Kirai Kirai Kirai / 嫌い嫌い嫌い / (‘Hate hate hate’, 1960)

 

Ichiro Sugai

 

Sojuro Shinkawa (Ichiro Sugai) is the elderly chairman of the Shinkawa conglomerate, a position which he was hoping his son, Sotaro (Kenji Sugawara), would succeed him in. However, Sotaro has rebelled and gone off to do his own thing, so Sojuro gathers the presidents of the six companies which make up the conglomerate and asks them each to select their most promising employee and send them to head office, where they will compete to marry his granddaughter, Kikuko (Atsuko Kindaichi), and the winner will be groomed to become the new chairman. 

 

Atsuko Kindaichi

 

The six men chosen run the gamut from the ultra masculine Nagaoka (Ryuichi Ishii) with his impressive chest hair to the effeminate Hirose (Kanji Matsumoto), who drinks only milk, a thermos of which he always carries with him. Other candidates include Sakurai (future director Juzo Itami), who used to be friends with Kikuko as a child, the handsome and modest Tsujimoto (Jiro Tamiya), who appears to be the favourite, and coal miner Fukumitsu (Gen Mitamura), who is conflicted due to his secret love for co-worker Sumiko (Junko Kano)…

 

Jiro Tamiya

 

This Daiei production was based on a novel entitled Hana no sarariman (‘The Flower Salaryman’) by Keita Genji (1912-85), a writer well-known for this type of material whose work also provided the basis for many other films including Masumura’s Blue Sky Maiden (1957) and The Most Valuable Wife (1959). 

 

Junko Kano

 

Sachiko Hidari

For me, the main appeal was that it provided a rare chance to see another film by Hiroshi Edagawa, whose Roses Bloom on The Rose Bush (1959) I liked so much. However, this one is less interesting as it’s basically a piece of fluff, albeit a well-made one which is not unentertaining. It’s an ensemble piece with no real star at the centre, although Jiro Tamiya and Junko Kano were both beginning to get popular at the time and Sachiko Hidari also appears prominently, although in a role that has little bearing on the story, while Kazuko Matsuo pops up singing the title song in a nightclub (to which you can listen on YouTube here). Even Bokuzen Hidari makes an appearance as one of the company presidents - which may well be the most untypical role he ever played. Anyway, for the most part, it's a pleasant enough time-passer, though the gay stereotyping of Kanji Matsumoto’s character is regrettable. 

 

Bokuzen Hidari

 

A note on the title:

Kirai can also be translated as ‘I hate it’, ‘I hate you’, etc, so the tag line on the Japanese posters should probably be read as ‘I hate him because he’s handsome! I hate him because he’s rich! I hate him because he has chest hair! Is that really true?’

 

Kazuko Matsuo

 Watched with dodgy subtitles. 

Bara no ki ni bara no hana saku / 薔薇の木にバラの花咲く / (‘Roses Bloom on the Rose Bush’, 1959)

Obscure Japanese Film #136

Ayako Wakao

Rieko Sumi and Ayako Wakao

Reiko (Ayako Wakao) is a senior university student majoring in English who gets a part-time job tutoring junior student Mariko (Noriko Kubota). This is valuable income as Reiko lost both parents in the war and the only family she has left is her elder sister, Ginko (Rieko Sumi), who has become involved with the no-good Nose (Manabu Morita) and ended up working in the red light district. 

Jiro Tamiya

 

One day at Mariko’s house, Reiko meets a young architect, Fuyuhiko (Jiro Tamiya), who is immediately attracted to her. Coming from a wealthy family and used to having his own way, he pursues her relentlessly until his persistence pays off. Reiko begins a relationship with him which soon leads to talk of marriage. However, there is also the matter of Reiko’s sister, whose status would make the match unacceptable to Fuyuhiko’s family, as well as Reiko’s friendship with fellow student Narumi (Keizo Kawasaki), who loves her but has so far kept his feelings to himself…

Wakao and Keizo Kawasaki

 

This Daiei production was based on a novel of the same name by Yoshiko Shibaki, whose work had also formed the basis of Mizoguchi’s Akasen chitai and Yuzo Kawashima’s lesser-known but excellent Suzaki Paradise (both 1956), both of which were stories of the red light district. Like those films, this is also concerned with people who have found themselves marginalised by society partly due to economics, but here the red light district is a minor element and the main focus is on social status, or the class divide, a theme seldom dealt with in Japanese films as explicitly as it is here. 

 

The director was Hiroshi Edagawa (1916-2010), a filmmaker credited with just two feature films on IMDb, but who actually directed 31 features between 1950 and 1965 before finishing his career in TV, which shows just how much info is still missing on IMDb. Not having seen any of his other films, I can’t say how this one compares, but his work here is more than competent and he succeeds in delivering a satisfying and affecting Naruse-like relationship drama with good performances all round. 

 

Keizo Kawasaki

The characters here actually resemble real people – Jiro Tamiya’s, for instance, could easily have been a one-dimensional spoilt rich kid type, but is portrayed as having both positive and negative traits, while Ayako Wakao’s heroine is also shown to have her own flaws (embarrassed by her sister, she later comes to realise how lucky she is to have her). This unusual attention to character is probably why I found myself so drawn into the story and caring about what happened to the fictional people on screen. Given the obscurity of both film and director, I didn’t expect much from this, but I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised and warmly recommend it. 

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

English subtitles can be found here.

Thanks to A.K.