Kizu-darake no okite / 傷だらけの掟 (1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #287

Hiroyuki Nagato

When Yasuo (Pigs and Battleships star Hiroyuki Nagato), an apparently naive student, allows himself to be dragged into a bar by Yuki (Sanae Nakahara), a young woman who accosts him on the street, he’s easily persuaded to treat her and her friends to cocktails. Predictably, when the bill comes it’s higher than expected and he’s unable to pay, but he’s allowed to go after leaving his watch with the yakuza who run the place; they’re members of the Hanayama gang. We then discover that Yasuo is actually a young con artist who sells fake Rolexes and that his older brother, Goro (Ryoji Hayama), is a member of a rival yakuza gang, the Noda-gumi.

Ryoji Hayama

When the Hanayama gang catch up with Yasuo and take him prisoner, Goro intercedes and gets him released. Yasuo then abducts Yuki, intending to rape her in revenge, but when the hotel is raided by the cops before he can do so, they escape together and hide out in the carriage of a stationary goods train, where she gives herself to him willingly after he slaps her a couple of times. Then they fall in love, but, like Romeo and Juliet, it’s not long before their rival gangs are at war. Can the self-sacrificing Goro help the young couple escape this life of crime before it’s too late?

Nagato with Sanae Nakahara

Set in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district, this Nikkatsu production was based on a story by ‘Masaharu Kawase’, a pseudonym of Masaharu Segawa, a young director who was then under contract to Toei but had previously been an assistant to Yutaka Abe, who directed it. Segawa became best-known for comedies, but later made Four Sisters, while Abe was a 64-year-old veteran famous for having worked in Hollywood in the 1920s and brought some of its style back to Japan before building a highly successful post-war career largely on literary adaptations. By this point, he was regarded as old-fashioned – perhaps not unfairly as he was responsible for films like Confession – so his career was in decline and he had to take whatever directing work he could. This yakuza genre piece is by no means typical of his work, then, and was presumably a studio assignment intended to cash in on the increasing popularity of this type of material at the time. However, it speaks to Abe’s adaptability that he clearly had no trouble with the new emphasis on sex and violence and there’s no sense that this is the work of an old fuddy-duddy. It didn’t help him, though – after three more films for Nikkatsu (the latter two of which were very minor B-movies), he reportedly quit when they cut his pay and it seems that he received no further offers of work from any studio.

Nobuo Kaneko

The screenplay was co-written by prolific Nikkatsu contract hack Iwao (aka Gan) Yamazaki together with Takashi Nomura, who went on to become a director and made A Colt is My Passport (1967). It’s stylishly shot by cinematographer Yusuichiro Yamazaki, who also did Shunkin monogatari (1954) and the score by Riichiro Manabe is classier than expected for this type of fare. Still, the formulaic and unoriginal story together with the regrettable inclusion of the rape-leads-to-love cliché prevent this from being anything special even if it is well made and very watchable.

Also notable in the cast are Yoko Minamida as a widowed florist who provides the love interest for Goro, plus Nobuo Kaneko and Hideaki Nitani as the rival gang leaders.

A note on the title:

The title doesn’t translate easily into English, but the film is sometimes listed as The Law’s Bloody Wounds, which seems a reasonable attempt, although I’m not sure that was ever an official release title. At least it’s better than Tarnished Rule, which I’ve also seen it called. On some Japanese sites, the English title is listed as The Ogre in Mt. Oe, but that’s clearly not right!

Watched with dodgy subtitles.

Trailer on YouTube

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The Tragedy of Bushido / 武士道無残 / Bushido muzan (1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #185

Miki Mori

 

This Shochiku production opens with the legend, ‘There was a time when ritual suicide, upon the death of a feudal lord, was glorified as a gesture of loyalty in the name of Bushido’ followed by a shot of a desert-like landscape. A small figure appears on the horizon and begins running towards the camera, which then cuts to a close-up of the same figure – a young samurai running frantically in fear for his life. The camera then reveals he is being pursued by six men, who chase him up a steep sand dune. From a distance, we see them gaining on him until finally they cut him down.  

 

Hizuru Takachiho

 

This is a visually striking opening scene which grabs the attention immediately, partly due to the unusual setting, which doesn’t look like Japan, but must have been filmed at the Tottori Sand Dunes, located on the north coast of western Honshu, Japan’s main island. There’s no real reason given in the script to justify the use of this location, but it emphasizes most effectively the hostility of the world we are about to enter.

 

Junichiro Yamashita and Miki Mori

 

The remainder of the brisk 74-minute film concerns Lord Nobuyuki (Miki Mori), his wife O-Ko (Hizuru Takachiho) and his younger brother, Iori (Junichiro Yamashita), who are members of the Honda clan. After the death of the clan’s leader, Noboyuki is summoned by the chief retainer (Fumio Watanabe) and informed that Iori has been selected to perform ritual suicide in five days’ time as they need someone to follow their late lord in death. Noboyuki has precisely zero choice in the matter, and it is up to him to inform Iori, who is only 16 years old. O-Ko is especially distraught as she has raised Iori as if he were her son. Accepting that she can’t save his life, she makes the astonishing request that she be permitted to sleep with him so that at least he won’t have to die as a virgin… 

 

Yamashita and Takachiho

 

Dealing as it does with the merciless inflexibility of the code of Bushido, all-too frequently applied in a way that resulted in the suffering of the lower ranking samurai while enabling the higher-ranking to escape responsibility, The Tragedy of Bushido (whose title could also be translated as ‘The Cruelty of Bushido’) has a great deal in common with Masaki Kobayashi’s later Harakiri (1962) and Samurai Rebellion (1967), so it’s surprising to find that a little-known filmmaker had made such an effective film on this topic as early as 1960. The filmmaker in question was Eitaro Morikawa (1931-96), who directed this film from his own original screenplay. Apparently, it was planned as Shochiku’s first ‘new wave period drama’. Morikawa had worked as an assistant director, mainly under Tatsuo Osone, but he had no previous credits as either screenwriter or director. Given the quality of this debut, one can only assume that he did something to incur the wrath of the studio heads at Shochiku* – he never directed again, and his only other credits are as co-screenwriter on three films for Nikkatsu and one for Toei between 1963 and 1966, one assistant director credit on Nagisa Oshima’s obscure 44-minute film A Small Child’s First Adventure (1963) and as a ‘planner’ on Kaneto Shindo’s Blackboard (1986). Morikawa had apparently been a classmate of Oshima’s and, after leaving the film industry, went on to work for the Dentsu advertising agency before becoming a university professor. 

 

Fumio Watanabe

 

Morikawa is ably abetted by the high contrast cinematography of Takao Kawarazaki and unusual music score by Riichiro Manabe, while the non-starry cast are also effective (incidentally, Miki Mori died at the age of 26 from gas poisoning four days after the film’s release – a result of a leak rather than suicide, I think). Perhaps there’s a twist too many at the end, which is the only point at which the music goes a little overboard, but nevertheless this gem is an impressive debut which should have led to a long career for its writer-director.

* Miguel Patricio has more to say on the abrupt end to Morikawa’s career in his review (in Portuguese) here. 

 

Thanks to A.K.

English subtitles at Open Subtitles