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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The Last Judgment / 最後の審判 / Saigo no shinpan (1965)

Obscure Japanese Film #250

Tatsuya Nakadai

Masao Mishima

Jiro (Tatsuya Nakadai), the manager of a pool hall owned by Asai (Masao Mishima), has been having an affair with Masako (Chikage Awashima) since her wealthy engineer husband went to oversee a construction project in Vietnam two years earlier. The husband in question, Riichiro (Fujio Suga), also happens to be Jiro’s cousin. When he returns from abroad, it becomes very difficult for the lovers to continue meeting, especially as Riichiro is not only a jealous and suspicious type, but has a short fuse to boot.

Fujio Suga

Jitsuko Yoshimura

Meanwhile, Asai wants to sell the pool hall and Jiro wants to buy it but lacks the funds. He also has little time to find them as the local yakuza want to buy the place, but then he thinks of a clever solution to his problems. This will involve both seducing a waitress, Miyoko (Onibaba’s Jitsuko Yoshimura), and getting Riichiro to use his explosive temper against himself. But will Jiro be able to stay one step ahead of dogged police detective Kikuchi? (This latter is played by Junzaburo Ban, who played a similar character in the same year’s A Fugitive from the Past.)

Junzaburo Ban

This Toho production was based on the 1949 novel Heaven Ran Last by William P. McGivern (1918-82), who also wrote the novels on which Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat (1953) and Robert Wise’s Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) were based. Heaven Ran Last, though, was never filmed by Hollywood and, like Kurosawa basing High and Low (1963) on Ed McBain’s novel King’s Ransom, it’s an indication of how much American pulp was being translated into Japanese in the post-war years that it came to the attention of director Hiromichi Horikawa. In this case, apart from transferring the story from America to Japan, screenwriters Zenzo Matsuyama and Ichiro Ikeda have stuck pretty closely to the book – too closely, perhaps, according to some Japanese reviewers who have commented that the characters don’t behave like Japanese people. In any case, I found it to be one of the better plots I’ve seen in this type of film as the twists don’t become too far-fetched, as is so often the case.

Chikage Awashima

Several of the same talents from Horikawa’s excellent 1963 noir Shiro to kuro (‘White and Black’, aka Pressure of Guilt) returned for this one, including Japan’s top film composer Toru Takemitsu as well as cast members Chikage Awashima, Masao Mishima, Eijiro Tono and, of course, star Tatsuya Nakadai. The Last Judgment makes an excellent vehicle for Nakadai, who looks very cool driving around in an MG Roadster in his shades and fur-lined jacket and is obviously having a field day being very bad indeed. However, Jiro is saved from becoming a one-dimensional villain not only by Nakadai’s charismatic performance but the fact that his love for Masako, at least, does seem to be genuine.

One of the great things about Takemitsu as a composer was that he knew when to shut up, an all-too-rare talent which is well in evidence here, while Horikawa makes excellent use of industrial noises to heighten the tension in a number of scenes. Another plus is the dark, shadowy cinematography of Tokuzo Kuroda. All in all, The Last Judgment is a very satisfying noir that has been kept in the dark for far too long.

Thanks to A.K.

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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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Yojohan monogatari: Shofu Shino / 四畳半物語 娼婦しの (‘Tale of the Four and a Half Mat Room: Prostitute Shino’, 1966)

Obscure Japanese Film #189

Takahiro Tamura and Yoshiko Mita

 

Shino (Yoshiko Mita) is an amateur geisha working under the name of O-Shige at a modest geisha house run by the money-loving Taneko (Michiyo Kogure), where she also lives. This means that she lacks the musical and dancing skills of a true geisha and simply sleeps with men for money – not because it’s the life she wanted to lead, but because she has taken it upon herself to pay off his father’s debts so that he can avoid prison. Shino is involved with Ryukichi (Shigeru Tsuyuguchi), who works informally as Taneko’s procurer, but he’s a lazy sponger, so she’s naturally not in love with him. 

 

Tamura, Mita and Tsuyuguchi

 

One day, Tadasu (Takahiro Tamura) visits the geisha house as a new client. Compared to most of her customers, he’s kind and gentle, and the two fall in love. However, being a former samurai reduced to pickpocketing, he can’t afford to buy her freedom. He resolves to go straight, but meanwhile Ryukichi becomes jealous of their relationship and begins plotting revenge… 

 

 

Like the previously-reviewed Cards Are My Life, this was one of just five films written and directed by Masashige Narusawa, who was more usually a screenwriter only. This one is an adaptation of a short story by Kafu Nagai first published in 1917 – a story which went on to have a controversial history when a second, pornographic version appeared and began to circulate on the black market. Nagai claimed that somebody else had added the explicit material without his knowledge, but many thought he had written it himself. After the later version was finally posthumously published in 1972, the magazine publisher responsible was taken to court and charged with obscenity. In any case, although Toei studios based their film on the earlier version, their choice of it as material was one of the tentative steps they were taking at the time to introduce more eroticism into their films as a means of competing with television, where such adult themes were not allowed. 

 

Yumiko Nogawa and Yoshiko Mita

 

As a film set in a single location, albeit with quite an elaborate exterior set as well as the interior one, this was also probably quite a cheap film to make, although it never looks it. Narusawa (who had studied under Mizoguchi) uses long takes with few close-ups and little cutting – a style I’ve always admired as I feel that it promotes naturalistic acting and makes the viewer feel less led by the nose than in the many films which frequently cut from one close-up to another. Cinematographer Juhei Suzuki – who shot 13 Assassins (1963) and Tales of the Inner Chambers (1968) – also deserves credit for his mobile camerawork, which enabled Narusawa to have only 39 cuts in the entire film.

 

 

On the other hand, the performances are adequate but not exceptional and the story is not terribly compelling, featuring as it does the types of characters and situations we’ve seen many times before. Narusawa retains the framing device used by Nagai (here featuring narration by a mostly-unseen Eijiro Tono), but I’m not sure it added much. The one really poor choice, though, is the easy-listening jazz score by Harumi Ibe, which just seems out of place in a Japanese period film, especially when the strummed guitar and accordion kick in, which lend a distinctly inappropriate French flavour to the proceedings!

Thanks to A.K. 

The Wild Goose / 雁 / Gan (1966)

Obscure Japanese Film #158

Ayako Wakao

 

Tokyo, 1880. Otama (Ayako Wakao) is a young woman back living with her widowed father (Tomosaburo Ii) after having left her husband when she discovered he was actually a bigamist and their marriage was illicit. Unfortunately for her, this means that she is now considered ‘soiled goods’ and finding a suitable husband will be much more difficult. Her father, a street vendor, is getting old and it’s uncertain how much longer he’ll be able to push his cart around. 

Wakao with Toyoko Takechi

 

Their future looks bleak when a conniving old woman (Toyoko Takechi) comes with a proposal: a recently-widowed kimono-shop owner called Suezo (Eitaro Ozawa) wants Otama for his mistress and will provide her and her father with separate places of their own as well as an allowance each if they agree. (Supposedly, Suezo feels that he can’t invite Otama to live with him because his two young children wouldn’t accept her). Seeing no better opportunities on the horizon and worried about her father, Otama agrees. 

Eitaro Ozawa

 

Suezo treats Otama well and everything is fine at first, but she soon discovers that she’s been deceived once again – the old woman had lied to get Otama and her father to agree so that Suezo would cancel the debt she owed him. It turns out that, not only is Suezo a loan shark rather than a kimono merchant, but his wife (Hisano Yamaoka) is still alive and living with him. Despite her disillusionment, Otama continues as Suezo’s mistress as she’s simply not in a position to leave him. But then she begins to have romantic thoughts about Okada (Gaku Yamamoto), a student who walks past her house every day…

 

Gaku Yamamoto

Based on a short 1913 novel of the same name by Ogai Mori – himself a young medical student like Okada at the time this story is set – this remake of Shiro Toyoda’s better-known 1953 version starring Hideko Takamine (also produced by Daiei) credits the same screenwriter (Masashige Narusawa) and follows the original picture almost scene-for-scene. For this reason, it may well seem superfluous and is probably destined to live forever in the shadow of the earlier film. However, there are some differences, and it does manage to improve on the original in a couple of ways. Toyoda’s film was shot in academy ration – standard for the time – while by 1966, widescreen had long been the norm in Japan, and that’s the format used here. Whether this really adds much in itself is debatable considering that the cinematography in the first film was one of its notable features, especially its striking close-ups of Takamine. What is much better, though, is the music – it may be a little over-dramatic at times, but it’s less cloying than in the 1953 movie, and is also used more sparingly, which helps a great deal too. The other main improvement for me was the casting of Gaku Yamamoto as Okada – he may not be a star actor, but at least he doesn’t resemble a constipated undertaker as the miscast Hiroshi Akutagawa did in the original. 

 

In regard to the casting of Suezo, the choice of Eitaro Ozawa was almost a no-brainer. If you wanted someone to play an unpleasant middle-aged male in a Japanese movie in the 1950s or ‘60s, you probably either went with Eijiro Tono or Eitaro Ozawa – both founder members of the Haiyuza theatre company, incidentally – and Tono had already played the character in Toyoda’s version. Ozawa is good here, but he doesn’t manage to surpass Tono’s memorable portrayal of Suezo as a ridiculous and pathetic character. The real villain of the piece is not Suezo, but the scheming old matchmaker (played to the hilt here by Toyoko Takechi) who cares not a damn whose lives she wrecks if there’s something in it for her. 

Hisano Yamaoka

 

Reiko Fujiwara

The rest of the cast also give strong performances, especially Hisano Yamaoka as Suezo’s wife and Reiko Fujiwara as a woman who, reduced to streetwalking to support her children, serves as a sort of ghost-of-Christmas-future to Otama.  Ayako Wakao is well-cast in her role and gives her usual immaculate performance, but I felt that she didn’t quite nail Otama’s dichotomous combination of resigned pragmatism and girlish romanticism as well as Takamine. 

 

For the most part, Masashige Narusawa’s screenplay(s) could be taken as a model of how to adapt literature for the cinema, but there’s one part of the story that bothers me in both films – while Suezo is away for a day, Otama gives her maid the day off and sets about preparing an elaborate meal for Okada, intending to invite him into her home as he passes by so they can finally be alone together. This seems stupid considering that she has no idea if he will be available, or even accept if he is. And it just doesn't seem like something a woman in her situation would do because, if he did accept, somebody would be sure to find out about it and the two would become the subject of a scandal which would do neither of them any good. This absurdity is an invention of Narusawa’s as, in the book, she simply goes to the hairdresser and intends to start a conversation with him when she sees him coming rather than simply exchanging a silent greeting as they usually do. 

 

Although both films are largely very faithful to Mori, the other major diversion from the source material concerns the scene which gives the story its title. (It should be noted here that there are no plurals in Japanese, so the title can be translated as either The Wild Goose or The Wild Geese). In the novel, Okada is persuaded by a fellow student to throw a stone at some wild geese that have alighted in a nearby pond; to his consternation, he hits one and kills it. A comparison is made between the goose and Otama, the implication of which (I think) is that, just as Okada did not mean to kill the goose, neither did he mean to make Otama fall in love with him. In this interpretation, Otama could be said to be the ‘wild goose’ of the title.* However, for some reason this event is absent from the two films. In both, after learning of Okada’s imminent departure for Europe, Otama watches a goose fly away, in effect making him the wild goose. 

 

The director, Kazuo Ikehiro, is far better known for action films, including several entries in the Zatoichi series. He does an excellent job here, but it’s hard to give him a great deal of creative credit as he was more or less following a blueprint created by Shiro Toyoda and Masashige Narusawa. He was active in television as recently as 2022 and, at the time of writing, appears to be alive at the ripe old age of 95. 

  *This bird symbolism is reminiscent of Chekhov’s The Seagull, which Mori may well have been familiar with in German translation as he was also a translator of literature from German into Japanese. Of course, there is a further avian metaphor in the caged bird that Suezo gives to Otama as a gift and which is later threatened by a snake – the implication that Otama is in the same position is clear.

Thanks to A.K.

A good translation of the novel by Burton Watson is available as a free e-book here.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

Watch the 1953 version on my new YouTube channel here.