Kirai Kirai Kirai / 嫌い嫌い嫌い / (‘Hate hate hate’, 1960)

 

Ichiro Sugai

 

Sojuro Shinkawa (Ichiro Sugai) is the elderly chairman of the Shinkawa conglomerate, a position which he was hoping his son, Sotaro (Kenji Sugawara), would succeed him in. However, Sotaro has rebelled and gone off to do his own thing, so Sojuro gathers the presidents of the six companies which make up the conglomerate and asks them each to select their most promising employee and send them to head office, where they will compete to marry his granddaughter, Kikuko (Atsuko Kindaichi), and the winner will be groomed to become the new chairman. 

 

Atsuko Kindaichi

 

The six men chosen run the gamut from the ultra masculine Nagaoka (Ryuichi Ishii) with his impressive chest hair to the effeminate Hirose (Kanji Matsumoto), who drinks only milk, a thermos of which he always carries with him. Other candidates include Sakurai (future director Juzo Itami), who used to be friends with Kikuko as a child, the handsome and modest Tsujimoto (Jiro Tamiya), who appears to be the favourite, and coal miner Fukumitsu (Gen Mitamura), who is conflicted due to his secret love for co-worker Sumiko (Junko Kano)…

 

Jiro Tamiya

 

This Daiei production was based on a novel entitled Hana no sarariman (‘The Flower Salaryman’) by Keita Genji (1912-85), a writer well-known for this type of material whose work also provided the basis for many other films including Masumura’s Blue Sky Maiden (1957) and The Most Valuable Wife (1959). 

 

Junko Kano

 

Sachiko Hidari

For me, the main appeal was that it provided a rare chance to see another film by Hiroshi Edagawa, whose Roses Bloom on The Rose Bush (1959) I liked so much. However, this one is less interesting as it’s basically a piece of fluff, albeit a well-made one which is not unentertaining. It’s an ensemble piece with no real star at the centre, although Jiro Tamiya and Junko Kano were both beginning to get popular at the time and Sachiko Hidari also appears prominently, although in a role that has little bearing on the story, while Kazuko Matsuo pops up singing the title song in a nightclub (to which you can listen on YouTube here). Even Bokuzen Hidari makes an appearance as one of the company presidents - which may well be the most untypical role he ever played. Anyway, for the most part, it's a pleasant enough time-passer, though the gay stereotyping of Kanji Matsumoto’s character is regrettable. 

 

Bokuzen Hidari

 

A note on the title:

Kirai can also be translated as ‘I hate it’, ‘I hate you’, etc, so the tag line on the Japanese posters should probably be read as ‘I hate him because he’s handsome! I hate him because he’s rich! I hate him because he has chest hair! Is that really true?’

 

Kazuko Matsuo

 Watched with dodgy subtitles. 

The Invisible Wall / 眼の壁 / Me no kabe (‘Wall of Eyes’, 1958)

Obscure Japanese Film #137

Keiji Sada

Masao Oda

 

This Shochiku production stars Keiji Sada as Hagisaki, the deputy head of an accounts department whose boss, Sekino (Masao Oda), commits suicide. Hagisaki receives a letter from the dead man explaining that he felt it was the only way to take responsibility for losing 30 million yen of the company’s money as a result of a scam. 

Ko Nishimura

 

Shinji Takano

Despite being warned by the company’s lawyer, Segawa (Ko Nishimura), not to interfere, Hagisaki takes it upon himself to investigate and joins forces with his friend Tamura, a journalist (Shinji Takano). Their clues lead them first to the Red Moon bar on the Ginza, and eventually to a mountain village in Nagano. 

Fumio Watanabe and Jun Tatara

 

Yachiyo Otori

Jun Usami

 

Among the other people involved in the mystery are bartender Yamamoto (Fumio Watanabe), a private detective (Jun Tatara), a moneylender’s secretary named Etsuko (Yachiyo Otori) and right-wing politician Funasaka (Jun Usami), but it proves to be a crusty old villager (Bokuzen Hidari) who provides the key to the mystery before events reach a gruesome climax involving an acid bath… 

Bokuzen Hidari

 

Based on a novel of the same name by popular mystery writer Seicho Matsumoto, this story is typical of the author’s work, but not one of the best adaptations of it. Masayoshi Ikeda’s suspenseful music score helps, but the story is allowed to become a little too complicated for its own good and fails to maintain the interest as a result. 

 

It also doesn’t help that the hero, Hagisaki, is such a blank slate of a character – Keiji Sada was a good actor, but he’s given very little to work with here, which is at least partly his own fault as he was a big enough star to have made changes if he had cared to. It’s competently but rather indifferently directed by Hideo Oba, best known for his What Is Your Name? trilogy (1953-54), which also starred Keiji Sada, but the proceedings are occasionally enlivened by some of the excellent character actors who pop up along the way.  

Yachiyo Otori

 

Leading lady Yachiyo Otori had been a stage star for the Takarazuka theatre company; this was her first film under contract to Shochiku. She makes little impact here, although it’s not much of a role, to be fair. Her film career never really took off and she had more success on stage and television. At the time of writing, she’s still alive at the age of 91.

 

Sanshiro Sugata / 姿三四郎 (1965)

Obscure Japanese Film #101

Yuzo Kayama

According to Stuart Galbraith IV in his book The Emperor and the Wolf, this remake of Kurosawa’s debut film (about an early exponent of judo) and its sequel was motivated by the need to turn a quick profit after the inordinately lengthy and expensive production of Red Beard. However, this may not have been the only reason, as Sanshiro Sugata Part Two (1945) not only contained some badly dated anti-Western propaganda, but was actually considered a lost film at the time this remake was produced.* 

 

Toshiro Mifune

In any case, Kurosawa chose to co-produce the film, but not direct it, instead handing the reins over to the 42-year-old Seiichiro Uchikawa, who had been an assistant to an impressive range of directors, including Ozu, Kon Ichikawa, Hiroshi Shimizu and Kenji Mizoguchi. He had found Mizoguchi extremely difficult and eventually been fired by him after a dispute. Nevertheless, Uchikawa became a director himself in 1953. By the time Sanshiro Sugata went into production, he had already directed around 30 films – often also writing the screenplays – and gradually built up a decent reputation without breaking into the A-list. Most of these earlier films are inaccessible, the exceptions being the two immediately preceding this one, namely Tange Sazen (1963) and Samurai from Nowhere (1964). The latter of the two was especially well-received and was likely the reason why Kurosawa chose him as director of this remake. Unfortunately for Uchikawa, Sanshiro Sugata would not be received as positively, at least by the critics, and seems to have damaged his career as he did not direct another feature film until 4 years later; when finally given another chance, he was reduced to making a vehicle for the pop group known as The Tempters. In my opinion, that was unfair – while the remake lacks the panache that Kurosawa himself would no doubt have brought to it, in some ways it improves on the originals, benefitting from the use of widescreen, staging at least some of the fight sequences more effectively, and employing a stronger cast, and it’s certainly far more satisfying than Kihachi Okamoto’s1977 kiddie remake. Uchikawa was also somewhat straitjacketed by the obligation to follow Kurosawa’s blueprint, as Kurosawa made only minor changes to his originals and even had Uchikawa replicate the montage of the abandoned geta. 

Yunosuke Ito

 

Bokuzen Hidari

Tsutomu Yamazaki

Kurosawa further put his stamp on the film by filling the cast with his favourite actors. Yuzo Kayama (son of Ken Uehara) had just co-starred in Red Beard, and makes a good Sanshiro, being both convincing in the fight scenes and likeable in general. Toshiro Mifune is the perfect actor to play his mentor, Shogoro Yano, and it’s great to see him kicking ass at the beginning, hurling multiple assailants into a canal. Also ideal casting is Bokuzen Hidari as the comic priest who gives Sugata a hard time, while Yunosuke Ito and Tsutomu Yamazaki make effective bad guys, and even Takashi Shimura pops up, although his part is so brief it seems a mere token gesture. In the first film, Shimura had played ju-jitsu master Hansuke Murai, the part played here by Daisuke Kato (surprisingly convincing as a formidable martial artist!). 

Takashi Shimura

 

Daisuke Ito and Eiji Okada

Not Robert Shaw, but Eiji Okada

From outside the Kurosawa stable, Eiji Okada is impressive in a dual role as two of the brothers who are Sugata’s most dangerous opponents (as karate master Tesshin, he looks remarkably like Robert Shaw). The female characters are played by less familiar names – Yumiko Konoe is the love interest, while Chisako Hara** plays Yunosuke Ito’s vengeful daughter. Konoe’s main career has been as a singer, while Hara was the wife of director Akio Jissoji, and had a long career, but mainly played supporting roles in movies. Both are fine, but Hara has the more interesting role even though it’s much smaller than Konoe’s.

Chisako Hara

Yumiko Konoe

 

The high-contrast cinematography looks good throughout, while Yojimbo composer Masaru Sato provides a score which, ironically, seems to be imitating Ennio Morricone’s music for Sergio Leone’s unacknowledged Yojimbo remake, A Fistful of Dollars. The film’s main flaw is that it feels too long at two and a half hours, but otherwise it’s hard to imagine it could have been much improved on by a director other than Uchikawa – unless, of course, it were Kurosawa himself, or perhaps Masaki Kobayashi. On the evidence of the film alone, it’s hard to see why it should have been a career-killer for Uchikawa, although it’s entirely possible there are additional unknown factors which account for the sudden 4-year gap in his film career after this was released. Although this film has been largely ignored by critics, its current of rating of 7.4 on IMDb strongly suggests that most people who have seen it enjoyed it, and I would certainly encourage anyone interested to check it out if you have the chance.

 

*A print was subsequently discovered in Russia. 

**Chisako Hara is listed as two separate people on IMDb.