Sisters / 姉妹 / Kyodai (1955)

Obscure Japanese Film #197

Hitomi Nozoe and Hitomi Nakahara

 

Keiko (Hitomi Nozoe) and Toshiko (Hitomi Nakahara) are teenaged sisters whose family home is in the mountains close to a hydroelectric dam where their father (Akitake Kono) works. Their three younger brothers stay at home with their mother (Hiroko Kawasaki), but Keiko and Toshiko attend school in the city, so during term time they stay with aunt Otami (Yuko Mochizuki) and uncle Ginzaburo (Jun Tatara).  The relations get on well together, but Ginzaburo is prone to drinking, gambling and cavorting with geisha and Otami sometimes has to hide from creditors. At least Ginzaburo is preferable to their other uncle (Taiji Tonoyama), who beats his wife (Setsuko Shinobu). 

 

Yuko Mochizuki

 

As Keiko’s parents cannot afford to send her to university, they’re already looking for a match for her though she’s only 17. She likes power station worker Oka (Taketoshi Naito) despite his strange passion for dried squid, but his prospects are poor. The more tomboyish Toshiko is only 14 but already has a strong individualistic streak and equally strong opinions. Although the two girls are like chalk and cheese, they’re also unusually close, but seem fated to part sooner or later…  

 

Hitomi Nakahara

 

Shot mostly on location, this character-driven piece produced by the independent company Chuo Eiga has little plot, but plenty of comedy and tragedy in equal measure. Chuo Eiga was something of a haven for leftist filmmakers unable to get their projects accepted by the major studios. Sisters touches on some typical socialist concerns, such as the lay-offs of power station workers, but for the most part wears its politics lightly. The source was a semi-autobiographical 1954 novel by Fumi Kuroyanagi (1912-65), for whom the younger sister, Toshiko, was something of an alter ego. Perhaps for largely practical reasons, the setting has been changed from pre-war Niseko in Hokkaido to post-war Matsumoto in Nagano Prefecture. 

 

 

Director Miyoji Ieki (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Kaneto Shindo) was known for his films focusing on the difficulties faced by young people growing up, and Sisters is typical of his work. Although largely forgotten these days, there’s no doubt that Ieki qualifies as a true auteur due to the consistency of his theme and frequent input in the writing of his pictures. As usual, he elicits fine performances out of his young principals, although it should be noted that Hitomi Nakahara (also featured prominently in Ieki’s All My Children), who plays a 14-year-old most convincingly, was actually 19 at the time and, ironically, one year older than her namesake, Hitomi Nozoe, who plays her older sister. Ieki may not have been the most stylish of directors, but like his films Stepbrothers (1957), All My Children (1963) and The Wayside Pebble (1964), this is an intelligent, sensitive and genuinely moving piece of work.

 

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

 

 

 

Mountain Pass / 峠 / Toge (1957)

Obscure Japanese Film #196

 

Yoko Minamida

 

Tsukiko (Yoko Minamida) is a young woman dabbling in acting who gets signed by a movie studio where she is cast alongside star actress Harumi Sada (Misako Watanabe), a selfish bitch. Tsukiko’s father, Reisuke (Masao Shimizu), is a distinguished former diplomat who now lives with Tsukiko’s stepmother, Tomiko (Sachiko Murase), with whom she has an uneasy relationship, believing that Tomiko stole Reisuke away from her late mother. 

 

Masao Shimizu

 

Sachiko Murase

 

Tsukiko keeps running into nice guy magazine reporter Daisuke (Ryoji Hayama), a friend of her twinkly-eyed uncle (Jukichi Uno). However, after she meets the wealthy and money-obsessed Junzo (Shoji Yasui), who wants to marry her, she decides that the film biz is not for her and becomes his wife. Unfortunately, it turns out that Junzo and Harumi are former lovers; when Harumi happens to be on the same train as the newlyweds, she asks them which hotel they’ll be staying at and then transfers to the same one with the intention of seducing Junzo…

 

Ryoji Hayama

 

 

Shoji Yasui

 

Despite its title, this romantic drama from Nikkatsu studios has little to do with mountains – there’s some talk about Daisuke finding a mole up a mountain, which seems to be a strained metaphor for something or other, but that’s about it. Based on a serialised novel of the same name by Jiro Osaragi (best-known for his series of novels featuring his hooded swordsman character, Kurama Tengu), it was adapted by one Tamio Aoyama, whose brief screenwriting career resulted in only nine credits. Frankly, on the evidence of this film, it’s not hard to see why – there are  more coincidental meetings (one of my pet hates!) than you can shake a stick at, most of the characters are mere types rather than recognisable human beings, and Tsukiko’s marriage to Junzo is entirely unconvincing. 

 

Jukichi Uno

 

 

Misako Watanabe

 

The actors do their best, with Yoko Minamida and Sachiko Murase making especially heroic efforts with the flawed material they’ve been lumbered with, while Misako Watanabe can hardly fail to make an impression in the fun bad girl role, but for the most part these characters – especially the male ones – never really come to life. The corny string-dominated music score of Takanobu Saito and pedestrian direction by Buichi Saito (no relation) certainly do not help matters either. Director Saito had been an assistant to Ozu and began his own career making films of a similar type to his mentor, but had little success until he switched to more commercial fare such as The Rambling Guitarist (1959) and it’s eight sequels. 

 

Yoko Minamida

 

While the theme of how to deal with an unfaithful partner has potential and it’s satisfying to see Tsukiko refuse to be a victim and stand up for herself at the end, Mountain Pass is too contrived to be judged anything more than a mediocre piece of work.

Thanks to A.K.

Amazon Japan (no subtitles)

Bonus trivia: Shohei Imamura was assistant director on this film and can be seen playing one of the staff at the studio where Tsukiko makes her movie debut.

Wounded Beast / 傷つける野獣 / Kizu tsukeru yaju (1959)

Obscure Japanese Film #195

 

Tamio Kawaji

Kasahara (Tamio Kawaji) is a young man who bungles an attempt to rob a bank in Yokohama, shooting one of the staff in the process, and is forced to flee the scene without the loot. Detective Kizaki (Hideaki Nitani) is assigned to the case and soon discovers that the bullet matches a gun stolen from a detective killed in Osaka a few days before. Kasahara seeks refuge in the house of his sister (Tomoko Ko), but the police soon arrive and he only just manages to give them the slip. 

 

Hideaki Nitani

 

Kizaki’s investigations reveal that Kasahara was orphaned during the war and subsequently slid into a life of delinquency and petty crime. He loves Yoshiko (Hisako Tsukuba), who reciprocates his feelings, and we learn that he attempted the bank robbery after happening to see a vox pop interview in a cinema newsreel in which Yoshiko was asked by a reporter what it was she most wanted and replied ‘Money!’ The police now realise that all they have to do is follow Yoshiko and Kasahara will turn up sooner or later…

 

Hisako Tsukuba

 

This Nikkatsu noir credits notable future director Kei Kumai with its screenplay (his first) and has a separate credit for the prolific Hajime Takaiwa for ‘adaptation’, although it seems not to have had a literary source. Director Hiroshi Noguchi* directed his first eight feature films for Nikkatsu between 1939 and 1941, after which the war led to the studio becoming part of Daiei until 1954, when Noguchi became a director again, having spent most of the intervening years as an A.D. at Shochiku. He never made the top tier and remained a B-picture man until his premature death from a heart attack in 1967 at the age of 54, shortly after having completed his 85th film, Nikkatsu’s only monster movie, Gappa, the Triphibian Monster. However, if Wounded Beast is anything to go by, he was clearly not without talent, as it’s a fast-moving, stylish and entertaining piece of work. 

 

Joe Shishido

The majority of the cast are not terribly well-known (at least outside Japan), but – as one of the detectives – it does feature a young Joe Shishido, who appears to have begun but not yet completed the cheek augmentation surgery that would eventually lead to him resembling a hamster with the mumps. The underrated Yoko Minamida also pops up as Detective Kizaki’s girlfriend. 

 

Yoko Minamida

 

The opening credits sequence benefits from a cool jazz theme by composer Teizo Matsumura featuring what sounds like metal pipes being struck; this is followed by an abrupt silence and an attention-grabbing opening shot of a gun pointed directly at the camera. Noguchi also makes effective use of real locations and handles the action sequences very well. However, the most surprising aspect of the film is the amount of sympathy it has for Kasahara, even though he’s killed two people, one of whom was a police detective. The film’s liberal message is clearly that he’s really just a scared kid who’s had a lousy life and is desperately trying to act tough because he lacked a positive role model. 

*Aka Haruyasu Noguchi, real name Shigeichi Noguchi

Bonus trivia: Hisako Tsukuba later produced Piranha (1978) and several of its sequels.

Watched with dodgy subtitles

Amazon Japan (no subtitles)