The Sharks / 鮫 / Samé (1964)

Obscure Japanese Film #272

Kinnosuke Nakamura 

The late Muromachi period, c.1467, the beginning of the Onin War. Samé, or ‘Shark boy’ (Kinnosuke Nakamura), is a young shark fisherman who lives as an outcast near a fishing village on the Echizen coast. As itinerants, his family are not accepted by the villagers and he is forced to hand over his catch every day and accept the scraps they allow him to keep for himself. When hostility towards the itinerants increases, their huts are burned and Samé’s mother (Akiko Kazami) killed, so he and an itinerant elder (Yoshi Kato) decide to head for the capital (Kyoto) on foot in search of a better future. 

Yoshi Kato

However, the old man falls ill and passes away en route, after which Samé hooks up with a middle-aged woman (Michiyo Kogure) making the same journey alone. She has a mysterious supply of meat which keeps them going but, horrified to discover that it’s actually human flesh, Samé abandons her and continues on his own.

Michiyo Kogure

Minoru Chiaki

It’s a time of widespread famine, and Samé turns to stealing in order to survive. He’s taken under the wing of Shirasawa (Minoru Chiaki), a one-armed criminal with a black mark on his face, who teaches Samé to be more ambitious in his thievery and even encourages him to kill. Inevitably, the pupil eventually turns on his master and, by the time Samé has become a fully-fledged adult, he’s a ruthless man indeed. 

Daisuke Kato 

He next joins a gang of mercenaries led by Genji of Chikushi (Daisuke Kato) in the hope of receiving not only wealth but a position of power in exchange for the heads he takes in battle. By this time, his willingness to commit evil seems to know no bounds, but when he tries to rape a nun (Yoshiko Mita), her unexpected reaction awakens his lost humanity.

Yoshiko Mita

Based on a best-selling, prize-winning two-part novel of the same name by Nobuhiko Matsugi (1932-2016) and adapted for the screen by director Tomotaka Tasaka’s regular collaborator Naoyuki Suzuki (who also frequently worked for Tomu Uchida), like many of Tasaka’s films, this is a lengthy one, clocking in at around 165 minutes. With former kabuki actor Kinnosuke Nakamura – one of the biggest stars of Japanese cinema at the time – in the lead role, it was a major production for Toei, so it’s surprising that it’s not better known, though this is likely because it was not an award winner and appears to have been out of circulation for many years. At the time, Kinema Junpo ranked it 17^th in the list of best films of 1964, and it was the third most successful of the year in terms of box office.

Nakamura

The film depends heavily on its star, Kinnosuke Nakamura, a talented actor but one who had a tendency to go over the top, which he certainly does here, with his maniacal laugh being overused in the later scenes. It might also have been better to cast a younger actor in the part of Samé as a boy – indeed, it took me a while to realise that the 32-year-old actor was playing a boy at the beginning. Regarding the other cast members, it’s as surprising to see Michiyo Kogure as a cannibal as it is predictable to see the cadaverous Jun Hamamura – who had already tasted ‘monkey meat’ in Fires on the Plain (1959) – desperate for a taste, but it’s the two Seven Samurai veterans, Minoru Chiaki and Daisuke Kato, who come off best as Nakamura’s two mentors of villainy.

Jun Hamamura

Like Nakamura, director Tasaka was left-leaning politically, and the film makes it very clear that Samé is driven to crime by poverty and the merciless feudal system. Although most of Samé’s actions are selfish ones, at one point he clearly takes sides when he attacks some men escorting stocks of rice, liberating the food not for his own benefit, but for all the starving poor to share. This scene is also an example of several complex action sequences involving numerous actors that Tasaka stages quite brilliantly. His usual cinematographer at the time, Masahiko Iimura, makes effective use of colour and widescreen, although I couldn’t help thinking that black and white would have suited such dark material better. There’s also a fitting score by one of Japan’s top film composers, Masaru Sato. However, well worth seeing though it is, I wouldn’t personally make any claims for this film as a lost masterpiece because I found it rather lacking in subtlety both in terms of story and performance, and I didn’t buy Samé’s rather corny religious redemption at the end.

Thanks to A.K.

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The Great Journey / 大いなる旅路 / Oinaru tabiji (1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #110

Rentaro Mikuni and Michiko Hoshi

Morioka, Iwate Prefecture, mid-1920s. Kozo Iwami (Rentaro Mikuni) works for the railway as a stoker but wants to become a driver. After failing the exam, he becomes despondent and seeks solace in saké and the arms of bar hostess Koharu (Michiko Hoshi). 

 

Akiko Kazami

One day, Yukiko (Akiko Kazami), a young woman rushing home to see a dying relative, is permitted to ride the freight train on which Kozo is working. This chance meeting leads to marriage, but Iwami fails to change his ways and continues seeing Koharu, hardly even bothering to hide the fact from his wife. However, when an avalanche causes Kozo’s train to derail and the driver is killed, Kozo undergoes a personality change. 

Mikuni

 

It’s not entirely clear why this occurs, but perhaps it’s just due to the fact that he now realises how lucky he is to be alive. In any case, he stops seeing Koharu and begins taking his job more seriously, eventually becoming a driver as a result. 

 

Ken Takakura

The years pass, and Kozo and Yukiko have four children: Tadao (Hiroshi Minami), who gets called up for military service in China and is soon killed; Shizuo (Ken Takakura), who follows in his father’s footsteps and joins the railway; Sakiko (Mitsue Komiya), who marries the wrong type of guy; and Takao (Katsuo Nakamura), who voluntarily enlists in the army but later returns embittered and in poor health. 

Katsuo Nakamura

 

Mikuni

 

Spanning three decades, this features Mikuni in another role in which he has to age considerably over the course of the movie, as he had previously done in Stepbrothers (1957) and Ballad of a Cart-Puller (1959). However, this was the first time he had won an award for such an effort, namely the Blue Ribbon for Best Actor. Kozo is a complex character and our feelings about him change as the story progresses; at first, seeing him as an uncouth worker in a wintry location who gets passed over for promotion, I thought he was going to be another Gonsuke from A Story from Echigo. However, though he can be unforgiving and even violent at times, Kozo usually regrets his actions almost immediately and sometimes displays a generosity of spirit. Mikuni made another railway picture, Oinaru bakushin, for the same director, Hideo Sekigawa, later the same year, but he played a different character and the stories were not connected, although both screenplays were written by – you guessed it (or not) – that one-man screenplay-machine, Kaneto Shindo. While many of Sekigawa’s films appear to have been routine assignments, he directed a couple of notable anti-war films: Listen to the Voices of the Sea (1950) and Hiroshima (1953), and he does a good job here, with the location shooting being particularly impressive, although the story has not dated well and must have seemed old-fashioned even at the time. 

Takakura and Mikuni

 

The first half hour of the film is the most interesting – once Kozo changes his attitude after the accident, it becomes a sentimental family saga which unfolds all too predictably, while Ichiro Saito’s music lays on the harps and strings a bit thick. Like the previous film I reviewed, this is another with a strongly conservative message: everyone learns the error of their ways, and hard work and dedication to duty are rewarded in the end. This ideology is especially surprising coming from a couple of leftists like Sekigawa and Shindo.

Michiko Hoshi

 

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the film is the fact that they actually wrecked a real train in order to make it, a feat made possible due to Toei president Hiroshi Okawa, a former railroad employee who had maintained good connections with Japan’s national railway. 

The omnipresent Eijiro Tono

 

Note on the title: The film is sometimes referred to as 'The Great Road', which makes little sense as tabiji means 'journey' rather than 'road'. It's also clear from the film that 'journey' has the double meaning of a railway journey and the journey of life.