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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House of Wooden Blocks / 積木の箱 / Tsumiki no hako (1968)

Obscure Japanese Film #32

Yoshiro Uchida and Ayako Wakao

In the 18^th of her 20 films for director Yasuzo Masumura, Ayako Wakao plays a supporting character for the first time in their collaboration since the 1961 picture A Lustful Man. Even for a supporting role, the character she portrays in House of Wooden Blocks is not very interesting and certainly presents no challenge to her acting skills, so one wonders whether she would have agreed to the part had the choice been hers. The Japanese film studios at the time worked their stars very hard and would generally sooner put a star into a minor role than have them not working, so (unlike in Hollywood) it was not unusual to see them in around 10 films a year flitting between leads, supports and the odd cameo. It was also very difficult for stars to say no if they were under contract, as can be seen from the case of one of Daiei Studios’ other big female stars, Fujiko Yamamoto, whose film career came to an abrupt end in 1963 when she rebelled. Of course, it’s possible that Wakao may have felt some loyalty towards Masumura, but he was later to describe her as a ‘cold and calculating woman’ (whether or not this assessment is fair, I have no idea).

Kayo Matsuo and Yoshiro Uchida

 

The main character in House of Wooden Blocks is Ichiro (Yoshiro Uchida), a boy of around 14 who is shocked one day to see his elder sister Namie (Kayo Matsuo) rolling around naked on the bed with his father, Goichi (Asao Uchida). He subsequently discovers that Namie is not actually his sister, but was adopted by his father as a child and later became his mistress. Now wanting to avoid his own family, Ichiro finds himself drawn to Hisayo (Ayako Wakao), a single mother who runs a local shop, and he becomes like an older brother to her young son. Meanwhile, Ichiro’s easygoing teacher, Sugiura (Ken Ogata), is also attracted to Hisayo, sparking feelings of jealousy in his pupil. Sugiura has noticed a change in Ichiro, who has become increasingly moody since realising the true nature of the relationship between his father and Namie. However, Sugiura’s efforts to help are rebuffed by Ichiro, who begins to wonder why Hisayo always avoids his father…

Ayako Wakao, Yoshiro Uchida and Ken Ogata

A more literal translation of the Japanese title would be ‘Box of Wooden Building Blocks’, but it seems to be a metaphor akin to the English ‘House of Cards’ in the sense that Goichi has built his family on shaky foundations and it won’t take much to send it all crashing down, which indeed proves to be the case. 

Ken Ogata and Ayako Wakao

 

Dealing with a young man’s simultaneous disillusionment and sexual awakening, Masumura apparently described this work as ‘a boy’s Vita Sexualis’, this being the title of a classic 1909 novel by the Japanese author Ogai Mori, best-known for the story on which Kenji Mizoguchi’s Sansho the Bailiff was based. However, this film was adapted by Masumura and Ichiro Ikeda from a just-published novel of the same name by Ayako Miura, who also supplied the source material for Satsuo Yamamoto’s Freezing Point (1966) starring Ayako Wakao. Masumura frequently adapted new novels and without a translation it’s hard to know how faithfully he did so, but I expect that much of the misanthropic vision to be found here and in other Masumura adaptations like Hanran comes from him as it’s such a common thread in his work.

House of Wooden Blocks features a restrained classical-style score by Tadashi Yamauchi, who had composed the music for a number of Masumura's other pictures, while the photography by another regular collaborator, Setsuo Kobayashi, looks a bit more rushed than in their previous work – perhaps a result of Daiei’s dwindling finances. The cast is also less distinguished than usual. A young and surprisingly skinny Ken Ogata tries hard as the too-good-to-be-true teacher, but it’s not much of a part. At the other end of the scale, shameless scene-stealer Kayo Matsuo certainly gives value for money as bitchy nympho Namie, but the characters here are simply too one-dimensional for the film to really hit home.