Koroshita no wa dareda / 殺したのは誰だ (‘Who is the Real Killer?’, 1957)

Obscure Japanese Film #286

Ichiro Sugai

Misako Watanabe

Eikichi (Ichiro Sugai) is a widowed 55-year-old car salesman with two adult children: Katsuko (Misako Watanabe), a bar hostess who sometimes sleeps with her customers, and Jiro (Asahi Kobayashi), a student who seems to have dropped out, works part-time at a car wash and plays billiards for high stakes when he has the cash. Eikichi has shacked up with Yurie (Toshiko Yamane), who has a cheap eatery ironically named the ‘Peaceful Oasis Diner’. However, nobody seems to actually eat there, only to drink, and it’s patronised mainly by a former salesman turned chronic alcoholic (Jun Hamamura) and assorted flies.

Sugai, Toshiko Yamane and Ko Nishimura

Eikichi is having a run of bad luck at work, partly because he keeps getting undercut by ruthless rival salesman Nakagawa (Ko Nishimura), who has also taken a liking to Yurie. When Nakagawa tempts Eikichi and his friend Frank (Taiji Tonoyama) into a dangerous criminal scheme for some supposedly easy money, more than one person ends up dead…

Yamane, Sugai and Taiji Tonoyama

The title of this Nikkatsu production might lead you to expect a whodunit but, written as an original screenplay by leftist Kaneto Shindo, the answer to the titular question is presumably supposed to be ‘society’. Unusually, Shindo places the focus largely on middle-aged failure Eikichi rather than his troubled offspring. The 50-year-old Ichiro Sugai suits this part very well (it was likely tailor-made) and gives a fine performance in what was a rare leading role for him. Apparently, he had first come to prominence playing Inspector Javert in a now lost film version of Les Miserables directed by Tomu Uchida in 1931. He went on to become a favourite not only of Shindo, but also of Mizoguchi, Kurosawa, Kozaburo Yoshimura and Kon Ichikawa and appeared in over 300 films, even directing two himself, before his passing in 1973.

Sugai with Toshiko Yamane

The film was directed by Ko Nakahira*, best-known for Crazed Fruit (1956). With his customary flair and economy, he paints a vivid picture of a cutthroat post-war world in which people are desperate enough to do almost anything to make a few yen and American culture has been unquestioningly embraced, along with all the emphasis on materialism and capitalism that goes with it. It’s significant that the film opens with a driver’s POV shot of a dashboard bearing the legend ‘Cadillac’; yet when we see the driver’s hand turn on the radio, it’s not American rock and roll or jazz we hear, it’s a melancholy theme provided by the film’s composer, Akira Ifukube, of Godzilla fame. This is the first indication that this will be a film that does not play out along familiar lines.

Jun Hamamura with fly

There’s some effective if not especially subtle symbolism involving spiders and flies, while performances are solid all round, although Jun Hamamura is given a little too much license to scene-steal and be weird. And that’s not the only element which doesn’t always work – Sugai’s drunk scene is over the top and a billiards scene, though cleverly shot and edited, goes on too long – but there are some great, unexpected moments along the way that make this one well worth watching, and it’s stylishly shot by Shinsaku Himeda, who would later win awards for his work with Shohei Imamura.

*IMDb lists Shindo as co-director, but Japanese sites do not.

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Misako Watanabe

Time within Memory / 青幻記 遠い日の母は美しく / Seigen-ki (1973)

Obscure Japanese Film #273

Takahiro Tamura

Arai Yohiro

Minoru (Takahiro Tamura) is a middle-aged man who returns to the island of Okinoerabu in the far south of Japan for the first time in over 30 years. He relives long-forgotten memories of his childhood and his widowed mother (Atsuko Kaku), who died there when he was still a boy (Arai Yohiro), and meets an old man (Kamatari Fujiwara) who had been in love with her.

Atsuko Kaku

Based on an autobiographical novel by Jiro Isshiki (1916-88) which won the Osamu Dazai prize on its publication in 1967, this was the first of just two films directed by renowned cinematographer Toichiro Narushima (1925-93), who also worked as his own DP and producer here in addition to co-writing the screenplay. Previously, he had provided first-rate camerawork for mostly ‘new wave’ directors such as Yoshishige Yoshida, Masahiro Shinoda, Noboru Nakamura and Nagisa Oshima after starting out as an assistant cameraman for Keisuke Kinoshita. He clearly learnt a few things from working with such acclaimed filmmakers as, not only is the photography in this film as striking as one would expect from Narushima, but he proves to have a firm hand in other areas too.

Atsuko Kaku

The story is the sort of nostalgic, sentimental material that could easily have become cloying, but Narushima mostly avoids this by preventing his actors from overdoing it and staging his scenes with taste and subtlety, while the device of having the young and old Minoru frequently appearing together - almost as if the older one were a time traveller – works especially well, as does the purposefully non-chronological unfolding of events in the flashbacks (the most dramatic scene is held back until the older Minoru can finally face it). Time within Memory also benefits from its well-used locations and Toru Takemitsu’s score, which provides much of the emotional resonance even if its not one of his greatest.

Yunosuke Ito and Hisano Yamaoka

Delivering a fine performance in only her third film appearance, Atsuko Kaku won the Mainichi Film Concours Award for Best Actress, but for some reason never made another film. Like Tatsuya Nakadai and many other well-known Japanese actors, she was a member of the Haiyuza theatre company. 

Jun Hamamura

As a passive observer of his own past, Takahiro Tamura has less to do despite ostensibly having the lead role, while other notables among the cast include Yunosuke Ito as Minoru’s eccentric inventor grandfather and Hisano Yamaoka as his wife, Taiji Tonoyama as a shopkeeper sympathetic to the young Minoru, and Jun Hamamura as a mumbo-jumbo mumbling shaman. However, it’s Kamatari Fujiwara who impresses the most among the supporting cast when he sings and accompanies himself on the shamisen in a uniquely individual style (assuming he wasn’t dubbed).

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Kamatari Fujiwara

The Sharks / 鮫 / Samé (1964)

Obscure Japanese Film #272

Kinnosuke Nakamura 

The late Muromachi period, c.1467, the beginning of the Onin War. Samé, or ‘Shark boy’ (Kinnosuke Nakamura), is a young shark fisherman who lives as an outcast near a fishing village on the Echizen coast. As itinerants, his family are not accepted by the villagers and he is forced to hand over his catch every day and accept the scraps they allow him to keep for himself. When hostility towards the itinerants increases, their huts are burned and Samé’s mother (Akiko Kazami) killed, so he and an itinerant elder (Yoshi Kato) decide to head for the capital (Kyoto) on foot in search of a better future. 

Yoshi Kato

However, the old man falls ill and passes away en route, after which Samé hooks up with a middle-aged woman (Michiyo Kogure) making the same journey alone. She has a mysterious supply of meat which keeps them going but, horrified to discover that it’s actually human flesh, Samé abandons her and continues on his own.

Michiyo Kogure

Minoru Chiaki

It’s a time of widespread famine, and Samé turns to stealing in order to survive. He’s taken under the wing of Shirasawa (Minoru Chiaki), a one-armed criminal with a black mark on his face, who teaches Samé to be more ambitious in his thievery and even encourages him to kill. Inevitably, the pupil eventually turns on his master and, by the time Samé has become a fully-fledged adult, he’s a ruthless man indeed. 

Daisuke Kato 

He next joins a gang of mercenaries led by Genji of Chikushi (Daisuke Kato) in the hope of receiving not only wealth but a position of power in exchange for the heads he takes in battle. By this time, his willingness to commit evil seems to know no bounds, but when he tries to rape a nun (Yoshiko Mita), her unexpected reaction awakens his lost humanity.

Yoshiko Mita

Based on a best-selling, prize-winning two-part novel of the same name by Nobuhiko Matsugi (1932-2016) and adapted for the screen by director Tomotaka Tasaka’s regular collaborator Naoyuki Suzuki (who also frequently worked for Tomu Uchida), like many of Tasaka’s films, this is a lengthy one, clocking in at around 165 minutes. With former kabuki actor Kinnosuke Nakamura – one of the biggest stars of Japanese cinema at the time – in the lead role, it was a major production for Toei, so it’s surprising that it’s not better known, though this is likely because it was not an award winner and appears to have been out of circulation for many years. At the time, Kinema Junpo ranked it 17^th in the list of best films of 1964, and it was the third most successful of the year in terms of box office.

Nakamura

The film depends heavily on its star, Kinnosuke Nakamura, a talented actor but one who had a tendency to go over the top, which he certainly does here, with his maniacal laugh being overused in the later scenes. It might also have been better to cast a younger actor in the part of Samé as a boy – indeed, it took me a while to realise that the 32-year-old actor was playing a boy at the beginning. Regarding the other cast members, it’s as surprising to see Michiyo Kogure as a cannibal as it is predictable to see the cadaverous Jun Hamamura – who had already tasted ‘monkey meat’ in Fires on the Plain (1959) – desperate for a taste, but it’s the two Seven Samurai veterans, Minoru Chiaki and Daisuke Kato, who come off best as Nakamura’s two mentors of villainy.

Jun Hamamura

Like Nakamura, director Tasaka was left-leaning politically, and the film makes it very clear that Samé is driven to crime by poverty and the merciless feudal system. Although most of Samé’s actions are selfish ones, at one point he clearly takes sides when he attacks some men escorting stocks of rice, liberating the food not for his own benefit, but for all the starving poor to share. This scene is also an example of several complex action sequences involving numerous actors that Tasaka stages quite brilliantly. His usual cinematographer at the time, Masahiko Iimura, makes effective use of colour and widescreen, although I couldn’t help thinking that black and white would have suited such dark material better. There’s also a fitting score by one of Japan’s top film composers, Masaru Sato. However, well worth seeing though it is, I wouldn’t personally make any claims for this film as a lost masterpiece because I found it rather lacking in subtlety both in terms of story and performance, and I didn’t buy Samé’s rather corny religious redemption at the end.

Thanks to A.K.

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Across Darkness / 闇を横切れ / Yami o yokogire (1959)

Obscure Japanese Film #234

Hiroshi Kawaguchi and So Yamamura

When a stripper is murdered in a love hotel, suspicion naturally falls on Ochiai (Kappei Matsumoto), the mayoral candidate found drunk and unconscious in the same room, but ambitious rookie reporter Ishizuka (Hiroshi Kawaguchi) smells a set-up. Urged on by the editor he idolises (So Yamamura), he starts digging and exposes a tangled web of corruption leading to the current mayor (Jun Hamamura) and transport boss Hirose (Osamu Takizawa). Along the way he falls for the dead woman’s best friend, a fellow stripper named Motomi (Junko Kano)…

Jun Hamamura and Kawaguchi

This Daiei production was from an original screenplay by regular Kurosawa collaborator Ryuzo Kikushima and its director, Yasuzo Masumura (Kikushima also co-wrote Masumura’s Afraid to Die and The Hoodlum Soldier). As you’d expect from Masumura, it zips along at a snappy pace, but unfortunately that in itself is not enough to make an engaging picture, a point that this one certainly proves. It doesn’t help that it relies so heavily on the very limited talents of Daiei boss Matsutaro Kawaguchi’s son Hiroshi, who is in almost every scene, while the slight lift the film gets when the more charismatic So Yamamura is on screen is insufficient to counteract the Kawaguchi effect. Junko Kano is also effective in an almost Gloria Grahame kind of way as a woman who’s been more or less forced to get by on her looks but retains her sense of self by generally refusing to turn on the charm that men seem to expect of her.

Kawaguchi and Junko Kano

Even with a better actor in the lead, though, I question whether this movie would be much improved – somehow, there’s just nothing convincing about the characters or situations or any real reason why we should care about any of it, and I was left wondering what on earth this film’s raison d’être was supposed to be, especially as it’s impossible to take seriously as a political drama. Perhaps it was intended as a send-up of American film noir but, if so, it falls spectacularly flat. Unusually, there’s no music score – presumably the producers felt that the endless amount of talk (much of it shouted) would render music unnecessary. All in all, it’s no wonder, then, that this has been one of the more obscure items in Masumura’s filmography – it’s definitely no hidden gem, that’s for sure. Of course, that’s just my opinion and it’s only fair to note that most of the Japanese viewers’ reviews which can be found online are quite positive, so maybe I’m missing something…

Osamu Takizawa

The print quality on the Japanese DVD release is not great and contains numerous scratches. 

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Yotsuya kaidan - Oiwa no borei / 四谷怪談 お岩の亡霊 (‘Yotsuya kaidan: The Ghost of Oiwa,’1969)

Obscure Japanese Film #233

 

Kei Sato

 

This Daiei production was the seventh post-war film version of Japan’s most famous ghost story and the last made for the cinema until 1981. Coming just four years after Shiro Toyoda’s adaptation (known in English as Illusion of Blood), this one may have felt somewhat unnecessary, but it does add a couple of new twists and turns out to be surprisingly good. For those unfamiliar with the story, it concerns Iemon, a masterless samurai married to Oiwa and struggling to get by. When an opportunity to better his situation presents itself, he’s only too willing to take it even if it means poisoning his wife so that he can marry another woman (I’ll leave you to guess the rest). 

 

Tatsuya Nakadai had starred in the previous film, whereas here it’s his former classmate from the Haiyuza theatre school, Kei Sato, who may be the most cold-blooded Iemon of them all. This is partly down to the perfectly-cast Sato’s almost reptilian performance, but also the script, as I think this is the only version in which he knows in advance that the poison will disfigure his wife. Iemon is also clearly not haunted by guilt in this one, so the ghosts cannot be interpreted as a manifestation of his conscience. 

 

Sonosuke Sawamura and Sato

Fortunately, Sato is not the sort to overact, although the same cannot be said of certain members of the supporting cast, especially Sonosuke Sawamura, who plays the masseur, Takuetsu. The other major role, of course, is that of Oiwa herself, but though it may be a famous part, in many ways it’s not a very appealing one for an actress – in most versions, Oiwa is initially little more than a doormat for Iemon to wipe his feet upon, then a messy make-up job makes her look hideous and finally she just has to jump out of dark corners as a ghost and cackle maniacally. Despite this, Kinuyo Tanaka and Mariko Okada – both big stars – had played her in the past, but in this case it’s Kazuko Inano, a theatre actress who had made other films but was not a film star. She does a decent enough job here, but it’s Sato’s performance you’ll be more likely to remember. 

 

Kazuko Inano

 

The director of this version was Kazuo Mori, a veteran who had made his first film in 1936 and directed the previously-reviewed Suzakumon (1957) and The Saga of Tanegashima (1968). He was an above-average if not exceptional talent, and his choices here are mostly good ones (although the green fireball spirits that feature in one scene are more cute than scary). The film seems rather murkily photographed, which made me wonder whether the struggling Daiei studios were trying to save on electricity at the time by restricting the lighting available (I had similar thoughts about the studio’s 1968 picture The Pit of Death). On the other hand, this could equally have been an artistic choice, and it is one that would make sense as the story takes place in the days before electric light, In any case, it certainly suits the film, which also benefits from excellent sets and costumes as well as camerawork. 

 

Jun Hamamura pops up as one of Iemon's victims

Perhaps the real star of the show here, though, is the wonderfully atmospheric score by Ichiro Saito, which features a combination of furiously-strummed shamisen, a string section, single bass notes and ominous rumbling sounds, all of which is subtly effective and adds considerably to the feeling of unease. 

 

 

AKA The Oiwa Phantom / The Curse of the Ghost / The Curse of the Night, etc

DVD at Amazon Japan 

English subtitles at Open Subtitles 

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Wandering Shore / 流離の岸 / Ryuri no kishi (1956)

Obscure Japanese Film #180

Terumi Niki

 

Sachiko Murase

Chiho (Terumi Niki) is a young child left alone in the country to be raised by her grandmother , Uta (Sachiko Murase), because her mother, Hagiyo (Nobuko Otowa), has left her father and is getting remarried. Chiho is a sensitive but also somewhat wilful and proud child who misses her mother but doesn’t like to admit it. Uta sends Chiho to take food to her neighbour, Okichi (Sachiko Soma), whom Uta has known since childhood. Uta is now a penniless old lady living in a shack; according to Uta, she has ended up this way because she was frivolous in her relationships with men and spent her life doing what she wanted without regard for the consequences. 

Mie Kitahara and Nobuko Otowa

 

After a year, Chiho goes to live with her mother and stepfather, Takakura (Nobuo Kaneko), who has a son of his own, but Chiho’s status is lower and she feels it. Ten years pass, and Chiho (now played by Mie Kitahara) is a high school student living with her uncle (Taiji Tonoyama) and his wife (Yoshiko Tsubouchi). When Chiho wakes up one day with a strange pain in her finger, she goes to see her friend’s father, a doctor, but he’s out, so the doctor’s son, a newly graduated medical student, Ryukichi (Rentaro Mikuni), attends to her instead. An instant mutual attraction soon leads to marriage plans, but Ryukichi has not been entirely honest with her about his past…

Rentaro Mikuni

 

Mie Kitahara

Released four months after Love is Lost (see review below), this is another Nikkatsu production written and directed by Kaneto Shindo and featuring some of the same cast, with Nobuko Otowa taking a supporting role here and Taiji Tonoyama and Jun Hamamura popping up as expected. Again, the screenplay was not an original – in this case it’s an adaptation of a novel first published in 1953 by Yoko Ota (1906-63),* whose childhood seems to have been similar to that of Chiho’s. 

 

The film is a little less successful than Love is Lost – although it also features the work of composer Akira Ifukube and cinematographer Takeo Ito, their contributions here are less memorable. For his part, Shindo was perhaps a little too faithful to the novel as the story feels more complicated than it needed to be. However, while Terumi Niki (from the previous year’s Policeman’s Diary) growing up to be Mie Kitahara is a stretch, the attraction between Chiho and Ryukichi is convincing. The film is also quite powerful in putting across its message, which I would summarise as a cautionary one about the irreparable damage that can be caused to a relationship when one party deceives the other – especially when that other is a sensitive soul like Chiho, whose fractured childhood has left her more emotionally vulnerable than most.

 

*Ota was a Hiroshima survivor and her 1948 novel City of Corpses on this theme is available in English translation in Hiroshima: Three Witnesses (Princeton University Press, 1990). She also has a short story in the collection Fire from the Ashes: Short Stories about Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Readers International, 1985).

Thanks to A.K. 

Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

Love is Lost / 銀心中 / Gin shinju (‘Silver Double Suicide’, 1956)

Obscure Japanese Film #179

 

Jukichi Uno and Nobuko Otowa

Tokyo, c. 1942. Sakie (Nobuko Otowa) and her husband Kiichi (Jukichi Uno) run a barbershop together and agree to take Kiichi’s nephew Jutaro (Hiroyuki Nagato) as a live-in apprentice. When Kiichi is called up to join the army, his absence brings Sakie and Jutaro closer during his absence, but it’s not long before Jutaro is also conscripted. One day, a messenger arrives to inform Sakie that her husband has been killed in battle in the Philippines. After living out the remainder of the war with her brother (Akitake Kono) and his resentful wife (Harue Tone) in the country, Sakie returns to Tokyo to find the barbershop in ruins, but is reunited with Jutaro. Their relationship soon turns romantic and they vow to rebuild the business, but the course of true love never runs smooth…  

Otowa with Hiroyuki Nagato

 

This Nikkatsu production was based on a 1952 short story of the same title by Torahiko Tamiya (male, 1911-88), whose work also provided the basis for Miyoji Ieki’s Stepbrothers (1957) among other films. Written and directed by Kaneto Shindo, as usual it stars his long-term mistress, Nobuko Otowa, who gives a typically fine performance in the lead role. The rest of the cast also acquit themselves well and it’s always good to see Shindo’s stock company of his favourite  character actors, including Taiji Tonoyama, Tanie Kitabayashi and – very briefly as a barbershop customer – Jun Hamamura. However, I did think that the actress playing Umeko, the alcoholic, gambling-addicted harlot went way over the top – I finally realised that this role was also being played by Nobuko Otowa! This is cleverly shot and edited, with Taiji Tonoyama playing a scene with both Otowas. 

Taiji Tonoyama with Otowa as Sakie

 

TT with Otowa as Umeko

This film has its flaws and gets a bit too repetitive in its latter stages, with virtually the same scene playing out several times, and it would be easy to dismiss it as just another rather hokey tragic love story. However, it also provides a powerful depiction of the sense of futility and waste that the Japanese felt after the war, and how this inevitably led to widespread disillusionment, bitterness, cynicism and nihilism. In one scene which has no bearing on the plot, the bombed-out Sakie and Jutaro take shelter with other newly-homeless Tokyo residents in the subway and look on as two men chase a screaming woman through a tunnel. Nobody intervenes or even offers a comment. For me, this type of seemingly-irrelevant scene which actually speaks volumes is the mark of a great filmmaking talent, which I think Shindo certainly was. The excellent cinematography of Takeo Ito (an award-winner for Kurosawa’s Drunken Angel) and score by Godzilla composer Akira Ifukube also help to make this a film worth seeking out.

Otowa as Sakie

 

Otowa as Umeko

Thanks to A.K.

On Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)