Kaei / 花影 / (‘The Shade of Blossoms’, 1961)

Obscure Japanese Film #194

Junko Ikeuchi

 

Yoko (Junko Ikeuchi) is an ageing Ginza bar hostess who has never been sufficiently calculating to hook a wealthy patron and get herself set up with her own bar or restaurant. Seeing little future for herself, she plans to commit suicide with pills she’s been saving up. As she prepares to do so, her story is told in flashback and we learn that she was adopted as a child and, as an adult, has had a series of disappointing relationships with a variety of men. These include university lecturer Matsuzaki (Ryo Ikebe), middle-aged lawyer Hata (Tadao Takashima), young TV producer Shimizu (Ichiro Arishima), and old-flame-made-good Nogata (Tatsuya Mitsuhashi). However, the only one she’s ever really loved is older art critic Takashima (Shuji Sano), as he’s the only one who’s never made a pass at her, but perhaps she’s idealised him too much…

 

Ikeuchi and Shuji Sano

 

Based on a prize-winning novel of the same name by Shohei Ooka – best known for Fires on the Plain – the story of this Tokyo Eiga production (distributed by Toho) was inspired by the life of Mutsuko Sakamoto (1915-58), a Ginza bar hostess with whom Ooka had had an eight-year-long affair before she committed suicide. The adaptation by Ryuzu Kikushima (one of Kurosawa’s regular collaborators) is extremely faithful to the book, which was translated into English as The Shade of Blossoms by Dennis Washburn and published in 1998 by the University of Michigan Press (the title refers to the shade under blossoming cherry or plum trees). Both film and novel have an almost shockingly sad ending without a trace of sentimentality, and director Yuzo Kawashima has done a fine job of bringing the story to life without imposing his own ego upon it. When he (or perhaps Kikushima) does add something – like Hata’s adopted daughter killing a worm in the garden after her father has thoughtlessly pointed out to Yoko that she’s not his by blood – it’s entirely appropriate and helps to illustrate the emotions of the characters. 

 

 

Yoko, a hostess who is weary of men, knows every seduction trick in the book only too well and seems in danger of sliding into alcoholism, is 38 years old in the novel, and would have been a perfect fit for Hideko Takamine, then 37. However, Tokyo Eiga went with the 28-year-old Junko Ikeuchi, whom they had just signed after her previous studio Shintoho had gone bankrupt. Although she’s a little young for the role, Ikeuchi could perhaps pass for a very well-preserved 38, but in any case she gives an excellent performance and manages to put Yoko’s complex emotions across very well. The remainder of the cast are left fighting for screen time as there are an unusually large number of important characters – indeed, it’s unusual to see Ryo Ikebe and Chikage Awashima in such small roles (Awashima plays the former mistress of Nogata’s deceased father). Sei Ikeno’s harpsichord-dominated score also adds a touch of class to the proceedings and never tries to manipulate our emotions in an obvious way. 

 

Tatsuya Mihashi, Ikeuchi and Chikage Awashima 

 

Shohei Ooka is on record as saying that Yukio Mishima was effusive in his praise of the book and that, after Mishima’s suicide, he felt convinced that it was this theme of Yoko wanting to end her own life while she was still beautiful that had appealed to him so much. 

 

Ryo Ikebe and Ikeuchi

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles) 

The Last Trump Card / 最後の切札 / Saigo no kirifuda (1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #193

Keiji Sada

 

Tatsuno (Keiji Sada) is a clothing store owner who has an unusual side hustle – he pretends to be part of a ‘New Religion research group’ with his sidekick Yoshimura (Seiji Miyaguchi), and together they extort money from religious organisations by offering to save them from potential scandals (mostly created by Tatsuno) for a price. In other words, they are blackmailers, and their only motivation seems to be greed. As if this weren’t sleazy enough, Tatsuno also dabbles in a little pimping and procuring on the side, and is having affairs with multiple women including nightclub singer Sonoko (Miyuki Kuwano from The Shape of Night) and TV actress Tsuruko (Keiko Hibino), both of whom he treats with contempt… 

 

Miyuki Kuwano

 

Based on a 1957 novel entitled Niku no boku (‘Servant of the Flesh’ or ‘I am Flesh’) by Hideo Shirasaki (1920-92) and with a screenplay by Kurosawa regular Shinobu Hashimoto, this Shochiku production was directed by Yoshitaro Nomura, who had been an assistant to Kurosawa on Scandal (1950) and The Idiot (1951), and it features a whole host of character actors familiar from Kurosawa pictures, including Miki Odagiri (the girl from Ikiru), Jerry Fujio, Seiji Miyaguchi, Eijiro Yanagi, Taiji Tonoyama and Koji Mitsui. And just when you think Ko Nishimura’s not going to be in it, his macabre little face finally pops up to deliver the rather gruesome ending - it's the sort of role usually played by Michael Ripper in Hammer horror films. However, in my view screenwriter Hashimoto sometimes produced sub-par work when not undert the guidance of a really great director like Kurosawa or Masaki Kobayashi, and here he allows the story to become too talky and complicated (even when watched with pretty good subtitles) while forgetting to give us anyone to root for, resulting in a mostly unengaging movie. 

 

Ko Nishimura

 

Usually cast in nice guy roles, leading man Keiji Sada probably relished the opportunity to play a complete scumbag for a change, something he would go on to do again in his final film, Sweet Sweat (1964). Talking of sweat, there’s also a lot of that in this movie, which is set in Tokyo during a heatwave and has everyone dripping throughout. Director Yoshitaro Nomura – best known for his Seicho Matsumoto adaptations (often adapted by Hashimoto) such as Castle of Sand (1974) – was a very good director, but this is not one of his best and I couldn’t help feeling it’s the sort of material that would have been better in black and white. For all its cynicism, at heart this is a superficial film – if watching a nasty guy do nasty things for 90 minutes before getting his comeuppance is enough for you, you might enjoy it, but it’s really got nothing to say. I doubt that it was a box office success, especially as it appears to be the only film adaptation of a Hideo Shirasaki novel and Japanese film companies tended to raid an author’s work repeatedly if they had made any money from it.

 

Sada with Seiji Miyaguchi

 

Alternative titles: The Grave Tells All / The Cards Will Tell

Thanks to A.K.

Main Line to Terror / 動脈列島 / Domyaku retto (1975)

Obscure Japanese Film #192

 

Masaomi Kondo

 

Akiyama (Masaomi Kondo) is a young doctor furious about the death of one of his patients, which he believes was the result of her living right next to a shinkansen (bullet train) track as the intense noise and vibration brought on memories of World War 2 air raids and induced repeated panic attacks which wrecked her health. It’s been around a decade since the advent of the bullet train, and many other people living near to the lines have also suffered greatly, but the rail bosses have done little to address the problems, so Akiyama decides it’s time to take matters into his own hands. He persuades his girlfriend Tomoko (Keiko Takahashi), a nurse, to steal a phial of nitro-glycerine from the hospital and uses it to create a bomb, threatening to destroy a bullet train in ten days’ time if Japanese National Railways (JNR) fail to address the issues immediately. The Police Commissioner (Eitaro Ozawa) calls in investigator Takigawa (Jiro Tamiya), who marshals all the forces at his disposal in a race against time to catch Akiyama and avert a major disaster…

 

Jiro Tamiya and Eitaro Ozawa

 

This Tokyo Eiga production has the type of story that can hardly fail to be gripping, but also calls attention to the issue of noise pollution from high-speed trains, which was something of a hot topic at the time. The film was based on a 1974 novel by the leftist writer Ikko Shimizu (1931-2010) which won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award. His work had a strong element of social commentary and often dealt with themes such as corruption in big business, but was only occasionally adapted for the big screen. In this case, the book was inspired by a lawsuit filed against JNR by 575 residents of Nagoya City which would drag on for over a decade (the residents eventually received substantial compensation and the original bullet trains were gradually replaced by quieter models). However, the idea of one of these protestors turning terrorist appears to have been Shimizu’s invention. As the story makes JNR look pretty bad, it’s unsurprising that they refused to co-operate with the film company, so how certain scenes could have been pulled off without their help is anyone’s guess. 

 

Masaomi Kondo and Meiko Kaji

 

Co-written and directed by Yasuzo Masumura, by this time a freelancer after the collapse of Daiei, it’s efficiently made but one of the least characteristic of his works. The plot has its implausibilities, but also a strong police procedural element and a memorable climax involving a bulldozer which made me wonder whether the filmmakers had seen the previous year’s American TV movie Killdozer. 

 

 

Star Jiro Tamiya was a Masumura favourite who had previously featured in the latter’s Black Super-Express (1964), which also had a plot revolving around the shinkansen. His co-star, Masaomi Kondo, had been around for a while, having debuted in Shohei Imamura’s The Pornographers (1966), but was mostly known for his TV work at this point, and the part of Akiyama marked his biggest film role to date. The rest of the cast features some well-known faces – including Meiko Kaji as a barmaid who falls for Akiyama and So Yamamura as the president of JNR – but the characters are generally on the thin side and don’t give the actors many opportunities to impress. Not that it matters much – the film rattles along at high speed much like the trains it features, and there’s also a pretty decent score by Hikaru Hayashi, who often worked with Kaneto Shindo as well as Masumura. 

 

So Yamamura

 

Toei released the similarly-themed Shinkansen daibakuha aka Bullet Train the same year.

Note on the title: The film is sometimes referred to in English as Dynamic Islands, but a more accurate translation of the Japanese title is ‘Artery Archipelago’, which would make sense if one added ‘of the’ in the middle. 

 

Masaomi Kondo and Meiko Kaji