Yutaro kodan / 遊太郎巷談 (1959)

Obscure Japanese Film #269

Raizo Ichikawa

Yutaro (Raizo Ichikawa), a prince whose father (also played by Ichikawa) was forced to commit suicide, masquerades as a ronin and uses his formidable skill with a sword to right a few wrongs he sees being perpetrated on his wanderings. One day, he takes an ornate box stolen by a pickpocket away from the thief and discovers that it contains a MacGuffin in the shape of a map. A disgraced clan are attempting to restore their fortunes but need the map to do it, so they enlist the help of the famous swordsman Hirate Miki (Kenjiro Uemura) to slay Yutaro. Meanwhile, Oyu (Masako Kishi) and Sayuri (Yoko Uraji) compete for Yutaro’s affections, but he seems more interested in Princess Tsu (Atsuko Kindaichi) even though she’s involved with the baddies…

This Daiei production was based on a novel by Renzaburo Shibata (1917-78), creator of the Nemuri Kyoshiro (or Sleepy Eyes of Death) series, the films of which also starred Raizo Ichikawa. The plot is pure hokum, but the film is well made, fast-paced and entertaining and looks a treat thanks largely to the superb widescreen black and white cinematography of veteran Kohei Sugiyama, who had shot such classics as A Page of Madness (1926) and Gate of Hell (1953). This was one of his final films before he passed away in 1960.

It’s difficult to think of anyone who looks more the part of the heroic samurai than Raizo Ichikawa does in this movie and the supporting cast also give a good account of themselves, especially Kenjiro Uemura, who manages to be even more dour than Shin Saburi in Hirate Miki (1951). 

Kenjiro Uemura

The female lead, Atsuko Kindaichi, was appearing in a period film for the first time here, having debuted as a Daiei ‘New Face’ in 1957 and been kept very busy since. In 1960 she was cast in Shunkai Mizuho’s Sure-sure, which involved a bed scene with Hiroshi Kawaguchi, so she refused to do it and quit the business. Few would blame for that, although I don’t think it was specifically because it was Kawaguchi…

Atsuko Kindaichi

Director Katsuhiko Tasaka was the younger brother of the better-known Tomotaka Tasaka and seems to have worked almost entirely in the chambara (sword fighting) genre. As this is pre-Yojimbo, there is no spurting blood or slashing sounds, just some rather clichéd music, but on the plus side, Tasaka delivers a memorably weird scene involving a giant talking Buddha statue and a dancing woman with impractically long sleeves.

A note on the title:

I’m not sure the film has an official English title, but it’s sometimes referred to as Yutaro’s Secret Story or Yutaro’s Secret Sword; the former seems to be a reasonable reflection of the Japanese title, in which 巷談 (kodan) is generally translated as ‘rumour’.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

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My Voiceless Friends / あゝ声なき友 / Aa koe naki tomo (1972)

Obscure Japanese Film #268

Kiyoshi Atsumi

1944. Private Nishiyama (Kiyoshi Atsumi) comes down with a fever while serving in China. He’s sent to hospital to recover, but develops pleurisy, making him unfit for service. When the rest of his platoon hear he’s to be sent home, they all write letters to their loved ones and give them to Nishiyama to deliver. However, Nishiyama has to wait months before he can get a passage on a ship back to Japan, by which time the rest of his platoon have been wiped out. He decides that the least he can do is deliver the letters, but this proves to be no easy task in the turmoil of post-war Japan and he spends the next 8 years travelling the length and breadth of the country trying to track down the recipients…

After reading the 1960 novel Isho haitatsunin (‘Death Letter Delivery Man’) by Red Angel author Yorichika Arima (1918-80), actor Kiyoshi Atsumi – a very popular star thanks to his role as Tora-san in the long-running series – set up his own production company to turn it into this film in collaboration with Shochiku. Naoyuki Suzuki, the award-winning screenwriter of Tomu Uchida’s A Fugitive from the Past (1965) and a specialist in literary adaptation, came on board to write the script, while Tadashi Imai – always passionate about material with an anti-war theme – was hired to direct, shooting on many different locations across Japan.

Chieko Baisho

Aside from the Chieko Baisho segment, which feels rather awkwardly shoehorned in (perhaps to give Atsumi’s regular Tora-san co-star something to do), the episodic structure of the film works quite well, keeping tedium at bay and avoiding much in the way of repetition, while Atsumi’s completely straight, low-key performance is a definite asset and folk singer Hitoshi Komuro’s solo guitar score generally hits the right notes. Given the nature of the story, the film could have been unbearably mawkish, but as we see Atsumi deliver the letters to sundry familiar character actors, there’s not always the big emotional scene one might expect – in some cases the recipients have become quite indifferent by the time he gets round to them. The letters themselves are not always kind either, and one hapless father receives a hate-filled missive from his dead son saying that it should be the old who die, not the young. In other cases, Nishiyama finds himself stirring up trouble rather than bringing closure to the bereaved, and all the while his commitment to his quest means that he misses out on various opportunities in his own life. Is he really helping people or has he just made a rod for his own back due to a bad case of survivor’s guilt? Indeed, the real strength of this film is its questioning nature – there’s no sense of certainty that Nishiyama has done the right thing, and it's quite rightly left for him – and us – to ponder.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

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Mori no Ishimatsu / 森の石松 (‘Ishimatsu of Mori’, 1949)

Obscure Japanese Film #267

Susumu Fujita

Takashi Shimura 

Ishimatsu (Susumu Fujita, best-known for playing the title role in Kurosawa’s Sanshiro Sugata) is a poor tenant tea farmer fed up with working like a slave for a pittance. After losing the little money he had in a dice game against gambling boss Shimachidori (Takashi Shimura), he resolves – with the encouragement of tea house hostess Oshin (Kyoko Asagiri) – to abandon agriculture and turn to crime despite the objections of his mother (Choko Iida) and best friend Gosaku (Taiji Tonoyama). He finds employment with the famous yakuza Jirocho Shimizu (Komei Minami) but has little success in his new endeavour until, determined to make a name for himself, he shows reckless bravery in a fight but loses an eye in the process. Now with a formidable reputation to live up to, he falls in love with Ofuji (Yukiko Todoroki), but she won’t marry him unless he gives up his life of crime…

Yukiko Todoroki

Mori no Ishimatsu was said to have been a subordinate of the real life Jirocho Shimizu (1820-93), but it’s unclear whether Ishimatsu was, in fact, a real person. In any case, he had already been the subject of at least half a dozen movies by the time this one was made and would go on to inspire many more, most of which seem to be comedies, which is understandable given that Japanese Wikipedia states that he was traditionally portrayed as ‘a lovable character who is a drunken ruffian but has a strong sense of loyalty and compassion, and is somewhat absent-minded.’

This Shochiku production was based on an original screenplay by Kaneto Shindo and directed by his regular associate Kozaburo Yoshimura. Also frequently comic in tone, with a rather dim-witted hero and the sword fighting scenes emphasising the clumsiness and reluctance of the opponents, their film nevertheless has its serious side and criticises both gangsterism and the exploitation of workers by the old feudal system. Indeed, it was probably these themes that saw it approved by the censors of the Occupation authorities, who prevented many period films from being made at the time (this was Yoshimura’s first) as they felt that such stories often gave tacit approval to feudalism, the mindset of which had allowed the military to take over the government of Japan and lead it into war.

Taiji Tonoyama

As a film, this is no lost masterpiece, but it is a well-made and enjoyable watch which clearly had quite a lot of effort put into it – the period details, for example, look quite authentic, and there is some effective use made of real locations, nifty tracking shots (courtesy of Yoshimura’s regular cinematographer at the time, Toshio Ubukata) and a number of complex, well-staged scenes in which elaborate sets and large numbers of extras are also used. Another asset is the cast, in which Shimura makes a fine villain, while Choko Iida stands out as Ishimatsu’s put upon, sutra-chanting mother. Other notables featured are Koji Mitsui, Sadako Sawamura and an almost unrecognisable Chishu Ryu. 

Choko Iida

Chishu Ryu

Note on the title:

Although it’s often translated as ‘Ishimatsu of the Forest’, there’s no sign of a forest; apparently, the ‘Mori’ of the title actually refers to Mori-machi village, in what was then the Enshu region, and is where Ishimatsu was said to be from.

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