Okoto to Sasuke / お琴と佐助 (‘O-Koto and Sasuke’, 1961)

Obscure Japanese Film #282

Kojiro Hongo and Fujiko Yamamoto

O-Koto (Fujiko Yamamoto) is a young blind woman whose parents indulge her every whim out of pity. She takes a liking to Sasuke (Kojiro Hongo), a young apprentice who is supposed to be learning her family’s pharmaceutical trade, and it’s not long before he’s the only one she will allow to help her. Her parents decide to make Sasuke her full-time companion and he begins learning the shamisen so that he’ll be ably to accompany her on her namesake instrument, the koto, at which she is proficient. Love grows between the two, but Sasuke’s low status as a servant makes him an awkward prospect for a potential husband and a wealthy would-be playboy (Keizo Kawasaki) sets out to seduce her…

Keizo Kawasaki

This Daiei production was the third film version of Junichiro Tanizaki’s novella A Portrait of Shunkin following Yasujiro Shimizu’s 1935 version starring Kinuyo Tanaka and Daisuke Ito’s 1954 version with Machiko Kyo. Yet to come were Kaneto Shindo’s eccentric 1972 take and Katsumi Nishikawa’s more commercial 1976 version. In my review of the latter, I also discuss the 1935 and 1972 versions.

Unlike the Audrey Hepburn approach, the part of O-Koto has traditionally been played with eyes fully closed which might make it easier for the actor on the one hand but obviously hampers their expressiveness on the other. Nevertheless, Fujiko Yamamoto puts across the character’s spoilt, proud and stubborn nature very well here but it hardly makes her very likeable, so it’s hard to have much sympathy for O-Koto until she eventually becomes the victim of a horrendous crime. Yamamoto repeated the role in a 1965 TV adaptation. Her co-star, Kojiro Hongo, was – appropriately for the role – of considerably lower status and makes little impression at first, though his performance does improve as the film goes on.

Following the international success of his early colour picture Gate of Hell in 1953, director Teinosuke Kinugasa, who also wrote the screenplay for this and co-wrote the 1976 version, had been entrusted by Daiei with several big-budget colour productions, but the dark green hues which dominate Okoto to Sasuke are considerably less memorable than Gate of Hell’s striking visual design. In fact, there’s little to be said about Kinugasa’s direction here other than it is certainly careful and, of course, competent, so I’d only really recommend this film if you’re a particular fan of Fujiko Yamamoto or, perhaps, the story itself, which in this case is treated as a tragic, sentimental love story with its more perverse elements not entirely absent, but certainly not emphasized as they were by Kaneto Shindo.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

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