Niwatori wa futatabi naku / 鶏はふたゝび鳴く (‘The Cock Crows Twice’, 1954)

Obscure Japanese Film # 259

Eijiro Tono and Yoko Minakaze

After a man trying to find oil in order to revive the fortunes of his dying seaside town commits suicide, the locals blame Fumiko (Yoko Minakaze), a young woman who had rejected his sudden offer of marriage. Fumiko lives with her father, Tokinosuke (Eijiro Tono, great), who has been going to pieces since his wife ran off with another man. Ostracised by the townsfolk, Fumiko heads towards the sea with the intention of ending it all, but is spotted by an itinerant oil worker (Shuji Sano) who prevents her from going through with it. He and four other men have been left stranded since the suicide of their boss and Fumiko is moved by their kindness and relates to their outside status.

Shuji Sano

Sachiko Hidari, Minakaze and Yoko Kozono

It emerges that Fumiko has two female friends, Yoko (Yoko Kozono/Kosono) and Taniko (Sachiko Hidari), with whom she has made a suicide pact, each carrying a deadly pill in a locket around their necks. Yoko’s reason for being miserable is that she’s the daughter of a concubine (Sadako Sawamura), while Taniko’s is that she’s physically disabled and has to walk with a crutch. The women have agreed that they will all commit suicide together. Meanwhile, the stranded workers are debating whether to flee the town and escape the debts they’ve incurred or stick it out, hoping that a long-awaited telegram will arrive telling them to come to a new oil field. Then Kurama (Yunosuke Ito), an embezzler on the run from the police, arrives and claims to be an oil surveyor who intends to restart the drilling…

Yunosuke Ito

This Shintoho production has an unusual story which is a creation of Rinzo Shiina (1911-73), who wrote the original screenplay and had written the novel on which director Heinosuke Gosho’s Where Chimneys are Seen (1953) had been based. However, there are certain similarities to Vittorio De Sica’s Miracle in Milan (1951), which I strongly suspect influenced this film. With all the talk of suicide, it first appears to be a rather bleak drama, but gradually transforms into a comedy. It’s not like any other Gosho film I’ve seen, and I found it quite engaging and charming in the way it takes delight in continually subverting our expectations. For example, when Fumiko’s wealthy aunt who has been turning down her father’s requests for money appears, we expect that she’ll be a terrible harridan – especially as she’s played by Eiko Miyoshi – but this proves not to be quite the case.

Eiko Miyoshi

It’s surprising to see Yoko Minakaze (1930-2007) in the lead role. She doesn’t look like a film star and, indeed, wasn’t one, but for some mysterious reason I felt her lack of star quality somehow worked in this film’s favour. Coming from the theatre, she enjoyed a long career on stage as well as screens both big and small, but this may well be her most major role in movies.

It’s worth noting that screenwriter Rinzo Shiina had converted to Christianity in 1950 and it’s easy to see how his beliefs influenced this work. It’s also perhaps the reason composer Toshiro Mayuzumi used choral music for his score, although this is one element I didn’t particularly care for. In most respects, though, this film is a gem and it’s also beautifully shot by Joji Ohara, who won a Mainichi Film Concours Award for Best Cinematography for his pains, making this a film crying out for a good quality release.

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The Maid’s Kid / 女中ッ子 / Jochukko (1955)

Obscure Japanese Film #239

Sachiko Hidari

This Nikkatsu production stars Sachiko Hidari – best-known for The Insect Woman (1963) and A Fugitive from the Past (1965) – as Hatsu, a young woman from snowy Akita Prefecture who goes to Tokyo to work as a maid in the house of middle-class couple Kyohei (Shuji Sano) and his wife Umeko (Yukiko Todoroki). 

Shuji Sano

Yukiko Todoroki

At first, Hatsu seems like the stereotypically naive country bumpkin, but she’s also a hard-working, cheerful bundle of energy who turns out, in many ways, to be the perfect maid. The family also includes two young boys who have been left to their own devices by their parents and become totally out of control. When Hatsu develops a strong bond with the younger child, Katsumi (Teruo Iba), he begins to be mocked by his classmates, who call him the ‘son of a maid’...

Teruo Iba

Based on a just-published novel by female author Yuki Shigeko (1900-69), The Maid’s Kid was directed by the underrated Tomotaka Tasaka, who also co-wrote the screenplay together with Katsuya Susaki. Tasaka had a tendency to make long films, and this one is no exception at 142 minutes, but he also had a rare gift for never making them feel overlong. In fact, his readiness to linger on a shot feels quite modern today in the wake of the Slow Cinema movement. He also makes excellent use of real locations and elicits fine performances from all involved – most notably Hidari, of course; it’s difficult to imagine any other actor pulling this role off as well as she does here. It’s the sort of drama that stands or falls on its main performance, and Hatsu could easily have ended up seeming too unconvincingly saintly if played by a less skilled or less suitable star. Other familiar faces among the supporting cast include Chieko Higashiyama, Tanie Kitabayashi and, in one of his earliest film appearances, a pre-cheeky Joe Shishido.

Perhaps the main point of the story is that a person’s social status bears no correlation to their worth as a person; Kyohei and Umeko say they don’t believe in titles like ‘master’ and ‘mistress’, but they act with oblivious selfishness and disregard for Hatsu, at times treating her more like a slave than a servant so that she barely gets a moment’s rest. At one point, she’s even rebuked for not understanding that some people are more important than others. However, another strength of the film is that, although the couple’s hypocrisy is quite evident to the viewer, they are not reduced to one-dimensional villains and are portrayed as basically decent, if misguided, people.

Tasaka’s avoidance of melodrama and intelligent handling of the material is complemented by the work of his regular cinematographer Saburo Isayama as well as by Akira ‘Godzilla’ Ifukube’s fine score. The film was ranked 7^th best of its year by Kinema Junpo magazine, but is less well-known than it deserves today. It was remade in 1976 as Dongurikko by director Katsumi Nishikawa in a version starring the singer Masako Mori.

Thanks to A.K.

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Kirai Kirai Kirai / 嫌い嫌い嫌い / (‘Hate hate hate’, 1960)

 

Ichiro Sugai

 

Sojuro Shinkawa (Ichiro Sugai) is the elderly chairman of the Shinkawa conglomerate, a position which he was hoping his son, Sotaro (Kenji Sugawara), would succeed him in. However, Sotaro has rebelled and gone off to do his own thing, so Sojuro gathers the presidents of the six companies which make up the conglomerate and asks them each to select their most promising employee and send them to head office, where they will compete to marry his granddaughter, Kikuko (Atsuko Kindaichi), and the winner will be groomed to become the new chairman. 

 

Atsuko Kindaichi

 

The six men chosen run the gamut from the ultra masculine Nagaoka (Ryuichi Ishii) with his impressive chest hair to the effeminate Hirose (Kanji Matsumoto), who drinks only milk, a thermos of which he always carries with him. Other candidates include Sakurai (future director Juzo Itami), who used to be friends with Kikuko as a child, the handsome and modest Tsujimoto (Jiro Tamiya), who appears to be the favourite, and coal miner Fukumitsu (Gen Mitamura), who is conflicted due to his secret love for co-worker Sumiko (Junko Kano)…

 

Jiro Tamiya

 

This Daiei production was based on a novel entitled Hana no sarariman (‘The Flower Salaryman’) by Keita Genji (1912-85), a writer well-known for this type of material whose work also provided the basis for many other films including Masumura’s Blue Sky Maiden (1957) and The Most Valuable Wife (1959). 

 

Junko Kano

 

Sachiko Hidari

For me, the main appeal was that it provided a rare chance to see another film by Hiroshi Edagawa, whose Roses Bloom on The Rose Bush (1959) I liked so much. However, this one is less interesting as it’s basically a piece of fluff, albeit a well-made one which is not unentertaining. It’s an ensemble piece with no real star at the centre, although Jiro Tamiya and Junko Kano were both beginning to get popular at the time and Sachiko Hidari also appears prominently, although in a role that has little bearing on the story, while Kazuko Matsuo pops up singing the title song in a nightclub (to which you can listen on YouTube here). Even Bokuzen Hidari makes an appearance as one of the company presidents - which may well be the most untypical role he ever played. Anyway, for the most part, it's a pleasant enough time-passer, though the gay stereotyping of Kanji Matsumoto’s character is regrettable. 

 

Bokuzen Hidari

 

A note on the title:

Kirai can also be translated as ‘I hate it’, ‘I hate you’, etc, so the tag line on the Japanese posters should probably be read as ‘I hate him because he’s handsome! I hate him because he’s rich! I hate him because he has chest hair! Is that really true?’

 

Kazuko Matsuo

 Watched with dodgy subtitles. 

Okuman choja / 億万長者 (‘Billionaire’, 1954)

 

Isao Kimura

 

Karoku (Isao Kimura) is a tax collector so self-effacing he barely exists, so it’s easy for the people he’s supposed to collect from to send him away empty-handed. These include an unemployed photographer, Juji (Kinzo Shin), and his wife (Toyo Takahashi), who have 18 children and a lodger, Sute (Yoshiko Kuga). Like Karoku, Sute is an orphan who lost her parents to the atom bomb. She believes that the only way to protect peace is for Japan to have its own nuclear weapons and is now devoting all her energy to making them herself. 

 

Yoshiko Kuga

 

Karuko is attracted to his boss’s liberated daughter, Asako (Sachiko Hidari), who works in the same office, and she inspires him to become more aggressive in his collecting, but this only leads to him being bribed rather than paid. Realising the extent of corruption in the tax business, Karuko is persuaded by scheming geisha Hanakuma (Isuzu Yamada) into keeping a record of all the tax evaders. He intends to use this to expose corrupt politicians like Ebizo (Yunosuke Ito), but she has her own ideas…

 

Isuzu Yamada

 

This Shintoho release was produced by the Young Actors' Club (later known as Gekidan Seihai), which had been founded in 1952 and also produced Satsuo Yamamoto’s Hi no hate the same year. According to Japanese Wikipedia,

Isao Kimura, the lead actor, actually lost his family in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. It was Kimura who also appointed Kon Ichikawa as director.

The film was originally intended to be a film adaptation of Marcel Pagnol's play Topaz, starring Junkichi Orimoto, Kobo Abe was initially tasked with writing the screenplay, and had already completed a first draft. However, due to differences with Ichikawa, who had been appointed director, Abe's abstract script was not adopted. Ichikawa's wife, Natto Wada, quickly completed the script, and [cartoonist] Taizo Yokoyama and others contributed their opinions and ideas to the final screenplay, and are credited as scriptwriters…

This film does not have a director's name credit. Initially, it was to be distributed by Shochiku, but, after many twists and turns, it was eventually distributed by Shintoho. However, the producers agreed to cut the final scene, depicting the explosion of the atomic bomb, a blend of reality and hallucination, without Ichikawa's consent. This led Ichikawa to protest and refuse to have his name credited as director... Ichikawa later testified that the reasons for his removal from the credits were that the Young Actors' Club, the producers, had begun production without completing fundraising and were enthusiastic about it, and that it was Ichikawa's first independent production job and he had proceeded with filming without understanding the circumstances.

However, the version I saw does have a credit for Ichikawa as director, so I’m uncertain whether the Wikipedia article is incorrect or the credit was added to later prints. It’s perhaps also worth noting that, though many sources credit Ichikawa as a screenwriter, the film itself does not. 

 

Yunosuke Ito

Anyway, given the circumstances in which it was made, it’s perhaps not too surprising that the resultant film is a messy affair, albeit quite an enjoyable one with sterling work all around from an excellent cast. Though it’s a wacky satirical comedy in the vein of other Ichikawa films such as Pu-san (1953) and The Crowded Train (1957), it gets surprisingly dark in places and the underlying message to Japanese cinemagoers in 1954 seems to have been that the post-war problems of over-population, unemployment, poverty, corruption and atomic weapons meant that they were all screwed. 

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English susbtitles) 

 

Escape from Hell / 無宿人別帳/ Mushukunin-betsucho (1963)

Obscure Japanese Film #93

Keiji Sada

During the winter of 1802-3, a group of convicts are transported in individual bamboo cages to the island of Sado, where they have been sentenced to hard labour draining a gold mine. Among them is Yaju (Keiji Sada), a formerly honourable samurai who became a criminal after the woman he loved, Kumi (Mariko Okada), was forced into a marriage with the more senior Kurozuka (Hiroshi Nihonyanagi). 

 

Hiroshi Nihonyanagi and Mariko Okada

In an unfortunate coincidence, Kurozuka becomes the new governor of the mine, while his scheming subordinate Kojuro (Hiroyuki Nagato) informs Kumi that her former lover Yaju is among the prisoners. Always planning ahead, Kojuro also decides it could be to his advantage to push his own mistress, Rin (Sachiko Hidari), into the arms of the inexperienced new magistrate. 

Hiroyuki Nagato and Sachiko Hidari

 

Meanwhile, the prisoners find themselves not only working in life-threatening conditions, but also treated brutally by the foreman (Ko Nishimura) and his henchman Hachizo (Toranosuke Tennoji). 

 

Rentaro Mikuni and Kanemon Nakamura

However, two trusties, Shinpei (Rentaro Mikuni) and Seibei (Kanemon Nakamura) are more sympathetic and do what they can for the men. Seibei also has a daughter, Miyo (Masuyo Iwamoto*), who treats the men when they are wounded, but is raped by one named Senta (Masahiko Tsugawa) for her pains. When conditions become unbearable, the men decide to make a desperate escape attempt headed by Shinpei – but can the trusty be trusted?

Mariko Okada

 

This Shochiku production takes its Japanese title from the title of Seicho Matsumoto’s 1958 short story collection containing the story ‘Tobo’ (‘Escape’) upon which the film is partly based. The title is hard to translate into English, but in the Edo period during which the stories were set, the mushukunin were people who had been removed from the family register, and each of the stories in Matsumoto’s collection was centred on a character who was some kind of social outcast, i.e. a homeless person or criminal. However, the film is also partly based on a second Matsumoto story, ‘Sado runinko’ (‘Sado Exile Journey’), published in 1957. I’m uncertain whether there was really a mass escape attempt at the Sado gold mine, but it’s certainly true that, during the late Edo period, the authorities would round up vagrants and send them to do forced labour there. In any case, the man who used this interesting historical setting along with other elements of the two Matsumoto stories and turned it all into a fine screenplay was Hideo Oguni, known for his work on many of Kurosawa’s most famous films. 

Mariko Okada

 

The director, Kazuo Inoue (1924-2011), had worked as an assistant to Minoru Shibuya, Yuzu Kawashima and Yasujiro Ozu before becoming a Shochiku director himself in 1954. Escape from Hell is the 11^th of 12 films he made for the company before going freelance in 1964, after which he seems to have been unable to sustain a career in the declining Japanese film industry. Although he managed to direct a further eight pictures, most of these were comedies of little note, the exception being his final film, a documentary about Ozu entitled I Lived But… (1983). Apart from allowing some of the actors in the smaller parts to overact, his direction of Escape from Hell is impressive and he clearly knew how to get the most out of a scene.

Hiroyuki Nagato

 

Another factor which makes Escape from Hell worth seeking out is the host of well-known faces among the cast, even including Tora-san actor Kiyoshi Atsumi as a convict with a snoring problem. Hiroyuki Nagato from Pigs and Battleships is especially good as the devious Kojuro, constantly figuring all the angles to his own advantage, although Mariko Okada is sadly wasted in her role, which gives her little to do. Used to better advantage is Rentaro Mikuni, who gives one of the strongest performances here as an escaping convict. This fact, together with Sachiko Hidari’s appearance as a giggling former prostitute, suggests that Tomu Uchida saw the film and was influenced in his casting for A Fugitive from the Past (1965). 

 

Rentaro Mikuni

However, the real revelation for me among the cast was Keiji Sada – I’ve seen many of his films and always liked him, but would never have imagined Sada as the tough, unshaven, moody samurai he plays here, a role he pulls off very well indeed. It’s a reminder of what a loss to Japanese cinema his premature death in a car crash the following year was. 

Keiji Sada

 

 *Sometimes incorrectly listed as Tayo Iwamoto in English.