Obscure Japanese Film #178
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| Ryo Ikebe |
Okino (Ryo Ikebe) is a
hard-working Tokyo bank employee who is entrusted with a promotion to manager of
the Ikebukuro branch by his boss, Kuwayama (Akihiko Hirata, the one-eyed scientist from the original Godzilla). However, Okino is
disliked by his wife (Michiko Araki) and two children because he’s so focused
on his work that he largely ignores them. Soon after starting his new job, he’s
approached for a bank loan by restaurant owner Nami (Michiyo Aratama) and a
mutual attraction soon leads to an affair. As such a relationship with a
customer of the bank could cost Okino his job, he must be especially careful to
keep it a secret – something that becomes increasingly difficult when Kuwayama
meets Nami and decides to pursue her himself. Then Okino begins to wonder if
Nami has just been using him for her financial benefit…
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| Michiyo Aratama |
The Japanese title of
this Toho production translates as ‘Black Art Book Episode 2: Cold Current’ as
‘Cold Current’ was the title of Seicho Matsumoto’s story first serialised in
the Weekly Asahi in 1959 before being
included in the collection Black Art Book
2, published later that year.* Harenchi Gakuen helpfully explains on
Filmarks.com that, ‘The cold current refers to the side streams and those who
have been demoted.’ This makes perfect sense as Okino certainly finds himself
sidelined in this film version by screenwriter Tokuhei Wakao and director Hideo
Suzuki. Unfortunately, the original story is not available in English, but
apparently the ending was changed significantly. It’s a little different from
your typical Seicho Matsumoto tale – there’s not even a murder – and the plot
went off in directions I failed to anticipate, but did enjoy, culminating in a
highly unusual ending in which we are deliberately kept in the dark about
exactly what happened.
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| Akihiko Hirata |
It’s a refreshingly
unsentimental film which takes a pretty dim view of human nature. Having said
that, the two main characters are not entirely despicable. It’s common in Japan
for men to put work before family as Okino does here, and although Nami is the
business-minded, pragmatic type, she’s put in a difficult position with
which it’s hard not to sympathise, while it’s also clear that their relationship
begins to trouble her conscience. In this role, the underrated Michiyo Aratama
delivers the film’s best performance and it’s good to see her show what she
could do when given a meatier part than the typical ‘nice girl’ roles she’s
better-known for in films such as The
Human Condition.
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| Jun Hamamura |
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| Seiji Miyaguchi |
The film has some
wonderful cameos by familiar faces such as Jun Hamamura as a doctor who looks
like he could use some of his own medicine, Seiji Miyaguchi as a private
detective who looks like he hasn’t had a client for years, Tetsuro Tanba as a
yakuza boss and, best of all, Takashi Shimura as a shark-like banking bigwig
who exudes an aura of self-confidence and power and is appropriately trailed
everywhere by his silent, pilot-fish-like mistress (Machiko Kitagawa).
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| Tetsuro Tanba and friends |
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| Takashi Shimura |
This is the only film
I’ve seen so far by director Hideo Suzuki (1916-2002), who worked as a contract
director first for Daiei (1947-52), then Shintoho (1953) and finally Toho
(1954-67) before finishing his career in TV. Although he is said to have had a
limited amount of choice in the films he was assigned to direct and he worked in a
variety of genres, he is apparently highly regarded by some for his thrillers
and suspense movies, and on the evidence of Structure
of Hate, I, for one, am keen to see more, especially as there’s more to
this film than mere suspense. It’s also a portrait of a sick society in which
people have become foolishly obsessed with position and material wealth while
forgetting what’s really important in life.
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| Michiyo Aratama |
UPDATE: I've since watched Suzuki's Woman of Design (Sono basho ni onna arite, 1962), an equally unsentimental picture about women struggling to compete in the male-dominated advertising industry. It shows a similar disregard for the usual conventions of movie plotting, but for me it was a film to be admired rather than enjoyed as I found it a tad boring. It's also burdened with an odd score by composer Sei Ikeno which might have worked if used more sparingly but is repeated ad infinitum even over many of the dialogue scenes.
*Toho had made Black Art Book: An Employee’s Confession aka The Lost Alibi the previous year and Black Art Book: A Certain Disaster aka Death on the Mountain earlier in 1961. Structure of Hate was the final entry in
the series.
Thanks to A.K.
DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)
