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.

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. 

 

The Last Trump Card / 最後の切札 / Saigo no kirifuda (1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #193

Keiji Sada

 

Tatsuno (Keiji Sada) is a clothing store owner who has an unusual side hustle – he pretends to be part of a ‘New Religion research group’ with his sidekick Yoshimura (Seiji Miyaguchi), and together they extort money from religious organisations by offering to save them from potential scandals (mostly created by Tatsuno) for a price. In other words, they are blackmailers, and their only motivation seems to be greed. As if this weren’t sleazy enough, Tatsuno also dabbles in a little pimping and procuring on the side, and is having affairs with multiple women including nightclub singer Sonoko (Miyuki Kuwano from The Shape of Night) and TV actress Tsuruko (Keiko Hibino), both of whom he treats with contempt… 

 

Miyuki Kuwano

 

Based on a 1957 novel entitled Niku no boku (‘Servant of the Flesh’ or ‘I am Flesh’) by Hideo Shirasaki (1920-92) and with a screenplay by Kurosawa regular Shinobu Hashimoto, this Shochiku production was directed by Yoshitaro Nomura, who had been an assistant to Kurosawa on Scandal (1950) and The Idiot (1951), and it features a whole host of character actors familiar from Kurosawa pictures, including Miki Odagiri (the girl from Ikiru), Jerry Fujio, Seiji Miyaguchi, Eijiro Yanagi, Taiji Tonoyama and Koji Mitsui. And just when you think Ko Nishimura’s not going to be in it, his macabre little face finally pops up to deliver the rather gruesome ending - it's the sort of role usually played by Michael Ripper in Hammer horror films. However, in my view screenwriter Hashimoto sometimes produced sub-par work when not undert the guidance of a really great director like Kurosawa or Masaki Kobayashi, and here he allows the story to become too talky and complicated (even when watched with pretty good subtitles) while forgetting to give us anyone to root for, resulting in a mostly unengaging movie. 

 

Ko Nishimura

 

Usually cast in nice guy roles, leading man Keiji Sada probably relished the opportunity to play a complete scumbag for a change, something he would go on to do again in his final film, Sweet Sweat (1964). Talking of sweat, there’s also a lot of that in this movie, which is set in Tokyo during a heatwave and has everyone dripping throughout. Director Yoshitaro Nomura – best known for his Seicho Matsumoto adaptations (often adapted by Hashimoto) such as Castle of Sand (1974) – was a very good director, but this is not one of his best and I couldn’t help feeling it’s the sort of material that would have been better in black and white. For all its cynicism, at heart this is a superficial film – if watching a nasty guy do nasty things for 90 minutes before getting his comeuppance is enough for you, you might enjoy it, but it’s really got nothing to say. I doubt that it was a box office success, especially as it appears to be the only film adaptation of a Hideo Shirasaki novel and Japanese film companies tended to raid an author’s work repeatedly if they had made any money from it.

 

Sada with Seiji Miyaguchi

 

Alternative titles: The Grave Tells All / The Cards Will Tell

Thanks to A.K.