The Maid’s Kid / 女中ッ子 / Jochukko (1955)

Obscure Japanese Film #239

Sachiko Hidari

This Nikkatsu production stars Sachiko Hidari – best-known for The Insect Woman (1963) and A Fugitive from the Past (1965) – as Hatsu, a young woman from snowy Akita Prefecture who goes to Tokyo to work as a maid in the house of middle-class couple Kyohei (Shuji Sano) and his wife Umeko (Yukiko Todoroki). 

Shuji Sano

Yukiko Todoroki

At first, Hatsu seems like the stereotypically naive country bumpkin, but she’s also a hard-working, cheerful bundle of energy who turns out, in many ways, to be the perfect maid. The family also includes two young boys who have been left to their own devices by their parents and become totally out of control. When Hatsu develops a strong bond with the younger child, Katsumi (Teruo Iba), he begins to be mocked by his classmates, who call him the ‘son of a maid’...

Teruo Iba

Based on a just-published novel by female author Yuki Shigeko (1900-69), The Maid’s Kid was directed by the underrated Tomotaka Tasaka, who also co-wrote the screenplay together with Katsuya Susaki. Tasaka had a tendency to make long films, and this one is no exception at 142 minutes, but he also had a rare gift for never making them feel overlong. In fact, his readiness to linger on a shot feels quite modern today in the wake of the Slow Cinema movement. He also makes excellent use of real locations and elicits fine performances from all involved – most notably Hidari, of course; it’s difficult to imagine any other actor pulling this role off as well as she does here. It’s the sort of drama that stands or falls on its main performance, and Hatsu could easily have ended up seeming too unconvincingly saintly if played by a less skilled or less suitable star. Other familiar faces among the supporting cast include Chieko Higashiyama, Tanie Kitabayashi and, in one of his earliest film appearances, a pre-cheeky Joe Shishido.

Perhaps the main point of the story is that a person’s social status bears no correlation to their worth as a person; Kyohei and Umeko say they don’t believe in titles like ‘master’ and ‘mistress’, but they act with oblivious selfishness and disregard for Hatsu, at times treating her more like a slave than a servant so that she barely gets a moment’s rest. At one point, she’s even rebuked for not understanding that some people are more important than others. However, another strength of the film is that, although the couple’s hypocrisy is quite evident to the viewer, they are not reduced to one-dimensional villains and are portrayed as basically decent, if misguided, people.

Tasaka’s avoidance of melodrama and intelligent handling of the material is complemented by the work of his regular cinematographer Saburo Isayama as well as by Akira ‘Godzilla’ Ifukube’s fine score. The film was ranked 7^th best of its year by Kinema Junpo magazine, but is less well-known than it deserves today. It was remade in 1976 as Dongurikko by director Katsumi Nishikawa in a version starring the singer Masako Mori.

Thanks to A.K.

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Beyond Love and Hate / 愛と憎しみの彼方へ / Ai to nikushimi no kanata e (1951)

Obscure Japanese Film #237

Toshiro Mifune

Abashiri Prison, Hokkaido. When six convicts escape one rainy night, kindly veteran screw Kubo (Takashi Shimura) is shocked to learn that one of the men was Goro Sakata, also known as Fudo (Toshiro Mifune), a model prisoner who had only six months left to serve. It transpires that, in order to get Fudo to join the escape, the ringleader (Eitaro Ozawa) had spread a lie that his wife, Masae (Mitsuko Mito), was having an affair.

Takashi Shimura

Ryo Ikebe

However, it turns out that she has indeed become very close to a young doctor, Kitahara (Ryo Ikebe), although their relationship has remained platonic thus far – but will Fudo believe this? Possibly not, considering that – after hearing of her husband’s escape – Masae has made herself look guilty as hell by fleeing to the mountains with Kitahara (her reasons for this are never fully explained, perhaps because they make no sense)…

Mitsuko Mito

Distributed by Toho, this production by the Eiga Geijutsu Kyokai (Film Art Association)* was based on a story by Kotaro Samukawa (1908-77) entitled Datsugoku-shu (‘Escaped Prisoner’); this title was no doubt not used here as the same company had only recently released an unrelated picture also starring Toshiro Mifune entitled Datsugoku (1950).

Although director Senkichi Taniguchi brought Akira Kurosawa back on board to help him with the screenplay for this one, the script proves to be little improvement on that of Taniguchi’s previous film, Devil’s Gold. One scene which seems likely to have been a Kurosawa contribution recalls his 1950 picture Scandal, painting journalists in an extremely unfavourable light as dishonourable people who basically print lies for money. Unfortunately, the film feels too long for its slender story, which seems to have been cooked up mostly as an excuse to get Taniguchi and his star Toshiro Mifune back up in the mountains again.

Eitaro Ozawa and Mifune

On a more positive note, the locations are pretty impressive here, with one scene taking place on the side of a steaming volcano, which must have been a dangerous place to shoot in. There’s also another strong score which could only be the work of Godzilla composer Akira Ifukube, while the strong cast do their best with the substandard material foisted upon them. In particular, it’s good to see Takashi Shimura in a more substantial role than usual even if he has to play a prison guard so soft he’s practically a marshmallow.

* According to Kurosawa in his book Something Like an Autobiography, he established the Film Art Association in 1948 together with Taniguchi, their mentor Kajiro Yamamoto, Mikio Naruse and producer Sojiro Motoki. 

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Devil’s Gold / 魔の黄金 / Ma no ogon (1950)

Obscure Japanese Film #236

Masayuki Mori 

Iwaki (Masayuki Mori) is a gold prospector who has been in the mountains for 13 years – including the entire war – and finally struck it rich. He had originally gone there after being rejected by Tsukie (Chieko Soma), the woman he loved, for not having enough money. Returning to society, he is at first mocked for his uncouth appearance until people realise he’s carrying a fortune, at which point he becomes the toast of the town.

Chieko Soma

Takashi Shimura

Iwaki’s prospecting partner, Akutsu (Takashi Shimura), had died from exposure not long after they struck gold, so he hires Azuma (Eijiro Tono), a drunk who claims to be a detective, to track down Akutsu’s son. Meanwhile, Tsukie turns up, but she’s now married to a sick architect (Jukichi Uno) and is after Iwaki’s money. The only honest person Iwaki encounters is the maid, Tokiko (Michiko Hoshi), at the hotel he stays at, but she’s involved with a poor fisherman, Ichiro (Ichiro Izawa)...

Eijiro Tono

Jukichi Uno

Ichiro Izawa

This Daiei production was based on a novel by the largely forgotten Shu Sekikawa (1912-87) and was the fourth major feature film to be directed by Senkichi Taniguchi. It was also the first of Taniguchi’s features not to have been co-written by Akira Kurosawa, which may be one reason why it’s not as good as the director’s previous three – I doubt that Kurosawa would have been satisfied with the script of this one, which Taniguchi co-wrote with newcomer Takeo Matsuura.

Michiko Hoshi

Taniguchi was an avid mountaineer and, as in his debut feature Snow Trail (1947), there’s some impressive location shooting in the wintry mountains, but the bulk of the story takes place in an urban setting. As a film, it’s not very characteristic of Japan and the influence of Hollywood is obvious throughout. The score by Godzilla composer Akira Ifukube is effective, but unfortunately this is a story which not only unfolds all too predictably, but relies on a couple of annoyingly implausible coincidences.

Mori before and after his trip to the barber

It’s a surprise to see the usually suave Masayuki Mori in such a rough part, but he rather overdoes it and I couldn’t help wonder if Takashi Shimura – wasted here as he all too often was in a small (and in this case poorly-written) role – might have been a better fit. In fact, much of the acting is too broad for my taste, although the women are a notable exception. I personally think they’re usually better actors than the men on the whole, perhaps because they feel less need to show off, and this seems especially true in Japanese films of the post-war period for some reason. As for the two female stars here, Chieko Soma retired from acting at the age of 40 in 1962 and is presumably deceased, whereas Michiko Hoshi was acting as recently as 2013 and appears to be still with us at the time of writing at the ripe old age of 98.

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Jakoman and Tetsu / ジャコ万と鉄 (1949)

 

Toshiro Mifune and Kamatari Fujiwara

 

 

Eitaro Shindo

Kyubei (Eitaro Shindo, better known as Sansho the Bailiff) has a herring-fishing business in Hokkaido and is anticipating the annual arrival of the fish when his son, Tetsu (Toshiro Mifune) – presumed missing in the war – unexpectedly turns up. Tetsu is surprised to find that one of the fishermen employed by his father just lies around all day drinking saké and refusing to work. The man in question is Jakoman (Ryunosuke Tsukigata), an aggressive individual with an eye-patch whom everyone is afraid of and who has a beef with Kyubei because Kyubei stole his boat to escape from Sakhalin island when the Japanese were chased out by the Russians at the end of the war. 

 

 

Meanwhile, a woman named Yuki (Yuriko Hamada) turns up in search of Jakoman, and it emerges that she’s in love with him despite the fact that he wants nothing to do with her and treats her roughly. In the midst of all this personal drama, the herring finally appear just as the men call a strike due to low pay…

 

 

Yuriko Hamada

This Toho production* was based on a 1947 novel entitled Nishin ryoba (‘Herring Fishing Grounds’) by Tokuzo Kajino (1901-84, sometimes incorrectly listed as ‘Keizo Kajino’ or ‘Shinzo Kajino’). The screenplay was co-written by the director, Senkichi Taniguchi, and Akira Kurosawa, with whom Taniguchi frequently collaborated during this stage in their careers, and its full of characteristic Kurosawa touches. One such is when Kyubei’s son-in-law (Kurosawa favourite Kamatari Fujiwara), an apparently slow-witted clerk given to hiccups and sneezing, plays the shakuhachi (bamboo flute) and moves everyone to tears, instantly clearing up the mystery of what his wife (Nijiko Kiyokawa) sees in him. Indeed, the script seems to have been largely the work of Kurosawa, with Taniguchi making some changes when he came aboard as director, and Kurosawa apparently brought the characters of Jakoman and Tetsu to the fore for the film, whereas the source novel had Kyubei as its main protagonist.  Concerning Taniguchi, it’s hard to take him very seriously as a director given the hokum that he made in the final years of his career, while the fact that so many of his other films are basically inaccessible means that he’s likely to be forever regarded as a footnote to Kurosawa (who was said to have done much of the editing on Taniguchi’s early films). 

 

Mifune – who has to perform a spectacularly weird song and dance which I bet embarrassed him – looks great and is effortlessly likeable as Tetsu, while Ryunosuke Tsukigata is almost too convincing as the villainous Jakoman, his one eye glinting with concentrated malevolence. Tsukigata had previously played two of the opponents in Kurosawa’s Sanshiro Sugata films and has a staggering 499 credits on the Japanese Movie Database. The female lead, Yuriko Hamada, also makes a strong impression even if her feisty character is tamed at the end. (Hamada’s fate remains a mystery – she made her final film in 1957 and nobody seems to know what happened to her after that.) Excellent use of locations and a fine score by Godzilla composer Akira Ifukube also help to make this an enjoyable watch. The main flaw of the film is that it lacks subtlety in the way it puts across its rather obvious moral message. 

 

Yoshiko Kuga

 

In regard to Kinji Fukasaku’s 1964 remake, while it was a good idea to replace the original film’s subplot of Tetsu falling in love with a girl he sees playing the organ in a Christian church** (played by an almost unrecognisably young Yoshiko Kuga) with one in which he falls in love with the sister of a deceased comrade whose family he visits, in my opinion that was the only thing that the remake did right. Aside from that, everything that was good about the first film has evaporated in Fukasaku’s tedious version, which seems to have been a vanity project initiated by its star, Ken Takakura. Unfortunately, that’s the one which is available in a very nice limited Blu-Ray from 88 Films.

The original film was a box office success and spawned a sequel entitles Jiruba Tetsu (1950) again starring Mifune, Yuriko Hamada and Eitaro Shindo and co-written by Kurosawa but directed by Isamu Kosugi and produced by Tokyo Eiga. 

 

*Actually, although it was distributed by Toho and bears the Toho logo at the beginning, the following title card announces the film as a ’49 Years production’. It seems to be the only film credited thus, something which appears to be a result of the labour dispute that was going on at Toho at the time. Perhaps the strike called by the men in the film was partly a comment on the situation, but though the fishermen settle their differences with Kyubei, that was sadly not to be the case at the studio.

**According to ‘I Love Jakoman’ on Amazon Japan,

… it was Taniguchi's idea for Tetsu to fall in love with the church girl, and upon hearing it, Akira Kurosawa reportedly remarked, "That stinks." (Taniguchi himself said this at a Taniguchi Film Screening).

Only Kurosawa and Taniguchi are credited with the screenplay for the 1964 remake, but it’s unclear whether either had any involvement in the changes made.

Watched without subtitles

 

Yuriko Hamada

 

Wandering Shore / 流離の岸 / Ryuri no kishi (1956)

Obscure Japanese Film #180

Terumi Niki

 

Sachiko Murase

Chiho (Terumi Niki) is a young child left alone in the country to be raised by her grandmother , Uta (Sachiko Murase), because her mother, Hagiyo (Nobuko Otowa), has left her father and is getting remarried. Chiho is a sensitive but also somewhat wilful and proud child who misses her mother but doesn’t like to admit it. Uta sends Chiho to take food to her neighbour, Okichi (Sachiko Soma), whom Uta has known since childhood. Uta is now a penniless old lady living in a shack; according to Uta, she has ended up this way because she was frivolous in her relationships with men and spent her life doing what she wanted without regard for the consequences. 

Mie Kitahara and Nobuko Otowa

 

After a year, Chiho goes to live with her mother and stepfather, Takakura (Nobuo Kaneko), who has a son of his own, but Chiho’s status is lower and she feels it. Ten years pass, and Chiho (now played by Mie Kitahara) is a high school student living with her uncle (Taiji Tonoyama) and his wife (Yoshiko Tsubouchi). When Chiho wakes up one day with a strange pain in her finger, she goes to see her friend’s father, a doctor, but he’s out, so the doctor’s son, a newly graduated medical student, Ryukichi (Rentaro Mikuni), attends to her instead. An instant mutual attraction soon leads to marriage plans, but Ryukichi has not been entirely honest with her about his past…

Rentaro Mikuni

 

Mie Kitahara

Released four months after Love is Lost (see review below), this is another Nikkatsu production written and directed by Kaneto Shindo and featuring some of the same cast, with Nobuko Otowa taking a supporting role here and Taiji Tonoyama and Jun Hamamura popping up as expected. Again, the screenplay was not an original – in this case it’s an adaptation of a novel first published in 1953 by Yoko Ota (1906-63),* whose childhood seems to have been similar to that of Chiho’s. 

 

The film is a little less successful than Love is Lost – although it also features the work of composer Akira Ifukube and cinematographer Takeo Ito, their contributions here are less memorable. For his part, Shindo was perhaps a little too faithful to the novel as the story feels more complicated than it needed to be. However, while Terumi Niki (from the previous year’s Policeman’s Diary) growing up to be Mie Kitahara is a stretch, the attraction between Chiho and Ryukichi is convincing. The film is also quite powerful in putting across its message, which I would summarise as a cautionary one about the irreparable damage that can be caused to a relationship when one party deceives the other – especially when that other is a sensitive soul like Chiho, whose fractured childhood has left her more emotionally vulnerable than most.

 

*Ota was a Hiroshima survivor and her 1948 novel City of Corpses on this theme is available in English translation in Hiroshima: Three Witnesses (Princeton University Press, 1990). She also has a short story in the collection Fire from the Ashes: Short Stories about Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Readers International, 1985).

Thanks to A.K. 

Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)