Niwatori wa futatabi naku / 鶏はふたゝび鳴く (‘The Cock Crows Twice’, 1954)

Obscure Japanese Film # 259

Eijiro Tono and Yoko Minakaze

After a man trying to find oil in order to revive the fortunes of his dying seaside town commits suicide, the locals blame Fumiko (Yoko Minakaze), a young woman who had rejected his sudden offer of marriage. Fumiko lives with her father, Tokinosuke (Eijiro Tono, great), who has been going to pieces since his wife ran off with another man. Ostracised by the townsfolk, Fumiko heads towards the sea with the intention of ending it all, but is spotted by an itinerant oil worker (Shuji Sano) who prevents her from going through with it. He and four other men have been left stranded since the suicide of their boss and Fumiko is moved by their kindness and relates to their outside status.

Shuji Sano

Sachiko Hidari, Minakaze and Yoko Kozono

It emerges that Fumiko has two female friends, Yoko (Yoko Kozono/Kosono) and Taniko (Sachiko Hidari), with whom she has made a suicide pact, each carrying a deadly pill in a locket around their necks. Yoko’s reason for being miserable is that she’s the daughter of a concubine (Sadako Sawamura), while Taniko’s is that she’s physically disabled and has to walk with a crutch. The women have agreed that they will all commit suicide together. Meanwhile, the stranded workers are debating whether to flee the town and escape the debts they’ve incurred or stick it out, hoping that a long-awaited telegram will arrive telling them to come to a new oil field. Then Kurama (Yunosuke Ito), an embezzler on the run from the police, arrives and claims to be an oil surveyor who intends to restart the drilling…

Yunosuke Ito

This Shintoho production has an unusual story which is a creation of Rinzo Shiina (1911-73), who wrote the original screenplay and had written the novel on which director Heinosuke Gosho’s Where Chimneys are Seen (1953) had been based. However, there are certain similarities to Vittorio De Sica’s Miracle in Milan (1951), which I strongly suspect influenced this film. With all the talk of suicide, it first appears to be a rather bleak drama, but gradually transforms into a comedy. It’s not like any other Gosho film I’ve seen, and I found it quite engaging and charming in the way it takes delight in continually subverting our expectations. For example, when Fumiko’s wealthy aunt who has been turning down her father’s requests for money appears, we expect that she’ll be a terrible harridan – especially as she’s played by Eiko Miyoshi – but this proves not to be quite the case.

Eiko Miyoshi

It’s surprising to see Yoko Minakaze (1930-2007) in the lead role. She doesn’t look like a film star and, indeed, wasn’t one, but for some mysterious reason I felt her lack of star quality somehow worked in this film’s favour. Coming from the theatre, she enjoyed a long career on stage as well as screens both big and small, but this may well be her most major role in movies.

It’s worth noting that screenwriter Rinzo Shiina had converted to Christianity in 1950 and it’s easy to see how his beliefs influenced this work. It’s also perhaps the reason composer Toshiro Mayuzumi used choral music for his score, although this is one element I didn’t particularly care for. In most respects, though, this film is a gem and it’s also beautifully shot by Joji Ohara, who won a Mainichi Film Concours Award for Best Cinematography for his pains, making this a film crying out for a good quality release.

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The Makioka Sisters / 細雪 / Sasameyuki (‘Light Snowfall’, 1959)

Obscure Japanese Film #148

Junko Kano and Fujiko Yamamoto

Junichiro Tanizaki’s novel Sasameyuki is widely recognised as a classic of Japanese literature. Translated into English as The Makioka Sisters in 1957 by Edward G Seidensticker, it has remained constantly in print ever since. The book was originally published in serial form beginning in 1943, but this was soon halted by the Japanese War Ministry – not because it criticised the government, but because, according to them at the time, ‘The novel goes on and on detailing the very thing we are most supposed to be on our guard against during this period of wartime emergency: the soft, effeminate, and grossly individualistic lives of women.’* I would have thought they should have been more worried about the enemy, but in any case, Tanizaki was forced to wait until the war had ended to resume publication, with the final instalment appearing in 1948.

 

Yukiko Todoroki

 

The story itself takes place between 1936 and 1941, ending around eight months before the attack on Pearl Harbour, and it seems that Tanizaki’s intention was partly to provide a record of a way of life he had seen rapidly vanishing before his eyes. The Makioka sisters are four adult siblings whose parents are no longer alive. Once a grand family, their fortunes are on the wane but they remain very well-to-do in comparison with most Japanese and keep a number of servants. The eldest, Tsuruko (played here by Yukiko Todoroki), lives apart from the others with her husband and children in what is referred to as the ‘main house.’ She is a peripheral character, but, as the senior surviving member of the family, the other sisters must defer to her and her husband before making any important decisions. Tsuruko later goes to live in Tokyo when her husband has to relocate for his job, but her sisters remain in their hometown of Osaka.

 

Machiko Kyo and Fujiko Yamamoto

The other three sisters live together. In order of age, they are Sachiko (Machiko Kyo), Yukiko (Fujiko Yamamoto) and Taeko, familiarly called ‘Koi-san’ (Junko Kano). Sachiko is married to Teinosuke (Kyu Sazanka), with whom she has one child, Etsuko (Takako Shima). Although Sachiko is held responsible for her two younger sisters by the main house, little of the drama revolves around her. Instead, much of it concerns the attempts to find a husband for Yukiko, whose shy and sometimes stubborn nature makes this difficult. Ever since her original fiancée was killed in an accident, each marriage proposal has come to naught for one reason or another, and Yukiko is already approaching 30 when the story begins. Complicating matters further is the fact that Taeko must wait until Yukiko is married before getting married herself in order not to humiliate Yukiko and leave her looking like an old maid that nobody wants. Taeko is the closest thing to a rebel in the family, generally doing as she likes and indulged by her older sisters, who make allowances for her due to the fact that their parents died when she was so young. Even so, her disregard of the rules only goes so far and she avoids direct confrontation. 

 

Junko Kano

 

The sisters are likeable characters who live their lives trapped in a web of etiquette. Overly-concerned with what others think, they are unable to make a move without first ensuring that what they do will not offend anyone else or damage their own social status, but there’s little in the way of arrogance about them. Rather, they are simply behaving according to the rules by which they were brought up and it doesn’t even occur to them to do otherwise. In the book, Tanizaki paints a minutely-detailed picture of their lives, but never tells us what to think about it. The future of the family is left open at the end, but it’s impossible to be unaware of the dark cloud of war that awaits them just over the horizon, and no doubt Tanizaki planned it that way. 

 

The first film version appeared in 1950, directed by the forgotten Yutaka Abe, but notably starring Hideko Takamine as Taeko. When Koji Shima came to direct this remake for Daiei, Tanizaki was still alive (aged 74), and permission was sought from him to update the story to the present day, which he granted. I doubt whether this was to save money as the Japanese film industry seemed to have plenty to throw around in 1959, so I suspect the idea was to broaden the appeal to the modern audience. The story transfers with surprising ease to the Japan of the late ‘50s, but of course the feeling of watching a vanishing way of life is mostly lost. 

 

The wisdom of attempting to condense a novel which comes in at 530 pages (in its English translation) into a film running an hour and 45 minutes is also open to question. This episodic kind of material is probably better-suited to television and, in fact, there have been six different versions made for Japanese TV over the years. These misgivings aside, screenwriter Toshio Yasumi does a creditable job under the circumstances, choosing to concentrate less on the attempts to arrange a marriage for Yukiko and instead focus on the events revolving around Taeko, which are somewhat more dramatic. 

 

 

One of the best things about this film is the casting – all of the main actors are well-suited to their roles and are talented enough to make them feel like real people. It also looks a treat, with some interesting lighting choices including director Koji Shima’s trademark orange glow of sunset in several scenes, while the music – at least once the main credits are over – is restrained and tasteful. Cinematographer Joji Ohara and composer Seitaro Omori were both regular collaborators of the director. Shima had a fondness for storms as well as sunsets, which is just as well as the book contains a dramatic storm sequence which he pulls off nicely here. He also shows great skill at co-ordinating his actors, who perform all sorts of little bits of business during their dialogue scenes with great naturalism. Along with films such as The Beloved Image and A Rainbow at Every Turn, The Makioka Sisters provides further proof that Koji Shima was not simply a hack who made Warning from Space and The Phantom Horse, but was also a true artist when he wanted to be.  

 

 

Bonus trivia: After 20 years of being blacklisted, Fujiko Yamamoto (who plays Yukiko here) was invited back to the big screen by Kon Ichikawa to play Tsuruko in his 1983 remake. After thinking about it for six months, she said no and decided to stick with her stage work.

 

 *Rubin, Jay. Injurious to Public Morals: Writers and the Meiji State. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984. P.264.

Blu-ray at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles). This comes with a bonus DVD of a rare early Machiko Kyo film apparently, but I haven't been able to determine the title.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles).

Thanks to A.K.

The Beloved Image/ 顔 / Kao (‘Face’, 1960）

Obscure Japanese Film #129

Machiko Kyo and Ryo Ikebe

This Daiei picture opens with young executive Ko (Ryo Ikebe) being seen off at Haneda airport by his family and colleagues as he leaves Tokyo to spend two years working in America. He looks around anxiously to check that a young woman, Eriko (Machiko Kyo), is among the crowd. Relieved to find that she is, he bids her an awkward goodbye... 

Eijiro Yanagi

 

We then flashback to a couple of months previously as Ko arrives home after work one day to find himself greeted by a stranger, who turns out to be Eriko. The two have not seen each other since childhood, but Eriko has come up from Kyoto to help look after her aunt, who is also Ko’s step-mother, Orie (Hisako Takihana), whom his father married after Ko’s natural mother had died giving birth to him. Now Orie is ill, and Ko’s father, highly respected religious scholar Kiyosu (Eijiro Yanagi), is not much help looking after her, so Eriko is a godsend. Ko and Eriko are mutually attracted to each other and soon become close, but neither does anything about it as he will soon have to leave for America. However, before he goes, Ko asks Eriko to stay at the house until he gets back, ostensibly to look after Orie. 

 

No sooner has Ko departed than Orie takes a turn for the worse and passes away. A couple of months later, Eriko accompanies Kiyosu on an overnight golfing trip, sharing a room with him (it’s unclear why she has agreed to this). Kiyosu forces himself on her, and the next day asks her to marry him. She accepts, perhaps because his status is such that she sees no way to refuse, or perhaps because she’s old-fashioned enough to think that it’s the only correct thing to do. Anyway, she resigns herself to the idea, they marry, and she gradually gets used to her new position even if she never feels entirely happy about it. 

Yasuko Nakada

 

Two years pass, and Ko returns to Japan. The woman he hoped to marry is now his new step-mother, so things are awkward between them and Ko wants to move out of the family home and get his own apartment. Eriko decides that Ko needs a woman of his own as well, so she tries to fix him up with a friend of hers from Kyoto, widowed fashion designer Setsuko (Yasuko Nakada), but she finds that she can’t quite forget her own feelings for her lost love.

 

Based on a novel of the same title by Fumio Niwa* (here adapted by Teinosuke Kinugasa), this melancholy love story for grown-ups is beautifully realised in all departments, and I’m surprised it’s not better known. As a director, former actor Koji Shima has a reputation as something of a hack who would make any old thing, but here he shows such impressive skill and taste that it’s difficult to believe he’s the same man responsible for the ridiculous starfish-people sci-fi flick Warning from Space (1956). Here, he’s ably abetted by veteran cinematographer Joji Ohara, whose compositions, lighting and camera movements are all frequently impressive. There are some nicely symbolic shots, too, such as the one of the moth trapped inside a light when Eriko is raped, while excellent use is made of the weather throughout – on several occasions, interior scenes are played out against a backdrop of snowfall or a storm raging outside. 

 

Regarding the music, there was something of a trend in Japanese cinema at the time for Spanish guitar, which can sometimes feel jarring and intrusive. In the hands of composer Seitaro Omori here, however, it’s subtle and highly effective, adding a great deal to the emotional impact of the film without ever feeling manipulative. 

 

In the leading role, Machiko Kyo’s character changes a great deal in the course of the film, but she’s never less than entirely believable. The same can be said for Ryo Ikebe, an actor I’ve previously described as ‘wooden’ – and who could certainly never be accused of overacting – but who impressed me here. This is a story largely about what is going on in the minds of Ko and Eriko, and both actors prove highly adept at communicating this with a mere glance or slight change of expression even if the film occasionally resorts to voiceover from both characters. 

Kyoko Enami

 

There’s also a brief appearance by Kyoko Enami in one of her first film roles as Eriko’s rude niece, but it’s Yasuko Nakada as the seductive young widow who proves to be the major scene-stealer. She’s so good, in fact, that I’m surprised she failed to become a bigger star, especially as she was the mistress of Daiei president Masaichi Nagata; as it was, she broke up with him in 1964 and retired from acting, but is still alive at the time of writing.

This is a superb film - rarely have I come across one so obscure of such high quality. And that ending...

 

*Fumio Niwa (male, 1904-2005) also wrote the novels on which Women of Tokyo (1939), Naruse’s The Angry Street and Battle of Roses (both 1950) and Kinuyo Tanaka’s Love Letter (1953) were based. The only Niwa published in English translation appears to be his novel The Buddha Tree.