Evening Stream / 夜の流れ / Yoru no nagare (aka The Lovelorn Geisha, 1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #75

 

Isuzu Yamada

Sonoda (Takashi Shimura) is a wealthy businessman who owns a restaurant run by Aya (Isuzu Yamada), whom he has repeatedly tried and failed to seduce. She’s actually having an affair with the cook, Igarashi (Tatsuya Mihashi), who has a foot injury as a result of being forced to work barefoot when he was a prisoner-of-war in Siberia. Aya’s daughter, Miyako (Yoko Tsukasa), is also in love with Igarashi but unaware of her mother’s affair. The restaurant has several geisha who entertain the guests. These include Kintaro (Yaeko Mizutani), who tends to get drunk a lot and is eventually raped in a car while intoxicated; Beniko (Etsuko Ichihara), who regularly attempts suicide for obscure reasons; and Masae (Mitsuko Kusabue), who has been left by her husband, Nozaki (Kazuo Kitamura), and is now in a relationship with a salesman (Akira Takarada, the heroic diver from the original Godzilla), although Nizaki keeps turning up to sponge off her.

 

Takashi Shimura

 

This Toho production is unusual in being a collaboration between two directors – Mikio Naruse and Yuzo Kawashima – and it seems to have come about as a result of Kawashima’s admiration for his senior colleague. Reportedly, Naruse directed most of the interiors in the studio, while Kawashima handled the scenes shot on location, and it certainly looks that way. As might be expected from this approach, there is a certain unevenness of tone. Kawashima’s opening scene set at a swimming pool suggests we’re in for a moronic sex comedy, but the film becomes more serious and interesting as it progresses. 

 

Tatsuya Mihashi

 

The geisha portrayed here are not the high-class prostitutes of period dramas, but simply female companions and entertainers for hire, which is what geisha had become by the time this film was made (it’s set in what was then the present day). Nevertheless, it’s surprising to see geisha emulating westerners on their days off. They ride around in American sports cars, go to jazz bars and drink highballs, and it’s made clear that their shamisen skills are somewhat lacking compared to the geisha of the past. In fact, their materialism, pursuit of pleasure and lack of spirituality are almost akin to the ‘sun tribe’ youths seen in films such as Crazed Fruit (1956). However, although these women seem pretty vacuous at first, they do become more sympathetic as the various sub-plots unfold, and Kintaro’s rebellion is gratifying when it comes. 

 

Kazuo Kitamura and Akira Takarada

 

The film was based on an original screenplay by frequent Naruse collaborator Toshiro Ide, and Zenzo Matsuyama, soon to become a director himself. It seems that Ide wrote the Naruse portions, while Matsuyama wrote Kawashima’s scenes. Each director also worked with a different cinematographer. I suspect that Naruse might have had an undeveloped, set-bound script by Ide on his hands and suggested that Kawashima add some exteriors showing what the women get up to on their days off (though this is pure speculation on my part). In any case, I felt that the Naruse scenes were stronger, though this might be partly due to the fact that he directed all the sections featuring Isuzu Yamada, who is exceptional. I don’t think I’ve ever seen another actor burst into real tears as suddenly as she does here. Yoko Tsukasa is equally convincing as her daughter, while Yaeko Mizutani proves herself the master of the drunk scene. The music score by Ichiro Saito features jazz guitar quite prominently and has not dated well, but on the whole this often maligned film rewards the patient viewer and is by no means the failure its reputation suggests. 

 

Yoko Tsukasa

 

Isuzu Yamada

Yaeko Mizutani

The Hunter's Diary / 猟人日記 / Ryojin nikki (1964)

Obscure Japanese Film #13

Cover of the Japanese DVD release (no English subtitles)

 

This crime mystery from Nikkatsu Studios concerns Ichiro Honda (Noboru Nakaya), a businessman who takes advantage of the travelling necessitated by his job to repeatedly cheat on his wife, Taneko (Masako Togawa), with a series of women he picks up for one night stands. He regards these women as his ‘prey’ and records the details of each conquest in his ‘hunter’s diary’, but when two of these women are murdered, he begins to wonder whether this could really be a coincidence or if somebody’s out to frame him.  

 

Noboru Nakaya as Honda finds his next 'prey'

 

The film begins in documentary style with a lecture on how different blood types can be used to identify criminals, but it ends – surprisingly – with a song, and I found that this unexpected contrast gave the ending an emotional power it would otherwise have lacked. The director, Ko Nakahira, is only familiar to most film buffs in the West for his debut, Crazed Fruit, which saw him labelled as a member of the ‘new wave’ and helped to create the ‘sun tribe’ genre discussed in my last review (for Season of the Sun).  He had previously worked as an assistant for Akira Kurosawa on Scandal (1949) and The Idiot (1951); the two filmmakers reportedly enjoyed a good relationship which continued for many years. Aside from Crazed Fruit, I have seen one other Nakahira film, the terrific Mikkai aka The Assignation / Secret Rendezvous (1959), a drama of infidelity with a truly shocking denouement. In The Hunter’s Diary, he uses a combination of real locations and studio work to have fun with a clever but implausible mystery. In 1967, Nakahira began travelling to Hong Kong to make films for the Shaw Brothers, including a remake of The Hunter’s Diary under the title Lie ren (aka Diary of a Ladykiller). He was dismissed from Nikkatsu in 1968 for drinking on the job while directing The Spiders’ Great Advance, a vehicle for Japanese Beatles clones The Spiders. Forced to go independent, his output dwindled and he managed to complete only six films in the 1970s before his premature death from cancer in 1978. 

 

Masako Togawa

 

Honda appears to have been a rare starring role for actor Noboru Nakaya, although he played a couple of other leads for Nakahira around this time. Nakaya was married to Kyoko Kishida (star of The Woman in the Dunes), but in the film his character’s wife – an artist who paints bizarre pictures in the style of Dali – is played by Masako Togawa in her only major film role. Togawa was the author of the novel upon which the film was based and was also a well-known singer. She gives a strong performance in the film while Nakaya, though an able enough actor, is perhaps a little nondescript. Also notable among the cast are Shohei Imamura favourite Kazuo Kitamura as a genial lawyer and Yukiyo Toake, who is wonderfully expressive as his naïve assistant. 

 

Kazuo Kitamura and Yukiyo Toake

 

There is much to enjoy here, so let’s hope that the film gains a wider audience and more of Ko Nakahira’s work surfaces outside Japan.

Seen in a 35mm print with English subtitles at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, on 6 February 2022.

BONUS TRIVIA:  Noboru Nakaya, who plays the lead here, was married to Kyoko 'Woman of the Dunes' Kishida from 1954-78.