistresses. Although these films were classified as ‘for adults only’ at the time, it should be noted that they were not pornographic, though other filmmakers would copy the template and add nudity and more explicit sex scenes in the years to come. As is often the case, Nakajima’s career was more schizophrenic than that of many directors in the West, and went on to encompass a wide range of material from yakuza flicks and sex documentaries to more highbrow (or at least middlebrow) period dramas. His Meiko Kaji vehicle Jeans Blues: No Future (1974) has a minor cult following, while his passion project The Seburi Story (1985) was nominated for the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Nakajima’s career as a feature film director ended in the late 1990s, but not quite – he can be seen playing the part of a director at Toei Kyoto studios (much like himself) in Uzumasa Limelight (2014) and returned to the director’s chair one last time at the age of 84 for Love’s Twisting Path (2018) before passing away in 2023.
Isuzu Yamada and Junko Fuji
The most striking direction in this film occurs towards the end of the first story, when Omino arrives at the secluded house with the aim of being impregnated by a stranger and we hear the cries of the cicadas reaching fever pitch on the soundtrack before we get a POV shot from the bottom of a well down which the old lady who owns the house drops her bucket. No other scene is quite as memorable, but it’s a strong film overall, although not without its technical flaws – the wire attached to a fake firefly is visible at one point, while more depth of focus would have been preferable in some scenes, when the actors in the background are reduced to blurry blobs.
Tomoko Ogawa and a blurry Kishida
But these niggles are more than made up for by the quality cast, excellent score by Hajime Kaburagi (which utilises traditional instruments to great effect) and the fact that, with all the colourful kimono on display, this is exactly the type of film that benefits most from colour cinematography. The film was a huge hit, which not only spawned two sequels directed by Nakajima, but created a whole new subgenre of female-oriented jidaigeki which came to be known in Japan as ‘Ooku’ (inner palace) stories and would include the previously reviewed Tales of the Inner Chambers.
Isuzu Yamada
Bonus trivia:
Most of the young actresses featured in the film had never worn the type of kimono known as uchikake before, so jidaigeki veteran Isuzu Yamada (on loan from Toho) had to spend half a day training them how to walk without falling over.
Director Tadashi Imai was originally attached to the project, but his reluctance to emphasise the erotic aspects of the story led to him being taken off it by studio head Shigeru Okada.
Thanks to A.K.
DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)
Kyoko Kishida
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