Brand of Evil / 悪の紋章 / Aku no monsho (1964)

Obscure Japanese Film #229

Tsutomu Yamazaki

 

Kikuchi (Tsutomu Yamazaki, the kidnapper from High and Low) is a police detective investigating the murder of a young woman. The trail leads to company boss Shibata (Rokko Toura), but he suddenly finds himself falsely accused of accepting bribes from a drug dealer and is kicked out of the police force and sent to prison for two years. After his release, he manages to find work with a private detective agency on condition that he drops any notion of trying to clear his name. He agrees, then promptly sets about trying to clear his name, during the course of which he finds himself involved with Setsuko (Michiyo Aratama), a young woman he sees falling victim to a pickpocket on the subway…

 

Michiyo Aratama

This co-production between Toho and Takarazuka Eiga was based on a 1962 novel of the same name by Shinobu Hashimoto, who co-wrote the screenplay with Sakae Hirosawa and the director, Hiromichi Horikawa. Horikawa and Hashimoto had previously collaborated on The Lost Alibi (1960) and Shiro to kuro (1963), two similarly dark and twisty crime thrillers, and both had begun their film careers under the tutelage of Kurosawa. The master’s influence is apparent here in the way certain scenes are shot and the use of weather to heighten atmosphere. In fact, the moody high-contrast cinematography comes courtesy of Yuzuru Aizawa, who had shot The Bad Sleep Well (1960). Another asset is a strong jazz score by one of Japan’s top composers, Toshiro Mayuzumi, while the excellent cast also includes Kyoko ‘Woman in the Dunes’ Kishida, Keiji Sada and, wasted in a tiny role as the head of the detective agency, Takashi Shimura. 

 

Hashimoto’s view of the world tended towards the misanthropic, and none of the characters in Brand of Evil are terribly nice. In fact, one of the most memorable scenes involves the supposed hero torturing a hapless yakuza stooge to the strains of a Strauss waltz (‘Rosen aus dem Süden’), which reminded me of the way Tarantino used ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’ in Reservoir Dogs, although Tarantino certainly took it to another level. 

 

Keiji Sada and Tsutomu Yamazaki

In my view, the film is slightly less effective than The Lost Alibi or Shiro to kuro because the combination of the lack of a sympathetic protagonist combined with a rather convoluted plot and slightly excessive running time of around two hours and eleven minutes makes it hard to feel emotionally invested in the story all the way to the end. It’s also hard to forgive the demeaning portrayal of a disabled character, Setsuko’s friend Tsuyako, played by Toshiko Yabuki. 

 

Rokko Toura

 

Yellow Dog / イエロー・ドッグ (1973)

Obscure Japanese Film #225

 

Jiro Tamiya

 

This oddity is an independent Japanese-British co-production from a company called Akari, which seems to have been formed by star Jiro Tamiya and director Terence Donovan especially for this movie. Tamiya plays Kimura, a secret service man who goes to London on a covert mission. A Professor Bewsley (John Welsh) has found a way to produce synthetic fuel from hydrogen (or sommat) and Kimura must prevent it from falling into the wrong hands – but of course that’s all just a Hitchcock-like MacGuffin to set the plot in motion. Along the way, Kimura forms an uneasy alliance with British secret service man Alexander (Robert Hardy) and is seduced by the mysterious Della (Carolyn Seymour). 

 

Carolyn Seymour

Unfortunately, the plot is convoluted to the point of incomprehensibility at times. The screenplay is by Shinobu Hashimoto, justly famous for his collaborations with Akira Kurosawa among others, but who sometimes seemed to go off the rails when not working from a literary source and left to his own devices (see also Lake of Illusions). Here, Hashimoto has based his story on the fact that Japan had no specific law against espionage at the time, making it a so-called ‘paradise for spies’ (Japan’s State Secrecy Law finally went into force in 2014). It’s perhaps worth noting that, preceding Hashimoto’s screenplay credit, the opening credits state (in this order) ‘New Dialogue by John Bird / Original Translation from the Japanese by Professor Alan Turney / From an Idea by Terence Donovan.’ John Bird (1936-2022) was a very well-known figure in the UK, famous for his satirical writing and comic acting, mainly on television, and was no doubt responsible for making the dialogue more colloquial. In any case, a bizarre climax involving Tamiya rubbing rice balls all over himself and an actual yellow dog (which has been died that colour) is something only the eccentric Hashimoto could have cooked up.

 

Of course, the title is also partly a racial epithet – another strange scene features Kimura pretending to be hopeless at judo before his opponent calls him a ‘yellow Jap’, at which point he snarls, ‘I don’t mind the “Jap” so much, but don’t ever call me “yellow”!’ He then loses it and proceeds to fuck up his opponent by dislocating both his arm and his jaw for him (incidentally, Tamiya was a black belt in karate, so why the filmmakers failed to make use of this real-life skill instead of featuring a judo match is anyone’s guess). Helpfully, Kimura later explains the second word in the title more fully, saying, ‘In Japan, detectives and informers are called dogs – they’re always sniffing around. Not a very polite expression,’ while another canine quirk of this film is that Kimura has a phobia of dogs. However, perhaps a further motivation for the use of ‘dog’ in the title is that Tamiya had starred in the series of nine Inu (‘dog’) films made by Daiei between 1964 and 1967. 

 

Tamiya with Robert Hardy

God knows how Tamiya hooked up with fashion photographer Terence Donovan and chose him as director. Donovan had never made a film before and never would again, with the exception of a number of music videos such as the one for Robert Palmer’s ‘Addicted to Love’. On this evidence, it’s not hard to see why Donovan made no further features. Almost everything falls flat here and, considering Donovan’s background, one might expect the film to look good at least, but most of it’s indifferently photographed and looks like cheap TV. A tragic footnote to this film is the fact that both Tamiya and Donovan suffered from depression and would die by suicide – Donovan not until 1996, but Tamiya in 1978, the year after this film was finally released in Japan (by Shochiku) and flopped both with the critics and at the box office. While Yellow Dog was certainly not the reason for his suicide, it may have been one of many contributing factors. 

 

Tamiya does surprisingly well in terms of his English pronunciation, though his intonation is rather strange and I suspect that he learned his lines phonetically. This must have been quite a challenge, and you can only admire him for taking it on, especially considering that he’s surrounded by such experienced and confident British actors as Robert Hardy and co. Cross-cultural collaborations of this sort rarely turn out well, and this one certainly didn’t, but it’s not entirely without entertainment value as we watch Tamiya as a fish out of water slurping his soup, pretending incompetence and bemusing the Brits, who (I’m ashamed to say) mostly come across as a cold and chauvinistic bunch of entitled snobs. 

 

Robert Hardy and Angela Thorne

 

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.

Hachi hyakuman goku ni idomu otoko / 八百万石に挑む男 (‘The Man Who Made an 8 Million koku Challenge’, 1961)

Obscure Japanese Film #191

 

Utaemon Ichikawa and Katsuo Nakamura

1729. Ten’ichibo (Katsuo Nakamura, brother of Kinnosuke Nakamura) is a young man who drifts from town to town gambling and drinking. He carries an antique dagger and letter explaining that the knife is an heirloom given to him as he is the illegitimate son of the eighth shogun, Yoshimune Tokugawa (Shin Tokudaiji), but nobody believes him and Ten’ichibo himself is uncertain of the truth. However, both the letter and the weapon look authentic and when the story comes to the attention of once-powerful samurai vassal Iganosuke (Utaemon Ichikawa), he cares little whether it’s true or not, but sees an opportunity to take over the shogunate by claiming Ten’ichibo as the rightful heir. It’s a high stakes gamble which could cost Ten’ichibo and Iganosuke their lives if they fail, but win them 8 million koku if they succeed (koku being a unit of measurement of rice, which was how wealth was calculated at the time). The shogun’s advisor, Matsudaira (So Yamamura), is also unconcerned about the truth of Ten’ichibo’s parentage, but wants to discredit him anyway to retain the power of the current regime… 

 

So Yamamura

 

Inspired by a real historical event and based on an original screenplay by regular Kurosawa collaborator Shinobu Hashimoto, this Toei production was directed by Nobuo Nakagawa, best remembered today for horror movies such as The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959), though the genre accounted for only eight out of his nearly 100 films. Many of his pictures tended to be quite low budget, but this one looks comparatively expensive, boasting elaborate costumes and impressive sets. Typically for a Hashimoto script, it’s full of cruel ironies and highlights the hypocrisy of the feudal system. 

 

Utaemon Ichikawa

 

Most (if not all) of the cast had theatre backgrounds, and the acting is rather stagey, with many of the actors projecting their voices as if worried about not being heard in the back row.   Given the formal context of most of the dialogues, the stiffness of some cast members is perhaps inevitable, but I’m not sure there’s much excuse for Utaemon Ichikawa, who – with his demoniacal laugh – is such an old ham he’d make Tod Slaughter blush. It’s also a very male-dominated movie, and the one female character (played by Hiroko Sakuramachi) has very little to do except be a victim. Fans of chanbara (sword-fighting films) should be warned that there is very little action (with the climax even taking place off screen), but, on a more positive note, the battle of wills between the two sides is tense enough to hold the interest for the most part, and there’s a fine score by Chumei Watanabe. 

 

Hiroko Sakuramachi

 

The story of the Ten’ichibo jiken, or ‘incident’ (as it is often referred to in Japan), has been filmed many times – there were numerous silent versions (now lost) as well as various TV versions made subsequent to this film. However, the most notable other feature film version is Daisuke Ito’s Suronin makaritoru (1947), the first period drama made after the war, starring Tsumasaburo Bando as Iganosuke and Akihiko Katayama as Ten’ichibo, which is available on DVD (without English subtitles) here. The real Ten’ichibo was arrested, charged with being an imposter, sentenced to death and executed.  

Thanks to A.K.

 

A Town Not on the Map / 地図のない町 / Chizu no mai machi (aka ‘The Jungle Block’, 1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #127

Yoko Minamida

Ryoji Hayama

 

Shinsuke (Ryoji Hayama) is a young doctor who has had to resign from his post at a hospital after failing to save a patient. Returning to the shanty town where he grew up, he begins assisting the local doctor, Kasama (Jukichi Uno), who is greatly respected by the poor community he serves. 

 

Jukichi Uno

Unfortunately, the local yakuza boss, Azusa (Osamu Takizawa), has managed to obtain a contract to clear the shanty town and replace it with modern apartment blocks. Meanwhile, Shinsuke’s sister Sakiko (Kazuko Yoshiyuki) is out walking one night with her fiancé Kajiwara (Yasukiyo Umeno) when they are attacked by a gang of yakuza and she is gang-raped. Shinsuke is appalled to find that, not only is Kajiwara too spineless to go to the police, but he no longer wants to marry Sakiko. If that wasn’t bad enough, he then learns that not only has his childhood sweetheart Kayoko (Yoko Minamida) become a prostitute, but she has accepted an offer to become Azusa’s mistress instead in order to pay off a debt owed by her father (Jun Hamamura). Shinsuke decides to take matters into his own hands, but what can he do against such a powerful mob?

Osamu Takizawa

 

There’s a lot going on in this Nikkatsu picture, which starts out almost like one of Satsuo Yamamoto’s leftist dramas in which an oppressed community band together to take on their corrupt oppressors, but morphs into a Seicho Matsumoto-style murder mystery at the end. Based on a story by Kaoru Funayama,* it was adapted by director Ko Nakahira and regular Kurosawa collaborator Shinobu Hashimoto. In the film, the story unfolds in a series of consecutive flashbacks (probably Hashimoto’s idea). This is an unusual approach, but one that works well in this instance, with the tension building nicely as events reach their climax. When they do, there is perhaps a twist too many, with the result that things become a little absurd – almost comic, in fact (something I doubt was intended).

Shobun Inoue

 

A Town Not on the Map benefits from a strong all-round cast. In the lead, Nikkatsu contract star Ryoji Hayama makes for a sympathetic hero despite being better known for playing bad guys, while the underrated Yoko Minamida is equally good as the troubled cat-loving heroine, Osamu Takizawa makes a suitably loathsome villain, Jukichi Uno exudes integrity as only he could, Shobun Inoue is convincingly tough as a scar-faced yakuza, and Jun Hamamura manages to look even more like death warmed up than usual. 

 

Jun Hamamura

The score by the great avant-garde composer Toshiro Mayuzumi is surprisingly conventional for him, but nonetheless highly effective. Director Ko Nakahira brings his customary flair to the proceedings, with impressive staging and camerawork (by his regular collaborator Yoshihiro Yamazaki) which is seldom pedestrian and often memorably stylish. 

Yoko Minamida

 

Excellent subtitles by Stuart J Walton can be found here: https://www.opensubtitles.org/en/subtitles/9880312/the-jungle-block-en

*The original story, ‘Satsui no kage’ / 殺意の影 (‘Shadows of Murder’), appeared in Funayama’s 1957 collection Akutoku /悪徳 (Vice).