Shunsetsu / 春雪 / (‘Spring Snow’, 1950)

Obscure Japanese Film #164

Yasuko Fujita

 

Takako (Yasuko Fujita) is a young woman who works on the ticket desk at her local train station in Denenchofu on the outskirts of Tokyo. The eldest child of a father (Takashi Shimura) who has been made redundant - though he doesn’t tell his family for a month - she hopes to wed train driver Toshio (Shuji Sano), but they cannot yet afford to marry. Not only are the family are struggling to get by, but Takako’s mother (Yuriko Hanabusa) is unwell and her younger brother (Teiji Takahashi) has started hanging out with a bad crowd. But when Takako’s younger sister Tomoko (Akiko Sawamura) finds work as a maid to a wealthy orchestra conductor (Ichiro Ryuzaki) who takes a shine to Takako, it looks like the family’s problems could be solved if she would only forget Toshio and marry him instead…

Takashi Shimura

 

Shuji Sano

 

Teiji Takahashi

Akiko Sawamura

This Shochiku production is unrelated to the later Yukio Mishima novel which shares its English title and was written as an original screenplay by Kaneto Shindo, one of around 40 he wrote for the director of this film, Kozaburo Yoshimura. I don’t remember the war itself being mentioned, but the poverty of the post-war years is emphasized throughout, and the family even try to grow vegetables in their garden to save a few yen. They tend to put up a  cheerful front when together, but often fall into depression on their own. We see Takiko riding a train and staring at the tracks as it speeds along as if seeing her life laid out before her in a straight line leading to nowhere, while her father eats his packed lunch in the ruins of the steelworks where he used to be employed and which was, presumably, demolished due to the war ending. Typically for Japanese drama, the story revolves around a classic giri (obligation) versus ninjo (inclination) conflict – in this case, if Takako marries the rich guy, her family will be saved. As it was made during the American occupation, however, the film also promotes western culture and values, and on one occasion we see Takako attending a ballet, while on another she and Toshio are seen sitting outside a Christian church where a wedding is taking place and admiring the sound of the choir singing a hymn within. 

 

Yasuko Fujita

The star of this film, Yasuko Fujita, was a theatre actress who had been hand-picked by Yoshimura to play the lead role despite never having appeared in a film before. It’s an impressive debut, and she not only looks the part, but acts it in such a way that she seems like a natural for the movies, betraying not even a hint of theatricality in her performance. Unfortunately for the Japanese cinema, she married a well-known music promoter in 1953 and retired from acting having made a dozen films, the most widely-seen of which is probably Yoshimura’s Clothes of Deception (1951), in which she co-starred opposite Machiko Kyo. Her Japanese Wikipedia page contains the enigmatic comment that ‘She reportedly made the most of her good looks when interacting with foreign celebrities.’ Yasuko Fujita passed away in 2015 aged 88.

Among the rest of the cast, the most notable is Takashi Shimura, and it’s nice to see that he’s not totally wasted here as he was so often when not working with Kurosawa. In Spring Snow, he gets to play a character with more than one dimension who goes through his own struggle against both himself and his circumstances. 

 

Although I wouldn’t go as far as to claim it as any kind of forgotten masterpiece, Spring Snow has quite a lot going for it, including the cinematography of Toshio Ubukata (who also worked for Kurosawa) and the mostly well-developed characters, who feel worth spending time with.

Thanks to A.K.

Natsuko’s Adventure in Hokkaido / 夏子の冒険/ Natsuko no boken (1952)

Obscure Japanese Film #103

Rieko Sumi

 

 

Natsuko (Rieko Sumi) is a spoiled and stubborn young woman bored by the various men chasing her and the thought of becoming a housewife or socialite. Instead, she dreams of a man who pursues his passion no matter what obstacles he must face. Unable to find such a person, she decides to become a nun, but on her way to enter a convent in Hokkaido she takes the ferry and meets Tsuyoshi (Masao Wakahara). He’s a hunter returning to the island to shoot the bear which, according to the subtitles, ‘dismembered and killed’ his fiancée, Akiko (Keiko Awaji).

Masao Wakahara

 

Convinced that she has finally found the man of her dreams, Natsuko abandons the idea of becoming a nun and decides to follow Tsuyoshi and help him to kill the bear whether he likes it or not. When they reach Sapporo, Tsuyoshi tries to get rid of Natsuko by dumping her on his journalist friend, Noguchi (Teiji Takahashi), who promptly falls in love with her. However, she proves impossible to shake off and follows Tsuyoshi into the countryside to the house of Akiko’s father, Juzo (Takeshi Sakamoto), who accepts her as a guest. 

Yoko Katsuragi and Takeshi Sakamoto

 

Despite her efforts to assist Tsuyoshi in his quest, Natsuko proves more of a hindrance than a help, while Akiko’s younger sister, the 17-year-old Fujiko (Yoko Katsuragi), seems to have become interested in Tsuyoshi herself and to regard Natsuko as a rival. Accustomed to rural life, Fujiko skips along the mountain trails with ease while Natsuko can barely keep up. Meanwhile, Natsuko’s grandmother, mother and auntie (Chieko Higashiyama, Teruko Kishi and Sachiko Murase) want her back home and are hot on her trail…

This Shochiku comedy was the second Japanese feature film in full colour. As the process was so new to Japan, some of the crew had to travel to Hollywood to get advice from the experts there. Like many early colour films, subtlety was not the idea and the costumes and backgrounds were designed to be as colourful as possible in order to dazzle the cinemagoers of the day. Unfortunately, some brief parts of the film are missing, although the soundtrack is complete apart from one sequence; however, the vast majority of the film survives in excellent condition.

Natsuko’s Adventure in Hokkaido is a moderately amusing piece of fluff, so it’s something of a shock to see that it was based on a novel by Yukio Mishima, of all people. The book has not so far been translated into English, but it appears that the film is actually quite faithful and the novel is a similarly lightweight piece. In the Asahi Weekly newspaper (29 July 1951), Mishima explained his motivation for writing it. Here is a rough translation:

Although the story is set in Hokkaido, the main characters are young men and women from the city. However, in the city, young people cannot find anything worthy of their energy. They leave Tokyo with different dreams. I am dissatisfied with the fact that the current era does not provide the means of fulfilling youthful dreams, so I wanted my characters to pursue their dreams among the lakes and forests of Hokkaido, where present-day Japan feels more like a foreign country. 

Fans of the writer Haruki Murakami may also be interested to know that Mishima’s book is said to have influenced Murakami’s novel A Wild Sheep Chase.

 

Rieko Sumi

 

Another surprising aspect of the film is that the star of this expensive production is not terribly well-known. Rieko Sumi (1928-2005) was from Hiroshima, where she suffered exposure to the atomic bomb, though thankfully she made a full recovery and became the first Miss Hiroshima in 1948, leading to her being signed as a new face by Toho. Most of her leading roles were in the early ‘50s, after which she was mainly relegated to supporting parts. I felt that she failed to give much depth to her portrayal of Natsuko, who comes across as a little too unsympathetic, and perhaps that indicates why her career as a leading woman ended early. However, she contributed a moving cameo as an A-bomb survivor who refuses to feel sorry for herself in Kozaburo Yoshimura’s A Night to Remember. 

 

Yoko Katsuragi

In Natsuko’s Adventure in Hokkaido, it’s Yoko Katsuragi who steals the show as the coquettish Fujiko. Given that the film feels like an imitation of the Hollywood style even down to avant-garde composer Toshiro Mayuzumi’s uncharacteristically conventional music score, it’s ironic that Fujiko explicitly criticises Natsuko’s American values at the end of the film. As the Americans had just left when the film went into production, perhaps the filmmakers were unable to resist having a dig at their former occupiers even as they continued to enthusiastically absorb their culture.

In regard to director Noboru Nakamura, at this stage in his career he was just beginning to gain a reputation as a reliable director of literary adaptations. On the basis of Natsuko’s Adventure, there’s little to distinguish him from any other competent director, but his best work was yet to come in films like Downpour (1957) and Koto (1963).  

 

Bonus trivia: actor Yoko Katsuragi married composer Toshiro Mayuzumi in 1953.