Fukkatsu / 復活 (‘Resurrection’, 1950)

Obscure Japanese Film #283

Keiju Kobayashi

Machiko Kyo

The 12^th year of the Showa era (1937). Kunihiko (Keiju Kobayashi) is a young soldier from an aristocratic family of Christians. Having just completed his training, he returns home to Shirahama in Wakayama Prefecture to say goodbye to his family before being sent to serve in China. While there, he seduces the young maid, Yukiko (Machiko Kyo), not realising that he’s made her pregnant in the process. Despite pressure from the family, Yukiko refuses to name the father and is dismissed, while Kunihiko forgets about her.

Four years later, Kunihiko returns and, asked to be a witness for Ushio (Osamu Takizawa), a socialist and fellow Christian accused of spreading anti-war propaganda, he is shocked to run into Yukiko at the court, where he learns she has been accused of murder after the madam at the brothel she had been working at tricked her into giving poison to a client in order to rob him. Seeing Yukiko’s downfall as the result of his own sinful lapse, the guilt-stricken Kunihiko resolves to do everything in his power to help her, even if it means breaking ties with his family…

This is certainly a more faithful adaptation of Tolstoy’s Resurrection than Mizoguchi’s very loose version of 1937 (known in English as The Straits of Love and Hate), and retains the books deeply Christian perspective, which no doubt meant that it was easily approved by the occupying American authorities at the time. In the novel, Prince Nekhlyudov is serving on a jury when he realises that one of the defendants is the maid he had seduced and abandoned years before; the Mizoguchi film dispensed with the Christian theme and had the inspired idea of having the male protagonist a theatre audience member who sees the former maid – now a comedienne – mocking their affair in a comedy sketch.

Adapted by Yoshikata Yoda, this Daiei production is well-made by director Akira Nobuchi, but it’s also probably the most heavily Christian-influenced Japanese film I’ve seen and the preachiness does become tiresome after a while. Kobayashi and Kyo do good work in the leads, although Kyo was still a relative newcomer at this point and her inexperience occasionally shows. Nevertheless, she puts across Yukiko’s conflicting emotions very effectively at times, such as in the scene where Kunihiko first visits her in prison. Interestingly, Osamu Takizawa plays a character much like himself in some respects – he had been arrested during the war for a similar offence and spent 16 months in prison.

Osamu Takizawa

The director, Akira Nobuchi (1896-1968), came from the theatre and made around 30 films from 1935-55, but this is the only one I’ve seen so far.

Thanks to A.K.

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Kohitsuji / 小羊 (‘The Lamb’, 1923)

Obscure Japanese Film #280

Tsuzuya Moroguchi

A 19-year-old engineering student, Toshihiko (Tsuzuya Moroguchi), falls in love with a stage actress (Yuriko Hanabusa) and writes her adoring letters, but when he finally summons up the courage to speak to her, she laughs at him and flings his letters back in his face. Heartbroken, he takes to wandering the country alone until he finally arrives in Hokkaido, where he collapses from hunger and exhaustion. He’s rescued by a shepherdess, O-Toyo (Yoshiko Kawada), whose father (Heijiro Osono) takes him in and gives him a job on the farm, but a fellow farmhand, Otokichi – known as ‘the Wolf’ – (Yotaro Katsumi), is jealous and wants to get rid of him…

Yoshiko Kawada, Moroguchi and Yotaro Katsumi

Like the previously-reviewed film Diary of a Drunkard, this Shochiku Kamata production was directed by Zanmu Kako, but in this case the film seems to have survived more or less in its entirety. Also as in that film, Kako elicits natural performances and demonstrates a good eye for composition. However, the downside here is that the overly-contrived plot has dated badly and hinges on a couple of massively unlikely coincidences. It’s also somewhat confusing at times – perhaps at the time some accompanying benshi narration would have made things clearer.

Kohitsuji clearly has a strong Christian influence, even quoting the story of Jacob’s Ladder from the Book of Genesis in the opening and closing title cards, while in the Bible, the lamb is of course a symbol of innocence, purity and sacrifice, although it was unclear to me whether the lamb of the title is supposed to refer to Toshihiko or O-Toyo (or possibly neither). In any case, the rather uninspired message is simply that the wicked will eventually be punished and the good rewarded.

The film is thought to have been based on an unfinished screenplay by one Norikuni Yasuda, who has 19 director credits on IMDb between 1924-29, and shot by Hiroshi Nomura, who later worked for Hiroshi Shimizu, Heinsosuke Gosho and Yasushi Sasaki. The two leads, Tsuzuya Moroguchi and Yoshiko Kawada, were big stars of the day who were frequently cast together – here, they were about halfway through the (at least) 40 films in which they co-starred. However, it’s Yuriko Hanabusa who would go on to have the longest career, racking up 242 credits on IMDb stretching from 1920 until shortly before her passing in 1970. Among these are starring roles in Souls on the Road (1921), often cited as Japan’s first important film, and Naruse’s Wife! Be Like a Rose (1935).

Yuriko Hanabusa

The director and cast came to films from the theatre, where they had worked not in kabuki or Noh, but in the new Western-influenced Shingeki (or Shin-engeki) movement. For further info (in Japanese) and to watch the film (without English subtitles), visit the Eiga Meets Shin-engeki website. 

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Niwatori wa futatabi naku / 鶏はふたゝび鳴く (‘The Cock Crows Twice’, 1954)

Obscure Japanese Film # 259

Eijiro Tono and Yoko Minakaze

After a man trying to find oil in order to revive the fortunes of his dying seaside town commits suicide, the locals blame Fumiko (Yoko Minakaze), a young woman who had rejected his sudden offer of marriage. Fumiko lives with her father, Tokinosuke (Eijiro Tono, great), who has been going to pieces since his wife ran off with another man. Ostracised by the townsfolk, Fumiko heads towards the sea with the intention of ending it all, but is spotted by an itinerant oil worker (Shuji Sano) who prevents her from going through with it. He and four other men have been left stranded since the suicide of their boss and Fumiko is moved by their kindness and relates to their outside status.

Shuji Sano

Sachiko Hidari, Minakaze and Yoko Kozono

It emerges that Fumiko has two female friends, Yoko (Yoko Kozono/Kosono) and Taniko (Sachiko Hidari), with whom she has made a suicide pact, each carrying a deadly pill in a locket around their necks. Yoko’s reason for being miserable is that she’s the daughter of a concubine (Sadako Sawamura), while Taniko’s is that she’s physically disabled and has to walk with a crutch. The women have agreed that they will all commit suicide together. Meanwhile, the stranded workers are debating whether to flee the town and escape the debts they’ve incurred or stick it out, hoping that a long-awaited telegram will arrive telling them to come to a new oil field. Then Kurama (Yunosuke Ito), an embezzler on the run from the police, arrives and claims to be an oil surveyor who intends to restart the drilling…

Yunosuke Ito

This Shintoho production has an unusual story which is a creation of Rinzo Shiina (1911-73), who wrote the original screenplay and had written the novel on which director Heinosuke Gosho’s Where Chimneys are Seen (1953) had been based. However, there are certain similarities to Vittorio De Sica’s Miracle in Milan (1951), which I strongly suspect influenced this film. With all the talk of suicide, it first appears to be a rather bleak drama, but gradually transforms into a comedy. It’s not like any other Gosho film I’ve seen, and I found it quite engaging and charming in the way it takes delight in continually subverting our expectations. For example, when Fumiko’s wealthy aunt who has been turning down her father’s requests for money appears, we expect that she’ll be a terrible harridan – especially as she’s played by Eiko Miyoshi – but this proves not to be quite the case.

Eiko Miyoshi

It’s surprising to see Yoko Minakaze (1930-2007) in the lead role. She doesn’t look like a film star and, indeed, wasn’t one, but for some mysterious reason I felt her lack of star quality somehow worked in this film’s favour. Coming from the theatre, she enjoyed a long career on stage as well as screens both big and small, but this may well be her most major role in movies.

It’s worth noting that screenwriter Rinzo Shiina had converted to Christianity in 1950 and it’s easy to see how his beliefs influenced this work. It’s also perhaps the reason composer Toshiro Mayuzumi used choral music for his score, although this is one element I didn’t particularly care for. In most respects, though, this film is a gem and it’s also beautifully shot by Joji Ohara, who won a Mainichi Film Concours Award for Best Cinematography for his pains, making this a film crying out for a good quality release.

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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

 

Flower-Picking Diary / 花つみ日記 / Hana-tsumi nikki (1939)

Hideko Takamine

 

 

 Mitsuru (Misako Shimizu) is a girl from Tokyo whose family have just moved to the Soemoncho district of Osaka. She’s in her early-mid teens and her mother is a Christian. When she begins attending her new school, she soon becomes best-friends with classmate Eiko (Hideko Takamine), who used to live in Tokyo herself when she was small. Her family have a business training maiko (apprentice geisha) to sing, dance and play instruments. When the two girls come up with a plan to make a gift together with which to surprise their kindly teacher (Kuniko Ashihara) on her birthday, a misunderstanding ensues and they fall out. Both girls are miserable as a result, and Eiko gets to the point where she can’t even face school anymore, so she drops out to become a maiko herself…

 

Misako Shimizu

 

Produced by Toho Eiga before they became known simply as Toho from 1943, Flower-Picking Diary was based on a story by Nobuko Yoshiya (1896-1973). Being both a Christian and a lesbian, she wrote from an unusual perspective for a Japanese author of the time, but her books were highly popular with female students – so much so, in fact, that there had already been around 30 movies based on her work. The main source of this particular picture is a story entitled ‘Tengoku to maiko’ (‘Heaven and maiko’) from her 1936 collection Chisana hanabana (Little Flowers), but it seems that some elements may have been borrowed from other stories by Yoshiya as the story of the film (as adapted by female screenwriter Noriko Suzuki) differs considerably. The main difference is that there is apparently no falling out between the two girls in the original – a fact I found quite surprising considering that this is absolutely central to the film. Indeed, the extent to which it should be interpreted as the story of a lesbian love is debatable  – there’s certainly nothing overt – but it’s certainly a film about friendship and the devastating feelings that can occur when two close friends fall out. It’s difficult to think of other examples of films dealing seriously with broken friendships, but this one is very moving once it gets going (there may be rather too much singing of sentimental songs in the earlier stages). 

 

 

The shadow of war looms large over the film, and the scenes of largely unquestioning and joyful celebration when Mitsuru’s brother gets called up have not dated well, but are revealing of their time. (Incidentally, Nobuko Yoshiya’s reputation suffered somewhat after the war as she was said to have toed the authoritarian government line a little more than necessary.) Ironically, though, it’s the war that gives some hope for the future of Eiko and Mitsuru’s friendship as Eiko decides to make a senninbari for Mitsuru’s brother, which involves her standing at the bridge on Shinsaibashi Street and asking passing women to sew a stitch to make up the 1000 needed for this type of amulet belt.

 

 

Hideko Takamine was 15 when she made this, but already an old pro who had made dozens of films since her film debut in 1929 at the age of 5. Her co-star, Misako Shimazu, was a very young-looking 20 years of age, and was featured in a few other films but disappeared from the screen after 1941. Takamine may well have related to her role more than usual here as, shortly before making the film, like Eiko, she had been forced to leave school and pursue a career she did not particularly care for (acting in movies was something she felt obliged to do as no less than nine family members were relying on her financially).

The sensitive direction is by Tamizo Ishida (1901-72), who made around 90 films between 1926 and 1947, but the only other one which is relatively easy to find in decent quality with English subtitles is Fallen Blossoms (1938).

BONUS TRIVIA: If the actor playing Eiko’s father looks familiar, that’s probably because it’s Eitaro Shindo, who went on to play the title role in Kenji Mizoguchi’s masterpiece Sansho Dayu (1954)

Some of the information above comes from a review on Amazon Japan by ‘Beautiful Summer.’

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan

 

 

Shunsetsu / 春雪 / (‘Spring Snow’, 1950)

Obscure Japanese Film #164

Yasuko Fujita

 

Takako (Yasuko Fujita) is a young woman who works on the ticket desk at her local train station in Denenchofu on the outskirts of Tokyo. The eldest child of a father (Takashi Shimura) who has been made redundant - though he doesn’t tell his family for a month - she hopes to wed train driver Toshio (Shuji Sano), but they cannot yet afford to marry. Not only are the family are struggling to get by, but Takako’s mother (Yuriko Hanabusa) is unwell and her younger brother (Teiji Takahashi) has started hanging out with a bad crowd. But when Takako’s younger sister Tomoko (Akiko Sawamura) finds work as a maid to a wealthy orchestra conductor (Ichiro Ryuzaki) who takes a shine to Takako, it looks like the family’s problems could be solved if she would only forget Toshio and marry him instead…

Takashi Shimura

 

Shuji Sano

 

Teiji Takahashi

Akiko Sawamura

This Shochiku production is unrelated to the later Yukio Mishima novel which shares its English title and was written as an original screenplay by Kaneto Shindo, one of around 40 he wrote for the director of this film, Kozaburo Yoshimura. I don’t remember the war itself being mentioned, but the poverty of the post-war years is emphasized throughout, and the family even try to grow vegetables in their garden to save a few yen. They tend to put up a  cheerful front when together, but often fall into depression on their own. We see Takiko riding a train and staring at the tracks as it speeds along as if seeing her life laid out before her in a straight line leading to nowhere, while her father eats his packed lunch in the ruins of the steelworks where he used to be employed and which was, presumably, demolished due to the war ending. Typically for Japanese drama, the story revolves around a classic giri (obligation) versus ninjo (inclination) conflict – in this case, if Takako marries the rich guy, her family will be saved. As it was made during the American occupation, however, the film also promotes western culture and values, and on one occasion we see Takako attending a ballet, while on another she and Toshio are seen sitting outside a Christian church where a wedding is taking place and admiring the sound of the choir singing a hymn within. 

 

Yasuko Fujita

The star of this film, Yasuko Fujita, was a theatre actress who had been hand-picked by Yoshimura to play the lead role despite never having appeared in a film before. It’s an impressive debut, and she not only looks the part, but acts it in such a way that she seems like a natural for the movies, betraying not even a hint of theatricality in her performance. Unfortunately for the Japanese cinema, she married a well-known music promoter in 1953 and retired from acting having made a dozen films, the most widely-seen of which is probably Yoshimura’s Clothes of Deception (1951), in which she co-starred opposite Machiko Kyo. Her Japanese Wikipedia page contains the enigmatic comment that ‘She reportedly made the most of her good looks when interacting with foreign celebrities.’ Yasuko Fujita passed away in 2015 aged 88.

Among the rest of the cast, the most notable is Takashi Shimura, and it’s nice to see that he’s not totally wasted here as he was so often when not working with Kurosawa. In Spring Snow, he gets to play a character with more than one dimension who goes through his own struggle against both himself and his circumstances. 

 

Although I wouldn’t go as far as to claim it as any kind of forgotten masterpiece, Spring Snow has quite a lot going for it, including the cinematography of Toshio Ubukata (who also worked for Kurosawa) and the mostly well-developed characters, who feel worth spending time with.

Thanks to A.K.