Mogura Yokocho / もぐら横丁 (‘Mole Alley’, 1953)

Obscure Japanese Film #244

Shuji Sano

This Shintoho production was based on episodes from a number of autobiographical novels by Kazuo Ozaki (1899-1983), one of which gives this film its title. Ozaki is renamed Kazuo Ogata here and played by Shuji Sano. In the originals, Ozaki was writing about his life as a struggling author in the 1930s before winning the coveted Akutagawa Prize in 1937. Perhaps for budgetary reasons, director Hiroshi Shimizu chose not to recreate the period and, in one scene, Ogata’s wife (played by Yukiko Shimazaki) goes to the cinema to see the 1952 French-Italian co-production The Seven Deadly Sins. However, apart from a few minor details such as this, the film could almost be set in the 1930s as there is no mention whatsoever of the war or of issues specific to the post-war period. Instead, it focuses entirely on the problems of the young couple as they try to find ways of paying the bills and avoiding homelessness while he maintains a writing career and she becomes a mother. 

Yukiko Shimazaki

Ozaki was a respected literary author in Japan, but almost none of his work has been published in English. His mentor was the better-known Naoya Shiga, who has several works published in English, including the novel A Dark Night’s Passing and the collection The Paper Door and Other Stories. Humour and anger at injustice are said to be among the prime characteristics of Ozaki’s work, which Mishima reportedly described as being like ‘Naoya Shiga in a kimono.’ Incidentally, there have been only three other films based on his writing: Koji Shima’s Nonki megane (1940). Tadao Ikeda’s Tenmei Taro (1951) and Seiji Hisamatsu’s Aisaiki (1959), none of which are easily accessible.

Shimizu co-wrote the screenplay with Kozaburo Yoshimura, already a well-established director himself by then, and this film seems to have been their sole collaboration. Shimizu was at this point dividing his time between making his own independent pictures and working for Shintoho. Unsurprisingly for a Shimizu picture, it’s an understated piece which avoids melodrama for the most part and has very little plot but plenty of gentle humour. On the other hand, it’s not one of his most characteristic or memorable films – unlike Tomorrow will be Fine Weather in Japan, for example, which feels like it could only have been made by Shimizu. 

If leading lady Yukiko Shimazaki, who plays Ogata’s rather child-like wife, is unfamiliar, that’s perhaps a symptom of Shimizu’s lack of interest in working with big names – she was not a major star, although she had been active in films from 1950 and went on to appear in Seven Samurai. She was also a chanson singer and, in 1963, she left the film business and opened her own chanson bar in Ginza named Epoch, which she ran for many years. A more familiar face among the supporting cast is Jukichi Uno, who plays a kindly landlord and seems to have appeared in almost every shomin-geki made during this period. 

Jukichi Uno

A note on the title:

As far as I’m aware, ‘Mole Alley’ is not an official English title. While ‘alley’ seems a fair translation of yokocho (which can also be translated as ‘side street’, ‘lane’, etc), mogura can also mean ‘creepers’ or ‘trailing plants’ as well as ‘mole’. Mogura Yokocho is the name of the street that Ogata and his wife move to, but whether that street is named after moles or creepers is unclear.

Bonus trivia:

Three well-known Japanese writers are glimpsed briefly in the Akutagawa Prize ceremony scene: Fumio Niwa, Kazuo Dan, and Shiro Ozaki (no relation to Kazuo Ozaki). 

Japanese DVD to be released 13 May 2026

Thanks to A.K.

The Seasons of Love / 四季の愛欲 / Shiki no aiyoku (‘Four Seasons of Love’, 1958)

 

Shoji Yasui

 

Gyo (Shoji Yasui) is a famous writer married to self-centred model Ginko (Yuko Kusunoki), but their marriage is not registered and they have told few people about it, fearing that to make it public might damage their careers. Ginko hates Gyo’s mother, Urako (Isuzu Yamada), believing that she abandoned Gyo when he was a child and only got back in touch after he became famous so she could sponge off him. Now 48, Urako is a widow, but in many ways she behaves like a young woman and has a lover, Hirakawa (Tomo’o Nagai), who owns a fabric wholesale business (at one point, she even takes him to see a blue movie). 

 

Yuko Kusunoki

 

Tomo'o Nagai and Isuzu Yamada

She also has two other adult children. One, Momoko (Yoko Katsuragi), is married to the older Tatabe (Jukichi Uno), but does not love him even though he treats her kindly and they have a young son. Unfortunately, she’s fallen in love with Tatabe’s cousin, Akaboshi (Yuji Odaka), a two-faced womaniser who laughs at her love letters behind her back. (After he tears one up and throws it in the wastepaper basket, we see his secretary taping it back together so she can read it). 

 

Yoko Katsuragi and Yuji Odaka

 

Urako’s other daughter is Harue (Sanae Nakahara), who dislikes Ginko and wants her brother, Gyo, to dump her and date her friend, Shinako (Shinako Mine) instead. However, when he takes them both to a hot spring inn for a treat, he gets chatting to the barmaid, Yuriko (Misako Watanabe), and when she casually mentions being troubled by athlete’s foot, he jumps behind the bar, removes her socks and smears her toes with a remedy he happens to have handy, kick-starting a love affair… 

 

Misako Watanabe

 

This Nikkatsu production was based on a 1957 novel entitled Shiki no engi (‘The Four Seasons of Acting/Performance’) by Fumio Niwa (1904-2005), whose work also provided the basis for Women of Tokyo (1939), The Beloved Image (1960) and Four Sisters (1962) among other films. Like many films by director Ko Nakahira, it takes a pretty dim view of human nature on the whole, although in this case some of the characters are quite sympathetic despite the amount of adultery going on. In any case, it’s clear that we’re a long way from Ozu and the world of Tokyo Story here, and perhaps that’s partly the point. There’s no genial Chishu Ryu-type father figure in this film, nor any father figure at all for that matter. The screenplay was written by the intriguing if not very prolific Keiji Hasebe, also known for his collaborations with Shohei Imamura, so new-wavers like him and Nakahira were likely reacting against the cosier domestic dramas of Ozu and others. In fact, the ending piles coincidence on top of coincidence in a way that strongly suggests that Nakahira and Hasebe were taking the piss. 

 

Yoko Katsuragi

 

If you can accept the film’s (possibly deliberate) absurdities, there’s much to enjoy, with Isuzu Yamada and Yoko Katsuragi taking the acting honours among a strong cast. There’s also an effective score by Toshiro Mayuzumi, albeit one of his more conventional efforts.

Thanks to A.K.

Four Sisters / 山麓 / Sanroku (‘The Foot of the Mountain’, 1962)

Obscure Japanese Film #167

Isuzu Yamada

 

Yoshiko Mita

Sonny Chiba

 

Modern-day Tokyo. Masako (Yoshiko Mita) is a young woman who wants to marry mountaineer Shinkichi (Sonny Chiba), but her domineering mother (Isuzu Yamada) wants her to wed the more financially solvent Sakurai (Fumio Watanabe). Once Sakurai begins courting her, Masako finds herself warming to him and becomes torn between the two men, so she begins to consider the marriages of her three older sisters in order to help her decide what to do. 

 

Chikage Awashima

 

Ko Nakahira

The eldest, Kikuno (Chikage Awashima), has been trapped in an unhappy and childless marriage to the wealthy Mitsumine (Ko Nishimura) for the past 10 years. Mitsumine loves her but has constant affairs on the side which he thinks Kikuno should just accept. The next sister, Misao (Chikage Ogi), is happily married to Igarashi (Tetsuro Tanba), with whom she has two children. Third sister Kanako (Kaneko Iwasaki) has angered their mother by eloping with Asayama (Hiroshi Minami), but leads a cheerful life with him in their small apartment and is newly pregnant.

 

Chikage Ogi and Kaneko Iwasaki

 

Chishu Ryu

 

The father of the four sisters (Chishu Ryu) is a classic henpecked husband who failed in business and now keeps his head down, busying himself with his bonsai while letting his wife make all the decisions. However, a family crisis is provoked when Kikuno – who had married Mitsumine at her mother’s urging – decides she’s had enough and leaves him, which will cut off an important source of income for the family…

 

 

As the IMDb page for this film not only contains a poster and a few stills in black and white, but also states that the film was shot that way, I was surprised to find that it’s actually in colour and, in fact, rather nicely shot by cinematographer Masahiko Iimura. A Toei production, it’s based on a just-published novel by Fumio Niwa, who also wrote the novels on which The Beloved Image (1960) and Women of Tokyo (1939) were based. The adaptation is by Zenzo Matsuyama, who had recently become a director himself, but this one is helmed by Masaharu Segawa (1925-2016), a director best-known for comedies, which this certainly ain’t. It’s the only film I’ve seen by Segawa, but it’s made with a sure hand and features consistently clever blocking of scenes and good performances across the board. The tasteful music by Ichiro Saito is also a plus. 

 

 

The mountain serves as a metaphor for marriage here, which is seen as a difficult journey that many abandon before reaching the peak, so the youngest sister is at ‘the foot of the mountain’ which was also the title of the novel and film in Japanese. The climax of the film involves a literal mountain, and this part does get a little melodramatic and corny, it has to be said, but not fatally so. 

 

 

Among a strong cast, the chameleon-like Isuzu Yamada delivers the finest performance as the apparently cold and materialistic queen bitch matriarch who, deep down, is actually insecure about both her position and her fading looks. Surprisingly, she was not even nominated for an award for this, but perhaps it’s simply because she’d already won a handful.

The film also features a cameo by popular singer Kazuko Matsuo, who appears crooning the film’s theme song in a nightclub. 

 

Kazuko Matsuo

 

The Beloved Image/ 顔 / Kao (‘Face’, 1960）

Obscure Japanese Film #129

Machiko Kyo and Ryo Ikebe

This Daiei picture opens with young executive Ko (Ryo Ikebe) being seen off at Haneda airport by his family and colleagues as he leaves Tokyo to spend two years working in America. He looks around anxiously to check that a young woman, Eriko (Machiko Kyo), is among the crowd. Relieved to find that she is, he bids her an awkward goodbye... 

Eijiro Yanagi

 

We then flashback to a couple of months previously as Ko arrives home after work one day to find himself greeted by a stranger, who turns out to be Eriko. The two have not seen each other since childhood, but Eriko has come up from Kyoto to help look after her aunt, who is also Ko’s step-mother, Orie (Hisako Takihana), whom his father married after Ko’s natural mother had died giving birth to him. Now Orie is ill, and Ko’s father, highly respected religious scholar Kiyosu (Eijiro Yanagi), is not much help looking after her, so Eriko is a godsend. Ko and Eriko are mutually attracted to each other and soon become close, but neither does anything about it as he will soon have to leave for America. However, before he goes, Ko asks Eriko to stay at the house until he gets back, ostensibly to look after Orie. 

 

No sooner has Ko departed than Orie takes a turn for the worse and passes away. A couple of months later, Eriko accompanies Kiyosu on an overnight golfing trip, sharing a room with him (it’s unclear why she has agreed to this). Kiyosu forces himself on her, and the next day asks her to marry him. She accepts, perhaps because his status is such that she sees no way to refuse, or perhaps because she’s old-fashioned enough to think that it’s the only correct thing to do. Anyway, she resigns herself to the idea, they marry, and she gradually gets used to her new position even if she never feels entirely happy about it. 

Yasuko Nakada

 

Two years pass, and Ko returns to Japan. The woman he hoped to marry is now his new step-mother, so things are awkward between them and Ko wants to move out of the family home and get his own apartment. Eriko decides that Ko needs a woman of his own as well, so she tries to fix him up with a friend of hers from Kyoto, widowed fashion designer Setsuko (Yasuko Nakada), but she finds that she can’t quite forget her own feelings for her lost love.

 

Based on a novel of the same title by Fumio Niwa* (here adapted by Teinosuke Kinugasa), this melancholy love story for grown-ups is beautifully realised in all departments, and I’m surprised it’s not better known. As a director, former actor Koji Shima has a reputation as something of a hack who would make any old thing, but here he shows such impressive skill and taste that it’s difficult to believe he’s the same man responsible for the ridiculous starfish-people sci-fi flick Warning from Space (1956). Here, he’s ably abetted by veteran cinematographer Joji Ohara, whose compositions, lighting and camera movements are all frequently impressive. There are some nicely symbolic shots, too, such as the one of the moth trapped inside a light when Eriko is raped, while excellent use is made of the weather throughout – on several occasions, interior scenes are played out against a backdrop of snowfall or a storm raging outside. 

 

Regarding the music, there was something of a trend in Japanese cinema at the time for Spanish guitar, which can sometimes feel jarring and intrusive. In the hands of composer Seitaro Omori here, however, it’s subtle and highly effective, adding a great deal to the emotional impact of the film without ever feeling manipulative. 

 

In the leading role, Machiko Kyo’s character changes a great deal in the course of the film, but she’s never less than entirely believable. The same can be said for Ryo Ikebe, an actor I’ve previously described as ‘wooden’ – and who could certainly never be accused of overacting – but who impressed me here. This is a story largely about what is going on in the minds of Ko and Eriko, and both actors prove highly adept at communicating this with a mere glance or slight change of expression even if the film occasionally resorts to voiceover from both characters. 

Kyoko Enami

 

There’s also a brief appearance by Kyoko Enami in one of her first film roles as Eriko’s rude niece, but it’s Yasuko Nakada as the seductive young widow who proves to be the major scene-stealer. She’s so good, in fact, that I’m surprised she failed to become a bigger star, especially as she was the mistress of Daiei president Masaichi Nagata; as it was, she broke up with him in 1964 and retired from acting, but is still alive at the time of writing.

This is a superb film - rarely have I come across one so obscure of such high quality. And that ending...

 

*Fumio Niwa (male, 1904-2005) also wrote the novels on which Women of Tokyo (1939), Naruse’s The Angry Street and Battle of Roses (both 1950) and Kinuyo Tanaka’s Love Letter (1953) were based. The only Niwa published in English translation appears to be his novel The Buddha Tree.