The Naked Sun / 裸の太陽 / Hadaka no taiyo (1958)

Obscure Japanese Film #254

Shinjiro Ebara

Kimura (Shinjiro Ebara) is a young stoker on the railway saving up to marry Yukiko (Satomi Oka), His best friend, Maeda (Tatsuya Nakadai), also works for the railway but is an unhappy man with a reputation for skiving, drinking and gambling. When a colleague’s money goes missing, Maeda is the main suspect and the workers give him a beating until Kimura intervenes and stops it. Later, Maeda asks Kimura to lend him some money, but won’t say what for – Kimura at first refuses, then relents and hands all his savings over to Maeda. Yukiko is furious when she finds out and persuades Kimura that Maeda must have lost it all betting on the bicycle races…

Tatsuya Nakadai

Set in the fictional town of Haginomiya but shot in Utsunomiya, north of Tokyo, this Toei production is the only film to have been based on a novel by the obscure Kazutoshi Himuro. Adapted for the screen by the ubiquitous Kaneto Shindo, it was directed by Miyoji Ieki. Unlike many of Ieki’s better-known films, none of the main characters are children, but otherwise this is fairly typical of his oeuvre in being a work of leftist social realism shot on real locations. Something I don’t remember seeing before in an Ieki film, however, is an accomplished action scene like the one we get here when there’s a fault with the train and Kimura has to climb outside while it’s still moving in order to fix it.

Hitomi Nakahara and Satomi Oka

Toei contract player Shinjiro Ebara had played his first lead in Tadashi Imai’s Rice the year before and went on to marry his co-star, Hitomi Nakahara (aptly nicknamed ‘Bambi’), in 1960. She also appears here as Yukiko’s younger sister. In his hands, Kimura seems quite dull at first and perhaps the filmmakers realised that he was failing to make much of an impression – around 50 minutes in, there’s a scene in which, completely out of the blue, he bursts into a quite extraordinary solo a capella song and dance to which he adds frenzied percussion by slapping himself and anything else near at hand. This is followed by a scene in which he does something weird with his shirt and gives an impassioned speech at a meeting, none of which seemed thinkable from the Kimura featured in the film’s first half. Well, I guess at least nobody was going to accuse him of giving a boring performance after all that...

Less than a year away from stardom, Tatsuya Nakadai’s screen time is quite limited and he’s not yet the assured actor he would soon become as a result of working on The Human Condition. There’s a mystery about his character which is quite intriguing, but ultimately his role feels underwritten, although this may well be the only film in which you’ll see him break down and sob uncontrollably.

The Naked Sun was entered into the 1959 Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Youth Film Award for Best Feature Film Suitable for Young People. This is perhaps a little surprising considering that it was a West Berlin festival in those days and Naked Sun seems like a film that would have been more popular with the Communists in the Eastern sector. However, in this case the workers only grumble a bit about their pay and conditions and are generally shown as quite a cheerful and hard-working bunch.

Toshio Takahara

The film was ranked 5^th best of the year by Kinema Jumpo magazine, the top four being, respectively, Kinoshita’s The Ballad of Narayama, Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, Ozu’s Equinox Flower and Ichikawa’s Conflagration (also featuring Nakadai). I’m a little surprised to see it ranked so highly myself but, while I wouldn’t call the film a masterpiece, it’s certainly an interesting and likeable picture and not just for train buffs.

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

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Kanashiki kuchibue / 悲しき口笛 (‘Sad Whistling’, 1949)

Obscure Japanese Film #249

Hibari Misora

Mitsuko (Hibari Misora) is a homeless child who hangs around with the day labourers at the docks in the Sakuragicho district of Yokohama. They look after her and she keeps them entertained by singing, for which she has a remarkable talent. Mitsuko dresses as a boy, but it’s never explained whether this is simply because it was easier for her to get hold of boy’s clothes or for some other reason. However, she is soon adopted and dressed in girl’s clothes by a waitress named Kyoko (Keiko Tsushima) and her father, Osamu (Ichiro Sugai), a classical violinist reduced to busking to make a living.

Keiko Tsushima

Ichiro Sugai

Meanwhile, Mitsuko’s older brother, Kenzo (Yasumi Hara), a musician, has finally made it back to Yokohama after being posted overseas during the war and is searching for his sister but has also become involved in a smuggling racket. One night he runs into Osamu, who is extremely drunk and singing a song which Kenzo wrote but never published. Kenzo knows that Osamu could only have heard the song from Mitsuko, but Osamu is too intoxicated to provide any useful information. When Osamu subsequently goes blind as a result of drinking bootleg liquor containing methanol, Kyoko’s efforts to raise money to pay his medical bills result in her being forced into helping the same gang of smugglers that Kenzo is involved with...

Yasumi Hara

Although it lacks big Hollywood-style production numbers, this Shochiku production has enough songs that it certainly qualifies as a musical. It was based on a story by the prolific Toshihiko Takeda (1891-1961), whose work also provided the basis for Tomu Uchida’s Policeman (1933) and Hiroshi Shimizu’s Why Did These Women Become Like This? (1956). It was the third film to be directed by Miyoji Ieki, who would become known for films dealing with childhood, although this particular film has the feel of an assignment, and its main raison d’être was probably to function as a vehicle for singing prodigy Hibari Misora. She was 12 at the time but looks younger; it was her fifth film appearance but her first starring role. Here, she comes across as a sort of Japanese Shirley Temple, which might not be entirely by chance – its worth remembering that the film was produced during the occupation when filmmakers needed the approval of the American authorities. As well as Hibari’s singing, Keiko Tsushima – a trained dancer as well as actor – also gets to strut her stuff.

Kanashiki kuchibue is a contrived and sentimental tale but it’s quite well-made and lent a little interest due to its portrayal of a chaotic post-war world in which people are forced to do whatever they can to survive.

Hibari Misora

Sung by Hibari, the title song was released about a month before the movie and became a huge hit.

DVDat Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

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Sisters / 姉妹 / Kyodai (1955)

Obscure Japanese Film #197

Hitomi Nozoe and Hitomi Nakahara

 

Keiko (Hitomi Nozoe) and Toshiko (Hitomi Nakahara) are teenaged sisters whose family home is in the mountains close to a hydroelectric dam where their father (Akitake Kono) works. Their three younger brothers stay at home with their mother (Hiroko Kawasaki), but Keiko and Toshiko attend school in the city, so during term time they stay with aunt Otami (Yuko Mochizuki) and uncle Ginzaburo (Jun Tatara).  The relations get on well together, but Ginzaburo is prone to drinking, gambling and cavorting with geisha and Otami sometimes has to hide from creditors. At least Ginzaburo is preferable to their other uncle (Taiji Tonoyama), who beats his wife (Setsuko Shinobu). 

 

Yuko Mochizuki

 

As Keiko’s parents cannot afford to send her to university, they’re already looking for a match for her though she’s only 17. She likes power station worker Oka (Taketoshi Naito) despite his strange passion for dried squid, but his prospects are poor. The more tomboyish Toshiko is only 14 but already has a strong individualistic streak and equally strong opinions. Although the two girls are like chalk and cheese, they’re also unusually close, but seem fated to part sooner or later…  

 

Hitomi Nakahara

 

Shot mostly on location, this character-driven piece produced by the independent company Chuo Eiga has little plot, but plenty of comedy and tragedy in equal measure. Chuo Eiga was something of a haven for leftist filmmakers unable to get their projects accepted by the major studios. Sisters touches on some typical socialist concerns, such as the lay-offs of power station workers, but for the most part wears its politics lightly. The source was a semi-autobiographical 1954 novel by Fumi Kuroyanagi (1912-65), for whom the younger sister, Toshiko, was something of an alter ego. Perhaps for largely practical reasons, the setting has been changed from pre-war Niseko in Hokkaido to post-war Matsumoto in Nagano Prefecture. 

 

 

Director Miyoji Ieki (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Kaneto Shindo) was known for his films focusing on the difficulties faced by young people growing up, and Sisters is typical of his work. Although largely forgotten these days, there’s no doubt that Ieki qualifies as a true auteur due to the consistency of his theme and frequent input in the writing of his pictures. As usual, he elicits fine performances out of his young principals, although it should be noted that Hitomi Nakahara (also featured prominently in Ieki’s All My Children), who plays a 14-year-old most convincingly, was actually 19 at the time and, ironically, one year older than her namesake, Hitomi Nozoe, who plays her older sister. Ieki may not have been the most stylish of directors, but like his films Stepbrothers (1957), All My Children (1963) and The Wayside Pebble (1964), this is an intelligent, sensitive and genuinely moving piece of work.

 

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

 

 

 

All My Children / みんなわが子 / Minna waga ko (1963)

Obscure Japanese Film #53

 

Director Miyoji Ieki (1911-76) made something of a speciality out of films focusing on children; this film, along with Stepbrothers (1957) and The Wayside Pebble (1964), certainly suggests that he had a genuine affinity for the subject and is another sensitive portrayal of the trials and tribulations experienced by those in their formative years. In this case, the children are evacuees suffering from homesickness and hunger in the final days of the war.

Like fellow director Satsuo Yamamoto, Ieki was fired by a major studio in the late 1940s due to his left-wing sympathies and subsequently forced to rely on a combination of independent production and freelancing in order to continue his career. All My Children is an example of the former, which may be one reason for the lack of big names among the cast. However, Hitomi Nakahara (b.1936) was a star who had been under contract to Toei since her debut in 1954 and was here appearing in one of her final film roles for many years before switching to TV in 1964. As the children’s teacher, she has a doe-eyed, Audrey Hepburn-like quality that’s quite appealing. She’s the closest thing to a main character in the film – really it’s an ensemble piece with no plot to speak of. Instead, we have an episodic narrative which encompasses everything from a double suicide to a desperate second evacuation to a mountain village, but it holds the interest throughout thanks to Ieki’s excellent staging and attention to detail. 

Hitomi Nakahara

 

I suspect that this film provides a pretty accurate portrayal of what it must have been like for such children and their teachers at the time, especially as the screenplay by former Kurosawa collaborator Keinosuke Uekasa (One Wonderful Sunday, Drunken Angel) was ‘based on the Gekkohara Elementary School volume of A Record of School Children Evacuations’. Indeed, several moments called to mind Tatsuya Nakadai’s description of his wartime childhood, such as the fact that the children were so hungry that they resorted to eating toothpaste while, early on in the film, we see them being trained how to kill American soldiers with bamboo spears. All My Children provides a sobering spectacle in showing us the extent to which the right-wing military had gained control of the country and been largely successful in brainwashing the citizens, costing countless innocent lives and almost destroying the country in the process. The film avoids cheap sentimentality for the most part and, just when it threatens to end on a maudlin note, Ieki deftly subverts our expectations with a final scene in which the resilience of the children provides a lesson for their teachers.

Finally, the music: Sei Ikeno’s harpsichord soundtrack may be an odd choice, but it works better than you might expect. 

 

Stepbrothers / 異母兄弟 / Ibo kyoudai (1957)

 Obscure Japanese film #23

Kido (Rentaro Mikuni) with his two eldest boys.

Covering a period of 25 years, Stepbrothers begins in 1921 as we see a military officer returning home on horseback. Upon being greeted by his servant, he dismounts and slaps the poor fellow so hard that he knocks him down. This introduction to Hantaro Kido provides an accurate first impression of a character who is to remain entirely unambiguous. Indeed, Kido proves to be not only an arrogant bully, but a humourless bore to boot. Who better to play him, then, than Rentaro Mikuni, an actor never afraid to be unsympathetic and who even seemed to revel in such roles.

Kinuyo Tanaka in a highly symbolic shot.

Kido has two nasty young sons who are chips off the old block and a terminally ill wife who has left him sexually frustrated. When a new maid arrives in the form of Rie (Kinuyo Tanaka), she’s barely begun work before he rapes her in the stable, and his wife passes away soon after. After learning that Rie is pregnant with his child, Kido initially plans to kick her out, but his superior officer hears about the pregnancy and asks him what he plans to do to avoid a scandal. Purely to impress the commander, he says he will marry Rie, and the unfortunate woman is doomed to a life of near-slavery as she has no other options. Another son, Tomohide, soon follows, and both her children are continually treated with contempt by their stepbrothers, although a scene in which one of the elder boys watches Rie laughing and having fun with her two young ones makes it clear that a degree of jealousy is involved. As the years pass, the Second World War begins and the focus of the narrative moves on to the teenage Tomohide (Katsuo Nakamura, who later played Hoichi the Earless in Kwaidan), the only boy in the family who has no wish to be a soldier. Tomohide falls in love with a maid, Haru (Hizuru Takachiho), but she is kicked out by Kido for singing and sold into prostitution (evidently, this was still happening in Japan as late as the 1940s).

Hizuru Takachiho and Katsuo Nakamura.

Like the young hero of the only other film I’ve seen directed by Miyoji Ieki, The Wayside Pebble (1964), Tomohide’s life is ruined as a result of living in an oppressive, semi-feudal, patriarchal society. The characters are as black and white as the images themselves, and perhaps it might have been preferable to make them a little more complex, but then again this may have diluted the strength of Ieki’s message that a society founded on such values is ultimately destructive for all involved.

Rentaro Mikuni

Kinuyo Tanaka is too old for her role in the early stages, but her casting makes more sense as the years pass. Her appearance remains the same, while Mikuni gradually transforms into a decrepit old git as he would also do in Satsuo Yamamoto’s Ballad of the Cart-Puller a couple of years later. The organ music by Kon Ichikawa favourite Yasushi Akutagawa has a very churchy feel and seems a strange choice, but then again Stepbrothers is certainly a solemn piece of work.

The film is based on a then recently-published novel of the same title by Torahiko Tamiya (1911-88), while the screenplay is co-written by Kenji Mizoguchi’s regular collaborator Yoshikata Yoda (who also wrote the screenplay for the aforementioned Ballad of the Cart-Puller) and the lesser-known Nobuyoshi Teruda. Stepbrothers shared the main prize at Czechoslovakia’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival with Sergei Gerasimov’s epic And Quiet Flows the Don.