Shirobamba / しろばんば (1962)

Obscure Japanese Film #248

Toru Shimamura

This Nikkatsu production was based on the autobiographical novel of the same name by one of Japan’s major writers, Yasushi Inoue (1907-91). The book was translated into English by Jean Oda Moy in 1991, but Inoue’s sequel, Zoku Shirobamba, has been neither filmed nor translated, and the fact that Nikkatsu never made the sequel suggests that this film was not especially profitable. The story concerns Inoue’s own childhood in Izu in the early Taisho period (1912-26) when Inoue was around seven years old, and the title refers to the white aphids that the children would try to catch in the autumn.

Izumi Ashikawa

Inoue’s alter ego is Kosaku (played here by Toru [later Miki] Shimamura), whose rural upbringing is unusual in that his parents, though living, are absent, and he’s brought up by his late great-great uncle’s mistress, known as Granny Onui (Tanie Kitabayashi). He’s all she’s got, so she spoils him, and he’s very attached to her as a result. The only other person he really likes is Sakiko (Izumi Ashikawa), whom he calls his elder sister although she’s actually his aunt. Unfortunately, she looks down on Onui and there’s no love lost between the two women. Sakiko lives in the ‘Upper House’ nearby with Kosaku’s other relations, but he feels uncomfortable there and avoids them. Kosaku gets the highest grades in his year at school and his family has a higher social status than his classmates’, so he feels different to the other boys and great things are expected of him.

Jacket of the novel in English translation

Reading the novel in translation a while ago I was reminded of the films of Keisuke Kinoshita and wondered if the book had ever been filmed; looking it up, I found that not only had it been, but that the screenwriter was none other than Keisuke Kinoshita himself. However, it’s directed not by him, but by Eisuke Takizawa, who seems to have been Nikkatsu’s director of choice for their more prestigious literary adaptations during this period (not a genre they’re widely remembered for).

Jukichi Uno

I had high hopes for this film but, although its superficially faithful, one of the strengths of the book is its lack of sentimentality, and it was disappointing to see the story sentimentalised as it has been here, especially in regard to composer Takanobu Saito’s clichéd use of mandolin and harp. There’s also been an overall softening of tone – to give a couple of examples, in the book, the schoolteachers think nothing of dishing out corporal punishment, and Sakiko is an arrogant snob, while here the teachers (one of whom is played by a twinkly-eyed Jukichi Uno in old man make-up) are far more genial and Sakiko – perhaps partly due to the casting of popular star Ishikawa – is a much gentler character.

Tanie Kitabayashi

Talking of casting, I felt that a lack of imagination was evident in hiring 51-year-old character actress Tanie Kitabayashi to do her old granny act yet again when Sachiko Murase would have been a far better fit for the complex character described by Inoue. Well-made though it is, ultimately I couldn’t help feeling that the film would have had more depth if it had been cast and scored differently and directed by Kinoshita or Miyoji Ieki instead of Takizawa.

A note on the title:

The title can be written as Shirobamba or Shirobanba in English; the character ん is usually written as ‘n’ in translation, but when pronounced before a ‘b’, it’s natural to close the mouth more fully, so it comes out sounding more like an ‘m’. This is also the reason why both Tetsuro Tanba and Tetsuro Tamba can be considered correct.

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

If you enjoy this blog, feel free to Buy Me a Coffee

Totsugu hi made / 嫁ぐ日まで (‘Until Your Wedding Day’, 1940)

Obscure Japanese Film #231

 

Setsuko Hara

Yoshiko (Setsuko Hara) lives with her widowed father (Ko Mihashi) and younger sister Asako (Akira Kurosawa’s future wife, Yoko Yaguchi, in her film debut). She’s being courted by Atsushi (Heihachiro Okawa), but feels that she cannot get married until her father finds a new wife to look after him and Asako. A suitable woman is found in the person of Tsuneko (Sadako Sawamura), but Asako is still very attached to the memory of her late mother, so will she accept another woman filling this role? 

 

Yoko Yaguchi

This domestic drama from Toho Eiga seems to prefigure the post-war films of Ozu, even down to the choice of Setsuko Hara as star. It’s well-made and features very natural performances from an impressive cast that also includes Haruko Sugimura as a piano teacher, but it’s arguably a little too low-key for its own good. It also features a couple of rather awkward ellipses and I must say that I found the ending completely unsatisfactory, perhaps largely because writer-director-producer Yasujiro Shimazu chose not to set it up in any way, so that when it comes it’s so out of the blue it feels almost random. 

 

Ko Mihashi

Shimazu, who died aged 48 of stomach cancer just after the war ended, was one of Japan’s most acclaimed directors of the 1930s. Credited with pioneering a new emphasis on realism and the lives of everyday people, it’s likely that he would have been much better known today had he survived and been able to continue directing for another decade or two. Keisuke Kinoshita, one of several fine directors who apprenticed under Shimazu, considered him a tyrant yet admitted he had learnt a great deal from him. 

 

Heihachiro Okawa

Intriguingly, there is a scene in which Asako’s school friends discuss going to see the 1938 French film about a reformatory school for teenage girls, Prison sans barreaux, which had recently been released in Japan, although it was unclear to me whether this was intended to say anything Asako's rebellion, mild as it is.  

 

Sadako Sawamura

 

Watch on my YouTube channel with English subtitles

https://BUYMEACOFFEE.com/martindowsing 

While Yet a Wife / 妻の日の愛のかたみに / Tsuma no hi no ai no katamini (1965)

Obscure Japanese Film #141

Ayako Wakao

Chieko (Ayako Wakao) and Kitahara (Eiji Funakoshi) are country schoolteachers who get married and appear to be the perfect couple. Liked but a little envied by the locals for having such a happy relationship, the two are looking forward to having a child. Then one day Chieko begins to suffer from mysterious pains which won’t go away. A doctor diagnoses arthritis, and the young couple find their lives changed forever…

Eiji Funakoshi

 

This Daiei production was based on a memoir by Mieko Ikegami and adapted by Keisuke Kinoshita, but directed by Daiei contract director Sokichi Tomimoto, who made six films with Ayako Wakao. It has something of the feel of a Kinoshita film – albeit a minor one – due to the rural setting and score by Kinoshita’s brother and regular collaborator, Chuji Kinoshita. Unfortunately, this is one of those times when the composer does not seem to realise that silence would sometimes be preferable, and the film suffers from an overuse of maudlin harp and strings throughout. 

 

The story’s pretty thin for a 90-minute picture, hence the brevity of my synopsis, and it’s not convincing as a portrait of someone suffering from severe arthritis, probably because the studio didn’t want to risk making Wakao look unattractive. It’s nice to see the underrated Eiji Funakoshi in a serious leading role for a change, and he does as good a job as anyone could be expected to under the circumstances, as does his more celebrated co-star. Although he was often cast in comic roles, the highlight of Funakoshi’s career was undoubtedly in Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain (1959), an atypical part for him, but a good example of successful casting against type. 

All in all, this is a decent enough tearjerker, but nothing more.

 

Note on the title: The Japanese title translates as something like ‘In the Spirit of Love on My Wife’s Day’

Thanks to A.K. 

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles).

 

Mother Country / 山河あり/ Sanga ari (‘There are Mountains and Rivers’) 1962

Obscure Japanese Film #40

Hideko Takamine

 

In 1955, Japan’s top screen actress Hideko Takamine married screenwriter Zenzo Matsuyama in a match arranged by director Keisuke Kinoshita, for whom both had worked – Matsuyama had been assistant director on Kinoshita’s two Carmen films and written The Tattered Wings (in all of which his future wife starred), while Takamine had also played the lead in Kinoshita’s Twenty-Four Eyes. By the time of Mother Tongue, she had made a further four films for Kinoshita and was said to be his favourite actress. This 1962 production for Shochiku was very much a family affair, then – Matsuyama co-wrote and directed it, Takamine headed the cast and Kinoshita received a credit for ‘planning’ (a credit common in Japanese films at the time, but one seldom used in the West, where similar duties are usually covered by a ‘producer’ credit). Prior to this, Matsuyama had worked as a screenwriter for Masaki Kobayashi on a number of films including The Human Condition trilogy and made his first feature film as director the previous year with The Happiness of Us Alone, in which Takamine played a deaf-mute, a performance for which she won a number of awards. Her co-star from that film, Keiju Kobayashi, also appears here; in the West, he’s most familiar for his comic performance as the samurai who gets locked in the cupboard in Akira Kurosawa’s Sanjuro, but he was a major name in Japan. 

Keiju Kobayashi

 

Yoshiko Kuga

Hideko Takamine receives another plum role courtesy of her husband in this film. She plays Kishimo, a young woman who emigrates to Hawaii with her husband, Yoshio (Takahiro Tamura), around 1918. They have been ‘chased out of Japan’ for rather vague reasons which seem to be something to do with her husband engaging in a relationship with her before she was married and while he was a teacher. On the ship, they become friends with a couple in a similar position, Kyuhei (Keiju Kobayashi) and Sumi (Yoshiko Kuga, another major star). Arriving in Hawaii, they begin work as farmers and find themselves treated little better than slaves. However, when both women fall pregnant, their husbands are motivated to work as hard as possible to lift themselves out of poverty and build a future for their children. 10 years pass. Yoshio has become a teacher and Kyuhei a shopkeeper. Their children know some Japanese but prefer to talk English. A further seven years go by – the parents are by this point fairly well-off and their now grown-up children are able to live the sort of carefree life their parents never experienced, but are disturbed by reports of Japan’s increasing aggression and begin to feel embarrassed about their background. Then the Japanese air force bomb Pearl Harbour and the families find themselves torn between two cultures, both of which now regard them as the enemy. 

 

 

The only other film I know of about the plight of Japanese-Americans during World War 2 is Alan Parker’s Come See the Paradise (1990), so Matsuyama deserves credit for tackling a thorny subject more usually swept under the carpet. Working from an original screenplay co-written with Kurosawa collaborator Eijiro Hisaita, mostly shot on location in Hawaii (I think) and covering a span of 30 years or so, it’s certainly an ambitious production. Unfortunately, it has a tendency to lapse into sentimentality, a quality often underlined by Chuji Kinoshita’s alternately string-laden and Hawaiian score. Despite a few scenes which hit home, the overall result is a well-produced melodramatic weepie topped off by a superb performance from the great Takamine, who also receives a credit for ‘costume supervision’ and even gets to perform a traditional Hawaiian song in one scene. Another bonus is the presence of splendidly acerbic character actor Koji Mitsui as the extremely forthright elder of the Japanese immigrant community. 

Koji Mitsui