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| Masahiko Tsugawa |
1832. Jirokichi (Masahiko Tsugawa) is an angry young man living in a tenement in Edo (now Tokyo) at a time when poverty is widespread and corruption is rife. His namesake, the real-life thief Jirokichi (better-known as Nezumi Kozo, or ‘Rat Boy’)* has just been executed. Like many young men, Jirokichi idolises him as a sort of Robin Hood-figure who helped the poor and continually outsmarted The Man. Unfortunately, his attempts to emulate his hero tend to cause trouble for his fellow tenement-dwellers, and he receives no parental guidance as his mother is dead, while his father (Akitake Kono) is unemployed and gambles away what little money they have.
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| Izumi Ashikawa |
The girl next door, Okin (Izumi Ashikawa), works at a teahouse and, to Jirokichi’s annoyance, is courted by a young samurai, Kakusaburo (Hiroyuki Nagato). Jirokichi picks a fight with him and wins, after which the two become friends. Some local yakuza who witnessed the fight decide to employ Jirokichi. Despite the fact that he had previously fought against the yakuza when he saw them ripping off the poor, he’s now happy to work for The Man as the other tenement-dwellers have come to see him as a troublemaker and turned against him. Only Okin still believes in him as she remembers all the times he protected her when she was a young girl…
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| Hiroyuki Nagato |
This Nikkatsu production was based on a then newly-published novel by Genzo Murakami, a specialist in samurai tales. The two young male stars, Masahiko Tsugawa (17) and Hiroyuki Nagato (23), were not only brothers, but were also both associated with so-called ‘sun tribe’ pictures – Tsugawa with Crazed Fruit and Nagato with Season in the Sun (both 1956). Although this film is by no means a ‘sun tribe’ jidaigeki (period drama), it’s obvious that it was made to appeal to the youth market.
Directed by veteran Taizo Fuyushima, who made Joshu karasu (see my review for more on him), like that film, this one is very well-made and entertaining with quite a lot of humour if not a great deal of depth, and also features some excellent cinematography, in this case by Shohei Imamura favourite Shinsaku Himeda. Transposed to another era, Jirokichi is akin to the typical nihilistic young rebel of post-war Japan who felt let down by the older generation (represented by here by his worse than useless father), but the light, conventional tone of the ending negates any impact the film might have had.
Watched with dodgy subtitles.
*This historical figure became the hero of various kabuki plays, novels and motion pictures in Japan; of the latter, Daisuke Ito’s Jirokichi the Rat (1931) is the most notable.
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