Kenka tobi / 喧嘩鳶 (‘Fighting Firemen,’ 1939)

Obscure Japanese Film #222

 

Kazuo Hasegawa

 

This Toho Eiga production was based on a newspaper serial novel by Kanji Kunieda (1892-1956), who specialised in stories set in the Edo period and also wrote the source novel upon which Mizoguchi’s  Utamaro and His Five Women (1946) was based. The story of Kenka tobi concerns the genuine historical phenomenon of the samurai firefighting gangs of the Edo period, who were often in fierce competition with each other. 

 

Isuzu Yamada

 

The film features four of the big stars of Japanese cinema in the late 1930s: Kazuo Hasegawa, Isuzu Yamada, Ranko Hanai and Yataro Kurokawa. Directed by Tamizo Ishida, who also made Fallen Blossoms (1938) and the previously-reviewed Flower-Picking Diary (1939), it was a big budget production originally released in two parts and featuring impressively large sets (much of which goes up in flames) and hundreds of extras. 

 

Ranko Hanai

 

Kenka tobi zenpen (‘Fighting Firemen Part 1’) ran 73 minutes and, while I was unable to find a reliable running time for Part 2 (Kenka tobi kohen), I think it’s safe to assume it was a similar length. What we are left with is an 89-minute version cobbled together from the two original parts, so it’s likely that nearly an hour has been chopped out, and there are certainly elements of the story that are a little unclear. 

 

Yamada and Hasegawa

What remains has Kichigoro (Hasegawa), a firefighter from the Kaga-tobi gang, coming to the rescue of Omon (Hanai) when some villains try to abduct her in the street. Omon is the sister of the Ha-gumi gang’s Jirokichi (Kurokawa). She falls in love with Kichigoro, but this is complicated as he belongs to the rivals of her brother’s gang (shades of Romeo and Juliet) and also because Koina (Yamada), a geisha who knows him as a client, is already in love with him…

 

Hasegawa and Yataro Kurokawa

 

Although it’s a meller aimed squarely at the box office, there’s a good deal of subtlety in Ishida’s direction here, and it’s really very well staged and shot throughout, while performances are free from the hamminess you might expect from this type of material. With so few early Japanese talkies available in such good quality before it mostly became military propaganda, Kenka tobi is a rare treat. I doubt that we’ll ever get to see the original two parts in full and would not be surprised if they no longer exist – it was quite common in the Japanese cinema at the time for studios to make two-part films, then edit them down to a single feature and apparently bin the rest. Other examples that spring to mind are Kon Ichikawa’s 365 Nights (1948) and The Burmese Harp (1956), and The Spider Man (1958).

A remake appeared in 1961 under the title Edokko-hada, directed by Masahiro Makino. 

 

Thanks to A.K. 

Watch on my YouTube channel here (with English subtitles)