The Alaska Story / アラスカ物語 / Arasuka monogatari (1977)

Obscure Japanese Film #228

Kinya Kitaoji

This Toho production was based on a 1974 novel* by Jiro Nitta (1912-80), who also supplied the source material for the previously-reviewed Mount Hakkoda, another big movie shot on rugged locations and released the same year. Nitta’s novel was itself based on the life of Frank Yasuda (1868-1958), sometimes dubbed the ‘Japanese Moses.’ Yasuda emigrated to the USA as a young man and served on the USS Bear, a coast guard vessel which became entrapped in ice off the coast of Alaska in 1893. Sent to get help, he walked a vast distance before eventually collapsing, then was rescued by some Inuit in the nick of time. They sent a party to the aid of his shipmates, but Yasuda decided to remain with the Inuit and was taken under the wing of a man named Amaohka, who taught him whaling and hunting. Yasuda ended up marrying Amaohka’s daughter, Nebiro. However, when food became scarce in the area, Yasuda hooked up with Thomas Carter, an American gold prospector, hoping to strike it rich and make enough to lead his adoptive people to a better land (hence the ‘Japanese Moses’ moniker)…

Kyoko Mitsubayashi

Adapted for the screen by Masato Ide (known for his work with Kurosawa), the film follows Yasuda’s story quite closely, but throws in some fictional scenes to spice up the drama, such as the rather absurd but highly entertaining one in which a pack of wolves try to break into Yasuda’s cabin while his wife’s trying to give birth. There was an opportunity to make a more thoughtful, serious film here, but what we get is a disappointingly superficial entertainment. The director, Hiromichi Horikawa, was a former assistant to Kurosawa who made at least two very good films, The Lost Alibi (1960) and Shiro to kuro (1963), but failed to live up to that early promise.

Joe Shishido

Having said that, The Alaska Story was by no means a chore to sit through and remains worth a look for its breathtaking locations shot by cinematographer Kozo Okazaki, who worked with many of Japan’s top directors. Masaru Sato’s elaborate score is also inspired at times. Leading man Kinya Kitaoji was likely cast for his physical toughness and endurance rather than acting ability, but he’s adequate anyway. The only other Japanese character is played by Joe Shishido, who steals the show here as the forthright George Oshima, Yasuda’s real-life friend, who seems to have been a sort of wandering lone adventurer. Other well-known Japanese actors appear as Inuit, including Eiji Okada as Amaohka, Kyoko Mitsubayashi as Nebiro, and Hideo Gosha favourite Isao Natsuyagi, while Tetsuro Tanba pops up as a Native American chief – and I must say he does look the part! But the real star of this film is nature herself.

Tetsuro Tanba

As usual with Japanese films featuring Western characters (of which there are quite a few), the director appears to have just grabbed the nearest Westerners to fill these roles regardless of acting ability or experience, and they’re mostly terrible. The one honourable exception is William Ross, who plays Tom Carter, and is quite decent. Ross was an American who emigrated to Japan and found work in the film industry in many capacities, but basically whenever a gaijin was needed.

William Ross

Those who enjoy tales of real-life adventure may well enjoy this film, but a word of warning for animal-lovers – it looks like Kitaoji killed a seal for real in one scene, and there’s also a sequence featuring a whale hunt which I don’t think was faked. As the British Board of Film Censors prohibits such scenes, I suspect that this is the reason why the film has had no UK release that I know of.

* An English translation was published in 1980 as An Alaskan Tale

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A Picture of Madame Yuki / 雪夫人繪圖 / Yuki Fujin ezu (1968)

Obscure Japanese Film #227

1949. Teenage orphan Hamako (Sumiko Hasegawa) arrives at a grand residence at Shinobazu Pond in Ueno, Tokyo, to serve as maid to the aristocratic Madame Yuki (Yoshiko Sakuma), whose father, a former viscount, has just died. Various relatives and opportunistic acquaintances flock to the scene like vultures hoping to secure a piece of the carcass for themselves. Among them are Yuki’s husband, Naoyuki (Isao Yamagata), who spends most of his time in Kyoto with his mistress, Ayako (Yuko Hama). However, it turns out that Yuki’s father has left nothing but debts, so the house is sold and the family’s other home in snowy Nagano is turned into an inn. Meanwhile, Yuki has been having an affair with Kikunaka (Tetsuro Tanba), a married writer, but even though she detests her own husband, he retains a mysterious sexual hold over her from which she seems unable to break free...

Isao Yamagata

Although the official English title of this film chooses ‘Picture’ over ‘Portrait’, it is, of course, based on the same novel as the better-known Kenji Mizoguchi film of 1950. The novel, by Seiichi Funahashi* (1904-76), first appeared in serial form between 1948-1950 and remains untranslated into English. To be frank, I can’t stand the story in either film version. One reason is the portrayal of unquestioning devotion, even idolatry, of a servant for her mistress, which seems to give tacit approval to the class system. Although Hamako becomes disillusioned with her mistress and Funahashi may have been trying to make a broader point about the disillusionment of the younger generation in the post-war years regarding the ruling class, the problem is that Yuki is presented as someone to be pitied and, if not deserving of the elevated status she enjoyed, it’s only because of her lack of courage. Indeed, while her self-pitying, acquiescent victimhood is irritating, she’s still painted as a tragic heroine. It also doesn’t help that the bad behaviour of the villains of the piece – the cruel husband and his predictably cheap and vulgar mistress – is so blatant that it’s never convincing.

At heart, the story is an old-fashioned melodrama, and, while the writer-director of this version, Masashige Narusawa – who had been a screenwriter for Mizoguchi on four of the latter’s final films – has for the most part clearly tried to downplay this as much as possible, still it is what it is. He certainly made a very different film to his mentor’s and was, reportedly, more faithful to the original novel. However, well-photographed though it is, it lacks the often inspired camera placement and composition found in the original, and so is not really an improvement overall, only in certain aspects. Transferring the bulk of the story to a snowy location (yuki means snow in Japanese) was a good idea, but it’s those crane shots with the rolling mist by the lake at the end of Mizoguchi’s film that linger in my mind.

Tetsuro Tanba

Compared to the wimpy character portrayed by Ken Uehara in 1950, Tetsuro Tanba is a much more commanding, masculine presence, yet none of the performances in either film are especially notable, perhaps because Funahashi – who also wrote the source novel for The Story of a Blind Woman – failed to put much life into them in the first place. Still, it’s a shame that this proved to be the final film directed by Narusawa as he clearly had talent, even if it’s less evident here than in his previous two pictures.

Produced by Toei, who had been pushing Yoshiko Sakuma as a star of literary erotica since their 1963 film of Tsutomu Mizukami’s Gobancho Yugiri-ro (aka A House in the Quarter), this version was shelved and not released until it was bought by Nikkatsu in 1975.

*Sometimes listed as Funabashi, but I think that’s incorrect.

Thanks to Coralsundy for the subtitles, which can be found here.

Thanks to A.K.

Kiri to kage / 霧と影 (‘Fog and Shadow’, 1961)

Obscure Japanese Film #182

Tetsuro Tanba

 

When Kasahara, a teacher from the local school is found dead at the bottom of a cliff on the Noto Peninsula, it’s assumed that he either slipped or committed suicide. However, his old friend Komiya (Tetsuro Tanba), who works as a reporter in Tokyo, smells a rat – he knows that Kasahara was afraid of heights, so he decides to investigate. In the process, he uncovers a complex (but not terribly interesting) web of conspiracy and corruption…

 

 

This Toei production features the type of story more usually associated with Seicho Matsumoto, but which in this case is actually based on a 1959 novel of the same name by Tsutomu Minakami (or Mizukami), known for Bamboo Dolls of Echizen, The Temple of Wild Geese, and Straits of Hunger among others. The Matsumoto resemblance is no coincidence as Minakami himself said that he had been inspired to write the book after reading Matsumoto’s Points and Lines (also known in English as Tokyo Express). It was Minakami’s first big success as a writer, and he soon proved that he was more than a mere Matsumoto imitator. According to Japanese Wikipedia, a critic named Kazushi Shinoda admired Kiri to kage for portraying the ‘anguish of a man cursed by fate, and the depth of the karma of a man who tries to escape his fate but ultimately cannot’.

 

 

It’s a pity, then, that this aspect of the work is absent from Teruo Ishii’s film, which is strictly B-movie stuff. It has been said that Ishii repeatedly attempted to make Naruse-like dramas early in his career, but these projects were all rejected. He later became a cult director, perhaps mainly due to his willingness to make exploitation films with titles such as Horrors of Malformed Men and Inferno of Torture.  Kiri to kage is well-shot but largely routine apart from the odd eccentric touch such as giving one of Komiya’s fellow reporters the gross habit of picking his nose with his pencil. 

 

 

Despite a reputation for turning up late on set without having learned his lines (and often using cue cards), Tetsuro Tanba was a fine actor, but the early leading role he gets here is the type in which the main thing the actor has to do is simply to find a different way to look surprised each time they receive new information. The remainder of the cast are not especially notable, and Chuji Kinoshita’s unsubtle music score does not help matters either, so I have to mark this one down as another disappointment. If it’s karmic anguish you’re after, watch Tomu Uchida’s adaptation of Minakami’s Straits of Hunger (better-known in English as A Fugitive from the Past) instead.

Watched with dodgy subtitles (I auto-translated from Japanese). 

Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

Structure of Hate / 黒い画集 第二話 寒流 / Kuroi gashu dainibu: Kanryu (1961)

Obscure Japanese Film #178

Ryo Ikebe

 

Okino (Ryo Ikebe) is a hard-working Tokyo bank employee who is entrusted with a promotion to manager of the Ikebukuro branch by his boss, Kuwayama (Akihiko Hirata, the one-eyed scientist from the original Godzilla). However, Okino is disliked by his wife (Michiko Araki) and two children because he’s so focused on his work that he largely ignores them. Soon after starting his new job, he’s approached for a bank loan by restaurant owner Nami (Michiyo Aratama) and a mutual attraction soon leads to an affair. As such a relationship with a customer of the bank could cost Okino his job, he must be especially careful to keep it a secret – something that becomes increasingly difficult when Kuwayama meets Nami and decides to pursue her himself. Then Okino begins to wonder if Nami has just been using him for her financial benefit…

 

Michiyo Aratama

 

The Japanese title of this Toho production translates as ‘Black Art Book Episode 2: Cold Current’ as ‘Cold Current’ was the title of Seicho Matsumoto’s story first serialised in the Weekly Asahi in 1959 before being included in the collection Black Art Book 2, published later that year.* Harenchi Gakuen helpfully explains on Filmarks.com that, ‘The cold current refers to the side streams and those who have been demoted.’ This makes perfect sense as Okino certainly finds himself sidelined in this film version by screenwriter Tokuhei Wakao and director Hideo Suzuki. Unfortunately, the original story is not available in English, but apparently the ending was changed significantly. It’s a little different from your typical Seicho Matsumoto tale – there’s not even a murder – and the plot went off in directions I failed to anticipate, but did enjoy, culminating in a highly unusual ending in which we are deliberately kept in the dark about exactly what happened.

 

Akihiko Hirata

 

It’s a refreshingly unsentimental film which takes a pretty dim view of human nature. Having said that, the two main characters are not entirely despicable. It’s common in Japan for men to put work before family as Okino does here, and although Nami is the business-minded, pragmatic type, she’s put in a difficult position with which it’s hard not to sympathise, while it’s also clear that their relationship begins to trouble her conscience. In this role, the underrated Michiyo Aratama delivers the film’s best performance and it’s good to see her show what she could do when given a meatier part than the typical ‘nice girl’ roles she’s better-known for in films such as The Human Condition. 

 

Jun Hamamura

 

Seiji Miyaguchi

The film has some wonderful cameos by familiar faces such as Jun Hamamura as a doctor who looks like he could use some of his own medicine, Seiji Miyaguchi as a private detective who looks like he hasn’t had a client for years, Tetsuro Tanba as a yakuza boss and, best of all, Takashi Shimura as a shark-like banking bigwig who exudes an aura of self-confidence and power and is appropriately trailed everywhere by his silent, pilot-fish-like mistress (Machiko Kitagawa). 

 

Tetsuro Tanba and friends

 

Takashi Shimura

This is the only film I’ve seen so far by director Hideo Suzuki (1916-2002), who worked as a contract director first for Daiei (1947-52), then Shintoho (1953) and finally Toho (1954-67) before finishing his career in TV. Although he is said to have had a limited amount of choice in the films he was assigned to direct and he worked in a variety of genres, he is apparently highly regarded by some for his thrillers and suspense movies, and on the evidence of Structure of Hate, I, for one, am keen to see more, especially as there’s more to this film than mere suspense. It’s also a portrait of a sick society in which people have become foolishly obsessed with position and material wealth while forgetting what’s really important in life. 

 

Michiyo Aratama

 

UPDATE: I've since watched Suzuki's Woman of Design (Sono basho ni onna arite, 1962), an equally unsentimental picture about women struggling to compete in the male-dominated advertising industry. It shows a similar disregard for the usual conventions of movie plotting, but for me it was a film to be admired rather than enjoyed as I found it a tad boring. It's also burdened with an odd score by composer Sei Ikeno which might have worked if used more sparingly but is repeated ad infinitum even over many of the dialogue scenes.
 

*Toho had made Black Art Book: An Employee’s Confession aka The Lost Alibi the previous year and Black Art Book: A Certain Disaster aka Death on the Mountain earlier in 1961. Structure of Hate was the final entry in the series.

Thanks to A.K.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

Four Sisters / 山麓 / Sanroku (‘The Foot of the Mountain’, 1962)

Obscure Japanese Film #167

Isuzu Yamada

 

Yoshiko Mita

Sonny Chiba

 

Modern-day Tokyo. Masako (Yoshiko Mita) is a young woman who wants to marry mountaineer Shinkichi (Sonny Chiba), but her domineering mother (Isuzu Yamada) wants her to wed the more financially solvent Sakurai (Fumio Watanabe). Once Sakurai begins courting her, Masako finds herself warming to him and becomes torn between the two men, so she begins to consider the marriages of her three older sisters in order to help her decide what to do. 

 

Chikage Awashima

 

Ko Nakahira

The eldest, Kikuno (Chikage Awashima), has been trapped in an unhappy and childless marriage to the wealthy Mitsumine (Ko Nishimura) for the past 10 years. Mitsumine loves her but has constant affairs on the side which he thinks Kikuno should just accept. The next sister, Misao (Chikage Ogi), is happily married to Igarashi (Tetsuro Tanba), with whom she has two children. Third sister Kanako (Kaneko Iwasaki) has angered their mother by eloping with Asayama (Hiroshi Minami), but leads a cheerful life with him in their small apartment and is newly pregnant.

 

Chikage Ogi and Kaneko Iwasaki

 

Chishu Ryu

 

The father of the four sisters (Chishu Ryu) is a classic henpecked husband who failed in business and now keeps his head down, busying himself with his bonsai while letting his wife make all the decisions. However, a family crisis is provoked when Kikuno – who had married Mitsumine at her mother’s urging – decides she’s had enough and leaves him, which will cut off an important source of income for the family…

 

 

As the IMDb page for this film not only contains a poster and a few stills in black and white, but also states that the film was shot that way, I was surprised to find that it’s actually in colour and, in fact, rather nicely shot by cinematographer Masahiko Iimura. A Toei production, it’s based on a just-published novel by Fumio Niwa, who also wrote the novels on which The Beloved Image (1960) and Women of Tokyo (1939) were based. The adaptation is by Zenzo Matsuyama, who had recently become a director himself, but this one is helmed by Masaharu Segawa (1925-2016), a director best-known for comedies, which this certainly ain’t. It’s the only film I’ve seen by Segawa, but it’s made with a sure hand and features consistently clever blocking of scenes and good performances across the board. The tasteful music by Ichiro Saito is also a plus. 

 

 

The mountain serves as a metaphor for marriage here, which is seen as a difficult journey that many abandon before reaching the peak, so the youngest sister is at ‘the foot of the mountain’ which was also the title of the novel and film in Japanese. The climax of the film involves a literal mountain, and this part does get a little melodramatic and corny, it has to be said, but not fatally so. 

 

 

Among a strong cast, the chameleon-like Isuzu Yamada delivers the finest performance as the apparently cold and materialistic queen bitch matriarch who, deep down, is actually insecure about both her position and her fading looks. Surprisingly, she was not even nominated for an award for this, but perhaps it’s simply because she’d already won a handful.

The film also features a cameo by popular singer Kazuko Matsuo, who appears crooning the film’s theme song in a nightclub. 

 

Kazuko Matsuo