The Virgin Witness / 処女が見た / Shojo ga mita (1966)

Obscure Japanese Film #120

Michiyo Yasuda

Kazue (Michiyo Yasuda) is an 18-year-old orphan who has been adopted by her uncle and aunt, with whom she does not get along. Troubled and rebellious, she is prone to violent emotional outbursts which cause her to be expelled from school, leading her uncle to beg the local Buddhist head priest (Shozo Nanbu) to find a suitable temple to take her in. 

 

Ayako Wakao

Kazue is brought to a temple run by Chiei (Ayako Wakao), an attractive young nun who is initially strict and somewhat remote with Kazue, who soon learns that life there will mostly consist of chanting sutras, cleaning, and eating tasteless food. However, Kazue finds herself drawn to Chiei. In one unlikely scene, she manages to persuade Chiei to join her at the concert of a band she is friendly with (they play American-style surf rock in the style of The Astronauts). 

 

Chiei is shocked to find that she enjoys it, and the two women become closer, but – just when it seems that Kazue might find some sort of stability at the temple – the head priest dies and is replaced by a younger man (Lone Wolf and Cub star Tomisaburo Wakayama). 

Tomisaburo Wakayama

 

Unfortunately, he seems to have gone to the Ganjiro Nakamura / Masao Mishima school of Buddhism* and exhibits rather too much enthusiasm for worldly pleasures, quickly developing an inappropriate interest in Chiei, who finds herself in an impossible position…

 

This Daiei production recycles elements of The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (filmed by Kon Ichikawa as Conflagration) and Ayako Wakao’s earlier film The Temple of Wild Geese, but in those stories the troubled youth was a male. Michiyo Yasuda (in her first film for Daiei after starting out in a couple of films for Nikkatsu) is excellent, going from flaming-eyed fury in one scene to moving vulnerability in another before switching to cool calculation towards the end. She does all of these well, and it’s arguably more her film than it is Wakao’s. Following the success of this picture, Yasuda was immediately reteamed with Wakao for the excellent Freezing Point (1966), then went on to play the female lead in Yasuzo Masumura’s remake of A Fool’s Love the following year. 

 

Although Ayako Wakao’s performance is of her usual high standard, there is something of a disconnect between the way she plays her part and the words she has to say in a couple of the later scenes. In my opinion, the script is to blame for this as, despite the fact that Chiei is obviously supposed to be an intelligent woman, her actions are at times too foolish to be plausible. That’s a pity as this is otherwise a pretty good movie, well-made as one would expect from director Kenji Misumi.

  

*Ganjiro Nakamura and Masao Mishima played hypocritical priests in Conflagration (1958) and The Temple of Wild Geese (1962) respectively.

The Third Will / 女系家族 / Nyokei kazoku (1963)

Obscure Japanese Film #117

Ayako Wakao

 

This Daiei production was an attempt to repeat the success of the company’s 1961 film, A Woman’s Medal, and reunites stars Machiko Kyo, Ayako Wakao and Jiro Tamiya in another adaptation of a Toyoko Yamasaki novel (which had just been published as a magazine serial when the film went into production). Like the earlier picture, The Third Will is also a very talky affair involving a variety of scheming characters, although it perhaps also owes something to Masaki Kobayashi’s The Inheritance (1962).

Yachiyo Otori, Machiko Kyo and Chieko Naniwa

 

When Kazo Yajima (the president of a cotton wholesale company in Osaka) dies, his three daughters assume they will inherit everything between them. The domineering eldest daughter, Fujishiro (Machiko Kyo), tries to take control, but faces rebellion from her younger sisters, Chizu (Yachiyo Otori) and Hinako (Miwa Tanako), and the squabbles begin. Fujishiro seeks advice from her younger dance teacher (Jiro Tamiya), who subsequently seduces her, hoping he can marry Fujishiro for her money. Another family member, Auntie Yoshiko (Chieko Naniwa), comes up with a plan to adopt Hinako, hoping that this will enable her to grab a slice of the pie for herself. Meanwhile, Uichi (Ganjiro Nakamura), the head clerk who has been appointed executor of the will and has a few schemes of his own going, reveals to their dismay that Kazo had secretly been keeping a mistress, Fumino (Ayako Wakao), a former geisha. Although no specific inheritance has been granted to her in the will – which mentions only that she should be treated with generosity – the family conspire to ensure that Fumino is sent packing with nothing. However, this proves to be their undoing, and the story concludes in a satisfying (if predictable) manner.

 

The Yajima family are an appalling bunch of arrogant, entitled snobs, and your sympathy will be entirely with Fumino here. The acting by the principals is excellent (as one would expect from this cast), and there’s also a notable performance by Chieko Naniwa as the auntie who turns out to be the nastiest of a very nasty lot who treat their servants like dirt and neglect the rental properties that their long-suffering tenants are unfortunate enough to live in. 

Jiro Tamiya

 

The film itself is very similar to A Woman’s Medal in many ways, despite being made by a different director. Kozaburo Yoshimura directed the earlier film rather indifferently, and I suspect that he would not have been a huge fan of a non-literary writer like Yamasaki and that A Woman’s Medal was a project assigned to him by the studio (though this is speculation on my part). This would explain the change of director here,* which in the case of The Third Will is Kenji Misumi, a filmmaker who would become known for his stylish Zatoichi and Lone Wolf and Cub movies but at this stage was still regarded as a jobbing director. This is not the kind of film one associates with Misumi, but he seems to have been a little more engaged than Yoshimura and brings what style he can to the dialogue-heavy scenes. The way he uses the sound of cicadas screaming in the climactic scene is particularly memorable.  

Ganjiro Nakamura

 

The film’s scathing portrayal of the moneyed class and lapses into melodrama have led some to interpret it as a satire, which is not unreasonable. However, if it is intended as satire, I doubt this came from Toyoko Yamasaki, as her formula seldom varied and consisted of straight social commentary intended to expose the hypocrisy and corruption existing behind the scenes in various hallowed institutions. 

 

Given the soap-operatic nature of the plot, it’s understandable that, despite being another success for Daiei, The Third Will has not been remade for the big screen; more appropriately, it has spawned no fewer than eight TV versions in Japan. 

 

*The cerebral haemorrhage that Yoshimura suffered in 1963 is probably not the reason for the change as The Third Will was released in March of that year and Yoshimura’s Bamboo Doll of Echizen (his final film before his 3-year hiatus) was released in October.

Note on the title: The Japanese title translates as ‘Matrilineal Family’, a theme also covered by Toyoko Yamasaki’s earlier novel Bonchi, filmed by Daiei in 1960. 

 

Shroud of Snow / 雪の喪章 / Yuki no mosho (1967)

Obscure Japanese Film #105

Ayako Wakao

The story begins in 1930 in Kanazawa, a city located on the west coast of Japan’s main island and known for its production of gold leaf and heavy snowfall in winter. Taeko (Ayako Wakao) has just married into the Sayama family, who have a successful gold leaf business. Soon after the wedding, her husband, Kunio (Toyota Fukuda), hires a new maid, Sei (Tamao Nakamura), apparently in an act of charity as she’s an orphan and a distant relation of the family. Sei is of a meek disposition, so Taeko is profoundly shocked when she catches Kunio in flagrante with her. Kunio’s mother (Mitsuko Yoshikawa) apologises to Taeko on behalf of her son, but explains pragmatically that it’s better than him spending his money in the red light district. However, Taeko finds herself unable to forgive Kunio so, when one of her husband’s employees, Guntaro (Shigeru Amachi), confesses his love to her, she seems ready to run off to Osaka with him and start a new life. 

Toyota Fukuda

 

When Kunio discovers their plans, Guntaro ends up leaving without her, and Taeko seems to have little choice but to stay with her husband and try to make it work. While resigning herself to her fate, she cannot help having vindictive thoughts, and when a series of tragedies occur – always during a heavy snowfall – she wonders if she has willed them into existence. As the years pass, the family’s fortunes take a dive, the war begins and events lead to an unexpected reunion of sorts with Guntaro…  

Tamao Nakamura

 

Shigeru Amachi

Revolving around the intertwined destinies of the four main characters, Shroud of Snow is not so much the story of a love triangle, but a love square. Despite a number of dramatic events, it’s a strange, enigmatic film in content as the real drama happens inside Taeko’s head. With no voiceover, the film relies heavily on the acting talents of Ayako Wakao; fortunately, she’s adept at expressing the inner thoughts and feelings of her characters, and gives her usual immaculate performance. Nevertheless, I’d love to be able to read the original novel in order to understand the film a little better, but unfortunately it’s never been translated and appears to be out of print in Japan. 

 

The author, Mitsuko Mizuashi (1914-2003), was herself from Kanazawa, where her father ran a gold leaf business before going bankrupt, after which the family moved to Osaka. Yuki no mosho, published in 1962, was her best-known work and the only one to be filmed, although she was a well-regarded writer nominated for both the Akutagawa and Naoki prizes on several occasions. I suspect that the task of adapting her novel must have been challenging and may be why it uncharacteristically took Daiei five years to turn it into a film as well as the reason it has not been filmed since. 

 

The director, Kenji Misumi, is well known for his Zatoichi and Lone Wolf and Cub films. Although Shroud of Snow is far from a typical Misumi film, his direction is impressive while seldom calling attention to itself. He extracts good performances all round and pulls off some difficult shots wonderfully, such as when we see flakes of gold leaf swirling about in the smoke from a fire. Another plus is the score by Sei Ikeno, which is subtle and restrained yet makes the most of the film’s dramatic moments.

Note on the title: A more literal translation of the Japanese title would be something like ‘Snow Mourning Band’. 

Bonus trivia: The gold leaf which covers Kyoto’s famous Kinkaku-ji (the Temple of the Golden Pavilion) was made in Kanazawa.