Born Wild, Run Free / イタズ 熊 / Itazu kuma (‘Bear’, 1987)

Obscure Japanese Film #264

Takahiro Tamura

1928. ‘One-Shot’ Ginzo (Takahiro Tamura), a matagi, or bear hunter, returns to his home village of Ani in Akita Prefecture after having spent 10 years in the penal colony on Sakhalin Island for fighting. He learns that his son was killed in action in Siberia seven years earlier, and that most of the villagers now work at the new mine. Ginzo’s daughter-in-law, Kimi (Junko Sakurada), is living as a widow with his grandson, Ippei (Hiroshi Miyata).

Junko Sakurada

When a bear kills one of the villagers, Ginzo sets out to kill it and succeeds. However, shortly after this, a bear cub turns up looking for its mother. Ginzo, believing that he has committed a sin against the god of the mountains by making the cub an orphan, resolves to give up hunting and raise the cub to make amends. Ippei is delighted to have a furry new playmate, but of course cute little bears turn into big scary ones and one day they will have to release it back into the wild…

Hiroshi Miyata and friend

This co-production between Toei and the independent Kobushi Productions was made to capitalise on the success of director Toshio Goto’s earlier film The Old Bear Hunter (1982), although this film is aimed more specifically at the family market, with considerable focus on the boy and the bear cub. There are even two montage sequences of the two frolicking together and the bear getting into various mischief over which a female singer croons a cheesy ballad about human-animal friendship. The film is not exactly subtle, then, but it is quite well-made and entertaining, and some of the animal and nature footage is certainly impressive even if the filmmakers occasionally resort to using a fake bear for the more difficult shots (there is some pretty amazing ursine acting at the end, though…)

As with Goto’s other wilderness movies, I would question how much the welfare of the animals was considered here, and I can’t help feeling there’s some hypocrisy in promoting such a film as wholesome family entertainment when some of the various bears used must have had an unpleasant time in certain scenes . Still, I suppose this reflects our generally inconsistent attitude to animals, which easily changes depending on convenience; in this film, bears are both monstrous killers and cute anthropomorphised playmates as the story demands.

It’s perhaps worth saying a few words about this film’s star, Takahiro Tamura (1928-2006), whose father was none other than Tsumasaburo Bando, the sword-fighting star of silent films whose career continued until his untimely death in 1953 at the age of 51. Apparently, Bando died owing money to Shochiku, the studio which had him under contract, and Tamura was urged to follow in his father’s footsteps as a means of repaying his debts, which he agreed to do. However, he refused to be marketed as Tsumasaburo Bando mark II and resisted appearing in period dramas for the most part. He worked for Shochiku from 1953-1963, becoming a regular in Keisuke Kinoshita’s films, then went freelance. Career highlights include his role as Shintaro Katsu’s sidekick in The Hoodlum Soldier series (1965-68), Seisaku in Yasuzo Masumura’s Seisaku’s Wife (1965) opposite Ayako Wakao, the air force commander in Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), and the father in the Oscar-nominated Muddy River (1981). I don’t think Tamura ever became a box office draw, but he was a serious, hard-working actor who managed to avoid typecasting and successfully took on a wide range of roles. His performance in this film may be a tad broad at times, but on the whole he makes a good fist of it and, though Ginzo initially appears unlikeably gruff and aggressive, Tamura gradually reveals the heart of gold that’s concealed beneath the surface.

A note on the title:

イタズ (itazu) means ‘bear’ in the matagi language, but as this would not be understood by most Japanese people, the original title also contains the standard Japanese word for ‘bear’, 熊 (kuma).

English subtitles at Open Subtitles

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Last Days of the Samurai / 琴の爪 / Koto no tsume (‘The Koto Pick’, 1957)

Obscure Japanese Film #263

Chikage Ogi and Tojuro Sakata

1702, the 15th year of the Genroku era. After 47 ronin – former retainers of Lord Asano Naganori – avenge their lord by attacking and killing Kira Yoshinaka in Edo, they wait for their punishment to be handed down, knowing they will likely be sentenced to commit seppuku. The leader, Lord Kuranosuke Oishi (Koshiro Matsumoto VIII), has noticed that one of his men, Isogai (Tojuro Sakata), seems especially untroubled by the situation and wonders whether his bravado is genuine. Isogai was engaged to be married to koto player Omino (Chikage Ogi), who had no idea that he had been planning to take part in such an action. She’s desperate to speak to him, but the ronin are not allowed visitors, so she puts pressure on her uncle, Den’emon (Ganjiro Nakamura), a member of the clan, to intervene…

Koshiro Matsumoto VIII

Ganjiro Nakamura

This Toho production was based on Oishi saigo no ichinichi (‘Oishi’s Last Day’), part of the Genroku Chushingura series of kabuki plays written by Seika Mayama in the 1930s which revolved around the famous Ako Incident.* Understandably, then, the cast consists largely of actors from the kabuki theatre, although their performances here are not stagy and are, in fact, perfectly appropriate for the cinematic medium. Running a mere 53 minutes, it was the sixth film in the ‘Toho Diamond’ series, which were stand-alone B-movies adapted from various literary works with running times of around an hour.

It was also the third film directed by Hiromichi Horikawa, a former assistant to Kurosawa who made some good films but perhaps never lived up to his early promise. Here, obviously working on a tight budget, he omits the attack completely and the film mainly consists of people talking on tatami. However, thanks in part to Horikawa’s precise blocking and effective camera placement, it nevertheless makes for compelling drama, and Masaru Sato’s subtle, unintrusive score is also a definite asset. There’s also a nice line in dry humour, perhaps provided by another Kurosawa collaborator, screenwriter Ryuzo Kikushima, who co-wrote the screenplay with Tokuhei Wakao – at one point, the men realise that none of them know the correct etiquette for committing seppuku as they’ve never seen anyone actually do it, while when Omino attempts to disguise herself as a man in order to gain access to her fiancé, Oishi takes one look at her and says something to the effect of, ‘You wouldn’t happen to be a woman by any chance, would you?’ For me at least, this modest little film is a gem which deserves a higher rating than the 5/10 it currently has on IMDb.

Ogi in feminine and masculine guises

*This series of plays had already been the basis for Kenji Mizoguchi’s two-part film of 1941-2.

BONUS TRIVIA: The film led to the marriage of actors Tojuro Sakata and Chikage Ogi, the latter of whom later became a politician. 

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When the Cookie Crumbles / 砂糖菓子が壊れるとき / Satogashi ga kowareru toki (1967)

Obscure Japanese Film #262

Ayako Wakao

with Takashi Shimura

Kyoko (Ayako Wakao) is a young model who allows herself to be photographed nude in order to pay her mentally-ill mother’s hospital bills. She subsequently attracts the attention of elderly film studio head Kudo (Takashi Shimura), who offers her a movie deal. He also wants to marry her, but to her he’s just a father figure; nevertheless, she’s devastated when he dies. She then goes on to have relationships with a young reporter (Masahiko Tsugawa) and a university professor (Eiji Funakoshi) before marrying a baseball star (Jun Fujimaki), and later a bespectacled, pipe-smoking writer (Takahiro Tamura). Kyoko’s relationships never seem to work out as each of the men is smitten by her looks rather than the person within. Failing to find the emotional fulfilment she craves, she becomes increasingly unstable and develops an addiction to sleeping pills…

Masahiko Tsugawa

Eiji Funakoshi

Jun Fujimaki

Takahiro Tamura

This Daiei production was based on a 1966 novel by Ayako Sono (1931-2025), a right-wing Christian whose work also provided the basis for Masahiro Shinoda’s Epitaph to My Love (1961) and a few other films; it was adapted by Sugako Hashida (1925-2021), probably Japan’s most successful female writer of TV drama. The story was based on the life of Marilyn Monroe, and it’s not hard to figure out which characters are Japanese versions of Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller. Admittedly, the idea of Ayako Wakao in effect playing Marilyn Monroe is intriguing if only for its weirdness, but the film proves to be less interesting than it sounds and Wakao’s breathy performance is not one of her best. The problem is that she’s required to be extremely sensitive and over-emotional in practically every scene, which soon becomes tiresome, while there’s too much repetition in seeing her stumble from one unsuitable relationship to another, rendering it largely ineffective as drama. It does, however, provide plenty of opportunities to display the star in an endless array of outfits, not to mention sporting every variety of haircut you can imagine bar an actual skinhead or peroxide job. In other words, it’s another of Daiei’s Ayako Wakao fashion parade / costume-change pics, which seemed to be a bankable formula for them at the time.

It may seem surprising that this film was directed by the leftist Tadashi Imai, but he’d been struggling to find film work and stuck in the doldrums of television for the previous couple of years. When Joan Mellen – who had published a feminist biography of Monroe in 1973 – questioned him about it in her interview with Imai for her 1975 book Voices from the Japanese Cinema, he had this to say:

“I was asked to make the film by Daiei. ...I am one of those Japanese directors who cannot afford to make only the films I want to make, so I accepted. In some respects I enjoyed making it, but it is not a film I really want to talk about. … Directors in Japan are not very wealthy and often they have to do films they don’t especially like.”

Indeed, there was nothing I could see that marked the film out as a Tadashi Imai picture, but at least it enabled him to resume his cinema career even if his best work was behind him.

A note on the title:

Although When the Cookie Crumbles seems to be the official English title, the English expression is more usually 'that's the way the cookie crumbles', which is used in a similar way to 'c'est la vie' when you have to accept the inevitable. The Japanese title translates more literally as 'the moment the sugar candy breaks', which I think does not mean quite the same thing, and it’s pretty clear that the ‘sugar candy’ in question is Kyoko / Marilyn.

Watched without subtitles.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

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Anchin to Kiyohime / 安珍と清姫 / (‘Anchin and Kiyohime’, 1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #261

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…

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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