Obscure Japanese Film #245
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| Chiemi Eri |
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| Kamatari Fujiwara and Nijiko Kiyokawa |
Sazae (Chiemi Eri) is a young woman still living at home with her father (Kamatari Fujiwara), mother (Nijiko Kiyokawa) and two younger siblings. She applies for a job at a women’s magazine but, after being directed to the wrong door by the handsome young Fuguta (Hiroshi Koizumi), she accidentally ends up working for a literary publisher instead. Her first task is to deliver the proof of a book to an author, but he turns out to be the same man she had had an embarrassing misunderstanding with in a department store and she is fired. Fuguta suggests she try to get a job at a detective agency instead – unexpectedly, she succeeds, but her first assignment happens to be to spy on her cousin, Norisuke (Tatsuya Nakadai), as his fiancee’s mother wants him investigated before agreeing to the marriage. She disguises herself as an old woman and begins to follow him around…
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| Chiemi Eri |
This Toho production was their first in a series of ten musical comedies starring singing sensation Chiemi Eri as Sazae-san, a daydreaming tomboy with a strange hairdo. It was based on a comic strip by Machiko Hasegawa (1920-92), Japan’s first professional female manga author, which first appeared in 1946 and ran in various newspapers until 1974. There have been various other adaptations, most notably an anime TV series which has been running since 1969, making Sazae-san a true Japanese institution, albeit one that’s remained little-known in the West.
One of the ironies of Japanese cinema is that, the more westernised the characters, the less likely a film has been to receive distribution abroad. The overseas market has tended to favour tales of samurai, geisha and yakuza, and (as far as I’m aware), Sazae-san has never been distributed in Europe or the U.S. At the end of the film, we see the family celebrating Christmas – which, of course, is not a Japanese festival, and the film is full of instances of Japanese people attempting to emulate westerners. The most extreme example of this is seen in the department store, where none of the mannequins look remotely Japanese.
The film was released in December of 1956 as the main feature in a triple-bill which also included two Tenten Musume pictures of under an hour each – very similar fare directed, like Sazae-san, by Nobuo Aoyagi, who had earlier made the excellent World of Love and the previously-reviewed Hyoroku’s Dream Tale (both 1943), but by this stage in his career seemed happy to be directing anything. In this case, there’s little to say about his direction except that it’s competent. Still, there’s some fun to be had from Sazae-san’s antics, and Chiemi Eri proves herself an adept comedienne as well as singer. Incidentally, in her daydreams, Sazae has a sensible haircut, glamorous attire and sings American-style jazz songs.
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| Tatsuya Nakadai |
It’s also amusing to see a young Tatsuya Nakadai as Sazae’s slightly slow-witted cousin in the days when he still had to take whatever roles he could get. It’s difficult to think of a less typical Nakadai role than this one, and it has to be said that he doesn’t look entirely comfortable singing along to Jingle Bells at the film’s climax. He managed to avoid the second film, but was roped back in for the third in the series before escaping for good.
Watched without subtitles.
DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)
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