Kagero ezu / かげろう絵図 (‘The Dragonfly Motif’, aka ‘Stop the Old Fox’, 1959)

Obscure Japanese Film #281

Osamu Takizawa

The 11^th year of the Tenpo era (1840). Sekio Nakano (Osamu Takizawa) is a senior retainer and trusted advisor to Ienari Tokugawa (Eijro Yanagi), the retired shogun, who remains the most powerful of the Tokugawas despite having been succeeded by his son, Ieyoshi (Ichiro Izawa). Nakano is also the adoptive father of Ienari’s senior concubine, Omiyo-no-kata (Michiyo Kogure). When Ienari impregnates the younger lady-in-waiting, Otaki-no-kata (Hiroko Yajima), Nakano arranges for her to have an accident leading to a miscarriage so as not to threaten Omiyo’s position, but when Otaki also dies as a result, the young maid Tomi (Fujiko Yamamoto), who had helped set up the accident, is promoted to take her place.

Michiyo Kogure

Tomi has an identical sister, Toyoharu (also played by Fujiko Yamamoto), who lives with young samurai Shinnosuke (Raizo Ichikawa), who is rather lazy but an expert swordsman. Living next door to him is Ryoan, a friendly, saké-loving doctor (Takashi Shimura), who is called to the castle to examine lady-in-waiting Kikukawa (Michiko Ai) and discovers she’s pregnant. As no men are permitted to enter the Ooku (inner chambers of the palace), this could cause a scandal, so Nakano orders a cover up. Ryoan’s life is now in danger, and Shinnosuke comes to his defence...

Raizo Ichikawa

Most Japanese online reviewers seem to regard this Daiei production as a disappointment, and in general it’s not hard to see why – with a talky and confusing first half, it feels like it takes ages to get anywhere, while eventually ending abruptly with nothing resolved. It was based on a novel by Seicho Matsumoto – better known for his contemporary crime dramas – which was not yet finished and was still in the process of being serialised in the Tokyo Shinbun when the film went into production. Half an hour longer than most Daiei films and helmed by a prestigious director (Teinosuke Kinugasa, whose 1953 film Gate of Hell had been a prize-winning international success), it was planned as the first part of a grand trilogy, but the sequels were never made. According to one online commentator, this was due to objections from Matsumoto, who was displeased with the first film, though on its release Kinema Junpo stated that the opening weekend had been ‘somewhat disappointing’, so this may well have been another factor.

Takashi Shimura

The film was heavily promoted as a vehicle for Daiei’s popular stars Raizo Ichikawa and Fujiko Yamamoto, whose 16^th film this was together, yet Ichikawa is entirely absent for the first 35 minutes and the main protagonist actually seems to be the bald villain Nakano, who was presumably the ‘old fox’ of the film’s silly English title. Unfortunately, as played by the stage-trained Osamu Takizawa – once acclaimed for playing Willy Loman in a theatre production of Death of a Salesman – Nakano is too one-dimensional to be terribly interesting. And although Yamamoto plays two roles, she was hardly an actor known for her versatility, so there’s little discernible difference between the two Yamamotos.

Fujiko Yamamoto x2

Having said all that, there’s actually quite a bit to enjoy here, and things do pick up a bit halfway, with more exterior scenes and more action. Kinugasa’s direction is elegant and makes the most of the excellent art direction and colour cinematography (although everything looked oddly pale and beige in the copy I watched, so I had to tweak the colour settings to make it look its best). The music score by Mizoguchi / Naruse favourite Ichiro Saito veers from bombastic to so subtle it’s almost subliminal, but always helps to heighten the sometimes underpowered drama. On a purely aesthetic level, then, I’d call this one a success and say that the flaws are mostly with the story.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

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The Sharks / 鮫 / Samé (1964)

Obscure Japanese Film #272

Kinnosuke Nakamura 

The late Muromachi period, c.1467, the beginning of the Onin War. Samé, or ‘Shark boy’ (Kinnosuke Nakamura), is a young shark fisherman who lives as an outcast near a fishing village on the Echizen coast. As itinerants, his family are not accepted by the villagers and he is forced to hand over his catch every day and accept the scraps they allow him to keep for himself. When hostility towards the itinerants increases, their huts are burned and Samé’s mother (Akiko Kazami) killed, so he and an itinerant elder (Yoshi Kato) decide to head for the capital (Kyoto) on foot in search of a better future. 

Yoshi Kato

However, the old man falls ill and passes away en route, after which Samé hooks up with a middle-aged woman (Michiyo Kogure) making the same journey alone. She has a mysterious supply of meat which keeps them going but, horrified to discover that it’s actually human flesh, Samé abandons her and continues on his own.

Michiyo Kogure

Minoru Chiaki

It’s a time of widespread famine, and Samé turns to stealing in order to survive. He’s taken under the wing of Shirasawa (Minoru Chiaki), a one-armed criminal with a black mark on his face, who teaches Samé to be more ambitious in his thievery and even encourages him to kill. Inevitably, the pupil eventually turns on his master and, by the time Samé has become a fully-fledged adult, he’s a ruthless man indeed. 

Daisuke Kato 

He next joins a gang of mercenaries led by Genji of Chikushi (Daisuke Kato) in the hope of receiving not only wealth but a position of power in exchange for the heads he takes in battle. By this time, his willingness to commit evil seems to know no bounds, but when he tries to rape a nun (Yoshiko Mita), her unexpected reaction awakens his lost humanity.

Yoshiko Mita

Based on a best-selling, prize-winning two-part novel of the same name by Nobuhiko Matsugi (1932-2016) and adapted for the screen by director Tomotaka Tasaka’s regular collaborator Naoyuki Suzuki (who also frequently worked for Tomu Uchida), like many of Tasaka’s films, this is a lengthy one, clocking in at around 165 minutes. With former kabuki actor Kinnosuke Nakamura – one of the biggest stars of Japanese cinema at the time – in the lead role, it was a major production for Toei, so it’s surprising that it’s not better known, though this is likely because it was not an award winner and appears to have been out of circulation for many years. At the time, Kinema Junpo ranked it 17^th in the list of best films of 1964, and it was the third most successful of the year in terms of box office.

Nakamura

The film depends heavily on its star, Kinnosuke Nakamura, a talented actor but one who had a tendency to go over the top, which he certainly does here, with his maniacal laugh being overused in the later scenes. It might also have been better to cast a younger actor in the part of Samé as a boy – indeed, it took me a while to realise that the 32-year-old actor was playing a boy at the beginning. Regarding the other cast members, it’s as surprising to see Michiyo Kogure as a cannibal as it is predictable to see the cadaverous Jun Hamamura – who had already tasted ‘monkey meat’ in Fires on the Plain (1959) – desperate for a taste, but it’s the two Seven Samurai veterans, Minoru Chiaki and Daisuke Kato, who come off best as Nakamura’s two mentors of villainy.

Jun Hamamura

Like Nakamura, director Tasaka was left-leaning politically, and the film makes it very clear that Samé is driven to crime by poverty and the merciless feudal system. Although most of Samé’s actions are selfish ones, at one point he clearly takes sides when he attacks some men escorting stocks of rice, liberating the food not for his own benefit, but for all the starving poor to share. This scene is also an example of several complex action sequences involving numerous actors that Tasaka stages quite brilliantly. His usual cinematographer at the time, Masahiko Iimura, makes effective use of colour and widescreen, although I couldn’t help thinking that black and white would have suited such dark material better. There’s also a fitting score by one of Japan’s top film composers, Masaru Sato. However, well worth seeing though it is, I wouldn’t personally make any claims for this film as a lost masterpiece because I found it rather lacking in subtlety both in terms of story and performance, and I didn’t buy Samé’s rather corny religious redemption at the end.

Thanks to A.K.

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Yojohan monogatari: Shofu Shino / 四畳半物語 娼婦しの (‘Tale of the Four and a Half Mat Room: Prostitute Shino’, 1966)

Obscure Japanese Film #189

Takahiro Tamura and Yoshiko Mita

 

Shino (Yoshiko Mita) is an amateur geisha working under the name of O-Shige at a modest geisha house run by the money-loving Taneko (Michiyo Kogure), where she also lives. This means that she lacks the musical and dancing skills of a true geisha and simply sleeps with men for money – not because it’s the life she wanted to lead, but because she has taken it upon herself to pay off his father’s debts so that he can avoid prison. Shino is involved with Ryukichi (Shigeru Tsuyuguchi), who works informally as Taneko’s procurer, but he’s a lazy sponger, so she’s naturally not in love with him. 

 

Tamura, Mita and Tsuyuguchi

 

One day, Tadasu (Takahiro Tamura) visits the geisha house as a new client. Compared to most of her customers, he’s kind and gentle, and the two fall in love. However, being a former samurai reduced to pickpocketing, he can’t afford to buy her freedom. He resolves to go straight, but meanwhile Ryukichi becomes jealous of their relationship and begins plotting revenge… 

 

 

Like the previously-reviewed Cards Are My Life, this was one of just five films written and directed by Masashige Narusawa, who was more usually a screenwriter only. This one is an adaptation of a short story by Kafu Nagai first published in 1917 – a story which went on to have a controversial history when a second, pornographic version appeared and began to circulate on the black market. Nagai claimed that somebody else had added the explicit material without his knowledge, but many thought he had written it himself. After the later version was finally posthumously published in 1972, the magazine publisher responsible was taken to court and charged with obscenity. In any case, although Toei studios based their film on the earlier version, their choice of it as material was one of the tentative steps they were taking at the time to introduce more eroticism into their films as a means of competing with television, where such adult themes were not allowed. 

 

Yumiko Nogawa and Yoshiko Mita

 

As a film set in a single location, albeit with quite an elaborate exterior set as well as the interior one, this was also probably quite a cheap film to make, although it never looks it. Narusawa (who had studied under Mizoguchi) uses long takes with few close-ups and little cutting – a style I’ve always admired as I feel that it promotes naturalistic acting and makes the viewer feel less led by the nose than in the many films which frequently cut from one close-up to another. Cinematographer Juhei Suzuki – who shot 13 Assassins (1963) and Tales of the Inner Chambers (1968) – also deserves credit for his mobile camerawork, which enabled Narusawa to have only 39 cuts in the entire film.

 

 

On the other hand, the performances are adequate but not exceptional and the story is not terribly compelling, featuring as it does the types of characters and situations we’ve seen many times before. Narusawa retains the framing device used by Nagai (here featuring narration by a mostly-unseen Eijiro Tono), but I’m not sure it added much. The one really poor choice, though, is the easy-listening jazz score by Harumi Ibe, which just seems out of place in a Japanese period film, especially when the strummed guitar and accordion kick in, which lend a distinctly inappropriate French flavour to the proceedings!

Thanks to A.K. 

Junpaku no yoru / 純白の夜/ (‘Pure White Nights’, 1951)

Obscure Japanese Film #161

Michiyo Kogure

Ikuko (Michiyo Kogure) is a young woman happily married to Tsunehiko (Seizaburo Kawazu), a banker. At a party, she dances with one of his friends, Kusunoki (Masayuki Mori), a dapper businessman. Afterwards, she’s surprised to discover that Kusunoki has slipped a note into her bag confessing his love for her. Ikuko informs her husband, who finds the situation amusing and advises her to ignore it and carry on as if nothing has happened. However, Kusunoki proves to be persistent and Ikuko begins to develop feelings for him in spite of herself. 

Masayuki Mori

 

Meanwhile, Ikuko’s younger sister, Tsuyuko (Keiko Tsushima), wants to marry a penniless actor-playwright (Keiji Sada), but her mother (Sachiko Murase) won’t allow it and wants her to marry Tsunehiko’s colleague, Sawada (Kinzo Shin). Ikuko regards Sawada with contempt but, unfortunately for her, he finds out that she has been seeing Kusunoki behind her husband’s back. During a storm, he gets Ikuko drunk and uses his information to pressure Ikuko into sleeping with him…

Keiko Tsushima

 

This Shochiku production was the first ever film version of a Yukio Mishima novel. Junpaku no yoru was first published as a magazine serial the previous year and has yet to be translated into English. Although not regarded as one of his major works, it seems to have been more than a mere job to pay the rent, and Shochiku’s publicity quoted Mishima as saying the following:

Junpaku no yoru is my favourite of the works I wrote last year. Works that are too overtly ambitious can have a certain vulgarity about them, but this one has relatively little of that, which is probably why the author likes it so much. However, since it is a novel that focuses more on psychology than plot, when I heard about the possibility of making it into a movie, I wondered if it could actually be done. This is because psychological portrayal is one of the weakest points of film.

The last sentence of Mishima’s quote is especially relevant here – although the film is quite effective in communicating the thoughts of the characters via the facial expressions and gestures of the characters as well as the dialogue, it basically adds up to scene after scene of people talking in rooms, and director Hideo Oba is not always inventive enough in his direction to make this very interesting. It probably doesn’t help that none of the main characters are terribly sympathetic, and it seems implausible that Ikuko would give herself to someone as repellent as Sawada even while drunk on a stormy night. Kinzo Shin – surely one of the gauntest faces in cinema – gets one of his better roles here as the smirking, chuckling, leering Sawada, but (from what I could gather by reading a translated synopsis), the Sawada of the book seems to have been a more sympathetic, slightly comic character. 

Kinzo Shin

 

Incidentally, other differences from the book are that Kusonoki no longer has a sick wife, a younger sister to Ikuko and Tsuyuko has disappeared, and the character played in the film by a young Keiji Sada was portrayed in the novel as being a spoilt, jazz-obsessed playboy.

Keiji Sada

 

Like The Ball at the Anjo House (1947), this is one of those post-war Japanese films in which the characters seem to live like wealthy foreigners in big, Western-style houses and are highly cultured with an interest in European art. I wonder how many people in Japan really lived like that at the time or to what extent audiences could relate to such people – perhaps it was some kind of aspirational fantasy? 

Michiyo Kogure

 

This is one of four films directed by Hideo Oba that I’ve seen now, and so far it’s hard to see him as anything other than competent but undistinguished.

Supposedly, Mishima appears as an extra in the ball scene, but if you can spot him, you have a sharper eye than mine.