The Makioka Sisters / 細雪 / Sasameyuki (‘Light Snowfall’, 1950)

 

Hideko Takamine

 

 

 

**The first four paragraphs are mostly identical to those in my review of the 1959 version**

Junichiro Tanizaki’s novel Sasameyuki is widely recognised as a classic of Japanese literature. Translated into English as The Makioka Sisters in 1957 by Edward G Seidensticker, it’s remained constantly in print ever since. The book was originally published in serial form beginning in 1943, but this was soon halted by the Japanese War Ministry – not because it criticised the government, but because, according to them at the time, ‘The novel goes on and on detailing the very thing we are most supposed to be on our guard against during this period of wartime emergency: the soft, effeminate, and grossly individualistic lives of women.’* I would have thought they should have been more worried about the enemy, but in any case, Tanizaki was forced to wait until the war had ended to resume publication, with the final instalment appearing in 1948.

 

Yukiko Todoroki

 

The story itself takes place between 1936 and 1941, ending around eight months before the attack on Pearl Harbour, and it seems that Tanizaki’s intention was partly to provide a record of a way of life he had seen rapidly vanishing before his eyes. The Makioka sisters are four adult siblings whose parents are deceased. Once a grand family, their fortunes are on the wane but they remain very well-to-do in comparison with most Japanese and keep a number of servants. The eldest, Tsuruko (played here by Ranko Hanai in what amounts to a minor role), lives apart from the others with her husband and children in what is referred to as the ‘main house.’ She is a peripheral character, but, as the senior surviving member of the family, the other sisters must defer to her and her husband before making any important decisions. Tsuruko later goes to live in Tokyo when her husband has to relocate for his job, but her sisters remain in their hometown of Osaka.

 

Hisako Yamane

The other three sisters live together. In order of age, they are Sachiko (Yukiko Todoroki, who went on to play Tsuruko in the 1959 version), Yukiko (Hisako Yamane) and Taeko, familiarly called ‘Koi-san’ (Hideko Takamine). Sachiko is married to Teinosuke (Seizaburo Kawazu), with whom she has one child, Etsuko (Takako Yamazaki). Although Sachiko is held responsible for her two younger sisters by the main house, little of the drama revolves around her. Instead, much of it concerns the attempts to find a husband for Yukiko, whose shy and sometimes stubborn nature makes this difficult. Ever since her original fiancée was killed in an accident, each marriage proposal has come to naught for one reason or another, and Yukiko is already approaching 30 when the story begins. Complicating matters further is the fact that Taeko must wait until Yukiko is married before getting married herself in order not to humiliate Yukiko and leave her looking like an old maid that nobody wants. Taeko is the closest thing to a rebel in the family, generally doing as she likes and indulged by her older sisters, who make allowances for her due to the fact that their parents died when she was so young. She has a long-running on-and-off relationship with the wealthy Kei-bo (Haruo Tanaka). 

 

Hideko Takamine

The sisters are likeable characters who live their lives trapped in a web of etiquette. Overly-concerned with what others think, they are unable to make a move without first ensuring that what they do will not offend anyone else or damage their own social status, but there’s little in the way of arrogance about them. Rather, they are simply behaving according to the rules by which they were brought up and it doesn’t even occur to them to do otherwise. In the book, Tanizaki paints a minutely-detailed picture of their lives, but never tells us what to think about it. The future of the family is left open at the end, but it’s impossible to be unaware of the dark cloud of war that awaits them just over the horizon, and no doubt Tanizaki planned it that way.

 

Haruo Tanaka

 

This first film version of the novel was produced by Shintoho and is probably the most faithful of the three overall. According to Japanese Wikipedia, it had ‘a budget of 38 million yen, an unprecedented sum for a film at the time.’ The 1959 version updated the story to what was then the present day, but this one retains the pre-war setting of the book and, being around 35 minutes longer, is also able to fit a little more in. Both the 1950s adaptations were scripted by Toshio Yasumi, who in this one includes the dark spot on Yukiko’s face that comes and goes and is supposedly a common affliction of unmarried women (something which was dropped from the 1959 film). 

 

Hisako Yamane

The later version is probably the more technically (and visually) impressive of the two – here, although there is quite an impressive flood sequence, we only hear about Koi-san’s rescue – but this one is well-done for its time and much superior to the one other film I’ve seen by its director, Yutaka Abe (the recently-reviewed 1956 film The Confession). He was no flashy stylist; instead, he rightly lets the camera be the actors’ friend here, using close-ups judiciously and tracking shots when necessary. Another asset is the music by Kurosawa favourite Fumio Hayasaka, which is certainly one of the less grating and more effective scores of its era. 

 

 

Although technically an ensemble piece, this is Hideko Takamine’s film all the way, partly because her character goes through the most changes and she gets the lion’s share of the screen time, but also because she’s so photogenic and charismatic that everyone else seems to fade into the background when she’s in view. As Koi-san, she rejects her family’s obsession with tradition and form, deciding that a man’s actions are more important than his education or lineage – an ideology which would have found favour with the occupying Americans whose approval was needed for all films produced in Japan at the time. All in all, albeit not impressive enough to qualify as a masterpiece, this is at least a fine version of a literary classic, with a great star at its centre, and as such it deserves to be restored and more widely seen.

Bonus trivia: Future star Kyoko Kagawa appears briefly in one of her first roles as Itakura’s sister.

Thanks to A.K.

Yamane and Takamine

 

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.

Kemono no tawamure / 獣の戯れ/ The Frolic of the Beasts (1964)

Obscure Japanese Film #47

Ayako Wakao

 

Koji (Takao Ito) is a student working at a ceramics shop in Tokyo owned and run by middle-aged author Ippei, a writer of highbrow literature (Seizaburo Kawazu). Despite having a beautiful younger wife, Yuko (Ayako Wakao), Ippei is also a philanderer who condescendingly boasts of his affairs to Koji. However, the shoe is soon on the other foot when Koji begins an affair with his boss’s wife…

Takao Ito

 

One evening, Koji escorts Yuko home only to discover that Ippei is there in bed with a stripper. When Yuko protests, Ippei slaps her around, causing Koji to lose his temper. He pulls out a wrench he happened to have in his pocket and attacks Ippei with it. Ippei survives, albeit in a brain-damaged state, while Koji goes to prison. 

Seizaburo Kawazu

 

Meanwhile, Yuko breaks with convention and becomes Koji’s sponsor, enabling him to be released into her care after serving two years. She is now living with the disabled Ippei in a coastal village on the Izu Peninsula, running a flower farm where Koji will work. This strange triangle results in an emotional hothouse which can only end in tragedy. 

Ito, Wakao and Kawazu

 

This brief synopsis simplifies the non-linear narrative of both the film and the book it is based on, a short 1961 novel by Yukio Mishima which finally appeared in English translation in 2018. Screenwriter Kazuo Funahashi (1919-2006) also wrote the screenplays for Listen to the Voices of the Sea (1950), The Temple of Wild Geese (1962) and another Mishima adaptation, Sword (aka Ken, 1964). His adaptation is pretty faithful to the book, although some of the subtle psychological nuances are inevitably lost, resulting in a slightly more conventional melodrama than the original. For example, when Koji finds the wrench, he conceals it from Yuko in the book, but not in the film as, without the insight into Koji’s mind that the text provides, this would have made it appear that his attack on Ippei was premeditated. According to translator Andrew Clare, Mishima’s original is also filled with references to the Noh theatre, but whether this would have been apparent to the average reader or viewer even in Japan is questionable. 

Ayako Wakao

 

The other main departure from the novel is the ending. This is more surprising given that the story originally ended with Yuko, but for some inscrutable reason the filmmakers chose not to give the final scene to their star. Incidentally, Ayako Wakao had acted opposite Mishima in Yasuzo Masumura’s Afraid to Die a few years earlier and was an actress that the author – an avid moviegoer – greatly admired. She later appeared in both stage (1970) and film (2005) versions of his novel Spring Snow.

Ito and Masao Mishima

 

Aside from Wakao, the most familiar member of the cast is Masao Mishima, who pops up as a much more benevolent priest than the one he played in The Temple of Wild Geese. However, Seizaburo Kawazu (1908-83), who plays Ippei, had a long career in the movies stretching back to 1928 and appeared in Yojimbo as the gang boss Seibei. In what was probably one of his best later roles, he’s very good here playing a character who undergoes a dramatic change.

Seizaburo Kawazu and unknown

 

The subtle music is the third and final film score by avant-garde composer Yoshiro Irino (1921-80), whose contribution to the picture is tastefully sparse and restrained, while the director, Sokichi Tomimoto (1927-89), is about as obscure as it gets. He was a Daiei contract director forced into TV work a few years after this and few of his films are accessible. On this evidence, he certainly had some talent at least as the film is well-staged and shot throughout even if there is little evidence of a particularly individual style. The following year, he worked with Wakao again on a Seicho Matsumoto adaptation, Forest of No Escape. 

Watched without subtitles.  

DVD on Amazon Japan

 

Ito and Wakao