Daikon to ninjin / 大根と人参 / (‘Radishes and Carrots’, 1965)

 

Chishu Ryu

 

 

 

Yamaki (Chishu Ryu) is a typical middle-aged salaryman who has worked his way up into a comfortable senior management position. He’s been married to Nobuyo (Nobuko Otowa) for 28 years, has four adult daughters and is a creature of habit who rarely deviates from his daily routine. As his younger brother and subordinate co-worker Kosuki (Hiroyuki Nagato) says, he’s ‘as ordinary as radishes and carrots’. 

 

Hiroyuki Nagato and Nobuko Otowa

However, problems begin to pile up – a friend (Kinzo Shin) has cancer but hasn’t been told, Kosuki has embezzled money from the company and is expecting Yamaki to bail him out, and he’s been getting into increasingly aggressive arguments with his best friend, Suzuka (Isao Yamagata), to whose son his youngest daughter (Mariko Kaga) is sngaged. 

 

Isao Yamagata

Mariko Kaga

One day, his family are shocked when he fails to return from work. Unbeknownst to them, he’s gone off to Osaka, where he becomes involved with a cheerful call girl (Miyuki Kuwano) and her eccentric pimp (Daisuke Kato), who also has a Chinese medicine business he wants Yamaki to come in on with him…

 

Miyuki Kuwano

 

Daisuke Kato

This Shochiku comedy features an all-star cast which also includes Ineko Arima, Mariko Okada and Yoko Tsukasa as Yamaki’s other three daughters as well as Ryo Ikebe and Shima Iwashita, although some of these big names (especially Ikebe) are given precious little to do. At the beginning of the film, we’re presented with statistics informing us that over 80, 000 people go missing per year in Japan – a phenomenon which seems an odd topic for comedy. The film originated from an idea by Yasujiro Ozu, no less, who took his inspiration from a short story by Ryunosuke Akutagawa entitled ‘Yamagamo’, which centres around a quarrel between two old friends, and worked up a treatment with his regular collaborator Kogo Noda which remained unfinished. It seems likely that the theme of a man who goes missing was added later by credited screenwriters Yoshio Shirasaka and Minoru Shibuya, the latter of whom directed the film (his penultimate feature). 

 

Nobuko Otowa and Mariko Okada

 

Shima Iwashita

Although this is actually the first film I’ve seen by Shibuya, he was known for somewhat cynical comedies and it’s clear that Daikon to ninjin  is far closer to his usual style than it is to Ozu’s. In fact, one of the pleasures of the film is seeing its unlikely lead, Chishu Ryu, send up all those ‘perfect father’ roles he played for Ozu over the years. There’s also some surprisingly frank sexual dialogue that would not have been found in an Ozu picture. While Yamaki’s disappearance is not really given sufficient motivation, and the film does seem a rather messy, cobbled-together affair, it remains quite entertaining and likeable, and certainly worth a watch for anyone with an affection for the Japanese actors of the era.

Thanks to A.K. 

 

Snow Country / 雪国 / Yukiguni (1965)

Obscure Japanese Film #198

 

Shima Iwashita

 

Yasunari Kawabata’s novel Snow Country began to appear in fragmented chapters in 1935, but was not published in its final form until 1948. Set in the mid-1930s at a hot spring resort somewhere in the mountains in the west of Japan’s main island, Honshu, it concerns Shimamura, a writer who rather absurdly writes about Western dancing despite never having witnessed a performance. A married man and father with a certain amount of independent wealth, he’s an idler who travels to the resort alone and meets Komako, a young woman whose company the innkeeper arranges as all of the town’s geisha are already booked for a big party. The two are quickly attracted to one another – Komako  falls for him a little too hard, although Shimamura is more reserved and has no intention of leaving his wife. Still, after returning home from his trip, he finds himself unable to forget Komako and returns to see her on two further occasions, by which time she has become a full-fledged geisha. Shimamura also becomes interested in Yoko, a young woman with whom Komako has an uneasy relationship due to their mutual connection to Yukio, a young man dying of tuberculosis who had been Komako’s childhood friend, possibly fiancée, and is now being cared for by Yoko…

 

Isao Kimura

 

Snow Country was first filmed in 1957 by director Shiro Toyoda for Toho with Keiko Kishi as Komako, Ryo Ikebe as Shimamura and Kaoru Yachigusa as Yoko. This Shochiku version directed by Hideo Oba a mere eight years later is by no means a carbon copy. Most obviously, whereas the earlier film was shot in academy ratio black and white and ran 143 minutes, this film is in colour and widescreen and (mercifully) runs 21 minutes shorter. Oba’s reputation is considerably less distinguished than Toyoda’s – probably rightly so – but in some respects his film does manage to improve on the previous one. 

 

 

As played by Keiko Kishi, Komako came across as childish, over-emotional and actually quite annoying, her mood changing by the minute, whereas Shima Iwashita somehow manages to avoid the pitfalls of playing Kawabata’s heroine, making her appeal for Shimamura much more understandable (although why she should be drawn to him so much is less clear). The music is also an improvement – there was way too much of it in Toyoda’s film, and the quality was also poor, but Naozumi Yamamoto’s superior score is used more sparingly and effectively even if it is occasionally on the syrupy side. 

 

 

On the other hand, as Shimamura, Isao Kimura (a respected actor but not a big star), lacks Ryo Ikebe’s charisma and makes little impression, while Toyoda’s snowscapes were more visually arresting even without the benefit of colour and widescreen. The underwritten character of Yoko is a thankless role in both films, but I felt that Kaoru Yachigusa managed it better than Mariko Kaga does here. Incidentally, Chieko Naniwa – who played the head maid in the earlier picture – somehow managed to get herself cast again here, this time playing the blind masseur. 

 

Mariko Kaga

 

Like the novel, Toyoda began his film with Shimamura’s second visit before flashing back to the first, while Oba has opted for a chronological timeline and also added a little narration from Shimamura which works well. Toyoda had found it more convenient to make Shimamura a painter, while Oba retains the character’s occupation as described by Kawabata, but adds a scene with Shimamura’s wife (played by Kaneko Iwasaki), who is only spoken about in both the book and the first film. One aspect that both films have in common is to resolve some of the ambiguity of the novel, in which it’s never really clear whether Shimamura and Komako sleep together or whether Yoko survives the climactic fire – both filmmakers strongly imply that the relationship is consummated and clarify the fate of Yoko. The two films both have their strengths and weaknesses and it will be a matter of personal opinion which one is preferred, but in my view Kawabata’s famous work is not terribly well-suited to film adaptation. 

 

 

In regard to Hideo Oba, a director best-known for his What’s Your Name? trilogy (1953-54), but still obscure to most, I suspect that his previously-reviewed film The Invisible Wall (1958) was a random assignment that did not especially interest him, whereas this was a project he at least put his heart into even if it’s no masterpiece. Like the other four films I’ve seen by him, it’s well made but not particularly inspired, original or individual. It was his sixtieth film out of the 64 he would direct and his final screenplay credit out of 14, as well as his fourth of five films with star Shima Iwashita, and it’s fans of Iwashita who are likely to find this film most rewarding.

Unfortunately, the colour photography did not look its best on the rather low-res copy I watched. 

 

 DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

The Time of Reckoning / 不信のとき / Fushin no toki (1968)

Obscure Japanese Film #128

Jiro Tamiya and Ayako Wakao

Asai (Jiro Tamiya) is an artist who designs advertising posters for a printing company owned by Koyonagi (Masao Mishima). As a loyal subordinate, Asai sometimes accompanies his boss on his frequent excursions to the red light district. On one such occasion, Koyonagi becomes smitten with a naïve young newcomer, Mayumi (Mariko Kaga), and decides not only to make her his mistress but to persuade her to have his baby. Unfortunately, Mayumi turns out to be not only stupid and vulgar but stubborn and wilful to boot. Meanwhile, Asai becomes involved with bar hostess Machiko (Ayako Wakao), who knows that he is married but wants to have his baby and promises not to be a homewrecker. Asai’s wife is Michiko (Mariko Okada), a calligraphy teacher who appears unable to have children herself. Asai begins to find it increasingly complicated to continue satisfying the diverging demands of his job, his wife and his mistress…

Mariko Okada

The director of this film, Tadashi Imai, was one of Japan’s most critically-acclaimed film directors. However, after making Revenge in 1964, his opportunities to helm feature films dried up for a while as the industry as a whole was suffering an economic downturn, mainly due to so many people having recently bought TV sets, initially to watch the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. As a result, Imai spent a couple of years making television dramas before returning to film work by directing the Ayako Wakao vehicle When the Sugar Candy Breaks (Satogashi ga kowareru toki, 1967) for Daiei. Wakao herself had recently had a success with The Wife of Seishu Hanaoka (1967), based – like The Time of Reckoning – on a novel by Sawako Ariyoshi, while her co-star in this picture, Mariko Okada, had previously scored a hit with another film based on an Ariyoshi novel, The Scent of Incense (1964) and also been successfully teamed (or pitted against) Wakao in Two Wives (1967). The Time of Reckoning, then, exists not as a project initiated by Imai, but as a vehicle for Daiei’s stars, Wakao and Okada, as well as Jiro Tamiya and Mariko Kaga. Personally, I detected little trace of the earlier Imai in this film, which he seems to have approached purely as a job of work – it looks in every respect like a typical Daiei drama which could have been made by any one of their stable of directors.

This is the film which got Jiro Tamiya not only fired by Daiei, but blacklisted by the film industry when he had the temerity to complain about his billing below the three female stars despite the fact that he was clearly playing the lead role. This over-the-top reaction by the studio seems almost feudalistic, and I doubt they did themselves any favours as they lost not only a talented actor, but a popular film star. Tamiya’s character in this film is actually less of a scheming shit than those he often played – indeed, it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for him here despite the fact that he’s no saint. 

 

Mariko Okada

For her part, Mariko Okada is excellent as usual, but makes slightly less of an impact than the other two female stars simply because her role gives her fewer opportunities.

 

Masao Mishima and Mariko Kaga

The other Mariko, Mariko Kaga, is pretty funny playing a brainless bimbo who nevertheless has a mind of her own (an oxymoron with the emphasis on ‘moron’?), but it’s Wakao who really shines here. Although her character is for the most part quite placid, there are a couple of scenes in which she becomes emotional where you can see that Wakao is not merely ‘acting’, she’s really feeling it, as you can tell by the fact that you can even see her face visibly colouring at one point. 

 

Perhaps that’s the main reason why she won the 1969 Kinema Jumpo Award for Best Actress for this film, House of Wooden Blocks and One Day at Summer’s End. I should also mention that there’s a nice cameo from the Woman in the Dunes herself, Kyoko Kishida.

Kyoko Kishida

With an easy listening jazz muzak score and an absence of any major tragedies, the tone of the film leans more towards comedy than drama, although it’s seldom laugh-out-loud funny.  Instead, it opts for a similar gentle irony to that of the recently-reviewed Furin, another film in which the women get the better of a man who thinks he’s got his two-timing arranged perfectly. Things get pretty complicated and confusing towards the end and then the film finishes with an odd little non-ending (that I actually rather liked). It’s quite an enjoyable journey, but this is one film that will be best appreciated by fans of the stars rather than the director.

Mariko Kaga

 

Bonus trivia: There have been four TV versions, including a 1968 one with Keiju Kobayashi in the Tamiya role and a 1984 one with Mariko Kaga switching roles to play Michiko. There was also a 1969 stage version starring Keiju Kobayashi in which Mariko Okada switched roles to play Machiko.

Note on the title: The Japanese title translates more accurately as ‘Time of Distrust.’

Thanks to A.K.