Kirai Kirai Kirai / 嫌い嫌い嫌い / (‘Hate hate hate’, 1960)

 

Ichiro Sugai

 

Sojuro Shinkawa (Ichiro Sugai) is the elderly chairman of the Shinkawa conglomerate, a position which he was hoping his son, Sotaro (Kenji Sugawara), would succeed him in. However, Sotaro has rebelled and gone off to do his own thing, so Sojuro gathers the presidents of the six companies which make up the conglomerate and asks them each to select their most promising employee and send them to head office, where they will compete to marry his granddaughter, Kikuko (Atsuko Kindaichi), and the winner will be groomed to become the new chairman. 

 

Atsuko Kindaichi

 

The six men chosen run the gamut from the ultra masculine Nagaoka (Ryuichi Ishii) with his impressive chest hair to the effeminate Hirose (Kanji Matsumoto), who drinks only milk, a thermos of which he always carries with him. Other candidates include Sakurai (future director Juzo Itami), who used to be friends with Kikuko as a child, the handsome and modest Tsujimoto (Jiro Tamiya), who appears to be the favourite, and coal miner Fukumitsu (Gen Mitamura), who is conflicted due to his secret love for co-worker Sumiko (Junko Kano)…

 

Jiro Tamiya

 

This Daiei production was based on a novel entitled Hana no sarariman (‘The Flower Salaryman’) by Keita Genji (1912-85), a writer well-known for this type of material whose work also provided the basis for many other films including Masumura’s Blue Sky Maiden (1957) and The Most Valuable Wife (1959). 

 

Junko Kano

 

Sachiko Hidari

For me, the main appeal was that it provided a rare chance to see another film by Hiroshi Edagawa, whose Roses Bloom on The Rose Bush (1959) I liked so much. However, this one is less interesting as it’s basically a piece of fluff, albeit a well-made one which is not unentertaining. It’s an ensemble piece with no real star at the centre, although Jiro Tamiya and Junko Kano were both beginning to get popular at the time and Sachiko Hidari also appears prominently, although in a role that has little bearing on the story, while Kazuko Matsuo pops up singing the title song in a nightclub (to which you can listen on YouTube here). Even Bokuzen Hidari makes an appearance as one of the company presidents - which may well be the most untypical role he ever played. Anyway, for the most part, it's a pleasant enough time-passer, though the gay stereotyping of Kanji Matsumoto’s character is regrettable. 

 

Bokuzen Hidari

 

A note on the title:

Kirai can also be translated as ‘I hate it’, ‘I hate you’, etc, so the tag line on the Japanese posters should probably be read as ‘I hate him because he’s handsome! I hate him because he’s rich! I hate him because he has chest hair! Is that really true?’

 

Kazuko Matsuo

 Watched with dodgy subtitles. 

The Precipice / 氷壁 / Hyoheki (1958)

Obscure Japanese Film #119

Kenji Sugawara

When salaryman Uoza (Kenji Sugawara) returns from a mountaineering trip and encounters his friend and former climbing partner Kosaka (Keizo Kawasaki) in a restaurant, he’s astonished to find that Kosaka is there to meet a married woman, Minako (Fujiko Yamamoto). 

 

Keizo Kawasaki and Fujiko Yamamoto

Feeling awkward, Uoza makes his excuses and leaves, but Minako catches up with him outside and asks if she can speak to him. Uoza learns that the relationship between Kosaka and Minako has been going on for a while although they’ve only slept together once. She regards the event as a moment of madness on her part and has been trying to break if off, but Kosaka has fallen head over heels for her and won’t accept this, so Minako wants to enlist Uoza’s help in order to make Kosaka see sense. Minako’s anxiety may also be partly due to the fact that her older husband, Yashiro (Ken Uehara with white hair), is a man not easily deceived.

Ken Uehara

 

Uoza decides to take Kosaka with him on his next trip to the mountains, where they attempt a difficult climb which Uoza hopes will take his friend’s mind off his emotional troubles. He also takes the opportunity to try and talk some sense into Kosaka, who finally seems to be resigning himself to a life without Minako. However, when they continue the last stage of their climb, Kosaka’s supposedly unbreakable nylon rope breaks and Uoza can only watch in horror as his friend falls down the mountainside…

 

Yasuzo Masumura’s fourth film as director covers similar territory to his better-known picture A Wife Confesses (1961). Kaneto Shindo’s screenplay was based on a novel published the previous year by the prolific Yasushi Inoue, who would go on to become one of Japan’s most respected authors but had yet to acquire that status. At the time, Inoue’s story was a topical one as he had based it on a couple of recent mountain accidents involving a new type of nylon rope. 

 

In the lead, actor Kenji Sugawara is a little on the stolid side, but was probably selected as much for his physical toughness – he was a 3rd dan in judo – as his acting ability. The film’s location photography is impressive and it certainly appears as if at least some of the climbing sequences were shot on location at Mount Hotaka in challenging conditions. 

Hitomi Nozoe

 

In the latter half of the film, Hitomi Nozoe has an important part as Kosaka’s sister. Any appearance by Nozoe is welcome in my view as she was an underrated actor, and her brilliant comic performance in Masumura’s Giants and Toys made that movie (and as we can see here, there was nothing wrong with her teeth!). Another actor who makes an impression is Kyu Sazanka, who uses every trick in the book to steal all of his scenes as Uoza’s boss. 

Kyu Sazanka

 

The Precipice was shot in Daiei’s briefly-adopted VistaVision process, with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, so it’s a little unusual in that respect as it was the 2.35:1 format that rapidly became standard in Japan around this time, replacing the old academy ratio of 1.33:1. Masumura and his cameraman Hiroshi Murai (who later shot Sword of Doom) use the VistaVision format to good effect here, pinning the characters down with clever blocking of scenes, with the camera closely following their every movement, and managing to squeeze in two or even three of the main characters at once when appropriate. 

 

The plot has its flaws, with one unlikely coincidence feeling especially unnecessary, but it’s such a well-made film that it remains worth watching, and the moving music by Akira Ifukube is a major asset. Inoue's story has proved a popular one in Japan and been remade for TV on a number of occasions.

Note on the title: The Japanese title translates as ‘Ice Wall’.

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

Goodbye, Hello / あなたと私の合言葉 さようなら、今日は / Anata to watashi no aikotoba sayōnara, konnichi wa (1959)

Obscure Japanese Film #61

L-R: Hitomi Nozoe, Shin Saburi, Ayako Wakao and Machiko Kyo

 

This comedy from Daiei studios stars Ayako Wakao as Kazuko, a modern young career woman working for Nissan Motors in Tokyo and living at home with her widowed father, Gosuke (Shin Saburi). Looking after him takes up much of her free time as he tends to come home drunk and is so useless in the kitchen that he can’t slice a lettuce without nearly severing a finger in the process. 

Hitomi Nozoe

 

Kazuko’s spoilt younger sister Michiko (Hitomi Nozoe) is no help in the house and is focusing on her new career as a flight stewardess. Kazuko has a fiancée, Hanjiro (Kenji Sugawara), but she seldom sees him as he is working in Osaka. The engagement is an arranged one and Kazuko’s heart is not really in it, so she decides to break it off. Her best friend, Umeko (Machiko Kyo), also lives in Osaka, where she runs a restaurant with her stepbrother, Torao (Eiji Funakoshi), who hopes one day to marry his stepsister. When Umeko comes to see Kazuko in Tokyo, Kazuko asks her to pay a visit to Hanjiro and cancel the engagement on her behalf, but when Umeko meets him, she falls for him herself. Meanwhile, Michiko has a crush on Tetsu (Hiroshi Kawaguchi), a young man who delivers the laundry and attends night school, but he is smitten with Kazuko, so it seems that everyone is in love with the wrong person…

Ayako Wakao

 

Were it not for some quirky humour typical of director Kon Ichikawa, this could easily pass for a Yasuzo Masumura film and covers similar themes to Masumura’s Beauty is Guilty released the same year and featuring much of the same cast. Both films are concerned with the new possibilities which were opening up for women in Japan at the time and both feature a modern, Westernised woman (played by Ayako Wakao) contrasted with a more traditional counterpart who dresses in Japanese clothes (Machiko Kyo here, Fujiko Yamamoto in Beauty is Guilty) .  

Machiko Kyo and Ayako Wakao

Goodbye, Hello is also something of a twist on the films of Ozu in which Setsuko Hara ponders whether to leave home and get married or stay and look after widowed father Chishu Ryu. The ending of this film subverts the expectations that audiences would have had from familiarity with Ozu’s pictures. 

 

Although it’s a minor work in the filmography of Kon Ichikawa, it’s certainly not without interest, especially as it features such a strong cast. Ayako Wakao and Machiko Kyo were paired by Daiei on quite a few occasions and clearly worked well together. 

Kenji Sugawara, Hiroshi Kawaguchi and Eiji Funakoshi making their best drinking faces

 

Hiroshi Kawaguchi is actually quite funny and likeable for a change; he married frequent co-star Hitomi Nozoe the following year. There’s even a brief appearance by a skinny young Jiro Tamiya right at the beginning (when he was still known by his real name, Goro Shibata). 

Jiro Tamiya (left)

 

The screenplay was co-written by Kon Ichikawa and his wife Natto Wada under their pen name of ‘Kurishitei’ in collaboration with Kazuo Funahashi. Some Japanese sources say that it had first appeared as a serialised novel. The Japanese title actually translates as The Password for You and I is ‘Goodbye, Hello’.

Watched without subtitles. 

DVD at Amazon Japan