The Seasons of Love / 四季の愛欲 / Shiki no aiyoku (‘Four Seasons of Love’, 1958)

 

Shoji Yasui

 

Gyo (Shoji Yasui) is a famous writer married to self-centred model Ginko (Yuko Kusunoki), but their marriage is not registered and they have told few people about it, fearing that to make it public might damage their careers. Ginko hates Gyo’s mother, Urako (Isuzu Yamada), believing that she abandoned Gyo when he was a child and only got back in touch after he became famous so she could sponge off him. Now 48, Urako is a widow, but in many ways she behaves like a young woman and has a lover, Hirakawa (Tomo’o Nagai), who owns a fabric wholesale business (at one point, she even takes him to see a blue movie). 

 

Yuko Kusunoki

 

Tomo'o Nagai and Isuzu Yamada

She also has two other adult children. One, Momoko (Yoko Katsuragi), is married to the older Tatabe (Jukichi Uno), but does not love him even though he treats her kindly and they have a young son. Unfortunately, she’s fallen in love with Tatabe’s cousin, Akaboshi (Yuji Odaka), a two-faced womaniser who laughs at her love letters behind her back. (After he tears one up and throws it in the wastepaper basket, we see his secretary taping it back together so she can read it). 

 

Yoko Katsuragi and Yuji Odaka

 

Urako’s other daughter is Harue (Sanae Nakahara), who dislikes Ginko and wants her brother, Gyo, to dump her and date her friend, Shinako (Shinako Mine) instead. However, when he takes them both to a hot spring inn for a treat, he gets chatting to the barmaid, Yuriko (Misako Watanabe), and when she casually mentions being troubled by athlete’s foot, he jumps behind the bar, removes her socks and smears her toes with a remedy he happens to have handy, kick-starting a love affair… 

 

Misako Watanabe

 

This Nikkatsu production was based on a 1957 novel entitled Shiki no engi (‘The Four Seasons of Acting/Performance’) by Fumio Niwa (1904-2005), whose work also provided the basis for Women of Tokyo (1939), The Beloved Image (1960) and Four Sisters (1962) among other films. Like many films by director Ko Nakahira, it takes a pretty dim view of human nature on the whole, although in this case some of the characters are quite sympathetic despite the amount of adultery going on. In any case, it’s clear that we’re a long way from Ozu and the world of Tokyo Story here, and perhaps that’s partly the point. There’s no genial Chishu Ryu-type father figure in this film, nor any father figure at all for that matter. The screenplay was written by the intriguing if not very prolific Keiji Hasebe, also known for his collaborations with Shohei Imamura, so new-wavers like him and Nakahira were likely reacting against the cosier domestic dramas of Ozu and others. In fact, the ending piles coincidence on top of coincidence in a way that strongly suggests that Nakahira and Hasebe were taking the piss. 

 

Yoko Katsuragi

 

If you can accept the film’s (possibly deliberate) absurdities, there’s much to enjoy, with Isuzu Yamada and Yoko Katsuragi taking the acting honours among a strong cast. There’s also an effective score by Toshiro Mayuzumi, albeit one of his more conventional efforts.

Thanks to A.K.

Yume miru hitobito / 夢見る人々 (‘People Who Dream’, 1953)

 

Yoko Katsuragi

 

 

 

Shinya (Masao Wakahara) is an architect who returns home from ‘the South’ for the first time since the war to find that his fiancée, writer Yuriko (Mieko Takamine) has married someone else, his family home has been destroyed in an air raid and his parents killed, and his half-sister and her husband have spent his inheritance. Needless to say, he’s not a happy bunny. However, his father’s friend’s granddaughter, Sumiko (Yoko Katsuragi), still loves him even though he only thinks of her as a younger sister…

 

Masao Wakahara

 

This Shochiku production was based on a 1952 newspaper-serial novel by Nobuko Yoshiya, the Christian-lesbian writer who also supplied the source material for Flower-Picking Diary (1939). In this case there’s no sign of Christianity nor lesbian love, and the two more unconventional female characters – company president Fujie (Sadako Sawamura) and her tomboyish daughter Ioko (Kyoko Kami) – seem to be present mainly to serve as comedy relief. Speaking of comedy, one amusing moment which feels unintentional comes at the beginning when a blind war veteran solicits donations on a train and seems able to tell when people are holding out money to him even when they say nothing. 

 

Kyoko Kami, Wakahara and Sadako Sawamura

 

The awkward subject of the war is always present in the background of the story, but only occasionally comes to the fore, and it’s entirely unclear what Shinya has been doing for the seven or eight years since the conflict ended. We know only that he has testified on behalf of a former sergeant, Arakawa (Jun Tatara), to save him from being sentenced as a war criminal. Many of the characters are portrayed as victims of the war in various ways, and there’s never really an acknowledgement of any guilt – the closest we get is a scene in which Shinya’s father’s friend, Shibata (Eijiro Yanagi), finally forgives his son, who had incurred his wrath during the war by daring to express the opinion that Japan would lose. 

 

Mieko Takamine

 

In terms of the cast, the forgotten Masao Wakahara as Shinya – described at one point as looking ‘like (Charles) Boyer’ – seems to have been quite a big star at the time, but his performance here is on the wooden side, which is perhaps why his career petered out early once his Boyer-esque looks began to fade. Mieko Takamine does her best with an underwritten role, but it’s Yoko Katsuragi as Sumiko who really becomes the heart of the film. She was an underrated actor whose girlish looks often prevented her from getting the more interesting dramatic parts, but it’s not for nothing that she was a favourite of Keisuke Kinoshita as well as this film’s director, Noboru Nakamura, for whom she made six pictures. One of these was Nakamura’s previous film, Natsuko’s Adventure in Hokkaido, in which she had also co-starred with Masao Wakahara. Regarding Nakamura, his direction is certainly highly competent, but his best work was yet to come in films such as Koto (1963), The Shape of Night (1964) and The Kii River (1966). 

 

 

Thanks to A.K. 

Watch with English subtitles on my YouTube channel here.

Oyafuko dori / 親不孝通り (1958)

Obscure Japanese Film #168

Hiroshi Kawaguchi and Yoko Katsuragi

 

Katsuya (Hiroshi Kawaguchi) is a cynical student who studies as little as possible, preferring to spend his time gambling, picking up women and getting drunk. He lives with his sister, Akie (Yoko Katsuragi), and is very protective of her, so, when he learns that she has had an abortion after becoming pregnant by Shuichi (Eiji Funakoshi), who refuses to marry her, he vows revenge. Katsuya discovers that Shuichi also has a sister, Kaneko (Hitomi Nozoe), and he decides to do the same to her…

 

Eiji Funakoshi and Hitomi Nozoe

 

This Daiei production tells a none-too-subtle story in which yet another woman falls in love with her rapist, which seemed to be a popular theme in Daiei films of this era. Unsurprisingly, it was written by a man – in fact, it was based on a story by Hiroshi Kawaguchi’s dad, Matsutaro Kawaguchi, who also happened to be executive director of Daiei. 

 

 

A little Hiroshi Kawaguchi goes a long way, in my opinion, and – unfortunately – there’s a lot of him to endure in this film. He can be good in comic roles on occasion, but his clumsy one-note performance here does nothing for the already unpromising material, while his future wife, Hitomi Nozoe, is saddled with a role in which she’s required to be naïve beyond belief. However, perhaps Kawaguchi could take comfort in the knowledge that his was not the worst performance in the film – that honour goes to the uncredited male ‘singer’ featured in a nightclub scene near the beginning, who appears to be trying to imitate American rock ‘n’ roll singers, but succeeds only in making a colossal arse of himself. 

 

 

The Japanese title translates as something like ‘Lack of Filial Piety Street’, which obviously doesn’t work in English, but is apparently an unofficial name used for certain streets in many Japanese cities where students congregate and behave badly. The film is sometimes listed as Disobedience, but I’m not sure that was ever an official English title and it doesn’t suit the movie very well. 

 

 

There might have been a good film to be made about a street frequented by students pursuing hedonism while they have the chance before having to buckle down to the salaryman life, but this ain’t it. A film about the absurdity of pursuing the tenet of an eye for an eye could also be a winner, but this ain’t that, either. It’s a film which wants to have its cake and eat it, and the contradiction inherent in a character who loves his sister and wants to protect her but will happily rape another woman to get revenge on somebody else is merely shrugged off. The incredibly flippant ending to the film delivers the coup de grace to one of director Yasuzo Masumura’s most dispensable works.

Thanks to A.K.