A Boy Named Jiro / 次郎物語 / Jiro monogatari (‘The Tale of Jiro’, 1955)

Obscure Japanese Film #288

Koji Osawa

The Meiji era, c. early 1890s. Jiro (Koji Osawa*) is a boy of around 8 who has been lovingly raised by wet nurse turned foster mother Ohama (Yuko Mochizuki), but now it’s time to go back to his family home and live with his real mother, Otami (Ranko Hanai), and his father, Shunsuke (Ichiro Ryuzaki). Unhappy about this as well as the obsession with status and correct etiquette common among such well-off samurai families in decline, Jiro takes to moping, and, while his father is patient and kindly, Otami is less so. Jiro misses Ohama and takes a long time to accept Otami, and it’s only when she falls ill from tuberculosis and he begins looking after her that the two become close. After she dies, his father finds a new wife in Oyoshi (Michiyo Kogure), whom Jiro is now expected to call ‘mother’ – it’s no wonder the poor kid’s confused...

Yuko Mochizuki

This Shintoho production is quite similar in terms of story to the previously-reviewed Shirobamba (1962). However, it was based on the early parts of an autobiographical novel by Kojin Shimomura, part one of which was serialised in 1941 and quickly turned into a film by director Koji Shima. Further parts appeared over the years, culminating in a fifth part published in 1954. Shimomura had been planning to continue the story further, but died in April 1955. This film was released around six months later, so his death may well have been the catalyst which led writer-director Hiroshi Shimizu to remake it, although the fact that the childhood theme was close to Shimizu’s heart would likely have been another motivating factor.

Michiyo Kogure

Typically for Shimizu, it’s not a star-led picture despite the presence of Michiyo Kogure, who appears only in the last 20 minutes, and there’s also a great deal of location work. Though the outlook of the film is very conservative, it’s beautifully made and Shimizu mostly prevents the sentimentality from becoming cloying, but he’s not helped by the choral music, which has not dated well at all, and, while Ranko Hanai’s deathbed scene is too drawn out, the acting is nicely understated all round (perhaps a reflection of Shimizu's opinion that 'actors are just talking props'). What impresses the most, though, is Shimizu’s technique – the way the tracking shots are co-ordinated with the complex blocking of the actors, such as when the children play ‘it’ in the house, is quite remarkable.

Ranko Hanai

The assistant director was none other than Teruo Ishii, whose own directorial career would go in an entirely different direction.

The story was remade as a two-parter by Masao Nozaki in 1960 and again by Tokihisa Morikawa in 1987.

*This child actor has also been credited as Koji Ozawa, Yukihiko Osawa and Yukihiro Osawa in English – I’m unsure which reading is correct.

Thanks to A.K.

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Shunsetsu / 春雪 / (‘Spring Snow’, 1950)

Obscure Japanese Film #164

Yasuko Fujita

 

Takako (Yasuko Fujita) is a young woman who works on the ticket desk at her local train station in Denenchofu on the outskirts of Tokyo. The eldest child of a father (Takashi Shimura) who has been made redundant - though he doesn’t tell his family for a month - she hopes to wed train driver Toshio (Shuji Sano), but they cannot yet afford to marry. Not only are the family are struggling to get by, but Takako’s mother (Yuriko Hanabusa) is unwell and her younger brother (Teiji Takahashi) has started hanging out with a bad crowd. But when Takako’s younger sister Tomoko (Akiko Sawamura) finds work as a maid to a wealthy orchestra conductor (Ichiro Ryuzaki) who takes a shine to Takako, it looks like the family’s problems could be solved if she would only forget Toshio and marry him instead…

Takashi Shimura

 

Shuji Sano

 

Teiji Takahashi

Akiko Sawamura

This Shochiku production is unrelated to the later Yukio Mishima novel which shares its English title and was written as an original screenplay by Kaneto Shindo, one of around 40 he wrote for the director of this film, Kozaburo Yoshimura. I don’t remember the war itself being mentioned, but the poverty of the post-war years is emphasized throughout, and the family even try to grow vegetables in their garden to save a few yen. They tend to put up a  cheerful front when together, but often fall into depression on their own. We see Takiko riding a train and staring at the tracks as it speeds along as if seeing her life laid out before her in a straight line leading to nowhere, while her father eats his packed lunch in the ruins of the steelworks where he used to be employed and which was, presumably, demolished due to the war ending. Typically for Japanese drama, the story revolves around a classic giri (obligation) versus ninjo (inclination) conflict – in this case, if Takako marries the rich guy, her family will be saved. As it was made during the American occupation, however, the film also promotes western culture and values, and on one occasion we see Takako attending a ballet, while on another she and Toshio are seen sitting outside a Christian church where a wedding is taking place and admiring the sound of the choir singing a hymn within. 

 

Yasuko Fujita

The star of this film, Yasuko Fujita, was a theatre actress who had been hand-picked by Yoshimura to play the lead role despite never having appeared in a film before. It’s an impressive debut, and she not only looks the part, but acts it in such a way that she seems like a natural for the movies, betraying not even a hint of theatricality in her performance. Unfortunately for the Japanese cinema, she married a well-known music promoter in 1953 and retired from acting having made a dozen films, the most widely-seen of which is probably Yoshimura’s Clothes of Deception (1951), in which she co-starred opposite Machiko Kyo. Her Japanese Wikipedia page contains the enigmatic comment that ‘She reportedly made the most of her good looks when interacting with foreign celebrities.’ Yasuko Fujita passed away in 2015 aged 88.

Among the rest of the cast, the most notable is Takashi Shimura, and it’s nice to see that he’s not totally wasted here as he was so often when not working with Kurosawa. In Spring Snow, he gets to play a character with more than one dimension who goes through his own struggle against both himself and his circumstances. 

 

Although I wouldn’t go as far as to claim it as any kind of forgotten masterpiece, Spring Snow has quite a lot going for it, including the cinematography of Toshio Ubukata (who also worked for Kurosawa) and the mostly well-developed characters, who feel worth spending time with.

Thanks to A.K.