The Third Will / 女系家族 / Nyokei kazoku (1963)

Obscure Japanese Film #117

Ayako Wakao

 

This Daiei production was an attempt to repeat the success of the company’s 1961 film, A Woman’s Medal, and reunites stars Machiko Kyo, Ayako Wakao and Jiro Tamiya in another adaptation of a Toyoko Yamasaki novel (which had just been published as a magazine serial when the film went into production). Like the earlier picture, The Third Will is also a very talky affair involving a variety of scheming characters, although it perhaps also owes something to Masaki Kobayashi’s The Inheritance (1962).

Yachiyo Otori, Machiko Kyo and Chieko Naniwa

 

When Kazo Yajima (the president of a cotton wholesale company in Osaka) dies, his three daughters assume they will inherit everything between them. The domineering eldest daughter, Fujishiro (Machiko Kyo), tries to take control, but faces rebellion from her younger sisters, Chizu (Yachiyo Otori) and Hinako (Miwa Tanako), and the squabbles begin. Fujishiro seeks advice from her younger dance teacher (Jiro Tamiya), who subsequently seduces her, hoping he can marry Fujishiro for her money. Another family member, Auntie Yoshiko (Chieko Naniwa), comes up with a plan to adopt Hinako, hoping that this will enable her to grab a slice of the pie for herself. Meanwhile, Uichi (Ganjiro Nakamura), the head clerk who has been appointed executor of the will and has a few schemes of his own going, reveals to their dismay that Kazo had secretly been keeping a mistress, Fumino (Ayako Wakao), a former geisha. Although no specific inheritance has been granted to her in the will – which mentions only that she should be treated with generosity – the family conspire to ensure that Fumino is sent packing with nothing. However, this proves to be their undoing, and the story concludes in a satisfying (if predictable) manner.

 

The Yajima family are an appalling bunch of arrogant, entitled snobs, and your sympathy will be entirely with Fumino here. The acting by the principals is excellent (as one would expect from this cast), and there’s also a notable performance by Chieko Naniwa as the auntie who turns out to be the nastiest of a very nasty lot who treat their servants like dirt and neglect the rental properties that their long-suffering tenants are unfortunate enough to live in. 

Jiro Tamiya

 

The film itself is very similar to A Woman’s Medal in many ways, despite being made by a different director. Kozaburo Yoshimura directed the earlier film rather indifferently, and I suspect that he would not have been a huge fan of a non-literary writer like Yamasaki and that A Woman’s Medal was a project assigned to him by the studio (though this is speculation on my part). This would explain the change of director here,* which in the case of The Third Will is Kenji Misumi, a filmmaker who would become known for his stylish Zatoichi and Lone Wolf and Cub movies but at this stage was still regarded as a jobbing director. This is not the kind of film one associates with Misumi, but he seems to have been a little more engaged than Yoshimura and brings what style he can to the dialogue-heavy scenes. The way he uses the sound of cicadas screaming in the climactic scene is particularly memorable.  

Ganjiro Nakamura

 

The film’s scathing portrayal of the moneyed class and lapses into melodrama have led some to interpret it as a satire, which is not unreasonable. However, if it is intended as satire, I doubt this came from Toyoko Yamasaki, as her formula seldom varied and consisted of straight social commentary intended to expose the hypocrisy and corruption existing behind the scenes in various hallowed institutions. 

 

Given the soap-operatic nature of the plot, it’s understandable that, despite being another success for Daiei, The Third Will has not been remade for the big screen; more appropriately, it has spawned no fewer than eight TV versions in Japan. 

 

*The cerebral haemorrhage that Yoshimura suffered in 1963 is probably not the reason for the change as The Third Will was released in March of that year and Yoshimura’s Bamboo Doll of Echizen (his final film before his 3-year hiatus) was released in October.

Note on the title: The Japanese title translates as ‘Matrilineal Family’, a theme also covered by Toyoko Yamasaki’s earlier novel Bonchi, filmed by Daiei in 1960. 

 

Onna no kunsho /女の勲章 (‘A Woman’s Medal’, 1961)

Obscure Japanese Film #80

Machiko Kyo

 

This Daiei production is based on a novel by Toyoko Yamasaki (1924-2013), an author of best-selling novels which often dealt with scheming, corruption and scandal in various industries and were based on interviews with insiders. Many of these were turned into successful films, such as The Great White Tower (the medical industry), A Splendid Family (the banking industry) and Barren Zone (the aviation industry). She became the subject of scandal herself for a while when she faced several accusations of plagiarism, but ultimately these failed to do any serious damage to her career. However, Yamasaki was more popular with readers than critics, most of whom saw little of literary merit in her work. Onna no kunsho, published the year of the film’s release, was the first example of what became the familiar Yamasaki formula and is set in the world of the fashion industry. 

 

Jiro Tamiya

Machiko Kyo stars as Shikiko, a talented fashion designer in Osaka* who forms an alliance with an ambitious business manager, Ginshiro (Jiro Tamiya). Unfortunately, behind the fake concern for her welfare, Ginshiro is an unscrupulous character who seeks only to exploit her for his own ends. After seducing Shikiko, he talks her into signing off on a lot of dodgy deals, then proceeds to work his way through her senior designers, Rinko (Ayako Wakao), Katsumi (Junko Kano) and Tomie (Tamao Nakamura), seducing each in turn and using them to expand the company and consolidate his own position. 

 

Ayako Wakao

Junko Kano and Tamao Nakamura

Although Tamiya later played a similarly ruthless character in the 1966 film of Yamasaki’s The Great White Tower – which became his signature role – Ginshiro is an unusual part for him in that he talks a lot and is not at all moody, being almost entirely unfazed by whatever difficult situation may occur. Tamiya handles this well and holds his own among a cast dominated by formidable female stars. Most of the female characters here turn out to be just as duplicitous as Ginshiro, and when somebody finally shows some moral backbone, it’s in the unlikely form of a journalist (the excellent Eiji Funakoshi). Journalists are seldom depicted as the most ethical of people, so the fact that Yamasaki was a former journalist herself might not be entirely coincidental. 

 

Eiji Funakoshi

Kaneto Shindo’s screenplay results in a very talky film with largely unsympathetic characters I found it difficult to care about very much, making it a stark contrast to the last film I reviewed here, A Night to Remember, also starring Ayako Wakao and Jiro Tamiya and directed by Kozaburo Yoshimura. I had the distinct impression that Yoshimura was less invested in this film as the direction is competent but seldom notable. However, Onna no kunsho does have a highly effective ending and was presumably successful at the box office as it has been remade for television three times since.  

*Shikiko is said to have been based on real-life Osakan fashion designer Yasuko Ueda (1906-96). 

Bonchi (The Son) / ぼんち (1960)

Obscure Japanese Film #15

Ayako Wakao and Raizo Ichikawa

Set in Osaka, Bonchi stars Raizo Ichikawa as Kikuji, a young womaniser who inherits his father’s tabi[1] business and has affairs with a number of women (including Ayako Wakao as an 18-year-old geisha with a taste for gaudy jewellery and Machiko Kyo as a teahouse hostess). His mother (Isuzu Yamada) and grandmother (Kikue Mori) are a couple of old connivers obsessed with appearances and tradition. For some reason I was unable to fathom, they kick his first wife (Tamao Nakamura) out when she gives birth to a baby boy. (According to other commentators, the two older women will only accept a female heir in order to maintain their tradition of matriarchal power; this may well be the case, but was unclear to me despite watching with good quality English subtitles). Anyway, their continual interference in Kikuji’s life prevents him from marrying again, and he eventually has a second son by Ponta (Wakao) out of wedlock. The story is told in flashback by a grey-haired Kikuji to a friend (Ganjiro Nakamura).

Ayako Wakao

 

Around two years prior to the production of Bonchi, Raizo Ichikawa had escaped his regular jidaigeki assignments to play the stuttering trainee monk turned arsonist in Conflagration, an adaptation of Yukio Mishima’s The Temple of the Golden Pavilion directed by Kon Ichikawa (no relation). Although the producers at Daiei had taken some convincing that he had been right for the part, the collaboration had been a happy one and the casting a success. Bonchi was a project based on a then recently-published novel and initiated by Raizo Ichikawa, who took it to Kon Ichikawa and asked him to direct. He agreed and asked his wife and regular screenwriter Natto Wada to adapt Toyoko Yamasaki’s book. 

Ayako Wakao and Raizo Ichikawa

 

The story is set mainly during the early Showa period (late 1920s), but Wada contributed the flashback structure and expanded the post-war scenes. This incurred the wrath of Yamasaki, who reportedly tried to stop production after filming had already begun. She subsequently became known for her studies of corruption in institutions in a number of novels which director Satsuo Yamamoto turned into successful films: The Great White Tower, The Family and The Barren Zone. (I wrote about the latter two in my Tatsuya Nakadai biography as he appeared in both. I also read the abridged English translation of The Barren Zone; the style suggested that Yamasaki was a writer of best-sellers rather than highbrow literature. An English translation of Bonchi appeared in the 1980s through various publishers). 

Kikue Mori and Isuzu Yamada

 

Bonchi seems to me to be a comedy rather than a drama, and the tone is light throughout, with a contemporary jazz score providing an ironic counterpoint to the proceedings. The film has a twist ending, but I have to say it’s a twist I completely failed to see the point in. Bonchi was not selected for release in the West at the time, and it’s not difficult to see why – some Japanese films are perhaps simply too Japanese to travel well. I would say this is a case in point as the story revolves around etiquette and traditions involving concubinage, etc, which I for one found somewhat baffling. Still, it’s a pleasure to watch such a great cast in a well-made film. The character was clearly close to Raizo Ichikawa’s heart, as he also played the role on stage the year the film was released. However, for me, the best performance is by Isuzu Yamada, who here vacillates between domineering malice and childlike sentimentality most convincingly.

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[1] Japanese socks which divide the big toe from the other four.