When the Cookie Crumbles / 砂糖菓子が壊れるとき / Satogashi ga kowareru toki (1967)

Obscure Japanese Film #262

Ayako Wakao

with Takashi Shimura

Kyoko (Ayako Wakao) is a young model who allows herself to be photographed nude in order to pay her mentally-ill mother’s hospital bills. She subsequently attracts the attention of elderly film studio head Kudo (Takashi Shimura), who offers her a movie deal. He also wants to marry her, but to her he’s just a father figure; nevertheless, she’s devastated when he dies. She then goes on to have relationships with a young reporter (Masahiko Tsugawa) and a university professor (Eiji Funakoshi) before marrying a baseball star (Jun Fujimaki), and later a bespectacled, pipe-smoking writer (Takahiro Tamura). Kyoko’s relationships never seem to work out as each of the men is smitten by her looks rather than the person within. Failing to find the emotional fulfilment she craves, she becomes increasingly unstable and develops an addiction to sleeping pills…

Masahiko Tsugawa

Eiji Funakoshi

Jun Fujimaki

Takahiro Tamura

This Daiei production was based on a 1966 novel by Ayako Sono (1931-2025), a right-wing Christian whose work also provided the basis for Masahiro Shinoda’s Epitaph to My Love (1961) and a few other films; it was adapted by Sugako Hashida (1925-2021), probably Japan’s most successful female writer of TV drama. The story was based on the life of Marilyn Monroe, and it’s not hard to figure out which characters are Japanese versions of Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller. Admittedly, the idea of Ayako Wakao in effect playing Marilyn Monroe is intriguing if only for its weirdness, but the film proves to be less interesting than it sounds and Wakao’s breathy performance is not one of her best. The problem is that she’s required to be extremely sensitive and over-emotional in practically every scene, which soon becomes tiresome, while there’s too much repetition in seeing her stumble from one unsuitable relationship to another, rendering it largely ineffective as drama. It does, however, provide plenty of opportunities to display the star in an endless array of outfits, not to mention sporting every variety of haircut you can imagine bar an actual skinhead or peroxide job. In other words, it’s another of Daiei’s Ayako Wakao fashion parade / costume-change pics, which seemed to be a bankable formula for them at the time.

It may seem surprising that this film was directed by the leftist Tadashi Imai, but he’d been struggling to find film work and stuck in the doldrums of television for the previous couple of years. When Joan Mellen – who had published a feminist biography of Monroe in 1973 – questioned him about it in her interview with Imai for her 1975 book Voices from the Japanese Cinema, he had this to say:

“I was asked to make the film by Daiei. ...I am one of those Japanese directors who cannot afford to make only the films I want to make, so I accepted. In some respects I enjoyed making it, but it is not a film I really want to talk about. … Directors in Japan are not very wealthy and often they have to do films they don’t especially like.”

Indeed, there was nothing I could see that marked the film out as a Tadashi Imai picture, but at least it enabled him to resume his cinema career even if his best work was behind him.

A note on the title:

Although When the Cookie Crumbles seems to be the official English title, the English expression is more usually 'that's the way the cookie crumbles', which is used in a similar way to 'c'est la vie' when you have to accept the inevitable. The Japanese title translates more literally as 'the moment the sugar candy breaks', which I think does not mean quite the same thing, and it’s pretty clear that the ‘sugar candy’ in question is Kyoko / Marilyn.

Watched without subtitles.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

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Towering Waves / 波の塔 / Nami no to (1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #221

 

Ineko Arima and Masahiko Tsugawa

 

Wakako (Miyuki Kuwano), the daughter of corporation director and ministerial candidate Tazawa (Hiroshi Nihonyanagi), meets Onogi (Masahiko Tsugawa) by chance while exploring an ancient dwelling in Kamisuwa in Nagano Prefecture. Although she’s attracted to him, they go their separate ways and she assumes they’ll never meet again. However, sometime later she runs into him while he’s in the company of Yoriko (Ineko Arima), but Wakako is unsure about the nature of their relationship.

 

Miyuki Kuwano

 

It turns out that Yoriko and Onogi have been having an affair since they met by chance while watching a Russian theatre troupe perform The Lower Depths. When Onogi noticed that Yoriko, who happened to be sitting next to him, looked like she was going to vomit during the performance, Onogi – perhaps happy for an excuse to  leave – escorted her out, and their relationship began. 

 

Koji Nanbara and Kyoko Kishida

 

Yoriko is unhappily married to Yuki (Koji Nanbara), a political fixer who’s having multiple affairs of his own, including one with Hideko (Kyoko ‘Woman in the Dunes’ Kishida). Given that Onogi is a junior prosecutor, it’s no surprise that he ends up investigating Yuki in relation to a corruption case, and it just so happens that Wakako’s father is also involved, thereby guaranteeing much hand-wringing and misery for everybody involved…

 

Hiroshi Nihonyanagi

 

This Shochiku production was based on a novel by Seicho Matsumoto published the same year and contains so many unlikely coincidences that it should have received some kind of booby prize for Most Contrived Plot. However, the book was a best-seller in Japan and was also adapted for TV no fewer than eight times. It was also said to have been responsible for making the Aokigahara Forest at the base of Mount Fuji a popular suicide spot. 

 

Ineko Arima

 

One expects better from director Noboru Nakamura, best known these days for The Shape of Night (1964), which also starred Miyuki Kuwano, although it’s the underrated Ineko Arima who’s the top-billed star here. Unfortunately, they’re both wasted in this, as are the rest of a mostly strong cast that also includes talented character actors Sadako Sawamura (as Wakako’s mother) and Ko Nishimura (as a slippery lawyer). There are some nice shots here and there, but overall this is easily the least impressive of the nine Nakamura films I’ve seen so far.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

Thanks to A.K.

Rats of the Town / 江戸の小鼠たち / Edo no koizumi tachi / (‘Little Rats of Edo’, 1957)

 

Masahiko Tsugawa

 

1832. Jirokichi (Masahiko Tsugawa) is an angry young man living in a tenement in Edo (now Tokyo) at a time when poverty is widespread and corruption is rife. His namesake, the real-life thief Jirokichi (better-known as Nezumi Kozo, or ‘Rat Boy’)* has just been executed. Like many young men, Jirokichi idolises him as a sort of Robin Hood-figure who helped the poor and continually outsmarted The Man.  Unfortunately, his attempts to emulate his hero tend to cause trouble for his fellow tenement-dwellers, and he receives no parental guidance as his mother is dead, while his father (Akitake Kono) is unemployed and gambles away what little money they have. 

 

Izumi Ashikawa

 

The girl next door, Okin (Izumi Ashikawa), works at a teahouse and, to Jirokichi’s annoyance, is courted by a young samurai, Kakusaburo (Hiroyuki Nagato). Jirokichi picks a fight with him and wins, after which the two become friends. Some local yakuza who witnessed the fight decide to employ Jirokichi. Despite the fact that he had previously fought against the yakuza when he saw them ripping off the poor, he’s now happy to work for The Man as the other tenement-dwellers have come to see him as a troublemaker and turned against him. Only Okin still believes in him as she remembers all the times he protected her when she was a young girl…

 

Hiroyuki Nagato

 

This Nikkatsu production was based on a then newly-published novel by Genzo Murakami, a specialist in samurai tales. The two young male stars, Masahiko Tsugawa (17) and Hiroyuki Nagato (23), were not only brothers, but were also both associated with so-called ‘sun tribe’ pictures – Tsugawa with Crazed Fruit and Nagato with Season in the Sun (both 1956). Although this film is by no means a ‘sun tribe’ jidaigeki (period drama), it’s obvious that it was made to appeal to the youth market. 

 

 

Directed by veteran Taizo Fuyushima, who made Joshu karasu (see my review for more on him), like that film, this one is very well-made and entertaining with quite a lot of humour if not a great deal of depth, and also features some excellent cinematography, in this case by Shohei Imamura favourite Shinsaku Himeda. Transposed to another era, Jirokichi is akin to the typical nihilistic young rebel of post-war Japan who felt let down by the older generation (represented by here by his worse than useless father), but the light, conventional tone of the ending negates any impact the film might have had. 

Watched with dodgy subtitles.  

*This historical figure became the hero of various kabuki plays, novels and motion pictures in Japan; of the latter, Daisuke Ito’s Jirokichi the Rat (1931) is the most notable.

Nikkatsu DVD (no subtitles) 

 

 

A Portrait of Shunkin / 春琴抄 / Shunkinsho (1976)

Obscure Japanese Film #154

Momoe Yamaguchi

 

Doshomachi, Osaka, early Meiji era (c.1870s). Okoto (Momoe Yamaguchi), the youngest daughter of the wealthy owner of a wholesale medicine company, has lost her sight due to a childhood illness. She takes a liking to Sasuke (Tomokazu Miura), a young apprentice employed by her father, and soon he is the only person she will allow to escort her to her music lessons and help her with other tasks. Okoto becomes proficient at playing the instrument whose name she shares (the koto, the ‘O’ being a polite prefix), inspiring the devoted Sasuke to take up the more humble samisen, which he practises in secret. 

Tomokazu Miura

 

Initially, Sasuke gets into trouble for being more concerned with looking after Okoto and learning music than he is about learning the trade. However, Okoto has become extremely stubborn and difficult to deal with since losing her sight, so her parents decide to release Sasuke from his normal duties and allow him to be Okoto’s full-time companion – even paying for him to have music lessons from Okoto’s teacher – in the hope that this will soothe her anger and improve her character.  Meanwhile, Okoto’s beauty has led to her attracting the attention of wealthy playboy Minoya (Masahiko Tsugawa), who begins laying plans to seduce her… 

Yamaguchi with Masahiko Tsugawa

 

Later in the story, Okoto becomes a music teacher herself and takes the name of Shunkin, hence the title. Junichiro Tanizaki’s 1933 novella of the same name (available in a good English translation in the collection Seven Japanese Tales) was first filmed in 1935 by Yasujiro Shimazu in a version starring Kinuyo Tanaka. At the time, talking pictures were still relatively new in a Japan which was lagging a few years behind Hollywood in this department. As the story features both music and birdsong quite prominently, it must have seemed a good choice by which to exploit the possibilities of the new sound medium. Other versions followed: in 1954, Daisuke Ito directed Machiko Kyo as Okoto, while in 1961 Teinosuke Kinugasa made a third version starring Fujiko Yamamoto. Up to this point, each film had featured a big female star, with the role of Sasuke being played by a more minor male co-star. Kaneto Shindo broke this pattern in 1972 with his version, entitled Sanka (‘Hymn’), which featured the unknown Tokuko Watanabe in the role. Shindo also restored the novella’s framing device, which uses a first-person narrator visiting the graves of Okoto and Sasuke and meeting their former maid – now an old woman – whom he persuades to tell him their story. In Sanka, Shindo himself plays the narrator, while his mistress Nobuko Otowa takes the role of the maid, so it seems likely that Shindo followed the book in this regard mainly to provide a role for Otowa, who was too old to play Okoto. 

 

Given that Okoto continues to treat Sasuke like a servant even after they become lovers and is often cruel to him, Tanizaki’s story can equally be interpreted as a story of how Sasuke’s unwavering devotion represents the ideal of true love, or as a story about the perfect sado-masochistic relationship. Unlike the previous film versions, Shindo’s very much emphasizes the latter reading, even going so far as to have Sasuke reverently burying his mistress’s shit in the garden every day – a detail not present in the book. However, considering that Tanizaki’s title was not Okoto and Sasuke but A Portrait of Shunkin, it’s also possible that his main concern was to provide a character study of a woman whose sense of pride means that she absolutely refuses to behave like a victim and for that reason would rather be thought cruel than allow anyone to feel sorry for her. 

 

Made just four years later, director Katsumi Nishikawa’s 1976 version – the fifth – returns to the more conventional interpretation of the tale as a tragic love story, with a screenplay co-written by Nishikawa and Teinosuke Kinugasa, who had directed the 1961 version. A lot of care evidently went into the making of this one, and it’s very pretty to look at. Its raison d’etre was clearly to provide a vehicle for stars Momoe Yamaguchi and Tomokazu Miura. Yamaguchi – who first came to fame as a 13-year-old pop singer in 1972 – was such a phenomenon in Japan in the 1970s that she even has a chapter devoted to her in Mark Schilling’s Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture. Her first major film part was in a version of another oft-filmed literary work, Yasunari Kawabata’s The Izu Dancer in 1974, the first of seven films for director Katsumi Nishikawa but also, more significantly, the first of 12 features in which she co-starred with Tomokazu Miura. The two soon became known as the ‘golden combination’, and were married in 1980, at which point Yamaguchi retired from show business to become a full-time wife and mother but continued to be hounded by both the media and her obsessive fans. 

 

Yamaguchi and Miura give decent performances in A Portrait of Shunkin, as do the rest of the cast, and it’s a well-made film. However, with Masaru Sato’s syrupy music ladled all over the soundtrack, I found its pretty sentimentality a bit cloying for my taste and prefer Shimazu’s early attempt or even Shindo’s more eccentric take on the story. 

DVD at Amazon Japan

English subtitles