Ten no yugao / 天の夕顔 (‘A Moonflower in Heaven,’ 1948)

 

Mieko Takamine

 

Toyohiko Fujikawa

Tatsunoguchi (Toyohiko Fujikawa) is a recluse who lives in a hut on a snowy mountain and shoots rabbits for his dinner. One day when out hunting, he notices a man (Haruo Tanaka) lying in the snow. The man is still alive and asks Tatsunoguchi to leave him there, but he takes him to his hut and nurses him back to health. It emerges that the man had wanted to die due to a love affair that went wrong, so Tatsunoguchi begins to tell him his own story of how he ended up living in such isolation.

 

 

As a student, every Friday Tatsunoguchi had passed a young woman, Akiko (Mieko Takamine), on his way to university and gradually fallen in love with her. However, the encounters suddenly ceased and, when he did finally run into her again three years later, she had already acquired both a husband and an infant son, although her marriage was a failure. Akiko reciprocated Tatsunoguchi’s feelings, so their love continued to grow, resulting in an on-and-off relationship that could only ever be platonic dragging on for years and leading to Tatsunoguchi's eventual self-exile to the mountain…

 

 

This Shintoho production was based on a 1938 novel of the same name by Yoichi Nakagawa (1897-1994) and is the only film adaptation of his work to date. According to Japanese Wikipedia, the novel ‘garnered high praise in Western Europe as a masterpiece of romantic literature, comparable to Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther. After the war, it was translated into six languages, including English, French, German, and Chinese, and was highly praised by Albert Camus.’ We also learn that Nakagawa got the story upon which he based his book from a masseur named Kozaburo Fujiki, who greatly resented the fact that Nakagawa refused to give him any credit. A feud between the two men lasted for decades, culminating in the self-publication of a 1976 book by Fujiki with the splendid title The Great Achievement of Shattering the Masterpiece Ten no yugao - A Guide for Reading Novels Carefully and with Taste.

 

 

This literary feud is arguably more entertaining than the film itself, which is an extremely maudlin piece of work, an aspect emphasized by the keening violin featured excessively  throughout composer Fumio Hayasaka’s score. Director Yutaka Abe had already made around 60 films at this point, and went on to make The Makioka Sisters (1950) and Confession (1956). He certainly does a competent job, but the material is so old-fashioned and sentimental that it has dated very badly indeed and is at times even laughable today - the animated firework near the end being an especially corny touch. 

 

 

Leading lady Mieko Takamine will be familiar to many readers, but who, you may well wonder, was her co-star, Toyohiko Fujikawa? Well, he seems to have been born in 1924 and has just two other credits, both in Daiei movies from 1950. According to @Shimo_x2 on x.com, he ‘was not originally an actor but a young president of a construction company. It seems he also invested in this film, making his appearance in the movie something of a hobby.’ In any case, he gives a slightly stolid but perfectly acceptable performance and certainly looks the part of a leading man. 

 

 

This film appears to lack an official English title, but is sometimes listed as ‘The Beauty of the Evening Sky.’ However, the first kanji can be interpreted as ‘heaven’ as well as ‘sky’ and, while夕on its own means ‘evening’ and 顔 can mean ‘face’ (but not ‘beauty’), the final two together mean ‘moonflower’, and there is in fact a scene in which Mieko Takamine admires a moonflower (ipomoea alba), which bloom at dusk and last only for one night. The English translation of the book by Akira Ota published by The Hokuseido Press in 1949 is also titled A Moonflower in Heaven. The cover art is by Jean Cocteau.

Watched with dodgy subtitles.  

 

 

The Makioka Sisters / 細雪 / Sasameyuki (‘Light Snowfall’, 1950)

 

Hideko Takamine

 

 

 

**The first four paragraphs are mostly identical to those in my review of the 1959 version**

Junichiro Tanizaki’s novel Sasameyuki is widely recognised as a classic of Japanese literature. Translated into English as The Makioka Sisters in 1957 by Edward G Seidensticker, it’s remained constantly in print ever since. The book was originally published in serial form beginning in 1943, but this was soon halted by the Japanese War Ministry – not because it criticised the government, but because, according to them at the time, ‘The novel goes on and on detailing the very thing we are most supposed to be on our guard against during this period of wartime emergency: the soft, effeminate, and grossly individualistic lives of women.’* I would have thought they should have been more worried about the enemy, but in any case, Tanizaki was forced to wait until the war had ended to resume publication, with the final instalment appearing in 1948.

 

Yukiko Todoroki

 

The story itself takes place between 1936 and 1941, ending around eight months before the attack on Pearl Harbour, and it seems that Tanizaki’s intention was partly to provide a record of a way of life he had seen rapidly vanishing before his eyes. The Makioka sisters are four adult siblings whose parents are deceased. Once a grand family, their fortunes are on the wane but they remain very well-to-do in comparison with most Japanese and keep a number of servants. The eldest, Tsuruko (played here by Ranko Hanai in what amounts to a minor role), lives apart from the others with her husband and children in what is referred to as the ‘main house.’ She is a peripheral character, but, as the senior surviving member of the family, the other sisters must defer to her and her husband before making any important decisions. Tsuruko later goes to live in Tokyo when her husband has to relocate for his job, but her sisters remain in their hometown of Osaka.

 

Hisako Yamane

The other three sisters live together. In order of age, they are Sachiko (Yukiko Todoroki, who went on to play Tsuruko in the 1959 version), Yukiko (Hisako Yamane) and Taeko, familiarly called ‘Koi-san’ (Hideko Takamine). Sachiko is married to Teinosuke (Seizaburo Kawazu), with whom she has one child, Etsuko (Takako Yamazaki). Although Sachiko is held responsible for her two younger sisters by the main house, little of the drama revolves around her. Instead, much of it concerns the attempts to find a husband for Yukiko, whose shy and sometimes stubborn nature makes this difficult. Ever since her original fiancée was killed in an accident, each marriage proposal has come to naught for one reason or another, and Yukiko is already approaching 30 when the story begins. Complicating matters further is the fact that Taeko must wait until Yukiko is married before getting married herself in order not to humiliate Yukiko and leave her looking like an old maid that nobody wants. Taeko is the closest thing to a rebel in the family, generally doing as she likes and indulged by her older sisters, who make allowances for her due to the fact that their parents died when she was so young. She has a long-running on-and-off relationship with the wealthy Kei-bo (Haruo Tanaka). 

 

Hideko Takamine

The sisters are likeable characters who live their lives trapped in a web of etiquette. Overly-concerned with what others think, they are unable to make a move without first ensuring that what they do will not offend anyone else or damage their own social status, but there’s little in the way of arrogance about them. Rather, they are simply behaving according to the rules by which they were brought up and it doesn’t even occur to them to do otherwise. In the book, Tanizaki paints a minutely-detailed picture of their lives, but never tells us what to think about it. The future of the family is left open at the end, but it’s impossible to be unaware of the dark cloud of war that awaits them just over the horizon, and no doubt Tanizaki planned it that way.

 

Haruo Tanaka

 

This first film version of the novel was produced by Shintoho and is probably the most faithful of the three overall. According to Japanese Wikipedia, it had ‘a budget of 38 million yen, an unprecedented sum for a film at the time.’ The 1959 version updated the story to what was then the present day, but this one retains the pre-war setting of the book and, being around 35 minutes longer, is also able to fit a little more in. Both the 1950s adaptations were scripted by Toshio Yasumi, who in this one includes the dark spot on Yukiko’s face that comes and goes and is supposedly a common affliction of unmarried women (something which was dropped from the 1959 film). 

 

Hisako Yamane

The later version is probably the more technically (and visually) impressive of the two – here, although there is quite an impressive flood sequence, we only hear about Koi-san’s rescue – but this one is well-done for its time and much superior to the one other film I’ve seen by its director, Yutaka Abe (the recently-reviewed 1956 film The Confession). He was no flashy stylist; instead, he rightly lets the camera be the actors’ friend here, using close-ups judiciously and tracking shots when necessary. Another asset is the music by Kurosawa favourite Fumio Hayasaka, which is certainly one of the less grating and more effective scores of its era. 

 

 

Although technically an ensemble piece, this is Hideko Takamine’s film all the way, partly because her character goes through the most changes and she gets the lion’s share of the screen time, but also because she’s so photogenic and charismatic that everyone else seems to fade into the background when she’s in view. As Koi-san, she rejects her family’s obsession with tradition and form, deciding that a man’s actions are more important than his education or lineage – an ideology which would have found favour with the occupying Americans whose approval was needed for all films produced in Japan at the time. All in all, albeit not impressive enough to qualify as a masterpiece, this is at least a fine version of a literary classic, with a great star at its centre, and as such it deserves to be restored and more widely seen.

Bonus trivia: Future star Kyoko Kagawa appears briefly in one of her first roles as Itakura’s sister.

Thanks to A.K.

Yamane and Takamine

 

The Life of a Horse-Trader / Bakuro Ichidai (1951)

Obscure Japanese Film #2

Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura

One year after Rashomon, Daiei Studios decided to reunite stars Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo and Takashi Shimura in The Life of a Horse-Trader, based on a novel by Masao Nakayama. Although the film has little else in common with Rashomon, it should delight fans of Kurosawa regulars Mifune and Shimura and, as a bonus, features another of that director’s favourites, Bokuzen Hidari – he of the Noh-mask-like face. The film also features an excellent score by Kurosawa’s regular composer, Fumio Hayasaka.

Set in Hokkaido just before the arrival of automobiles, it tells the story of Yonetaro Katayama (Mifune), a horse-trader who is good at his job but much given to drinking, fighting and gambling. As a result of these pastimes, he neglects his wife and young child and is in an ongoing feud with Rokutaro Kosaka (Shimura), a carriage-driver turned money-lender with political ambitions.  However, when his wife dies, Yonetaro must change his ways in order to care for his son. Meanwhile, Yuki (Kyo), who works as a waitress at the inn he frequents, is in love with him and patiently waiting for him to notice.

Although The Life of a Horse-Trader is an old-fashioned and sentimental drama, the use of real locations alongside meticulously detailed sets lend it a welcome air of realism unusual for 1951. Mifune gives one of his most committed performances outside of a Kurosawa film and, in one memorable sequence, even performs in three bouts of sumo one after the other to great effect. Equally pleasing is the fact that Shimura has one of his best roles as the villain of the piece, who may not be quite such a bastard after all. Kyo is less well-served as her role is not as interesting, but she makes the most of it and has some amusing moments.

Director Keigo Kimura seems forgotten today, but the only other film I’ve seen by him (Diary of a Mad Old Man) is also good, and this one is extremely well-made, with first-class black-and-white cinematography by Shigeyoshi Mine.

A word of warning for horse-lovers: there is a scene in which Mifune and his son are encouraging their sick horse to stand up, and we see the horse flailing around. There is then a very odd cut and the scene ends abruptly, after which we are told that said horse did get back on its hooves after all. I suspect the reason for the strange cut is that they had the horse tied down or something like that. Worse still, there is a horse racing sequence in which a horse takes a tumble in such a way it made me gasp, and I very much doubt it could have survived.

Aside from the horse abuse, The Life of a Horse-Trader is an entertaining film which should be of great interest to fans of Mifune and Shimura at least. It must have been successful at the time, as there was a sequel the following year (albeit one made by a different director and without Mifune, Shimura or Kyo), plus a remake in 1963 with Rentaro Mikuni.  

Funnily enough, the film has a remarkably similar ending to the one in The Saga of Tanegashima (see previous post). In typical Japanese-film style, it ends with the parting of two of the main characters, who shout each other’s names over and over again as each recedes into the distance.