Obscure Japanese Film #261
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| Ayako Wakao |
The Heian era. Kiyohime (Ayako Wakao) is the feisty daughter of a village headman. Out hunting a fox one day, she fires an arrow at it, but hits a handsome young monk, Anchin (Raizo Ichikawa), in the arm (presumably there was no cappuccino around in those days for her to spill on him). Apparently confusing the first aid procedure for arrow wounds with the one for snake bites, she sucks his wound and spits out the blood, then bandages it and invites him back to her place to recuperate. As a monk who takes his religion seriously, he spurns her company because he wants to avoid temptation; she takes this as an insult. To get revenge – in a literally ‘steamy’ scene made much of at the time – she follows him to a hot spring in which he’s taking a moonlit bath, strips off and makes as if to seduce him, then laughs in his face when he begins to give in to temptation. He runs off and confesses to a priest who advises him to go and stand under a waterfall until he stops thinking about her (is this the origin of the cold shower treatment?). Meanwhile, she decides that she really loves him after all, but of course everyone else in the movie is determined to keep them apart…
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| Raizo Ichikawa |
This Daiei production was based on a legend about the ancient Buddhist temple of Dojoji in Wakayama Prefecture. The legend had been the basis for numerous Noh, kabuki and bunraku (puppet) plays, but the sole writing credit here goes to screenwriter Hideo Oguni, a frequent Kurosawa collaborator. Unfortunately, in this case he came up with such a corny load of old tosh that the only reasonable way to atone for it would have been to commit hara kiri. Even at a mere 85-minutes, it feels incredibly drawn-out and plods on predictably at a glacial pace before finally reaching its climax, in which either Ayako Wakao turned into a giant snake, or I had begun to hallucinate as a result of brain-rot brought on by the previous 75 minutes, I’m really not sure which.
This was the tenth of 19 films in which Ayako Wakao and Raizo Ichikawa – two of Daiei’s biggest stars – appeared together, and they were rumoured to have been lovers at the time. I don’t know about that, but they were certainly very flirty in a joint magazine interview quoted at this Japanese Raizo Ichikawa fan blog. In any case, one can only pity them here for being lumbered with such unconvincing characters and risible dialogue. Director Koji Shima throws in a couple of his trademark storms and makes it all look quite pretty in an artificial sort of way, but this one’s a lost cause, although – not too surprisingly, perhaps – it was a box office success at the time. All in all, it’s the sort of story that works much better in Kihachiro Kawamoto’s 20-minute puppet film version of 1976 entitled Dojoji, which you can watch on YouTube.
Incidentally, anyone visiting Wakayama Prefecture can visit Dojoji, where there is a picture scroll depicting the story of Anchin and Kiyohime, and request a monk to tell the story (with the option of English, I think). For more info, visit Dojoji’s English web page.
At the time of writing, masochists can watch the film with English subs on YouTube.
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