Martin Dowsing: Violence / 暴力 / Boryoku (1952)

Obscure Japanese Film #285

Sumiko Hidaka

Post-war Osaka. After a prostitute commits suicide by throwing herself in front of a train, a magazine editor gives a female writer (former silent star Shizue Natsukawa) a guided tour of Shinsekai, a sleazy neighbourhood where food is cheap and criminals gather. Following this documentary-style opening, the narrative gradually focuses in on Takako (Sumiko Hidaka), a young woman who lures men to an ‘inn’ run by her stepfather, Yamada (Ichiro Sugai), where they are summarily fleeced and beaten up if they complain.

Ichiro Sugai and Chieko Naniwa

Taiji Tonoyama

Also living there are Takako’s mother (Chieko Naniwa) and blind 18-year-old sister Shizuko (Setsuko Wakayama), while their real father (Taiji Tonoyama) – having finally made it back to Japan after being a PoW only to find himself usurped by Yamada – is now a vagrant who hangs around the neighbourhood. Takako continually has to fend off the attentions of strip club owner Tomisaka (Eitaro Shindo, who also played the title role in Sansho the Bailiff) and hates her life in this cesspit, so when car thief Takami (Isao Kimura) seems to offer a way out, she’s only too ready to pin her hopes on him...

Isao Kimura

This Toei production was based on an original screenplay by Kaneto Shindo and directed by his regular associate Kozaburo Yoshimura. Prior to watching, I was under the impression that it starred Machiko Kyo because the woman on the poster / DVD cover looks like her (could this have been deliberate?), but it’s actually the lesser-known Sumiko Hidaka, who was not a star. (Perhaps Shindo and Yoshimura had Kyo in mind but couldn’t get her as she was under contract to Daiei.) Anyway, Hidaka gives a strong performance in a role that requires her at various times to be cynical and hard-bitten, tender and compassionate, falling-down drunk, and beside herself with anger, all of which she does well. This may well have been her finest hour in the movies and on this evidence she deserved more success.

Sumiko Hidaka

While there may be some influence from the Italian neorealist films of the time in the film’s depiction of post-war poverty, here the main actors are all professionals and there’s a little too much melodrama in the plot for it to be considered very realistic as realism goes. On the other hand, although most – if not all – of the exteriors were shot on location (I assume the interiors were done at Toei's Kyoto studios), the location work certainly delivers a vivid portrait of the area at the time. Made shortly after the American occupation ended, this was probably pretty strong stuff for 1952. One weird touch worth mentioning is a couple of shots in negative which are supposed to show us how the blind Shizuko views the world, but I’m not sure they really added anything other than a certain jarring effect.