Anchin to Kiyohime / 安珍と清姫 / (‘Anchin and Kiyohime’, 1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #261

Ayako Wakao

The Heian era. Kiyohime (Ayako Wakao) is the feisty daughter of a village headman. Out hunting a fox one day, she fires an arrow at it, but hits a handsome young monk, Anchin (Raizo Ichikawa), in the arm (presumably there was no cappuccino around in those days for her to spill on him). Apparently confusing the first aid procedure for arrow wounds with the one for snake bites, she sucks his wound and spits out the blood, then bandages it and invites him back to her place to recuperate. As a monk who takes his religion seriously, he spurns her company because he wants to avoid temptation; she takes this as an insult. To get revenge – in a literally ‘steamy’ scene made much of at the time – she follows him to a hot spring in which he’s taking a moonlit bath, strips off and makes as if to seduce him, then laughs in his face when he begins to give in to temptation. He runs off and confesses to a priest who advises him to go and stand under a waterfall until he stops thinking about her (is this the origin of the cold shower treatment?). Meanwhile, she decides that she really loves him after all, but of course everyone else in the movie is determined to keep them apart…

Raizo Ichikawa

This Daiei production was based on a legend about the ancient Buddhist temple of Dojoji in Wakayama Prefecture. The legend had been the basis for numerous Noh, kabuki and bunraku (puppet) plays, but the sole writing credit here goes to screenwriter Hideo Oguni, a frequent Kurosawa collaborator. Unfortunately, in this case he came up with such a corny load of old tosh that the only reasonable way to atone for it would have been to commit hara kiri. Even at a mere 85-minutes, it feels incredibly drawn-out and plods on predictably at a glacial pace before finally reaching its climax, in which either Ayako Wakao turned into a giant snake, or I had begun to hallucinate as a result of brain-rot brought on by the previous 75 minutes, I’m really not sure which.

This was the tenth of 19 films in which Ayako Wakao and Raizo Ichikawa – two of Daiei’s biggest stars – appeared together, and they were rumoured to have been lovers at the time. I don’t know about that, but they were certainly very flirty in a joint magazine interview quoted at this Japanese Raizo Ichikawa fan blog. In any case, one can only pity them here for being lumbered with such unconvincing characters and risible dialogue. Director Koji Shima throws in a couple of his trademark storms and makes it all look quite pretty in an artificial sort of way, but this one’s a lost cause, although – not too surprisingly, perhaps – it was a box office success at the time. All in all, it’s the sort of story that works much better in Kihachiro Kawamoto’s 20-minute puppet film version of 1976 entitled Dojoji, which you can watch on YouTube.

Incidentally, anyone visiting Wakayama Prefecture can visit Dojoji, where there is a picture scroll depicting the story of Anchin and Kiyohime, and request a monk to tell the story (with the option of English, I think). For more info, visit Dojoji’s English web page.

At the time of writing, masochists can watch the film with English subs on YouTube. 

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Nemuri Kyoshiro – Journal of an Outlaw / 眠狂四郎 無頼控 / Nemuri Kyôshirô burai hikae (aka The Lonely Swordsman Part 1, 1956)

Obscure Japanese Film #97

Koji Tsuruta

This Toho production was the first film based on the series of novels about Kyoshiro Nemuri, a fictional swordsman created by Renzaburo Shibata (1917-78) in the same year this film was released. The character later became the hero of a series of films starring Raizo Ichikawa – these are known in the West as the Sleepy Eyes of Death series (‘Nemuri’ actually means ‘sleep of death’ according to Merlin David’s first-rate subtitles here). Shibata appears to have modelled his character partly on Ryunosuke Tsukue, the anti-hero of Kaizan Nakazato’s novel Dai-bosatsu toge, portrayed most memorably by Tatsuya Nakadai in Sword of Doom. However, in the hands of actor Koji Tsuruta (see The Romance of Yushima), Nemuri simply comes across as an oddly unlikeable hero, especially considering the fact that he rapes Mihoyo (Keiko Tsushima) a few minutes into the film. Of course, she falls in love with him as a result (I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen this dodgy cliché in Japanese films). Although there is some compensation in the fact that the women get to do some of the fighting too (which is probably the best thing about this film), unfortunately the swordfights are never very convincing and feature neither cutting sounds nor blood. This would change forever post-Yojimbo and Sanjuro, but even though those game-changing movies were still a few years away at this point, I felt that director Shigeaki Hidaka (who also made World War III: 41 Hours of Fear) could have done a little better on the action front than what we see here. 

Keiko Tsushima

 

Talking of Kurosawa, the screenplay was written by his frequent collaborator Hideo Oguni and features two of his regular actors, Kamatari Fujiwara and (all too briefly) Bokuzen Hidari. It’s by no means a bad film, but I found it disappointing on the whole and the plot felt both over-complicated and implausible (this is why I couldn’t face writing a synopsis). The character of Kiheita, ‘the flying squirrel’ (Shin Tokudaiji) is especially daft – he’s a hunchbacked swordsman who is supposedly Nemuri’s deadliest rival and can leap really high into the air (i.e. be pulled up by wires). 

Kamatari Fujiwara

 

Shin Tokudaiji

Koji Tsuruta starred in two sequels before Toho dropped the series in 1958. Part 2 was shot back-to-back with this one and features many of the same cast members, but adds Koji Mitsui and Setsuko Wakayama, while the second sequel was shot in widescreen with a new director and a particularly impressive supporting cast including Isuzu Yamada, Haruko Sugimura and Michiyo Kogure. Daiei studios revived the character with Raizo Ichikawa and greater success in 1963 in a series which continued for 12 films and probably ended only due to the premature death of their star in 1969.

Koji Tsuruta

 

Escape from Hell / 無宿人別帳/ Mushukunin-betsucho (1963)

Obscure Japanese Film #93

Keiji Sada

During the winter of 1802-3, a group of convicts are transported in individual bamboo cages to the island of Sado, where they have been sentenced to hard labour draining a gold mine. Among them is Yaju (Keiji Sada), a formerly honourable samurai who became a criminal after the woman he loved, Kumi (Mariko Okada), was forced into a marriage with the more senior Kurozuka (Hiroshi Nihonyanagi). 

 

Hiroshi Nihonyanagi and Mariko Okada

In an unfortunate coincidence, Kurozuka becomes the new governor of the mine, while his scheming subordinate Kojuro (Hiroyuki Nagato) informs Kumi that her former lover Yaju is among the prisoners. Always planning ahead, Kojuro also decides it could be to his advantage to push his own mistress, Rin (Sachiko Hidari), into the arms of the inexperienced new magistrate. 

Hiroyuki Nagato and Sachiko Hidari

 

Meanwhile, the prisoners find themselves not only working in life-threatening conditions, but also treated brutally by the foreman (Ko Nishimura) and his henchman Hachizo (Toranosuke Tennoji). 

 

Rentaro Mikuni and Kanemon Nakamura

However, two trusties, Shinpei (Rentaro Mikuni) and Seibei (Kanemon Nakamura) are more sympathetic and do what they can for the men. Seibei also has a daughter, Miyo (Masuyo Iwamoto*), who treats the men when they are wounded, but is raped by one named Senta (Masahiko Tsugawa) for her pains. When conditions become unbearable, the men decide to make a desperate escape attempt headed by Shinpei – but can the trusty be trusted?

Mariko Okada

 

This Shochiku production takes its Japanese title from the title of Seicho Matsumoto’s 1958 short story collection containing the story ‘Tobo’ (‘Escape’) upon which the film is partly based. The title is hard to translate into English, but in the Edo period during which the stories were set, the mushukunin were people who had been removed from the family register, and each of the stories in Matsumoto’s collection was centred on a character who was some kind of social outcast, i.e. a homeless person or criminal. However, the film is also partly based on a second Matsumoto story, ‘Sado runinko’ (‘Sado Exile Journey’), published in 1957. I’m uncertain whether there was really a mass escape attempt at the Sado gold mine, but it’s certainly true that, during the late Edo period, the authorities would round up vagrants and send them to do forced labour there. In any case, the man who used this interesting historical setting along with other elements of the two Matsumoto stories and turned it all into a fine screenplay was Hideo Oguni, known for his work on many of Kurosawa’s most famous films. 

Mariko Okada

 

The director, Kazuo Inoue (1924-2011), had worked as an assistant to Minoru Shibuya, Yuzu Kawashima and Yasujiro Ozu before becoming a Shochiku director himself in 1954. Escape from Hell is the 11^th of 12 films he made for the company before going freelance in 1964, after which he seems to have been unable to sustain a career in the declining Japanese film industry. Although he managed to direct a further eight pictures, most of these were comedies of little note, the exception being his final film, a documentary about Ozu entitled I Lived But… (1983). Apart from allowing some of the actors in the smaller parts to overact, his direction of Escape from Hell is impressive and he clearly knew how to get the most out of a scene.

Hiroyuki Nagato

 

Another factor which makes Escape from Hell worth seeking out is the host of well-known faces among the cast, even including Tora-san actor Kiyoshi Atsumi as a convict with a snoring problem. Hiroyuki Nagato from Pigs and Battleships is especially good as the devious Kojuro, constantly figuring all the angles to his own advantage, although Mariko Okada is sadly wasted in her role, which gives her little to do. Used to better advantage is Rentaro Mikuni, who gives one of the strongest performances here as an escaping convict. This fact, together with Sachiko Hidari’s appearance as a giggling former prostitute, suggests that Tomu Uchida saw the film and was influenced in his casting for A Fugitive from the Past (1965). 

 

Rentaro Mikuni

However, the real revelation for me among the cast was Keiji Sada – I’ve seen many of his films and always liked him, but would never have imagined Sada as the tough, unshaven, moody samurai he plays here, a role he pulls off very well indeed. It’s a reminder of what a loss to Japanese cinema his premature death in a car crash the following year was. 

Keiji Sada

 

 *Sometimes incorrectly listed as Tayo Iwamoto in English.