Convicted Woman / 女犯破戒 / Nyohan hakai (1966)

Obscure Japanese Film #275

Yoko Mihara and Takahiro Tamura

Ushinosuke (Takahiro Tamura) is a Kyoto actor who elopes with a young woman, O-Ume (Mayumi Ogawa), in a small boat. She decides they must die together and attacks him with a knife; the boat capsizes in the struggle and only Ushinosuke survives. Seven years later, in repentance, he has become a monk at Enmei-in Temple in Edo under the new name of Dogyo, but his faith is continually tested by lustful young women like Okura (Reiko Ohara), who apparently find his pompous piety and shaven pate irresistible.

Mayumi Ogawa

One day, Ryuzen (Nobuo Kaneko), who knows about Dogyo’s past, comes to the monastery to train as a monk, but appears to have some form of blackmail in mind. Meanwhile, the elderly head priest is dying but tries to seduce Dogyo on his deathbed. A shocked Dogyo runs off and lets himself be seduced by Okura instead while Ryuzen is finishing off the old priest. For some reason, Dogyo then decides to become the wickedest priest that ever lived...

Nobuo Kaneko with TT

This monksploitation meller from Toei was part of the studio’s drive to lure dwindling audiences back into the cinema with the promise of more erotic content, although said content remains mostly rather tame at this early stage. The fact that it was made in black and white and the star is Takahiro Tamura (who had seldom carried a picture before this one) seems indicative of a low budget, as does the silly script by B-movie hack Kikuma Shimoiizaka. Director Eiichi Kudo of 13 Assassins (1963) fame pulls off a few memorable moments, but the unconvincing characters and over-the-top performances soon prove tiresome, making the film quite a let-down after a strong opening sequence.

Reiko Ohara and TT

A note on the title:

Although Convicted Woman appears to have been an official English title, it doesn’t fit the content; the Japanese title can be translated as ‘Female Transgression’ or ‘Women Breaking the Commandments’, either of which make more sense in light of the story.

Thanks to A.K.

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Time within Memory / 青幻記 遠い日の母は美しく / Seigen-ki (1973)

Obscure Japanese Film #273

Takahiro Tamura

Arai Yohiro

Minoru (Takahiro Tamura) is a middle-aged man who returns to the island of Okinoerabu in the far south of Japan for the first time in over 30 years. He relives long-forgotten memories of his childhood and his widowed mother (Atsuko Kaku), who died there when he was still a boy (Arai Yohiro), and meets an old man (Kamatari Fujiwara) who had been in love with her.

Atsuko Kaku

Based on an autobiographical novel by Jiro Isshiki (1916-88) which won the Osamu Dazai prize on its publication in 1967, this was the first of just two films directed by renowned cinematographer Toichiro Narushima (1925-93), who also worked as his own DP and producer here in addition to co-writing the screenplay. Previously, he had provided first-rate camerawork for mostly ‘new wave’ directors such as Yoshishige Yoshida, Masahiro Shinoda, Noboru Nakamura and Nagisa Oshima after starting out as an assistant cameraman for Keisuke Kinoshita. He clearly learnt a few things from working with such acclaimed filmmakers as, not only is the photography in this film as striking as one would expect from Narushima, but he proves to have a firm hand in other areas too.

Atsuko Kaku

The story is the sort of nostalgic, sentimental material that could easily have become cloying, but Narushima mostly avoids this by preventing his actors from overdoing it and staging his scenes with taste and subtlety, while the device of having the young and old Minoru frequently appearing together - almost as if the older one were a time traveller – works especially well, as does the purposefully non-chronological unfolding of events in the flashbacks (the most dramatic scene is held back until the older Minoru can finally face it). Time within Memory also benefits from its well-used locations and Toru Takemitsu’s score, which provides much of the emotional resonance even if its not one of his greatest.

Yunosuke Ito and Hisano Yamaoka

Delivering a fine performance in only her third film appearance, Atsuko Kaku won the Mainichi Film Concours Award for Best Actress, but for some reason never made another film. Like Tatsuya Nakadai and many other well-known Japanese actors, she was a member of the Haiyuza theatre company. 

Jun Hamamura

As a passive observer of his own past, Takahiro Tamura has less to do despite ostensibly having the lead role, while other notables among the cast include Yunosuke Ito as Minoru’s eccentric inventor grandfather and Hisano Yamaoka as his wife, Taiji Tonoyama as a shopkeeper sympathetic to the young Minoru, and Jun Hamamura as a mumbo-jumbo mumbling shaman. However, it’s Kamatari Fujiwara who impresses the most among the supporting cast when he sings and accompanies himself on the shamisen in a uniquely individual style (assuming he wasn’t dubbed).

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Kamatari Fujiwara

Born Wild, Run Free / イタズ 熊 / Itazu kuma (‘Bear’, 1987)

Obscure Japanese Film #264

Takahiro Tamura

1928. ‘One-Shot’ Ginzo (Takahiro Tamura), a matagi, or bear hunter, returns to his home village of Ani in Akita Prefecture after having spent 10 years in the penal colony on Sakhalin Island for fighting. He learns that his son was killed in action in Siberia seven years earlier, and that most of the villagers now work at the new mine. Ginzo’s daughter-in-law, Kimi (Junko Sakurada), is living as a widow with his grandson, Ippei (Hiroshi Miyata).

Junko Sakurada

When a bear kills one of the villagers, Ginzo sets out to kill it and succeeds. However, shortly after this, a bear cub turns up looking for its mother. Ginzo, believing that he has committed a sin against the god of the mountains by making the cub an orphan, resolves to give up hunting and raise the cub to make amends. Ippei is delighted to have a furry new playmate, but of course cute little bears turn into big scary ones and one day they will have to release it back into the wild…

Hiroshi Miyata and friend

This co-production between Toei and the independent Kobushi Productions was made to capitalise on the success of director Toshio Goto’s earlier film The Old Bear Hunter (1982), although this film is aimed more specifically at the family market, with considerable focus on the boy and the bear cub. There are even two montage sequences of the two frolicking together and the bear getting into various mischief over which a female singer croons a cheesy ballad about human-animal friendship. The film is not exactly subtle, then, but it is quite well-made and entertaining, and some of the animal and nature footage is certainly impressive even if the filmmakers occasionally resort to using a fake bear for the more difficult shots (there is some pretty amazing ursine acting at the end, though…)

As with Goto’s other wilderness movies, I would question how much the welfare of the animals was considered here, and I can’t help feeling there’s some hypocrisy in promoting such a film as wholesome family entertainment when some of the various bears used must have had an unpleasant time in certain scenes . Still, I suppose this reflects our generally inconsistent attitude to animals, which easily changes depending on convenience; in this film, bears are both monstrous killers and cute anthropomorphised playmates as the story demands.

It’s perhaps worth saying a few words about this film’s star, Takahiro Tamura (1928-2006), whose father was none other than Tsumasaburo Bando, the sword-fighting star of silent films whose career continued until his untimely death in 1953 at the age of 51. Apparently, Bando died owing money to Shochiku, the studio which had him under contract, and Tamura was urged to follow in his father’s footsteps as a means of repaying his debts, which he agreed to do. However, he refused to be marketed as Tsumasaburo Bando mark II and resisted appearing in period dramas for the most part. He worked for Shochiku from 1953-1963, becoming a regular in Keisuke Kinoshita’s films, then went freelance. Career highlights include his role as Shintaro Katsu’s sidekick in The Hoodlum Soldier series (1965-68), Seisaku in Yasuzo Masumura’s Seisaku’s Wife (1965) opposite Ayako Wakao, the air force commander in Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), and the father in the Oscar-nominated Muddy River (1981). I don’t think Tamura ever became a box office draw, but he was a serious, hard-working actor who managed to avoid typecasting and successfully took on a wide range of roles. His performance in this film may be a tad broad at times, but on the whole he makes a good fist of it and, though Ginzo initially appears unlikeably gruff and aggressive, Tamura gradually reveals the heart of gold that’s concealed beneath the surface.

A note on the title:

イタズ (itazu) means ‘bear’ in the matagi language, but as this would not be understood by most Japanese people, the original title also contains the standard Japanese word for ‘bear’, 熊 (kuma).

English subtitles at Open Subtitles

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When the Cookie Crumbles / 砂糖菓子が壊れるとき / Satogashi ga kowareru toki (1967)

Obscure Japanese Film #262

Ayako Wakao

with Takashi Shimura

Kyoko (Ayako Wakao) is a young model who allows herself to be photographed nude in order to pay her mentally-ill mother’s hospital bills. She subsequently attracts the attention of elderly film studio head Kudo (Takashi Shimura), who offers her a movie deal. He also wants to marry her, but to her he’s just a father figure; nevertheless, she’s devastated when he dies. She then goes on to have relationships with a young reporter (Masahiko Tsugawa) and a university professor (Eiji Funakoshi) before marrying a baseball star (Jun Fujimaki), and later a bespectacled, pipe-smoking writer (Takahiro Tamura). Kyoko’s relationships never seem to work out as each of the men is smitten by her looks rather than the person within. Failing to find the emotional fulfilment she craves, she becomes increasingly unstable and develops an addiction to sleeping pills…

Masahiko Tsugawa

Eiji Funakoshi

Jun Fujimaki

Takahiro Tamura

This Daiei production was based on a 1966 novel by Ayako Sono (1931-2025), a right-wing Christian whose work also provided the basis for Masahiro Shinoda’s Epitaph to My Love (1961) and a few other films; it was adapted by Sugako Hashida (1925-2021), probably Japan’s most successful female writer of TV drama. The story was based on the life of Marilyn Monroe, and it’s not hard to figure out which characters are Japanese versions of Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller. Admittedly, the idea of Ayako Wakao in effect playing Marilyn Monroe is intriguing if only for its weirdness, but the film proves to be less interesting than it sounds and Wakao’s breathy performance is not one of her best. The problem is that she’s required to be extremely sensitive and over-emotional in practically every scene, which soon becomes tiresome, while there’s too much repetition in seeing her stumble from one unsuitable relationship to another, rendering it largely ineffective as drama. It does, however, provide plenty of opportunities to display the star in an endless array of outfits, not to mention sporting every variety of haircut you can imagine bar an actual skinhead or peroxide job. In other words, it’s another of Daiei’s Ayako Wakao fashion parade / costume-change pics, which seemed to be a bankable formula for them at the time.

It may seem surprising that this film was directed by the leftist Tadashi Imai, but he’d been struggling to find film work and stuck in the doldrums of television for the previous couple of years. When Joan Mellen – who had published a feminist biography of Monroe in 1973 – questioned him about it in her interview with Imai for her 1975 book Voices from the Japanese Cinema, he had this to say:

“I was asked to make the film by Daiei. ...I am one of those Japanese directors who cannot afford to make only the films I want to make, so I accepted. In some respects I enjoyed making it, but it is not a film I really want to talk about. … Directors in Japan are not very wealthy and often they have to do films they don’t especially like.”

Indeed, there was nothing I could see that marked the film out as a Tadashi Imai picture, but at least it enabled him to resume his cinema career even if his best work was behind him.

A note on the title:

Although When the Cookie Crumbles seems to be the official English title, the English expression is more usually 'that's the way the cookie crumbles', which is used in a similar way to 'c'est la vie' when you have to accept the inevitable. The Japanese title translates more literally as 'the moment the sugar candy breaks', which I think does not mean quite the same thing, and it’s pretty clear that the ‘sugar candy’ in question is Kyoko / Marilyn.

Watched without subtitles.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

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Yojohan monogatari: Shofu Shino / 四畳半物語 娼婦しの (‘Tale of the Four and a Half Mat Room: Prostitute Shino’, 1966)

Obscure Japanese Film #189

Takahiro Tamura and Yoshiko Mita

 

Shino (Yoshiko Mita) is an amateur geisha working under the name of O-Shige at a modest geisha house run by the money-loving Taneko (Michiyo Kogure), where she also lives. This means that she lacks the musical and dancing skills of a true geisha and simply sleeps with men for money – not because it’s the life she wanted to lead, but because she has taken it upon herself to pay off his father’s debts so that he can avoid prison. Shino is involved with Ryukichi (Shigeru Tsuyuguchi), who works informally as Taneko’s procurer, but he’s a lazy sponger, so she’s naturally not in love with him. 

 

Tamura, Mita and Tsuyuguchi

 

One day, Tadasu (Takahiro Tamura) visits the geisha house as a new client. Compared to most of her customers, he’s kind and gentle, and the two fall in love. However, being a former samurai reduced to pickpocketing, he can’t afford to buy her freedom. He resolves to go straight, but meanwhile Ryukichi becomes jealous of their relationship and begins plotting revenge… 

 

 

Like the previously-reviewed Cards Are My Life, this was one of just five films written and directed by Masashige Narusawa, who was more usually a screenwriter only. This one is an adaptation of a short story by Kafu Nagai first published in 1917 – a story which went on to have a controversial history when a second, pornographic version appeared and began to circulate on the black market. Nagai claimed that somebody else had added the explicit material without his knowledge, but many thought he had written it himself. After the later version was finally posthumously published in 1972, the magazine publisher responsible was taken to court and charged with obscenity. In any case, although Toei studios based their film on the earlier version, their choice of it as material was one of the tentative steps they were taking at the time to introduce more eroticism into their films as a means of competing with television, where such adult themes were not allowed. 

 

Yumiko Nogawa and Yoshiko Mita

 

As a film set in a single location, albeit with quite an elaborate exterior set as well as the interior one, this was also probably quite a cheap film to make, although it never looks it. Narusawa (who had studied under Mizoguchi) uses long takes with few close-ups and little cutting – a style I’ve always admired as I feel that it promotes naturalistic acting and makes the viewer feel less led by the nose than in the many films which frequently cut from one close-up to another. Cinematographer Juhei Suzuki – who shot 13 Assassins (1963) and Tales of the Inner Chambers (1968) – also deserves credit for his mobile camerawork, which enabled Narusawa to have only 39 cuts in the entire film.

 

 

On the other hand, the performances are adequate but not exceptional and the story is not terribly compelling, featuring as it does the types of characters and situations we’ve seen many times before. Narusawa retains the framing device used by Nagai (here featuring narration by a mostly-unseen Eijiro Tono), but I’m not sure it added much. The one really poor choice, though, is the easy-listening jazz score by Harumi Ibe, which just seems out of place in a Japanese period film, especially when the strummed guitar and accordion kick in, which lend a distinctly inappropriate French flavour to the proceedings!

Thanks to A.K.