Shirobamba / しろばんば (1962)

Obscure Japanese Film #248

Toru Shimamura

This Nikkatsu production was based on the autobiographical novel of the same name by one of Japan’s major writers, Yasushi Inoue (1907-91). The book was translated into English by Jean Oda Moy in 1991, but Inoue’s sequel, Zoku Shirobamba, has been neither filmed nor translated, and the fact that Nikkatsu never made the sequel suggests that this film was not especially profitable. The story concerns Inoue’s own childhood in Izu in the early Taisho period (1912-26) when Inoue was around seven years old, and the title refers to the white aphids that the children would try to catch in the autumn.

Izumi Ashikawa

Inoue’s alter ego is Kosaku (played here by Toru [later Miki] Shimamura), whose rural upbringing is unusual in that his parents, though living, are absent, and he’s brought up by his late great-great uncle’s mistress, known as Granny Onui (Tanie Kitabayashi). He’s all she’s got, so she spoils him, and he’s very attached to her as a result. The only other person he really likes is Sakiko (Izumi Ashikawa), whom he calls his elder sister although she’s actually his aunt. Unfortunately, she looks down on Onui and there’s no love lost between the two women. Sakiko lives in the ‘Upper House’ nearby with Kosaku’s other relations, but he feels uncomfortable there and avoids them. Kosaku gets the highest grades in his year at school and his family has a higher social status than his classmates’, so he feels different to the other boys and great things are expected of him.

Jacket of the novel in English translation

Reading the novel in translation a while ago I was reminded of the films of Keisuke Kinoshita and wondered if the book had ever been filmed; looking it up, I found that not only had it been, but that the screenwriter was none other than Keisuke Kinoshita himself. However, it’s directed not by him, but by Eisuke Takizawa, who seems to have been Nikkatsu’s director of choice for their more prestigious literary adaptations during this period (not a genre they’re widely remembered for).

Jukichi Uno

I had high hopes for this film but, although its superficially faithful, one of the strengths of the book is its lack of sentimentality, and it was disappointing to see the story sentimentalised as it has been here, especially in regard to composer Takanobu Saito’s clichéd use of mandolin and harp. There’s also been an overall softening of tone – to give a couple of examples, in the book, the schoolteachers think nothing of dishing out corporal punishment, and Sakiko is an arrogant snob, while here the teachers (one of whom is played by a twinkly-eyed Jukichi Uno in old man make-up) are far more genial and Sakiko – perhaps partly due to the casting of popular star Ishikawa – is a much gentler character.

Tanie Kitabayashi

Talking of casting, I felt that a lack of imagination was evident in hiring 51-year-old character actress Tanie Kitabayashi to do her old granny act yet again when Sachiko Murase would have been a far better fit for the complex character described by Inoue. Well-made though it is, ultimately I couldn’t help feeling that the film would have had more depth if it had been cast and scored differently and directed by Kinoshita or Miyoji Ieki instead of Takizawa.

A note on the title:

The title can be written as Shirobamba or Shirobanba in English; the character ん is usually written as ‘n’ in translation, but when pronounced before a ‘b’, it’s natural to close the mouth more fully, so it comes out sounding more like an ‘m’. This is also the reason why both Tetsuro Tanba and Tetsuro Tamba can be considered correct.

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

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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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Heat Wave Island / かげろう / Kagero (‘Heat Wave’, 1969)

Obscure Japanese Film #223

 

Nobuko Otowa

Produced by Kindai Eiga Kyokai, an independent company formed by director Kozaburo Yoshimura, screenwriter Kaneto Shindo and actor Taiji Tonoyama in 1950, this crime drama was directed and co-written by Shindo and features Tonoyama in a supporting role as the head of an island village. Shindo’s long-term muse and mistress Nobuko Otowa plays Otoyo, a bar hostess who turns up dead at the beginning of the film when a dog carrying a human hand (an idea obviously nicked from Yojimbo) leads the cops to her corpse. Otowa, an actor always willing to do anything for her art, has to play a partially-excavated cadaver, but gets to pop up in flashbacks as a a living being throughout the rest of the movie. 

 

Rokko Toura

 

As the title suggests, it’s set during a heatwave, and a murder investigation is soon underway led by sweaty detectives Oishi (Oshima favourite Rokko Toura) and Iino (future director Juzo Itami), who have to traipse all over the islands of the Seto Inland Sea to interview sundry witnesses played by Shindo’s favourite character actors, including Jukichi Uno, Tanie Kitabayashi, Eitaro Ozawa and, of course, the aforementioned Taiji Tonoyoma. The dogged police begin to suspect that following Michiko (Masako Toyama), a young woman who worked at Otoyo’s bar, may lead them to the killer…

 

Masako Toyama

 

The little-known Masako Toyama, who has one of the principal roles here, was apparently a theatre actor whom Shindo had cast as a result of seeing her in a camera commercial. She had actually already made one film before this, a Shochiku action picture known in English as Pursuit of Murder: Shinjuku’s 25th Hour (1969), and she would go on to appear in at least nine more movies. IMDb has her listed (incorrectly I think) as Masako Tomiyama. 

 

Taiji Tonoyama

 

Anyway, the film is stylishly shot by cameraman Kiyomi Kuroda and has an interesting score by Hikaru Hayashi, although it’s one that works better in certain scenes than others, sometimes lending a strange feeling of detachment rather than enhancing the suspense. Both Kuroda and Hayashi had worked on Shindo’s best known films, Onibaba (1964) and Kuroneko (1968). 

 

Tanie Kitabayashi

 

What surprised me most about the film is how much it reminded me of Castle of Sand (1974), Yoshitaro Nomura’s big hit movie adaptation of Seicho Matsumoto’s 1961 novel of the same name. Heat Wave Island must surely have been an influence on that later film, right down to the permanently perspiring policemen. On the other hand, the plot of Heat Wave Island is also very much like something that Matsumoto might have written, and he was undoubtedly an influence on the original screenplay written by Shindo and Isao Seki (an assistant director on Onibaba and other Shindo films). 

 

Jukichi Uno

 

Unsurprisingly for Shindo, there’s also a leftist social commentary aspect to the film, as Joan Mellon pointed out in her 1975 book Voices from the Japanese Cinema:

Kagero has been highly praised by both [Donald] Richie and [Richard N.] Tucker. Its locale is again the Inland Sea, the same setting as The [Naked] Island [1960]. Ten years have elapsed and the people who might have been the heroes of the earlier film have moved to the cities. Lacking skills, they are absorbed inevitably into the lumpen proletariat as petty criminals, prostitutes and dealers in drugs. Richie holds that the film far transcends the level of melodrama:

From the brilliant opening it becomes apparent that he [Shindo] is making a statement on the relation between love and death; from other parts of the film (“cops are poor – criminals are poor: it is the poor chasing the poor”) it is apparent that a social statement is being made; finally, Shindo is making a film about what happens when sudden affluence reaches a simple people. 

The islands around the Seto Inland Sea, where poverty is high and employment low, certainly make for an interesting and often photogenic setting, as one of the cops muses at one point, saying,

The beauty of this scenery made them poor. The islands are beautiful because they’re made of granite soil. The soil can only grow wheat and potatoes. When it rains, the soil erodes and the fields wash into the sea. The beautiful white soil is a symbol of infertility. It’s a symbol of poverty. 

Heat Wave Island is a fascinating film even if the plot is arguably a little over-complicated and, though Otoyo seems a remarkably unsympathetic character at first, things turn out to be a lot less black and white as the story unfolds. 

 

Juzo Itami and Rokko Taura (centre)

 

Love is Lost / 銀心中 / Gin shinju (‘Silver Double Suicide’, 1956)

Obscure Japanese Film #179

 

Jukichi Uno and Nobuko Otowa

Tokyo, c. 1942. Sakie (Nobuko Otowa) and her husband Kiichi (Jukichi Uno) run a barbershop together and agree to take Kiichi’s nephew Jutaro (Hiroyuki Nagato) as a live-in apprentice. When Kiichi is called up to join the army, his absence brings Sakie and Jutaro closer during his absence, but it’s not long before Jutaro is also conscripted. One day, a messenger arrives to inform Sakie that her husband has been killed in battle in the Philippines. After living out the remainder of the war with her brother (Akitake Kono) and his resentful wife (Harue Tone) in the country, Sakie returns to Tokyo to find the barbershop in ruins, but is reunited with Jutaro. Their relationship soon turns romantic and they vow to rebuild the business, but the course of true love never runs smooth…  

Otowa with Hiroyuki Nagato

 

This Nikkatsu production was based on a 1952 short story of the same title by Torahiko Tamiya (male, 1911-88), whose work also provided the basis for Miyoji Ieki’s Stepbrothers (1957) among other films. Written and directed by Kaneto Shindo, as usual it stars his long-term mistress, Nobuko Otowa, who gives a typically fine performance in the lead role. The rest of the cast also acquit themselves well and it’s always good to see Shindo’s stock company of his favourite  character actors, including Taiji Tonoyama, Tanie Kitabayashi and – very briefly as a barbershop customer – Jun Hamamura. However, I did think that the actress playing Umeko, the alcoholic, gambling-addicted harlot went way over the top – I finally realised that this role was also being played by Nobuko Otowa! This is cleverly shot and edited, with Taiji Tonoyama playing a scene with both Otowas. 

Taiji Tonoyama with Otowa as Sakie

 

TT with Otowa as Umeko

This film has its flaws and gets a bit too repetitive in its latter stages, with virtually the same scene playing out several times, and it would be easy to dismiss it as just another rather hokey tragic love story. However, it also provides a powerful depiction of the sense of futility and waste that the Japanese felt after the war, and how this inevitably led to widespread disillusionment, bitterness, cynicism and nihilism. In one scene which has no bearing on the plot, the bombed-out Sakie and Jutaro take shelter with other newly-homeless Tokyo residents in the subway and look on as two men chase a screaming woman through a tunnel. Nobody intervenes or even offers a comment. For me, this type of seemingly-irrelevant scene which actually speaks volumes is the mark of a great filmmaking talent, which I think Shindo certainly was. The excellent cinematography of Takeo Ito (an award-winner for Kurosawa’s Drunken Angel) and score by Godzilla composer Akira Ifukube also help to make this a film worth seeking out.

Otowa as Sakie

 

Otowa as Umeko

Thanks to A.K.

On Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

Konki / 婚期 / 'Marriageable Age' (1961)

Obscure Japanese Film #124

Ayako Wakao

 

Takuo (Eiji Funakoshi) runs an inn (a family business he has inherited), and lives not just with his wife, Shizuka (Machiko Kyo), but with his two sisters – Namiko (Ayako Wakao) and Hatoko (Hitomi Nozoe), who are financially dependent on him and on the lookout for husbands. Namiko, 29, teaches calligraphy to children and is in danger of becoming an old maid (although it was unclear to me why). Hatoko, 24, is trying to become an actress but only getting tiny parts. The two sisters get on well, spending much of their time together, and are united in their dissatisfaction with Shizuka, perhaps because she does not run a perfect house and relies too heavily on the elderly maid (Tanie Kitabayashi). 

Eiji Funakoshi

 

Machiko Kyo

One day, Shizuka receives an anonymous letter telling her that her husband has a mistress with whom he has had a child, but she seems only a little perturbed by this. In this dysfunctional family, the only person who seems to have their shit together is Takuo’s sister, Saeko (Mieko Takamine), an emancipated divorcee who lives apart from the rest, works in the fashion industry and sees through her womanising brother…

Mieko Takamine

 

Director Kozaburo Yoshimura was better-known for his more serious literary adaptations, but on this occasion he successfully turned his hand to a domestic comedy from an original screenplay by frequent Tadashi Imai / Mikio Naruse collaborator Yoko Mizuki (1910-2003). Mizuki actually won the 1962 Best Screenplay Award for this and Tadashi Imai’s The Harbour Lights (1961). In the case of Konki, the screenplay is a dialogue-heavy one which allows the mostly female ensemble star cast to have a field day. 

Ayako Wakao and Hitomi Nozoe

 

Despite watching twice with decent if imperfect subtitles, I still felt that there was a great deal I didn’t understand, and I suspect that you have to be Japanese to really get this one. The subtitles sometimes struggled to keep up with the often rapid-fire dialogue, with the result that it was not always clear who was saying what to whom. I also suspect that the ending had a point to it which sailed right over my head. Nevertheless, there’s a lot to enjoy here, with Ayako Wakao and Hitomi Nozoe making a great comic double act. The real star of this movie, though, is Tanie Kitabayashi, an actress who specialised in granny roles. She was around 50 when she made this, but was playing at least 20 years older. She’s hilarious here as the put-upon help, and the splendidly reluctant intonation she puts into a simple ‘hai’ (‘yes’) when instructed to do something is priceless. 

Tanie Kitabayashi

 

One notable aspect of the film is the sheer amount of business the actors find to do while delivering their dialogue. Whether it’s Wakao marking her pupils’ calligraphy homework, Nozoe cutting her toenails, Takamine removing a face pack or Kitabayashi grating dried bonito, Konki is a masterclass in the use of props, and the skilfully co-ordinated interaction of the various cast members shows their considerable acting chops. While the film may be baffling at times for non-Japanese viewers, anyone who loves these actors and Daiei films of this era (as I do) should certainly seek it out.


Thanks to Anonymous.

The Human Wall / 人間の壁/ Ningen no kabe (1959)

Obscure Japanese Film #113

Kyoko Kagawa

Fumiko (Kyoko Kagawa) is a teacher at an elementary school in Saga Prefecture in the south of Japan. Her pupils are mainly from poor families in which the men are employed at the nearby coal mine or work as fishermen. When the local council wants to cut costs by laying off 259 staff, Fumiko comes under pressure to resign from her bosses, who explain that, as she is married, she has her husband’s income to fall back on, and that’s why they’ve singled her out. However, the real reason is that they suspect her husband, Kenichiro (Shinji Minamibara), of being a communist. Fumiko loves her job and refuses to resign. Kenichiro is an executive committee member of the local teacher’s union, but he’s a careerist rather than an idealist, and the relationship between the couple worsens when he wants to use their savings to bribe an official so that he can get elected chairman. 

Shinji Minamibara

 

Jukichi Uno

Meanwhile, Fumiko’s colleague Sawada (Jukichi Uno) has troubles of his own – catching three of his pupils bullying a disabled classmate, he pushes them away, but then finds himself accused of assault. This situation is exploited by the Liberal Democratic Party, who attempt to use him as a political pawn. The school’s other self-sacrificing teachers also continue to be treated unfairly, but eventually – led by Fumiko – they learn the power of collective action…

Kyoko Kagawa

 

Based on a novel by Tatsuzo Ishikawa (1905-85) which was itself based on real events that occurred in 1957, this independent production was made by director Satsuo Yamamoto’s own company and financed by the Japan Teachers’ Union, who were encouraged by the success of Yamamoto’s previous film (Ballad of the Cart-Puller) and the fact that he had a distribution deal with Shin-Toho. After being blacklisted by the studios as a communist in 1950, Yamamoto had managed to produce a number of high-quality and often commercially-successful films mostly financed by unions – a remarkable feat which would eventually see him re-employed by the studios, who could not ignore his impressive track record. In 1962, he made the hugely successful Shinobi no mono for Daiei, launching both the ninja genre and a series which ran to nine films, the first three of which are soon to be released on Blu-ray by Radiance Films.

 

One reason that The Human Wall is languishing in obscurity today may be that the topical nature of the material appears to make it of little contemporary relevance. However, I would argue that similar things continue to happen to people today and the film still works well as an effective piece of drama. At the time, it was a critical as well as a commercial success, ranked 6^th best film of the year by Kinema Junpo and winning three Mainichi Film Concours awards: Jukichi Uno for Best Supporting Actor, Yamamoto for Best Director (for this and Ballad of the Cart-Puller) and Hikaru Hayashi for Best Score (for this, Ballad and Lucky Dragon No.5). It’s a shame that Kurosawa favourite Kyoko Kagawa was overlooked, as she gives an excellent performance and carries the film in what must be one of her best movie roles. At the time of writing, Kagawa is still with us at the age of 92 and has only recently retired. 

 

Eitaro Ozawa

Tanie Kitabayashi

Masao Mishima

Among the familiar faces in the supporting cast are Ken Utsui, Eijiro Tono, Eitaro Ozawa, Taiji Tonoyama, Tanie Kitabayashi, Masao Mishima, Teruko Kishi and Yunosuke Ito, but the most surprising performance for me was that of Sadako Sawamura, an actress I can only remember previously seeing as downtrodden types, but who here plays a strong, no-nonsense woman most effectively. 

Sadako Sawamura

 

Director Satsuo Yamamoto sometimes phoned it in when working on later studio assignments such as Zatoichi the Outlaw (1967) and The Peony Lantern (1968), but he clearly took a lot of care over projects close to his heart such as this one, and it shows, especially in his sensitive direction of the child characters and his impressive skill in the way he manages to coordinate large groups of them on location. While this film could easily have been a worthy bore, good work in all departments prevents this from being the case, and the excellent cast bring their characters vividly to life.

 

Bonus trivia: Author Tatsuzo Ishikawa also provided the literary sources for the later Yamamoto films Kizudarake no sanga (aka The Tycoon, 1964) and Kinkanshoku (1975).