'Kuruwa' yori Muho ichidai / 「廓」より 無法一代 (From 'Red Light District': The Lawless Age, 1957)

Obscure Japanese Film #265

Tatsuya Mihashi and Michiyo Aratama

1906, the 39^th year of the Meiji Era. Kanta (Tatsuya Mihashi) and O-Gin (Michiyo Aratama) arrive in Chushojima, the red light district of Fushimi City near Kyoto, with the intention of setting up their own brothel with the help of O-Gin’s somewhat reluctant uncle (Jukichi Uno). They find an ideal property, but are less lucky in finding prostitutes – of the three they initially hire, one (Haruna Kaburagi) comes down with a venereal disease and has to be hospitalised, another (Harue Tone) is planning to abscond with her yakuza boyfriend (a pre-cheek-job Joe Shishido) and the remaining one, Kikuno (Izumi Ashikawa), is unable to reconcile herself with her new profession and is utterly miserable. If that weren’t bad enough, Kanta finds himself in conflict with Ikarigawa (Misao Shimizu), the local yakuza boss, and the Salvation Army are spreading anti-prostitution propaganda. It’s a tough life being a ponce…

Jukichi Uno

Joe Shishido

This Nikkatsu production was based on the first part of a bestselling trilogy of novels entitled Kuruwa by Katsumi Nishiguchi (1913-86) published between 1956 and 1958. According to Japanese Wikipedia, Nishiguchi had himself been born into a family that owned a brothel in Chushojima, and Nikkatsu’s website states that Kanta was based on his father. In 1957, prostitution was a hot topic in Japan as the Prostitution Prevention Law had just been passed and was due to come into force the following year, hence there were a number of films on the topic produced around this time, most famously Kenji Mizoguchi’s Akasen chitai, but also Yuzo Kawashima’s excellent Suzaki Paradise: Red Light District, another Nikkatsu production starring Mihashi, Aratama and Ashikawa released the previous year to this one. Nishiguchi, a member of the Japanese Communist Party, seems to have been strongly opposed to prostitution despite his family background, and this film has an obvious anti-capitalist message at its heart.

Izumi Ashikawa (front) and friends on display for passing customers

Tatsuya Mihashi

Tatsuya Mihashi, the film’s leading man, would have had little sympathy with Nishiguchi’s communist beliefs – the actor had been a prisoner of war in Siberia, and subsequently refused to take any plane that flew over Russian airspace. Mihashi was known as ‘the Japanese Cary Grant’ due to his alleged resemblance to the Hollywood star, though I can’t really see it myself. In any case, this is one of the best roles he ever had in the movies.

One interesting aspect of this film is the choice to make the perpetrators rather than the victims the main protagonists as one can hardly root for people like these. However, they’re certainly not one-dimensional villains – Kanta seems to have become obsessed with money only as a result of witnessing how the poor can be victimised by the rich and powerful with impunity, and he has a reckless courage in taking on a gang of yakuza single-handed. For her part, O-Gin’s love for her husband is strong enough to override her misgivings, at least at the beginning. The rounded performances by the two leads also ensure we never completely despise them and, in fact, do root for them in one way, at least – by hoping they will come to see the error of their ways. But perhaps that’s not easy for them in a world where the other local business owners see it as their right to exploit women by forcing them into sexual slavery. By showing all this so clearly, the film forces the audience to think seriously about Japan’s uncomfortable history with prostitution and the price that is paid when people decide to choose money over morality.

Misao Shimizu

The unconventional ending strongly suggested to me that there was supposed to be a sequel, but for some reason one was never made. I think the film may have rubbed people’s noses in it a bit too much to have been a box office success, but this is pure speculation on my part. In any case, this is a very well-done film all around and the best I’ve seen so far by director Eisuke Takizawa, here working from a screenplay by the prolific Toshio Yasumi.

A note on the title:

The film begins by displaying the character 廓 (kuruwa), then 無法一代 (muho ichidai) is superimposed over the top. Most Japanese sites list the film as 「廓」より　無法一代  (‘Kuruwa yori Muho ichidai’, which is perhaps best translated as ‘From Red Light District: The Lawless Age’), but sometimes the film is listed simply as Muho ichidai, omitting the reference to the title of the novel. Others have translated muho ichidai as ‘Outrageous Generation,’ but in my opinion this is a poorer fit for the material and was never an official English title as far as I can see. I believe the standard Japanese for ‘red light district’ is akasen chitai; kuruwa is an alternative which I suspect had fallen out of use or was only used in a specific area, but if anyone knows better, please leave a comment below. 

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Woman Unveiled / 女であること / Onna de aru koto (‘Being a Woman’, 1958)

 

Yoshiko Kuga

 

Masayuki Mori and Setsuko Hara

Sadatsugu (Masayuki Mori), a lawyer, and his wife Ichiko (Setsuko Hara) are a childless couple who are looking after the daughter of one of Sadatsugu’s clients, who is facing a death sentence, though we never learn precisely what for. The daughter, named Taeko (Kyoko Kagawa), appears to be in her late teens, and is sensitive, timid and rather gloomy, perhaps mostly due to her father’s situation.

 

Kyoko Kagawa

Sadatsugu and Ichiko then find themselves having to look after another young woman of a similar age, Sakae (Yoshiko Kuga), who has run away from home and is the daughter of Ichiko’s best friend. Unlike Taeko, Sakae turns out to be a spoilt, insensitive troublemaker with no filter and no control over her emotions. It’s not long before she’s annoying Taeko with her directness, flirting with Sadatsugu and even coming home drunk and kissing Ichiko on the lips. Meanwhile, Ichiko has a chance meeting with old flame Goro (Tatsuya Mihashi), whom she hasn’t seen for 17 years. Then Sakae finds out and starts sticking her oar in… 

 

Tatsuya Mihashi

 

This production by Tokyo Eiga (a subsidiary of Toho) was director Yuzo Kawashima’s first for them after leaving Nikkatsu. It was based on an untranslated novel of the same name by Yasunari Kawabata originally serialised in the Asahi Shinbun during 1956. Despite the fact that it’s not considered one of future Nobel laureate Kawabata’s most notable works, Kawashima – along with his collaborators Sumie Tanaka (female) and Toshiro Ide (male) – is said to have gone to a great deal of trouble over the screenplay. By all accounts a pretty faithful adaptation, nevertheless Kawashima apparently regarded the film as a failure, feeling that he had failed to make of it any more than an illustrated version of the novel’s key scenes. It’s also likely that some important aspects had to be implied in the film version due to censorship – for example, that Sadatsugu and his wife haven’t slept together much in their ten years of marriage, and that Ichiko’s interest in sex is revived partly due to her kiss with Sakae and partly as a result of meeting Goro again. There’s also some suggestion that Sadatsugu sleeps with Sakae, but it’s not really made clear. However, what’s more frustrating is that we learn nothing of the crime for which Taeko’s father is facing a death sentence and, in fact, never even lay eyes on him – it’s simply a convenient device to give her something to feel troubled about. It seems to me that the inclusion of such a story element rather obliges the writers to expand a little (I would assume that Kawabata went into more detail in his book).

 

Masayuki Mori

 

The film opens with a montage sequence of Yoshiko Kuga shot from behind riding around on her bike and shouting out greetings to various passers-by. This is followed by Akihiro Miwa, the drag queen from Black Lizard (1968), dancing and singing the title song (i.e. ‘Being a Woman’) over the opening credits before two American military planes go roaring overhead, scaring Kyoko Kagawa’s pet bird. It’s hard to know what to make of this opening – apart from whimsy on the part of Kawashima – as none of it seems to bear much relation to what follows. 

 

Setsuko Hara

Though by no means a bad film, Woman Unveiled also features a disappointingly corny, Hollywood-style score by Toshiro Mayuzumi and wraps things up in mostly conventional fashion, although the change undergone by Kyoko Kagawa’s character is somewhat unexpected. The posters promoted Setsuko Hara as the main star, but it’s Yoshiko Kuga who steals this one – the term  ‘charm offensive’ springs to mind here, as she simultaneously manages to be both charming and offensive. Incidentally, the role is strikingly similar to the one she played in the previous year’s Banka (aka Northern Elegy), in which she also caused trouble for a middle-aged and married professional played by Masayuki Mori. For all its flaws, Woman Unveiled remains a well-made and intelligent film arguably more in the Naruse mould than the Kawashima one (if such a thing existed) with a trio of very different but interesting and well-rounded female characters at its centre.

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles) 

 

 

Kaei / 花影 / (‘The Shade of Blossoms’, 1961)

Obscure Japanese Film #194

Junko Ikeuchi

 

Yoko (Junko Ikeuchi) is an ageing Ginza bar hostess who has never been sufficiently calculating to hook a wealthy patron and get herself set up with her own bar or restaurant. Seeing little future for herself, she plans to commit suicide with pills she’s been saving up. As she prepares to do so, her story is told in flashback and we learn that she was adopted as a child and, as an adult, has had a series of disappointing relationships with a variety of men. These include university lecturer Matsuzaki (Ryo Ikebe), middle-aged lawyer Hata (Tadao Takashima), young TV producer Shimizu (Ichiro Arishima), and old-flame-made-good Nogata (Tatsuya Mitsuhashi). However, the only one she’s ever really loved is older art critic Takashima (Shuji Sano), as he’s the only one who’s never made a pass at her, but perhaps she’s idealised him too much…

 

Ikeuchi and Shuji Sano

 

Based on a prize-winning novel of the same name by Shohei Ooka – best known for Fires on the Plain – the story of this Tokyo Eiga production (distributed by Toho) was inspired by the life of Mutsuko Sakamoto (1915-58), a Ginza bar hostess with whom Ooka had had an eight-year-long affair before she committed suicide. The adaptation by Ryuzu Kikushima (one of Kurosawa’s regular collaborators) is extremely faithful to the book, which was translated into English as The Shade of Blossoms by Dennis Washburn and published in 1998 by the University of Michigan Press (the title refers to the shade under blossoming cherry or plum trees). Both film and novel have an almost shockingly sad ending without a trace of sentimentality, and director Yuzo Kawashima has done a fine job of bringing the story to life without imposing his own ego upon it. When he (or perhaps Kikushima) does add something – like Hata’s adopted daughter killing a worm in the garden after her father has thoughtlessly pointed out to Yoko that she’s not his by blood – it’s entirely appropriate and helps to illustrate the emotions of the characters. 

 

 

Yoko, a hostess who is weary of men, knows every seduction trick in the book only too well and seems in danger of sliding into alcoholism, is 38 years old in the novel, and would have been a perfect fit for Hideko Takamine, then 37. However, Tokyo Eiga went with the 28-year-old Junko Ikeuchi, whom they had just signed after her previous studio Shintoho had gone bankrupt. Although she’s a little young for the role, Ikeuchi could perhaps pass for a very well-preserved 38, but in any case she gives an excellent performance and manages to put Yoko’s complex emotions across very well. The remainder of the cast are left fighting for screen time as there are an unusually large number of important characters – indeed, it’s unusual to see Ryo Ikebe and Chikage Awashima in such small roles (Awashima plays the former mistress of Nogata’s deceased father). Sei Ikeno’s harpsichord-dominated score also adds a touch of class to the proceedings and never tries to manipulate our emotions in an obvious way. 

 

Tatsuya Mihashi, Ikeuchi and Chikage Awashima 

 

Shohei Ooka is on record as saying that Yukio Mishima was effusive in his praise of the book and that, after Mishima’s suicide, he felt convinced that it was this theme of Yoko wanting to end her own life while she was still beautiful that had appealed to him so much. 

 

Ryo Ikebe and Ikeuchi

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles) 

Summer Storm / 夏の嵐 / Natsu no arashi (1956)

Obscure Japanese Film #112

Masahiko Tsugawa and Mie Kitahara

Director Ko Nakahira’s first film following his famous ‘sun tribe’ movie Crazed Fruit again stars Mie Kitahara and examines the lives of disaffected youth in post-war Japan. The film opens dramatically with a brief but attention-grabbing pre-credits sequence in which we hear a startling scream from Kitahara, who is standing on a windy beach and shouting out to sea. “How unfair! You’ve gone forever, that’s so unfair. I’ll never forgive you for this! Never!” she yells before rushing into the stormy ocean. This scene is repeated again at the end of the film, by which point of course we have the context to understand it. 

 

Ryoko (Kitahara) is a young woman living with her family after having been raised by another woman they call ‘Aunt Maki’ (Ayuko Fujishiro) until she was 13, at which point Aunt Maki remarried and sent Ryoko back to her birth mother, Mitsu (granny-specialist Tanie Kitabayashi playing her real age for once). 

 

Tanie Kitabayashi

As a result, Ryoko not only feels unwanted by both women and resents them, but has grown up to be a cold and cynical person. Although she works as a teacher at a special needs school, it’s a job she has taken mainly because her parents were against it (for reasons which are unclear). The family live in a Western-style house and are practising Christians. Mitsu takes religion especially seriously and is insufferably self-righteous; Ryoko sees her sister Taeko (Yoko Kozono) as a carbon copy of her mother and despises her for this reason. Their father (Yo Shiomi) is an antiques collector with his head in the clouds most of the time, and the only family member Ryoko feels any kinship with is her younger brother Akira (Masahiko Tsugawa), mainly because he’s adopted. 

 

Masahiko Tsugawa

Into this already dysfunctional household steps Akimoto (Tatsuya Mitsuhashi), a young man who is newly-engaged to Taeko. He’s full of self-loathing after having survived a suicide pact with a former girlfriend who died. When Ryoko is introduced, she suffers a shock – by pure coincidence, Akimoto is the same man she once had a one-night stand with on a camping trip. Trouble begins when the two realise they still have feelings for each other…  

 

Tatsuya Mihashi

In an attempt to follow the huge success of Crazed Fruit (based on a Shintaro Ishihara story), Nikkatsu studios chose to adapt another controversial Akutagawa Prize-nominated story by an angry young author – in this case a female one, Michiko Fukai (1932-2015). This is the only one of Fukai’s stories to have been filmed, and her literary career seems to have been a short one. To my knowledge, none of her stories have been translated into English. Although information about Fukai is scarce on the web, she was apparently influenced by Luchino Visconti’s portrayal of self-destructive emotions in Senso (1954), which had been released in Japan as Natsu no arashi, or Summer Storm, and whose title she borrowed. 

Tatsuya Mihashi and Yoko Kozono

 

The film features a considerable amount of voiceover narration by star Mie Kitahara, and is quite a dialogue-heavy piece of work in itself. It’s extremely well-directed by Ko Nakahira, who helps to hold the interest with some unusual staging; for example, he has Kitahara play a whole scene lying face down on the floor at one point, while in another, Ryoko and her colleague Kido (Nobuo Kaneko) exchange lines in a sweltering staffroom while each try to commandeer the one electric fan available. Unfortunately, Ryoko and Akimoto are both such self-pitying characters that they soon grow tiresome, and they are also given to saying things like “I crave exhilarating drama that makes my head reel!” (Ryoko). Perversely, it’s only when Akimoto realises that Taeko doesn’t love him that he wants to marry her. “You can’t understand my delight at the living death she promises me!” he exults. It’s hard to imagine real people saying such things, and I doubt it would sound any less pretentious in Japanese as the subtitles by Stuart J Walton are excellent. For these reasons, the film ultimately left me cold, and I suspect that it was a good deal less well-received than Crazed Fruit considering that it’s nowhere near as well-known and there were no further collaborations between Ko Nakahira and Mie Kitahara, or adaptations of Michiko Fukai’s stories. Where Crazed Fruit successfully tapped into the zeitgeist, Ryoko and Akimoto are both a bit too weird for most people to relate to; consequently, Summer Storm’s themes of suicide and incest feel like a slightly misjudged attempt to appeal to the supposedly nihilistic and rebellious youth of the time through mere shock value. 

 

Bonus trivia: Mie Kitahara (b.1933) was one of Japanese cinema’s biggest stars of the late 1950s and is still alive at the time of writing. After making 20 films with fellow star Yujiro Ishihara in the space of five years, she married him and retired from films in 1960, subsequently appearing in only one TV drama in 1964. Known as Makiko Ishihara since she quit acting, she co-managed her husband’s production company for many years and continued to run it after his death in 1987.