Rise, Fair Sun / 朝やけの詩 / Asayake no uta (‘Poem of the Morning Glow’, 1973)

 

Tatsuya Nakadai

 

The Shinano Plateau, Nagano. Left without a position after Japan’s defeat, former naval officer Sakuzo (Tatsuya Nakadai) is now a comparatively poor but hard-working and extremely proud farmer with a teenage daughter, Haruko (Keiko Takahashi), and two younger children, all of whom he is raising by himself. His wife, Yaeko (Kaneko Iwasaki), seems to have been unable to bear the drudgery, has developed a drinking problem and left him for an easier life, shacking up with Kamiyama (Yosuke Kondo). He’s the president of Apollo Tourism, who want all the farmers in the area to clear out so they can use the land to build a holiday resort. As the farmers are all in debt to local bigwig Inagi (Shin Saburi), Kamiyama conspires with him to make them an offer they can’t refuse, but some – like Sakuzo – prove inconveniently stubborn. When land surveyors are sent in, violence breaks out… 

 

Kaneko Iwasaki and Keiko Takahashi

 

Rise, Fair Sun was a co-production between Toho and Haiyuza, the theatre company to whom Nakadai and a number of his fellow cast members (including Kaneko Iwasaki and Yosuke Kondo) belonged. The film was directed by Kei Kumai and based on his original screenplay, co-written with the little-known Akiko Katsura and the slightly better-known Hisashi Yamanouchi, who had worked on three of Shohei Imamura’s early pictures. Like many of Kumai’s films, it has an obvious left-wing, social conscience theme. 

 

Shin Saburi and Nakadai

 

In the early 1970s, many Japanese feature films returned to using the old academy ratio that the studios had originally abandoned around 1957, and this film is one example of such. As I understand it, this was mainly done because it was cheaper and the studios’ profits were diminishing, but I also wonder whether it may have been related to the more TV-friendly nature of the academy ratio as the sale of films to television after their cinema run was more of a concern by this point. In any case, it’s part of the reason why Rise, Fair Sun has something of a TV miniseries feel to it. However, that’s not to say that the film fails to impress visually – mostly shot on location, it features some beautiful scenery and attractive cinematography by Kozo Okazaki (Goyokin, Inn of Evil) which includes a spectacular shot of Haruko and her young lover silhouetted against the sun towards the end. Another plus is the score by Kumai’s regular composer, Teizo Matsumura, which is refreshingly free from the usual clichés. 

 

 

The film is generally very sympathetic to Sakuzo despite the clear suggestion that his wife has been a victim of domestic violence, an implied additional motivation for her absence. Like Toshiro Mifune in Redbeard, there’s a scene in which Nakadai appears to forget that he’s not in a samurai movie and launches a one-man attack on multiple opponents – in this case grabbing a surveying pole and going into full Sword of Doom mode on the unfortunate surveyors. As if to compensate for this violent side, he tries to save a bloated cow (by stabbing it!) and, while digging on his land, he discovers an ancient pot from the Jomon people (who were believed to have lived in harmony with nature to a remarkable degree). This instantly turns his farm into a major archaeological site, and when a Jomon face sculpture is dug up, he declares it better than anything in the Louvre (which he has apparently visited while in the navy). This unexpected plot thread is quickly dropped, but – with symbolism not too hard to decipher – we will later see a shot of a bulldozer carelessly running over another piece of Jomon pottery. 

 

 

 

 

The film marked veteran star Shin Saburi’s return to the big screen after an absence of 12 years, during which time he had been very active as both an actor and director in television. It was his first film opposite Nakadai and there’s a memorable confrontation scene between the two, who were reunited the following year in Satsuo Yamamoto’s The Family. Nakadai had known his other co-star, Kaneko Iwasaki, since the very beginning of his acting career and the two had appeared in a number of films together. Though she has seldom had leading roles in feature films, Iwasaki is the official representative of Haiyuza at the time of writing and remains a highly respected stage actor who played the King Lear equivalent in Haiyuza’s 2024 production Dokoku no Ria (‘Lear’s Lament’). 

 

 

 

 

 

The production of the film was overshadowed by the publicity around the nude swimming scene featuring an 18-year-old Keiko Takahashi – then known as Keiko Sekine – who had already been a popular star for a couple of years at this point. Although the inclusion of such a scene may have been a cynical move by the producers, it was tastefully shot by Kumai, but in any case it was not enough to make Rise, Fair Sun a hit either at the box office or with the critics. Though screened in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, it failed to win any prizes. This is not too surprising as, despite some good work in a number of departments, it’s basically a noble effort which doesn’t quite gel – mainly, I think, due to the flawed script and somehow unconvincing characters. In my view, stories of this type often work better with a more Ken Loach-type approach, in which the use of improvisation by a cast of mainly non-professionals can be more effective.

The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) Film Library in Californiaa has a 35mm print of this film with English subtitles

Thanks to A.K.

 

Snow Country / 雪国 / Yukiguni (1965)

Obscure Japanese Film #198

 

Shima Iwashita

 

Yasunari Kawabata’s novel Snow Country began to appear in fragmented chapters in 1935, but was not published in its final form until 1948. Set in the mid-1930s at a hot spring resort somewhere in the mountains in the west of Japan’s main island, Honshu, it concerns Shimamura, a writer who rather absurdly writes about Western dancing despite never having witnessed a performance. A married man and father with a certain amount of independent wealth, he’s an idler who travels to the resort alone and meets Komako, a young woman whose company the innkeeper arranges as all of the town’s geisha are already booked for a big party. The two are quickly attracted to one another – Komako  falls for him a little too hard, although Shimamura is more reserved and has no intention of leaving his wife. Still, after returning home from his trip, he finds himself unable to forget Komako and returns to see her on two further occasions, by which time she has become a full-fledged geisha. Shimamura also becomes interested in Yoko, a young woman with whom Komako has an uneasy relationship due to their mutual connection to Yukio, a young man dying of tuberculosis who had been Komako’s childhood friend, possibly fiancée, and is now being cared for by Yoko…

 

Isao Kimura

 

Snow Country was first filmed in 1957 by director Shiro Toyoda for Toho with Keiko Kishi as Komako, Ryo Ikebe as Shimamura and Kaoru Yachigusa as Yoko. This Shochiku version directed by Hideo Oba a mere eight years later is by no means a carbon copy. Most obviously, whereas the earlier film was shot in academy ratio black and white and ran 143 minutes, this film is in colour and widescreen and (mercifully) runs 21 minutes shorter. Oba’s reputation is considerably less distinguished than Toyoda’s – probably rightly so – but in some respects his film does manage to improve on the previous one. 

 

 

As played by Keiko Kishi, Komako came across as childish, over-emotional and actually quite annoying, her mood changing by the minute, whereas Shima Iwashita somehow manages to avoid the pitfalls of playing Kawabata’s heroine, making her appeal for Shimamura much more understandable (although why she should be drawn to him so much is less clear). The music is also an improvement – there was way too much of it in Toyoda’s film, and the quality was also poor, but Naozumi Yamamoto’s superior score is used more sparingly and effectively even if it is occasionally on the syrupy side. 

 

 

On the other hand, as Shimamura, Isao Kimura (a respected actor but not a big star), lacks Ryo Ikebe’s charisma and makes little impression, while Toyoda’s snowscapes were more visually arresting even without the benefit of colour and widescreen. The underwritten character of Yoko is a thankless role in both films, but I felt that Kaoru Yachigusa managed it better than Mariko Kaga does here. Incidentally, Chieko Naniwa – who played the head maid in the earlier picture – somehow managed to get herself cast again here, this time playing the blind masseur. 

 

Mariko Kaga

 

Like the novel, Toyoda began his film with Shimamura’s second visit before flashing back to the first, while Oba has opted for a chronological timeline and also added a little narration from Shimamura which works well. Toyoda had found it more convenient to make Shimamura a painter, while Oba retains the character’s occupation as described by Kawabata, but adds a scene with Shimamura’s wife (played by Kaneko Iwasaki), who is only spoken about in both the book and the first film. One aspect that both films have in common is to resolve some of the ambiguity of the novel, in which it’s never really clear whether Shimamura and Komako sleep together or whether Yoko survives the climactic fire – both filmmakers strongly imply that the relationship is consummated and clarify the fate of Yoko. The two films both have their strengths and weaknesses and it will be a matter of personal opinion which one is preferred, but in my view Kawabata’s famous work is not terribly well-suited to film adaptation. 

 

 

In regard to Hideo Oba, a director best-known for his What’s Your Name? trilogy (1953-54), but still obscure to most, I suspect that his previously-reviewed film The Invisible Wall (1958) was a random assignment that did not especially interest him, whereas this was a project he at least put his heart into even if it’s no masterpiece. Like the other four films I’ve seen by him, it’s well made but not particularly inspired, original or individual. It was his sixtieth film out of the 64 he would direct and his final screenplay credit out of 14, as well as his fourth of five films with star Shima Iwashita, and it’s fans of Iwashita who are likely to find this film most rewarding.

Unfortunately, the colour photography did not look its best on the rather low-res copy I watched. 

 

 DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

Ths Shogun and His Mistresses / 大奥(秘)物語 / Ooku maruhi monogatari (‘Secret Tales of the Inner Palace’, 1967)

Obscure Japanese Film #188

Masaya Takahashi

 

Three stories set in the vast and labyrinthine inner chambers of Edo Castle during the reign of the sixth shogun, Ienobu Tokugawa, who held the title from 1709-12. (Nearly 50 at the time, Tokugawa is portrayed here as a somewhat younger man by the 37-year-old Masaya Takahashi.) With the exception of the shogun, only women are permitted in the inner palace, where power plays and factional battles are the norm… 

 

Junko Fuji (left) and Reiko Hagi

 

In the first story, Fusa (Reiko Hagi) is brought to the castle at the request of concubine Okon (Junko Miyazono), who is in poor health and no longer able to bear children, in the hope that she will catch the eye of the shogun and have his child, thus weakening the position of the rival faction of women headed by Osume (Naoko Kubo). However, the shogun prefers the maid that Fusa brought with her instead, Omino (Junko Fuji). But when Osume gets pregnant first, Omino conspires with Okon’s senior attendant Matsushima (Isuzu Yamada) to get pregnant secretly by another man and claim that it’s the shogun’s child…

 

Kyoko Kishida (left) and Tomoko Ogawa

In the second story, the shogun has his eye on the innocent Shinonoi (Tomoko Ogawa) for his next bed partner, but she enters into a lesbian relationship with her mistress, Urao (Kyoko Kishida, in another lesbian role after Manji). But Shininoi has no choice but to obey when summoned to the shogun’s boudoir, which leads Urao to become dangerously jealous… 

 

Kaneko Iwasaki (lying) and Yoshiko Sakuma

 

In the third story, Ochise (Yoshiko Sakuma), a maid to senior lady-in-waiting Asukai (Kaneko Iwasaki), is about to finish her three years of indentured servitude, after which she plans to leave the castle and marry fabric dyer Chokichi (Kunio Murai). No prizes for guessing what happens when she too catches the eye of the lustful shogun…

 

Kunio Murai and Yoshiko Sakuma

 

This Toei production was based on an original screenplay with four contributors, none of whom are especially well-known. Its director, Sadao Nakajima, started out as an assistant director around 1959 at Toei’s Kyoto studios – which meant that most of the films he worked on early on had period settings – before directing his first film, Female Ninja Magic, in 1964. With this debut, he (together with Kyoto studio head Shigeru Okada) was responsible for introducing a new eroticism to the jidaigeki (costume drama) genre, something which is also in evidence in The Shogun and His Mistresses. Although these films were classified as ‘for adults only’ at the time, it should be noted that they were not pornographic, though other filmmakers would copy the template and add nudity and more explicit sex scenes in the years to come. As is often the case, Nakajima’s career was more schizophrenic than that of many directors in the West, and went on to encompass a wide range of material from yakuza flicks and sex documentaries to more highbrow (or at least middlebrow) period dramas. His Meiko Kaji vehicle Jeans Blues: No Future (1974) has a minor cult following, while his passion project The Seburi Story (1985) was nominated for the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Nakajima’s career as a feature film director ended in the late 1990s, but not quite – he can be seen playing the part of a director at Toei Kyoto studios (much like himself) in Uzumasa Limelight (2014) and returned to the director’s chair one last time at the age of 84 for Love’s Twisting Path (2018) before passing away in 2023. 

 

Isuzu Yamada and Junko Fuji

 

The most striking direction in this film occurs towards the end of the first story, when Omino arrives at the secluded house with the aim of being impregnated by a stranger and we hear the cries of the cicadas reaching fever pitch on the soundtrack before we get a POV shot from the bottom of a well down which the old lady who owns the house drops her bucket. No other scene is quite as memorable, but it’s a strong film overall, although not without its technical flaws – the wire attached to a fake firefly is visible at one point, while more depth of focus would have been preferable in some scenes, when the actors in the background are reduced to blurry blobs. 

 

Tomoko Ogawa and a blurry Kishida

 

But these niggles are more than made up for by the quality cast, excellent score by Hajime Kaburagi (which utilises traditional instruments to great effect) and the fact that, with all the colourful kimono on display, this is exactly the type of film that benefits most from colour cinematography. The film was a huge hit, which not only spawned two sequels directed by Nakajima, but created a whole new subgenre of female-oriented jidaigeki which came to be known in Japan as ‘Ooku’ (inner palace) stories and would include the previously reviewed Tales of the Inner Chambers. 

 

Isuzu Yamada

 

Bonus trivia:

Most of the young actresses featured in the film had never worn the type of kimono known as uchikake before, so jidaigeki veteran Isuzu Yamada (on loan from Toho) had to spend half a day training them how to walk without falling over. 

Director Tadashi Imai was originally attached to the project, but his reluctance to emphasise the erotic aspects of the story led to him being taken off it by studio head Shigeru Okada.

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles) 

 

Kyoko Kishida