Waga ai / わが愛 (‘My Love’, 1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #232

 

Ineko Arima

Niizu (Shin Saburi) is a newspaper reporter who drops dead in the street after a night of heavy drinking. At the wake, his wife (Yatsuko Tan’ami) is surprised when a mysterious guest turns up to pay her respects. This is Kiyo (Ineko Arima), a young woman who has been Niizu’s mistress for the past three years while he was in the mountains working on a labour of love, a book entitled A History of the Chinese Salt Industry (sounds riveting!). 

 

Yatsuko Tan'ami

In flashback, we learn how Kiyo first met Niizu during the war when she was a teenager and was living with her aunt and a geisha named Hideya (Nobuko Otowa), who Niizu regularly slept with. One night, Niizu, Hideya and Kiyo were all sharing the same room when Niizu made love to Hideya while Kiyo kept her head turned away and covered her ears. When they were finished, Hideya went to use the bathroom and Niizu took the opportunity to say to Kiyo, ‘When you grow up, let’s have an affair.’ Instead of being creeped out by this, she fell in love with him and started keeping a scrapbook of his newspaper articles. When they met again a few years later, it was she who initiated their affair...

 

Arima

This Shochiku production involved many of the same talents that made the previously-reviewed film The Hunting Rifle (1961). Like that later picture, it was directed by Heinosuke Gosho, shot by Haruo Takeno, scripted by Toshio Yasumi based on a Yasushi Inoue story, scored by Yasushi Akutagawa and featured Shin Saburi and Nobuko Otowa. It’s safe to assume, then, that Waga ai was a commercial success as Shochiku would not have green-lit The Hunting Rifle otherwise. However, it suffers from several of the same fatal flaws as that later picture and I doubt it would be well-received by audiences today, which is perhaps why the only way to see it is via an old VHS transfer.

Shin Saburi

Nobel Prize nominee Yasushi Inoue was a very talented writer but, like many Japanese authors of the 20th-century, he was extremely prolific and divided his efforts between writing highbrow literary material and more commercial works to pay the rent, so that the quality of his work varied greatly. Without an English translation, I’m not sure how the 1952 story ‘Tsuya no kyaku’ (‘A Guest at the Wake’) which provided the basis for this film sits on that spectrum, but, for me anyway, the story is the fundamental problem here, consisting as it mostly does of  sentimental claptrap meets male wish-fulfilment. Indeed, it’s a complete mystery why Kiyo would fall in love with a craggy-faced, middle-aged, married drunk old enough to be her father and basically insist on becoming his uncomplaining slave; feminism must have been a completely alien concept to the people responsible for this film. Perhaps if Niizu had been played by someone more charismatic than Saburi, it might have helped a little, but probably not much – the picture is also sabotaged by the cloying clichés which make up Yasushi Akutagawa’s dreadful score.

Towering Waves / 波の塔 / Nami no to (1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #221

 

Ineko Arima and Masahiko Tsugawa

 

Wakako (Miyuki Kuwano), the daughter of corporation director and ministerial candidate Tazawa (Hiroshi Nihonyanagi), meets Onogi (Masahiko Tsugawa) by chance while exploring an ancient dwelling in Kamisuwa in Nagano Prefecture. Although she’s attracted to him, they go their separate ways and she assumes they’ll never meet again. However, sometime later she runs into him while he’s in the company of Yoriko (Ineko Arima), but Wakako is unsure about the nature of their relationship.

 

Miyuki Kuwano

 

It turns out that Yoriko and Onogi have been having an affair since they met by chance while watching a Russian theatre troupe perform The Lower Depths. When Onogi noticed that Yoriko, who happened to be sitting next to him, looked like she was going to vomit during the performance, Onogi – perhaps happy for an excuse to  leave – escorted her out, and their relationship began. 

 

Koji Nanbara and Kyoko Kishida

 

Yoriko is unhappily married to Yuki (Koji Nanbara), a political fixer who’s having multiple affairs of his own, including one with Hideko (Kyoko ‘Woman in the Dunes’ Kishida). Given that Onogi is a junior prosecutor, it’s no surprise that he ends up investigating Yuki in relation to a corruption case, and it just so happens that Wakako’s father is also involved, thereby guaranteeing much hand-wringing and misery for everybody involved…

 

Hiroshi Nihonyanagi

 

This Shochiku production was based on a novel by Seicho Matsumoto published the same year and contains so many unlikely coincidences that it should have received some kind of booby prize for Most Contrived Plot. However, the book was a best-seller in Japan and was also adapted for TV no fewer than eight times. It was also said to have been responsible for making the Aokigahara Forest at the base of Mount Fuji a popular suicide spot. 

 

Ineko Arima

 

One expects better from director Noboru Nakamura, best known these days for The Shape of Night (1964), which also starred Miyuki Kuwano, although it’s the underrated Ineko Arima who’s the top-billed star here. Unfortunately, they’re both wasted in this, as are the rest of a mostly strong cast that also includes talented character actors Sadako Sawamura (as Wakako’s mother) and Ko Nishimura (as a slippery lawyer). There are some nice shots here and there, but overall this is easily the least impressive of the nine Nakamura films I’ve seen so far.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

Thanks to A.K.

Daikon to ninjin / 大根と人参 / (‘Radishes and Carrots’, 1965)

 

Chishu Ryu

 

 

 

Yamaki (Chishu Ryu) is a typical middle-aged salaryman who has worked his way up into a comfortable senior management position. He’s been married to Nobuyo (Nobuko Otowa) for 28 years, has four adult daughters and is a creature of habit who rarely deviates from his daily routine. As his younger brother and subordinate co-worker Kosuki (Hiroyuki Nagato) says, he’s ‘as ordinary as radishes and carrots’. 

 

Hiroyuki Nagato and Nobuko Otowa

However, problems begin to pile up – a friend (Kinzo Shin) has cancer but hasn’t been told, Kosuki has embezzled money from the company and is expecting Yamaki to bail him out, and he’s been getting into increasingly aggressive arguments with his best friend, Suzuka (Isao Yamagata), to whose son his youngest daughter (Mariko Kaga) is sngaged. 

 

Isao Yamagata

Mariko Kaga

One day, his family are shocked when he fails to return from work. Unbeknownst to them, he’s gone off to Osaka, where he becomes involved with a cheerful call girl (Miyuki Kuwano) and her eccentric pimp (Daisuke Kato), who also has a Chinese medicine business he wants Yamaki to come in on with him…

 

Miyuki Kuwano

 

Daisuke Kato

This Shochiku comedy features an all-star cast which also includes Ineko Arima, Mariko Okada and Yoko Tsukasa as Yamaki’s other three daughters as well as Ryo Ikebe and Shima Iwashita, although some of these big names (especially Ikebe) are given precious little to do. At the beginning of the film, we’re presented with statistics informing us that over 80, 000 people go missing per year in Japan – a phenomenon which seems an odd topic for comedy. The film originated from an idea by Yasujiro Ozu, no less, who took his inspiration from a short story by Ryunosuke Akutagawa entitled ‘Yamagamo’, which centres around a quarrel between two old friends, and worked up a treatment with his regular collaborator Kogo Noda which remained unfinished. It seems likely that the theme of a man who goes missing was added later by credited screenwriters Yoshio Shirasaka and Minoru Shibuya, the latter of whom directed the film (his penultimate feature). 

 

Nobuko Otowa and Mariko Okada

 

Shima Iwashita

Although this is actually the first film I’ve seen by Shibuya, he was known for somewhat cynical comedies and it’s clear that Daikon to ninjin  is far closer to his usual style than it is to Ozu’s. In fact, one of the pleasures of the film is seeing its unlikely lead, Chishu Ryu, send up all those ‘perfect father’ roles he played for Ozu over the years. There’s also some surprisingly frank sexual dialogue that would not have been found in an Ozu picture. While Yamaki’s disappearance is not really given sufficient motivation, and the film does seem a rather messy, cobbled-together affair, it remains quite entertaining and likeable, and certainly worth a watch for anyone with an affection for the Japanese actors of the era.

Thanks to A.K. 

 

Kimi shinitamo koto nakare / 君死に給うことなかれ (‘Don’t Die Before Your Time’, 1954)

Obscure Japanese Film #115

Yoko Tsukasa

1940. Baggy-suited university professor Wataru (Ryo Ikebe) falls for Kumiko (Yoko Tsukasa), the nurse looking after his ailing mother in the hospital. However, his best friend, Kojima (Yoshio Tsuchiya), is being sent off to war and wants Wataru to marry his sister, Reiko (Setsuko Wakayama). Wataru resists and, when Kumiko is reassigned to Hiroshima, he follows her but receives a telegram en route ordering him to report for military duty immediately. The two are separated and lose touch with each other amid the chaos of war. 

Ryo Ikebe

Five years later, Kumiko has survived the A-bomb and is working for a man (Takashi Shimura) who runs a nursery school for orphans in Hiroshima. However, she has radiation burns on her body and the doctors believe there is a strong chance of her developing leukemia. For this reason, she believes that she is no longer fit for marriage and has changed her name in case Wataru tries to find her. In fact, Wataru has already tried to do so and concluded that she must be dead; he has married Reiko, but remains heartbroken. When circumstances lead him to suspect that Kumiko may still be alive, he makes every effort to track her down…

Setsuko Wakayama

 

This wartime weepie was originally to star Ineko Arima, but she had to withdraw due to an eye problem and was replaced by Yoko Tsukasa, a Mainichi Broadcasting System employee who had never acted before but had just done her first modelling job and was spotted by director Seiji Maruyama on a magazine cover. Tsukasa proved that she was more than just a pretty face and became an instant star as a result. 

Takashi Shimura and Ryo Ikebe

On the basis of this film, it should be unsurprising that director Seiji Maruyama went on to become best-known for his later war films as, while some scenes are indifferently shot, the movie suddenly comes alive during the impressive action scene in which Wataru and Kumiko have to flee their train along with hundreds of other passengers due to an aerial attack.

Yoko Tsukasa

 

Given the storyline, this Toho picture can hardly fail to be moving, and indeed it is, but it also feels rather contrived at times, and the characters often fail to be as sympathetic as they’re presumably supposed to be. Wataru just seems to assume that his feelings are reciprocated by Kumiko and forces himself on her whether she likes it or not, while Kumiko appears to revel in playing the martyr. The film also tries to have its cake and eat it in that Kumiko’s only visible scar from the A-bomb (that we get to see anyway) is on one wrist, making it rather too easy for Wataru to dismiss it (compare this to the scene in A Night to Remember in which Jiro Tamiya is made to feel considerably more uncomfortable). One can’t help feeling that the bombing of Hiroshima in this film is little more than a convenient plot device.