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| Toshiro Mifune and Kamatari Fujiwara |
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| Eitaro Shindo |
Kyubei (Eitaro Shindo, better known as Sansho the Bailiff) has a herring-fishing business in Hokkaido and
is anticipating the annual arrival of the fish when his son, Tetsu (Toshiro
Mifune) – presumed missing in the war – unexpectedly turns up. Tetsu is
surprised to find that one of the fishermen employed by his father just lies
around all day drinking saké and refusing to work. The man in question is Jakoman
(Ryunosuke Tsukigata), an aggressive individual with an eye-patch whom everyone
is afraid of and who has a beef with Kyubei because Kyubei stole his boat to
escape from Sakhalin island when the Japanese were chased out by the Russians
at the end of the war.
Meanwhile, a woman named Yuki (Yuriko Hamada) turns up in search
of Jakoman, and it emerges that she’s in love with him despite the fact that he
wants nothing to do with her and treats her roughly. In the midst of all this
personal drama, the herring finally appear just as the men call a strike due to
low pay…
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| Yuriko Hamada |
This Toho production* was based on a 1947 novel entitled Nishin ryoba (‘Herring Fishing Grounds’)
by Tokuzo Kajino (1901-84, sometimes incorrectly listed as ‘Keizo Kajino’ or
‘Shinzo Kajino’). The screenplay was co-written by the director, Senkichi
Taniguchi, and Akira Kurosawa, with whom Taniguchi frequently collaborated during
this stage in their careers, and its full of characteristic Kurosawa touches. One
such is when Kyubei’s son-in-law (Kurosawa favourite Kamatari Fujiwara), an
apparently slow-witted clerk given to hiccups and sneezing, plays the shakuhachi (bamboo flute) and moves
everyone to tears, instantly clearing up the mystery of what his wife (Nijiko
Kiyokawa) sees in him. Indeed, the script seems to have been largely the work
of Kurosawa, with Taniguchi making some changes when he came aboard as
director, and Kurosawa apparently brought the characters of Jakoman and Tetsu
to the fore for the film, whereas the source novel had Kyubei as its main
protagonist. Concerning Taniguchi, it’s
hard to take him very seriously as a director given the hokum that he made in
the final years of his career, while the fact that so many of his other films are basically
inaccessible means that he’s likely to be forever regarded as a footnote to
Kurosawa (who was said to have done much of the editing on Taniguchi’s early
films).
Mifune – who has to perform a spectacularly weird song and dance
which I bet embarrassed him – looks great and is effortlessly likeable as
Tetsu, while Ryunosuke Tsukigata is almost too convincing as the villainous
Jakoman, his one eye glinting with concentrated malevolence. Tsukigata had
previously played two of the opponents in Kurosawa’s Sanshiro Sugata films and has a staggering 499 credits on the
Japanese Movie Database. The female lead, Yuriko Hamada, also makes a strong
impression even if her feisty character is tamed at the end. (Hamada’s fate
remains a mystery – she made her final film in 1957 and nobody seems to know
what happened to her after that.) Excellent use of locations and a fine score
by Godzilla composer Akira Ifukube
also help to make this an enjoyable watch. The main flaw of the film is that it
lacks subtlety in the way it puts across its rather obvious moral message.
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| Yoshiko Kuga |
In regard to Kinji Fukasaku’s 1964 remake, while it was a good
idea to replace the original film’s subplot of Tetsu falling in love with a
girl he sees playing the organ in a Christian church** (played by an almost
unrecognisably young Yoshiko Kuga) with one in which he falls in love with the
sister of a deceased comrade whose family he visits, in my opinion that was the
only thing that the remake did right. Aside from that, everything that was good
about the first film has evaporated in Fukasaku’s tedious version, which seems
to have been a vanity project initiated by its star, Ken Takakura. Unfortunately,
that’s the one which is available in a very nice limited Blu-Ray from 88 Films.
The original film was a
box office success and spawned a sequel entitles Jiruba Tetsu (1950) again starring Mifune, Yuriko Hamada and Eitaro
Shindo and co-written by Kurosawa but directed by Isamu Kosugi and produced by
Tokyo Eiga.
*Actually, although it
was distributed by Toho and bears the Toho logo at the beginning, the following
title card announces the film as a ’49 Years production’. It seems to be the
only film credited thus, something which appears to be a result of the labour
dispute that was going on at Toho at the time. Perhaps the strike called by the
men in the film was partly a comment on the situation, but though the fishermen settle
their differences with Kyubei, that was sadly not to be the case at the studio.
**According to ‘I Love
Jakoman’ on Amazon Japan,
…
it was Taniguchi's idea for Tetsu to fall in love with the church girl, and
upon hearing it, Akira Kurosawa reportedly remarked, "That stinks."
(Taniguchi himself said this at a Taniguchi Film Screening).
Only Kurosawa and
Taniguchi are credited with the screenplay for the 1964 remake, but it’s
unclear whether either had any involvement in the changes made.
Watched without subtitles
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| Yuriko Hamada |
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