The Makioka Sisters / 細雪 / Sasameyuki (‘Light Snowfall’, 1950)

 

Hideko Takamine

 

 

 

**The first four paragraphs are mostly identical to those in my review of the 1959 version**

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’s 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 deceased. 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 Ranko Hanai in what amounts to a minor role), 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.

 

Hisako Yamane

The other three sisters live together. In order of age, they are Sachiko (Yukiko Todoroki, who went on to play Tsuruko in the 1959 version), Yukiko (Hisako Yamane) and Taeko, familiarly called ‘Koi-san’ (Hideko Takamine). Sachiko is married to Teinosuke (Seizaburo Kawazu), with whom she has one child, Etsuko (Takako Yamazaki). 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. She has a long-running on-and-off relationship with the wealthy Kei-bo (Haruo Tanaka). 

 

Hideko Takamine

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.

 

Haruo Tanaka

 

This first film version of the novel was produced by Shintoho and is probably the most faithful of the three overall. According to Japanese Wikipedia, it had ‘a budget of 38 million yen, an unprecedented sum for a film at the time.’ The 1959 version updated the story to what was then the present day, but this one retains the pre-war setting of the book and, being around 35 minutes longer, is also able to fit a little more in. Both the 1950s adaptations were scripted by Toshio Yasumi, who in this one includes the dark spot on Yukiko’s face that comes and goes and is supposedly a common affliction of unmarried women (something which was dropped from the 1959 film). 

 

Hisako Yamane

The later version is probably the more technically (and visually) impressive of the two – here, although there is quite an impressive flood sequence, we only hear about Koi-san’s rescue – but this one is well-done for its time and much superior to the one other film I’ve seen by its director, Yutaka Abe (the recently-reviewed 1956 film The Confession). He was no flashy stylist; instead, he rightly lets the camera be the actors’ friend here, using close-ups judiciously and tracking shots when necessary. Another asset is the music by Kurosawa favourite Fumio Hayasaka, which is certainly one of the less grating and more effective scores of its era. 

 

 

Although technically an ensemble piece, this is Hideko Takamine’s film all the way, partly because her character goes through the most changes and she gets the lion’s share of the screen time, but also because she’s so photogenic and charismatic that everyone else seems to fade into the background when she’s in view. As Koi-san, she rejects her family’s obsession with tradition and form, deciding that a man’s actions are more important than his education or lineage – an ideology which would have found favour with the occupying Americans whose approval was needed for all films produced in Japan at the time. All in all, albeit not impressive enough to qualify as a masterpiece, this is at least a fine version of a literary classic, with a great star at its centre, and as such it deserves to be restored and more widely seen.

Bonus trivia: Future star Kyoko Kagawa appears briefly in one of her first roles as Itakura’s sister.

Thanks to A.K.

Yamane and Takamine

 

A Portrait of Shunkin / 春琴抄 / Shunkinsho (1976)

Obscure Japanese Film #154

Momoe Yamaguchi

 

Doshomachi, Osaka, early Meiji era (c.1870s). Okoto (Momoe Yamaguchi), the youngest daughter of the wealthy owner of a wholesale medicine company, has lost her sight due to a childhood illness. She takes a liking to Sasuke (Tomokazu Miura), a young apprentice employed by her father, and soon he is the only person she will allow to escort her to her music lessons and help her with other tasks. Okoto becomes proficient at playing the instrument whose name she shares (the koto, the ‘O’ being a polite prefix), inspiring the devoted Sasuke to take up the more humble samisen, which he practises in secret. 

Tomokazu Miura

 

Initially, Sasuke gets into trouble for being more concerned with looking after Okoto and learning music than he is about learning the trade. However, Okoto has become extremely stubborn and difficult to deal with since losing her sight, so her parents decide to release Sasuke from his normal duties and allow him to be Okoto’s full-time companion – even paying for him to have music lessons from Okoto’s teacher – in the hope that this will soothe her anger and improve her character.  Meanwhile, Okoto’s beauty has led to her attracting the attention of wealthy playboy Minoya (Masahiko Tsugawa), who begins laying plans to seduce her… 

Yamaguchi with Masahiko Tsugawa

 

Later in the story, Okoto becomes a music teacher herself and takes the name of Shunkin, hence the title. Junichiro Tanizaki’s 1933 novella of the same name (available in a good English translation in the collection Seven Japanese Tales) was first filmed in 1935 by Yasujiro Shimazu in a version starring Kinuyo Tanaka. At the time, talking pictures were still relatively new in a Japan which was lagging a few years behind Hollywood in this department. As the story features both music and birdsong quite prominently, it must have seemed a good choice by which to exploit the possibilities of the new sound medium. Other versions followed: in 1954, Daisuke Ito directed Machiko Kyo as Okoto, while in 1961 Teinosuke Kinugasa made a third version starring Fujiko Yamamoto. Up to this point, each film had featured a big female star, with the role of Sasuke being played by a more minor male co-star. Kaneto Shindo broke this pattern in 1972 with his version, entitled Sanka (‘Hymn’), which featured the unknown Tokuko Watanabe in the role. Shindo also restored the novella’s framing device, which uses a first-person narrator visiting the graves of Okoto and Sasuke and meeting their former maid – now an old woman – whom he persuades to tell him their story. In Sanka, Shindo himself plays the narrator, while his mistress Nobuko Otowa takes the role of the maid, so it seems likely that Shindo followed the book in this regard mainly to provide a role for Otowa, who was too old to play Okoto. 

 

Given that Okoto continues to treat Sasuke like a servant even after they become lovers and is often cruel to him, Tanizaki’s story can equally be interpreted as a story of how Sasuke’s unwavering devotion represents the ideal of true love, or as a story about the perfect sado-masochistic relationship. Unlike the previous film versions, Shindo’s very much emphasizes the latter reading, even going so far as to have Sasuke reverently burying his mistress’s shit in the garden every day – a detail not present in the book. However, considering that Tanizaki’s title was not Okoto and Sasuke but A Portrait of Shunkin, it’s also possible that his main concern was to provide a character study of a woman whose sense of pride means that she absolutely refuses to behave like a victim and for that reason would rather be thought cruel than allow anyone to feel sorry for her. 

 

Made just four years later, director Katsumi Nishikawa’s 1976 version – the fifth – returns to the more conventional interpretation of the tale as a tragic love story, with a screenplay co-written by Nishikawa and Teinosuke Kinugasa, who had directed the 1961 version. A lot of care evidently went into the making of this one, and it’s very pretty to look at. Its raison d’etre was clearly to provide a vehicle for stars Momoe Yamaguchi and Tomokazu Miura. Yamaguchi – who first came to fame as a 13-year-old pop singer in 1972 – was such a phenomenon in Japan in the 1970s that she even has a chapter devoted to her in Mark Schilling’s Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture. Her first major film part was in a version of another oft-filmed literary work, Yasunari Kawabata’s The Izu Dancer in 1974, the first of seven films for director Katsumi Nishikawa but also, more significantly, the first of 12 features in which she co-starred with Tomokazu Miura. The two soon became known as the ‘golden combination’, and were married in 1980, at which point Yamaguchi retired from show business to become a full-time wife and mother but continued to be hounded by both the media and her obsessive fans. 

 

Yamaguchi and Miura give decent performances in A Portrait of Shunkin, as do the rest of the cast, and it’s a well-made film. However, with Masaru Sato’s syrupy music ladled all over the soundtrack, I found its pretty sentimentality a bit cloying for my taste and prefer Shimazu’s early attempt or even Shindo’s more eccentric take on the story. 

DVD at Amazon Japan

English subtitles

 

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.