The Horse Boy / 暴れん坊街道 / Abarendo kaido (1957)

Obscure Japanese Film #122

Shuji Sano

 

Isuzu Yamada

Yosaku (Shuji Sano) is a low-ranking samurai employed at Yurugi Castle in Tanba Province. He has a secret affair with Shigeno (Isuzu Yamada), the daughter of senior retainer Inaba Kotayu (Kenji Usuda). When she becomes pregnant, he is banished from the castle, while she gives birth to a baby boy, but is not allowed to keep him and has to watch helplessly as he is taken away. Shigeno is then assigned to act as wet nurse and carer for another infant – a new-born princess. 

Motoharu Ueki

 

Ten years pass, and Yosaku has become a wandering ronin. While travelling, he hires a horse from Sankichi (Motoharu Ueki), a precocious urchin who gambles and smokes a pipe. Looking for somewhere to rest up, Yosaku is taken to an inn next to the little shack in which Sankichi lives. Yosaku becomes friendly with the boy as well as with Koman (Shinobu Chihara), a young woman who works at the inn. 

Shinobu Chihara with Ueki an Sano

 

When a procession from Yurugi Castle passes through, it gets delayed when the young princess has a tantrum and jumps out of her palanquin. Shigeno fails to persuade her to get back in so they can continue her journey, but the princess discovers Sankichi gambling by the side of the road and is drawn to him, with the result that Sankichi is asked to accompany the retinue to the castle. Shigeno is shocked to discover that Sankichi is in possession of the omamori (amulet) she had tied around her son’s neck when forced to let him be taken from her all those years before… 

 

The screenplay was adapted by Yoshikata Yoda (best known for his many screenplays for Kenji Mizoguchi) from a jurori* entitled The Night Song of Yosaku from Tamba (Tamba Yosaku machiyo no komurobushi) by Monzaemon Chikamatsu (1653-1725), the dramatist later portrayed by Chiezo Kataoka in Chikamatsu’s Love in Osaka (1959). That film was, of course, directed by Tomu Uchida, as was The Horse Boy.

With a new emphasis placed on the character of Sankichi, this Toei production seems to have been intended mainly as a vehicle for child actor Motoharu Ueki, who was the eldest son of Chiezo Kataoka, a legendary actor and great favourite of Tomu Uchida. Kataoka had been the star of Uchida’s first post-war film, Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji (1955), and went on to appear in a further nine films for him, while Ueki had also appeared in that film as well as Uchida’s The Kuroda Incident (1956) and Rebellion from Below (1956) and would also be featured in The Eleventh Hour (1957).

Shigeno lives in a world of extremely refined manners in which etiquette dominates behaviour and rebellion is unthinkable, while the abandoned Sankichi has no manners at all and does what he likes. Uchida makes much of this contrast between the two very different worlds they inhabit. Unfortunately, my personal reaction was that Sankichi’s rude behaviour did not endear him to me at all, and for this reason I was never as moved as I felt I was probably supposed to be by this film, which I would definitely consider a minor work in Uchida’s filmography. I felt that Uchida saved his best bit of direction for a scene which occurs late in the film and takes place on a quiet road at night when a confrontation between Yosaku and the local moneylender (Eitaro Shindo) turns violent. Incidentally, Shindo is the stand-out among the supporting cast and could always be relied upon to play a man-you-love-to-hate effectively. 

Sano confronts Eitaro Shindo

 

It’s worth noting that, while Chikamatsu’s original apparently had a happy ending, Uchida’s film does not, and perhaps this is because he preferred to make it clear that the unforgiving rules of Japan’s former feudal society had ruined a lot of lives. 

Note on the title: The Japanese title translates as something like ‘Wild Child of the Road’.

*Wikipedia defines jurori as “a type of sung narrative with shamisen accompaniment, typically found in bunraku, a traditional Japanese puppet theatre”.

Watched without subtitles. 

David Baldwin has subsequently written a more detailed analysis of the film which can be found here.

 

Tarao Bannai - Thirteen Demon Lords / 多羅尾伴内 十三の魔王 / Tarao Bannai – Juzo no mao (aka The Man with Thirteen Eyes, 1958)

Obscure Japanese Film #96

Chiezo Kataoka as Tarao Bannai

When a nightclub singer is killed under mysterious circumstances at a racetrack, master detective Tarao Bannai (Chiezo Kataoka) adopts a number of disguises in an attempt to unmask the killer. The suspects include Dr Izumaru (Eitaro Shindo), his wife (Mieko Takamine), his assistant (Michiko Hoshi), the dead girl’s ex-lover (Ken Takakura), crooked businessman Togame (Takashi Shimura) a nightclub owner (Masao Mishima), and a nightclub hostess (Mitsuko Miura). 

Michiko Hoshi

 

Eitaro Shindo

Masao Mishima

Mitsuko Miura

The character of Tarao Bannai was created for the movies in 1946 by screenwriter Yoshitake Hisa (1904-81) in order to provide a new vehicle for veteran star Chiezo Kataoka. After the war, the occupying Americans had banned sword-fighting films in the belief that they encouraged feudalism, leaving Kataoka unable to perform the type of roles for which he was famous. Fortunately for Kataoka, the first film was a hit with the public if not with the critics.  He starred in four Tarao Bannai pictures for Daiei in the late ‘40s; when he later fell out with the studio, he made a further seven films featuring the character for Toei between 1953 and 1960. Thirteen Demon Lords was the first of these to be shot in colour and widescreen, and perhaps for that reason it boasts a remarkably strong cast including a young Ken Takakura, veteran star and respected actress Mieko Takamine, and Kurosawa favourite Takashi Shimura. However, despite such stiff competition, this is Kataoka’s show all the way. 

Ken Takakura

 

Mieko Takamine

Takashi Shimura

 

Outside of Japan, Chiezo Kataoka is perhaps best-known for his leading roles in a number of Tomu Uchida films, the most widely-seen of which is probably Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji, though he also played the nihilistic samurai Ryunosuke Tsukue in Uchida’s three-film version of the novel Daibosatsu Toge – a character later immortalised by Tatsuya Nakadai in Sword of Doom. He was a wonderfully versatile actor as we can see from his performance (or performances) in Thirteen Demon Lords. Although the disguises that his character adopts (an Indian magician, a beatnik artist, etc) are often utterly ridiculous, the extent to which Kataoka not only changes his appearance, but subtly alters his voice and body language each time is impressive. If it’s not too confusing, it should perhaps be noted that the character of Tarao Bannai himself is actually another alter-ego – the ‘real’ person behind the different faces is one Daizo Fujimura, a former jewel thief who has turned his back on his criminal past to become a crusader for justice. 

Chiezo Kataoka

 

Chiezo Kataoka

Kataoka as Daizo Fujimura

With its unlikely nick-of-time escapes and evil criminal mastermind who relishes the use of poison gas and dripping acid, this recalls the serials of the 1920s and ‘30s and is, of course, pure hokum, but it’s also pretty good fun if you’re in the mood. However, I’m not sure I’d want to sit through the other ten movies in the series as they apparently followed a pretty rigid formula, with Bannai adopting the same number of disguises each time (always seven) and departing in the same manner at the end of each film, although this very repetition seems to have become an element that the Japanese audiences of the time enjoyed.

Director Sadatsugu Matsuda (1906-2003) directed most of the entries in the series and divided his time between this sort of film and chanbara flicks. The character was briefly revived for two films in 1978 starring Akira Kobayashi, but did not catch on.

Watched with dodgy subtitles. 

Akanishi Kakita /赤西蠣太 aka Capricious Young Man (1936)

Obscure Japanese Film #77

Chiezo Kataoka

The year is 1671. Akanishi Kakita (Chiezo Kataoka) is a low-ranking samurai retainer described in the following way in Naoya Shiga’s original story: ‘His features were of the so-called ugly man type, and he had an uncouth accent. In every respect, he seemed the typical back-country samurai.’ He also likes to play shogi (Japanese chess) on his own and prefers eating sweets to drinking saké. These quirks, together with his unremarkable appearance, mean that his fellow samurai view him as a no-account oddball. However, his apparent defects serve him well as he is the last person anyone would suspect of being a spy – which is what he actually is. Though he apparently serves the daimyo Daté Hyobu (Michisaburo Segawa), his real master is the lord of Shiroishi, who has ordered him to infiltrate Hyobu’s household in order to gather information on the Daté clan’s intentions, especially those of their senior retainer, the evil-tempered Kai Harada (also played by Chiezo Kataoka), as they suspect Harada of planning an attack.*

 

Kataoka as Kai Harada

At one point, Kakita’s mission is endangered when he falls ill, suffering from severe stomach pain, which he believes is caused by his intestines having become twisted into a knot. He slices his own stomach open, unravels his guts, and sews himself back up again (this occurs off-screen for some reason). Having recovered a few days later, he then faces another problem – he needs to return to his real master to deliver his report, but how can he quit the Daté household without arousing suspicion? At the suggestion of his friend and fellow spy, Masujiro (Kensaku Hara), he writes a love letter to a beautiful young woman, Sazanami (Mineko Mori). When she rejects him, his apparent embarrassment will provide a plausible reason for his abrupt departure. However, she turns out to be a perceptive woman who has noticed his finer qualities… 

Akanishi Kakita is based on a 1917 short story of the same name by Naoya Shiga (1883-1971), a major literary figure in Japan. The story can be found in English translation in The Paper Door and Other Stories; as it’s only 17 pages long, writer-director Mansaku Itami (1900-1946) had to add some material in order to create a feature-length movie. Itami was the mentor to the great screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto. In his book Compound Cinematics: Akira Kurosawa and I, Hashimoto paints a picture of Itami as a remarkable cinematic talent whose career was cut short when he contracted tuberculosis, which eventually led to his early death. Intriguingly, Mansaku Itami was also the father of another ill-fated director, Juzo Itami (1933-1997).

Mansaku Itami made his debut as director in 1928 and directed 22 films, only six of which survive in more or less complete form. These include Atarashiki tsuchi (The Samurai’s Daughter, 1937), a German-Japanese co-production co-directed by Arnold Fanck, and Kyojinden (The Giant, 1938), a version of Les Misérables and his last film as director. He also wrote the screenplay for Hiroshi Inagaki’s The Life of Matsu the Untamed (1943), remade several times, most notably by Inagaki himself as The Rickshaw Man (1958), starring Toshiro Mifune and Hideko Takamine. 

The young Takashi Shimura

 

I’m not quite sure that Akanishi Kakita holds up as a forgotten masterpiece. The film is not very well-paced, and the use of western-style music for the soundtrack feels out of place at times, although it should be remembered that Japan had only just abandoned the silent film in 1936. However, there is some occasionally striking camerawork, such as the overhead shot of the two samurai walking in the rain with umbrellas at the beginning and a later tracking shot of a line of samurai sitting down in the seiza position. Itami also makes excellent use of repetition for comic effect when Kakita and his neighbour, a fellow retainer (Takashi Shimura) go back and forth trying to get rid of a noisy cat that’s keeping them both awake, and in a later scene when a senior samurai keeps bribing his servant with saké to go out in foul weather to gather information. These scenes are not present in the original, nor is the scene in which Kakita disguises himself as a monk in order to give his pursuers the slip, and  they show real inventiveness on the part of Itami while being perfectly in keeping with the comic tone of the original story. No wonder, then, that Naoya Shiga himself was pleased when he saw the final film.  

 

The star of this film, Chiezo Kataoka (1903-83), is best-remembered for his leading roles in 13 Assassins (1963) and two Tomu Uchida films, Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji (1955) and Hero of the Red Light District, aka A Killing in Yoshiwara (1960). Kataoka was clearly an extremely versatile actor, and he’s so good in his two opposing roles here that you could easily watch this film and not realise that it’s the same man playing Kakita and Harada, and not just because he’s made up with bushy eyebrows and pimple on his nose as Kakita – the voices of the two characters are also entirely different. 

Akanishi Kakita was named by Akira Kurosawa as one of his favourite films and later remade for television from Itami’s original script by Kon Ichikawa, who had worked as an assistant director to Itami as a young man. 

The print I saw looks like a VHS transfer and there are missing frames in one scene where intertitles have been used to fill in the gaps. It’s not great quality, although it does improve as the film goes on. However, surely Akanishi Kakita has sufficient cultural value to be worth a proper restoration. Why anyone thought it necessary to give this film the English title of Capricious Young Man is something of a mystery though.

*Kai Harada was later portrayed sympathetically by Tatsuya Nakadai in The Fir Tree Remains.