Mori no Ishimatsu / 森の石松 (‘Ishimatsu of Mori’, 1949)

Obscure Japanese Film #267

Susumu Fujita

Takashi Shimura 

Ishimatsu (Susumu Fujita, best-known for playing the title role in Kurosawa’s Sanshiro Sugata) is a poor tenant tea farmer fed up with working like a slave for a pittance. After losing the little money he had in a dice game against gambling boss Shimachidori (Takashi Shimura), he resolves – with the encouragement of tea house hostess Oshin (Kyoko Asagiri) – to abandon agriculture and turn to crime despite the objections of his mother (Choko Iida) and best friend Gosaku (Taiji Tonoyama). He finds employment with the famous yakuza Jirocho Shimizu (Komei Minami) but has little success in his new endeavour until, determined to make a name for himself, he shows reckless bravery in a fight but loses an eye in the process. Now with a formidable reputation to live up to, he falls in love with Ofuji (Yukiko Todoroki), but she won’t marry him unless he gives up his life of crime…

Yukiko Todoroki

Mori no Ishimatsu was said to have been a subordinate of the real life Jirocho Shimizu (1820-93), but it’s unclear whether Ishimatsu was, in fact, a real person. In any case, he had already been the subject of at least half a dozen movies by the time this one was made and would go on to inspire many more, most of which seem to be comedies, which is understandable given that Japanese Wikipedia states that he was traditionally portrayed as ‘a lovable character who is a drunken ruffian but has a strong sense of loyalty and compassion, and is somewhat absent-minded.’

This Shochiku production was based on an original screenplay by Kaneto Shindo and directed by his regular associate Kozaburo Yoshimura. Also frequently comic in tone, with a rather dim-witted hero and the sword fighting scenes emphasising the clumsiness and reluctance of the opponents, their film nevertheless has its serious side and criticises both gangsterism and the exploitation of workers by the old feudal system. Indeed, it was probably these themes that saw it approved by the censors of the Occupation authorities, who prevented many period films from being made at the time (this was Yoshimura’s first) as they felt that such stories often gave tacit approval to feudalism, the mindset of which had allowed the military to take over the government of Japan and lead it into war.

Taiji Tonoyama

As a film, this is no lost masterpiece, but it is a well-made and enjoyable watch which clearly had quite a lot of effort put into it – the period details, for example, look quite authentic, and there is some effective use made of real locations, nifty tracking shots (courtesy of Yoshimura’s regular cinematographer at the time, Toshio Ubukata) and a number of complex, well-staged scenes in which elaborate sets and large numbers of extras are also used. Another asset is the cast, in which Shimura makes a fine villain, while Choko Iida stands out as Ishimatsu’s put upon, sutra-chanting mother. Other notables featured are Koji Mitsui, Sadako Sawamura and an almost unrecognisable Chishu Ryu. 

Choko Iida

Chishu Ryu

Note on the title:

Although it’s often translated as ‘Ishimatsu of the Forest’, there’s no sign of a forest; apparently, the ‘Mori’ of the title actually refers to Mori-machi village, in what was then the Enshu region, and is where Ishimatsu was said to be from.

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Sanmon yakusha / 三文役者 (‘Third-Rate Actor’, 2000)

Obscure Japanese Film #257

Taiji Tonoyama

This late film by the prolific writer-director Kaneto Shindo (best known for his 1964 picture, Onibaba) tells the story of Taiji Tonoyama, an actor who appeared in most of Shindo’s films before his death at the age of 73 in 1989. Tonoyama was a short, prematurely bald Yoda lookalike with sad, baggy eyes, so he was usually to be found among the supporting casts of the many films he appeared in, in roles of various sizes – the only leading roles played by him that I’m aware of were in two Shindo films: The Naked Island (1960) and the previously-reviewed Libido (1967).

Naoto Takenaka

Shindo recreates scenes from the actor’s life with Naoto Takenaka as Tonoyama, placing the focus on his relationships with his first wife, Asako (Hideko Yoshida), and second wife, Kimie (Keiko Oginome), whom he meets when he is 36 and still married to Asako and Kimie is 17 and working as a waitress. Tonoyama was an unlikely womaniser and we also see him picking up various barmaids with apparent ease while simultaneously fighting a lifelong battle with the demon drink. Shindo intersperses these dramatisations with scenes from the films they made together and a straight-to-camera interview with Nobuko Otowa, Shindo’s mistress and eventual wife who frequently acted alongside Tonoyama (Otowa died in 1994, so Shindo must have been sitting on this for at least 6 years). Towards the end, there is also some very brief interview footage with fellow directors Shohei Imamura, Hiromichi Horikawa and Seijiro Koyama.

Nobuko Otowa

Shindo had already written a book about Tonoyama, who had also written a number of books himself, notably a 1966 volume whose title translates as The Irresponsible Ramblings of a Third-Rate Actor (unsurprisingly, these have not made it into English).While I’ve long been a fan of Tonoyama myself, I’m not really sure that Shindo has done his memory a lot of favours by making this film. Although Naoto Takenaka’s performance seems a pretty good Tonoyama impression for the first couple of minutes, he goes on to deliver every line with exactly the same throaty, drawn-out intonation, and it gets old fast. The film is also way too long at over two hours – a one-hour documentary would have been far more preferable in my view, especially as the end result feels so superficial and sentimental, with the repetitive piano and violin music-by-numbers score delivering the coup de grâce to what is easily the weakest Shindo film I’ve seen.

Keiko Oginome

A note on the title:

The film is frequently listed as ‘By Player’ in English, but I’m sure this was never an official release title. It’s also meaningless, and I can only assume that somebody somewhere came up with ‘bit player’ as a translation for ‘sanmon yakusha’ and somehow managed to confuse ‘bit’ with ‘by’.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

English subtitles at Open Subtitles

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The Naked Sun / 裸の太陽 / Hadaka no taiyo (1958)

Obscure Japanese Film #254

Shinjiro Ebara

Kimura (Shinjiro Ebara) is a young stoker on the railway saving up to marry Yukiko (Satomi Oka), His best friend, Maeda (Tatsuya Nakadai), also works for the railway but is an unhappy man with a reputation for skiving, drinking and gambling. When a colleague’s money goes missing, Maeda is the main suspect and the workers give him a beating until Kimura intervenes and stops it. Later, Maeda asks Kimura to lend him some money, but won’t say what for – Kimura at first refuses, then relents and hands all his savings over to Maeda. Yukiko is furious when she finds out and persuades Kimura that Maeda must have lost it all betting on the bicycle races…

Tatsuya Nakadai

Set in the fictional town of Haginomiya but shot in Utsunomiya, north of Tokyo, this Toei production is the only film to have been based on a novel by the obscure Kazutoshi Himuro. Adapted for the screen by the ubiquitous Kaneto Shindo, it was directed by Miyoji Ieki. Unlike many of Ieki’s better-known films, none of the main characters are children, but otherwise this is fairly typical of his oeuvre in being a work of leftist social realism shot on real locations. Something I don’t remember seeing before in an Ieki film, however, is an accomplished action scene like the one we get here when there’s a fault with the train and Kimura has to climb outside while it’s still moving in order to fix it.

Hitomi Nakahara and Satomi Oka

Toei contract player Shinjiro Ebara had played his first lead in Tadashi Imai’s Rice the year before and went on to marry his co-star, Hitomi Nakahara (aptly nicknamed ‘Bambi’), in 1960. She also appears here as Yukiko’s younger sister. In his hands, Kimura seems quite dull at first and perhaps the filmmakers realised that he was failing to make much of an impression – around 50 minutes in, there’s a scene in which, completely out of the blue, he bursts into a quite extraordinary solo a capella song and dance to which he adds frenzied percussion by slapping himself and anything else near at hand. This is followed by a scene in which he does something weird with his shirt and gives an impassioned speech at a meeting, none of which seemed thinkable from the Kimura featured in the film’s first half. Well, I guess at least nobody was going to accuse him of giving a boring performance after all that...

Less than a year away from stardom, Tatsuya Nakadai’s screen time is quite limited and he’s not yet the assured actor he would soon become as a result of working on The Human Condition. There’s a mystery about his character which is quite intriguing, but ultimately his role feels underwritten, although this may well be the only film in which you’ll see him break down and sob uncontrollably.

The Naked Sun was entered into the 1959 Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Youth Film Award for Best Feature Film Suitable for Young People. This is perhaps a little surprising considering that it was a West Berlin festival in those days and Naked Sun seems like a film that would have been more popular with the Communists in the Eastern sector. However, in this case the workers only grumble a bit about their pay and conditions and are generally shown as quite a cheerful and hard-working bunch.

Toshio Takahara

The film was ranked 5^th best of the year by Kinema Jumpo magazine, the top four being, respectively, Kinoshita’s The Ballad of Narayama, Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, Ozu’s Equinox Flower and Ichikawa’s Conflagration (also featuring Nakadai). I’m a little surprised to see it ranked so highly myself but, while I wouldn’t call the film a masterpiece, it’s certainly an interesting and likeable picture and not just for train buffs.

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

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Libido / 性の起原 / Sei no kigen (‘The Origin of Sex’, 1967)

Obscure Japanese Film #253

Taiji Tonoyama

An unnamed 51-year-old man (Taiji Tonoyama) suffering from some kind of nervous breakdown is recuperating in a mental hospital when he learns about the death of an old friend. Feeling depressed, he wants to prove to himself that he’s still alive, so he tries to have sex with the young female patient he’s sharing a room with (Kayo Matsuo). She’s not too pleased about this when she wakes up to find him on top of her, so she fights him off and runs for the doctor (Naoyuki Kanno aka Tadahiko Sugano). When the doctor arrives, he tells the man he has to leave immediately. The man’s wife (Nobuko Otowa) comes to take him home and, although dismayed by what her husband has done, she remains surprisingly sympathetic.

Kayo Matsuo

The couple have a son (Hideki Hayashi) and daughter (Miyoko Akaza) in their late teens who pay little attention to their usually meek father. However, when the son learns from the doctor what his father has done, he decides to track down the female patient and attempt to seduce her himself…

Miyoko Akaza and Hideki Hayashi

Writer-director Kaneto Shindo throws any pretence at realism out of the window here – of course, no mental hospital would have a male and female patient sharing the same private room, and there are numerous other issues one could take with the story, but he seems entirely unconcerned with such matters here. One matter he does seem concerned with is the generational differences he perceives regarding male-female relationships. Throughout the film, Shindo contrasts the relationship between the father and his wife with that of the developing one between the son and the young woman, and seems to be suggesting that the son believes himself to have the upper hand, but doesn’t – although he may have the strength to make a woman submit physically, that’s all he has, and it’s she who retains power over him. However, this is not really what stays with you at the end of the film.

Tonoyama and Nobuko Otowa

Regular Shindo collaborators composer Hikaru Hayashi and cinematographer Kiyomi Kuroda help to make both the sound and visuals of this typically eccentric work consistently interesting throughout. At times, the film plays like a comedy, and certainly parts of it are quite funny, the comic highlight being when Tonoyama has to give a guided tour to the world’s most taciturn man (Hideo Kanze). Ultimately, though, this is not a film likely to leave anyone smiling, and perhaps the laughter is supposed to catch in our throats as we see the apparently ridiculous protagonist struggling to come to grips with ageing, failure and mortality, while his wife’s devotion remains unshakeable. So, while it appears that Shindo set out to make a film with a sexual theme, it becomes more concerned with the father’s mid-life crisis (which, admittedly, is partly due to his impotence, yet not in merely sexual terms). However, it’s also possible that this was what Shindo intended all along, and the sex angle was simply a means of selling the film to the public – the poster promised Awakened sexuality! Lost sexuality! A groundbreaking and controversial film from the genius director Shindo, known for Instinct! A film exploring humanity through the theme of ‘sex’. (Instinct refers to Shindo’s previous film, which was also known as Honno or Lost Sex, so it seems that that film must have been successful at the box office in Japan anyway.)

Taiji Tonoyama, who was indeed 51 at the time but looked older, had co-founded the production company (Kindai Eiga Kyokai) which made this film together with Shindo and Kozaburo Yoshimura in 1950. Tonoyama appeared in most of Shindo’s films, but – being a short, bald man with sad, bulging eyes – he rarely had such a substantial one as this and its great to see him featured more prominently for a change. He has a staggering 346 credits on IMDb and is probably best-remembered for another rare lead he played in Shindo’s Naked Island (1960). He died in 1989, but Shindo liked him so much that he subsequently wrote a book about him, which he followed with a feature film Sanmon yakusha (2000). The title means ‘third-rate actor’ which is how Tonoyama had referred to himself in the title of his own 1966 book, which translates as The Irresponsible Ramblings of a Third-Rate Actor.

Bonus trivia:

The title sequence featuring lava lamp bubbles was designed by the famous artist Taro Okamoto, who also did the titles for Shindo’s Mother (1963), Onibaba (1964) and Yoshida’s Escape from Japan (1964).

Thanks to A.K.

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Their Legacy / 家庭の事情 / Katei no jijo (‘Family Circumstances’, 1962)

Obscure Japanese Film #243

So Yamamura

Junko Kano and Ayako Wakao

Utako Shibusawa and Mako Sanjo

Upon retiring, widower Misawa (So Yamamura) decides to give each of his four unmarried daughters 500,000 yen to do with as they wish. The eldest, Kazuyo (Ayako Wakao), is regretting having an affair with a married colleague (Jun Negami) and decides to quit and open a café. Second daughter Fumiko (Junko Kano) gives hers to her boyfriend (Jiro Tamiya) so that he can pay off his debts. Third daughter Miyako (Mako Sanjo) only reluctantly accepts the money and just wants to stay at home with her father. The youngest, Shinako (Utako Shibusawa), works in an accounts department and decides to become a moneylender while fighting off the attentions of a persistent co-worker (Hiroshi Kawaguchi). Meanwhile, Misawa has a relationship with gold-digger Tamako (Murasaki Fujima), although a matchmaker (Haruko Sugimura) is trying to interest him in getting married again to Yasuko (Mayumi Kurata)*…

This Daiei production was based on a magazine serial by Keita Genji (1912-85), whose works were also the source for the previously-reviewed Daiei movies The Most Valuable Wife (1959) and Kirai Kirai Kirai (1960), both of which offered similar fare. Like those, this is a light comedy, a genre not typically associated with director Kozaburo Yoshimura or his screenwriter Kaneto Shindo (although it was by no means the only occasion on which either filmmaker dabbled in comedy). Presumably, then, this was a studio assignment, but it’s well-made and entertaining, and I wasn’t left feeling they had just phoned it in.

Although Ayako Wakao – curiously, the only one who seems to be playing it totally straight – is top-billed, in this case she’s really just part of an impressive ensemble cast which also features Eiji Funakoshi, Keizo Kawasaki and Eitaro Ozawa, most of whom make the most out of the material. If you enjoy Daiei films of this era and like these actors, Katei no jijo is an enjoyable time-passer, with Sei Ikeno’s score helping to heighten the comic effect, although the black-and-white rush hour prologue and epilogue, while fun, seem a bit random to me as I couldn’t really see how they related to the main story. (I could also have done without the close-up of Eitaro Ozawa eating...)

Jiro Tamiya

Incidentally, in one impressive scene, real-life karate black-belt Jiro Tamiya gets properly thrown by another real-life karate black belt, Jun Fujimaki, who also appears here playing a love rival to Tamiya’s character.

Keita Genji’s story was remade by Katsumi Nishikawa for Nikkatsu in 1965 as Yottsu no koi no monogatari (‘Four Love Stories’).

*Although both IMDb and eiga.com state that Tamako is played by Yasuko Nakada and Yasuko is played by Murasaki Fujima, this is incorrect.

Murasaki Fujima as Tamako

Mayumi Kurata as Yasuko

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

Thanks to Coralsundy for the English subtitles, which can be found here.

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Heat Wave Island / かげろう / Kagero (‘Heat Wave’, 1969)

Obscure Japanese Film #223

 

Nobuko Otowa

Produced by Kindai Eiga Kyokai, an independent company formed by director Kozaburo Yoshimura, screenwriter Kaneto Shindo and actor Taiji Tonoyama in 1950, this crime drama was directed and co-written by Shindo and features Tonoyama in a supporting role as the head of an island village. Shindo’s long-term muse and mistress Nobuko Otowa plays Otoyo, a bar hostess who turns up dead at the beginning of the film when a dog carrying a human hand (an idea obviously nicked from Yojimbo) leads the cops to her corpse. Otowa, an actor always willing to do anything for her art, has to play a partially-excavated cadaver, but gets to pop up in flashbacks as a a living being throughout the rest of the movie. 

 

Rokko Toura

 

As the title suggests, it’s set during a heatwave, and a murder investigation is soon underway led by sweaty detectives Oishi (Oshima favourite Rokko Toura) and Iino (future director Juzo Itami), who have to traipse all over the islands of the Seto Inland Sea to interview sundry witnesses played by Shindo’s favourite character actors, including Jukichi Uno, Tanie Kitabayashi, Eitaro Ozawa and, of course, the aforementioned Taiji Tonoyoma. The dogged police begin to suspect that following Michiko (Masako Toyama), a young woman who worked at Otoyo’s bar, may lead them to the killer…

 

Masako Toyama

 

The little-known Masako Toyama, who has one of the principal roles here, was apparently a theatre actor whom Shindo had cast as a result of seeing her in a camera commercial. She had actually already made one film before this, a Shochiku action picture known in English as Pursuit of Murder: Shinjuku’s 25th Hour (1969), and she would go on to appear in at least nine more movies. IMDb has her listed (incorrectly I think) as Masako Tomiyama. 

 

Taiji Tonoyama

 

Anyway, the film is stylishly shot by cameraman Kiyomi Kuroda and has an interesting score by Hikaru Hayashi, although it’s one that works better in certain scenes than others, sometimes lending a strange feeling of detachment rather than enhancing the suspense. Both Kuroda and Hayashi had worked on Shindo’s best known films, Onibaba (1964) and Kuroneko (1968). 

 

Tanie Kitabayashi

 

What surprised me most about the film is how much it reminded me of Castle of Sand (1974), Yoshitaro Nomura’s big hit movie adaptation of Seicho Matsumoto’s 1961 novel of the same name. Heat Wave Island must surely have been an influence on that later film, right down to the permanently perspiring policemen. On the other hand, the plot of Heat Wave Island is also very much like something that Matsumoto might have written, and he was undoubtedly an influence on the original screenplay written by Shindo and Isao Seki (an assistant director on Onibaba and other Shindo films). 

 

Jukichi Uno

 

Unsurprisingly for Shindo, there’s also a leftist social commentary aspect to the film, as Joan Mellon pointed out in her 1975 book Voices from the Japanese Cinema:

Kagero has been highly praised by both [Donald] Richie and [Richard N.] Tucker. Its locale is again the Inland Sea, the same setting as The [Naked] Island [1960]. Ten years have elapsed and the people who might have been the heroes of the earlier film have moved to the cities. Lacking skills, they are absorbed inevitably into the lumpen proletariat as petty criminals, prostitutes and dealers in drugs. Richie holds that the film far transcends the level of melodrama:

From the brilliant opening it becomes apparent that he [Shindo] is making a statement on the relation between love and death; from other parts of the film (“cops are poor – criminals are poor: it is the poor chasing the poor”) it is apparent that a social statement is being made; finally, Shindo is making a film about what happens when sudden affluence reaches a simple people. 

The islands around the Seto Inland Sea, where poverty is high and employment low, certainly make for an interesting and often photogenic setting, as one of the cops muses at one point, saying,

The beauty of this scenery made them poor. The islands are beautiful because they’re made of granite soil. The soil can only grow wheat and potatoes. When it rains, the soil erodes and the fields wash into the sea. The beautiful white soil is a symbol of infertility. It’s a symbol of poverty. 

Heat Wave Island is a fascinating film even if the plot is arguably a little over-complicated and, though Otoyo seems a remarkably unsympathetic character at first, things turn out to be a lot less black and white as the story unfolds. 

 

Juzo Itami and Rokko Taura (centre)

 

Onna no saka / 女の坂 (‘A Woman’s Uphill Struggle’, 1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #190

 

Mariko Okada

 

After one of her uncles dies, Akie (Mariko Okada), a spirited young woman from Hakone, inherits his confectionary business in Kyoto. The company, Kagimura, is famous for an agar-based sweet called Kyo shigure, but the master confectioner, Taniji (Minpei Tomimoto), is the only one who knows how to prepare it properly and he’s in prison after accidentally killing an employee in a fight (which, oddly, nobody seems too bothered about). Akie originally intends to turn the premises into a dressmaking business instead, but when Tajiji is released, he makes Kyo shigure for her and she’s so impressed that she decides to revive her late uncle’s business. 

 

Nobuko Otowa

 

One day, Akie’s mother, Keiko (Nobuko Otowa), arrives with a companion, Yaoi (Keiji Sada). He’s a woodblock artist who has come to Kyoto to sketch some maiko (apprentice geisha), and Keiko has suggested that he stay with Akie instead of at an inn as she has plenty of space. Akie and Yaoi fall in love, but he’s already married with two children – and what exactly is the nature of his relationship with Keiko?

 

Keiji Sada

 

Like the previously-reviewed Wedding Day, Sweet Secret and Ai sureba koso, this was distributed by Shochiku but produced by Kindai Eiga Kyokai, an independent company formed in 1950 by director Kozaburo Yoshimura, screenwriter Kaneto Shindo and Taiji Tonoyama, the latter of whom appears here as one of Akie’s uncles. The story was cobbled together from two novels by Hisao Sawano (1912-92), both of which were published the same year the film was released. Sawano was best-known for his novel River of the Night, filmed by Yoshimura in 1956. 

 

 

For the first hour, the film is as light and insubstantial as a soufflé, and appears to be a simple rom-com made as a vehicle for Mariko Okada, who undergoes innumerable costume and hairstyle changes and whose charm the picture relies heavily upon. However, the tone eventually becomes more serious, even throwing in a suicide that seemed to me entirely superfluous. The message of the movie is very clear by the end, but it’s also a rather simple and conservative one, basically implying that one should not break the conventional rules of society as there are good reasons for them and the best thing to do if disappointed in love is repress your feelings and work, work, work! 

 

In my view, this is a minor effort from director Kozaburo Yoshimura, though it’s not without interest. For no good reason, it throws in Ganjiro Nakamura as an avant-garde potter, and there’s a surprisingly sensual moment when Akie sucks the pipe smoke from Yaoi’s mouth, while Toshiro Mayuzumi’s score is inventive and steers admirably clear of cliché. On the whole, though, Onna no saka is likely to be best enjoyed by fans of Mariko Okada. 

 

 

Bonus trivia: Kyo shigure appears to be a genuine dessert, although I have no idea whether it was created before or after the film existed, or even especially created for it. Those with a sweet tooth can find out more here (in Japanese). 

 

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)