The Crab Cannery Ship / 蟹工船 / Kanikosen (1953)

Obscure Japanese Film #159

So Yamamura

Based on the 1929 novel of the same name by communist writer Takiji Kobayashi (tortured to death by the police in 1933 aged just 30), this independent production depicts the harsh conditions on board the titular vessel, where the men are not much better off than the crabs they’re tasked with catching. The ship itself is closely modelled on the real-life Hakuai maru, which had started life as a hospital ship before being purchased by a fishing company. The crab-catching is carried out using smaller boats, which then return to the ship, where the catch is processed and canned on board. According to Japanese Wikipedia, this put the ship in a legal grey area as the usual naval laws did not apply to a factory ship, and neither did the labour laws that applied to factories based on land. Of course, this makes it easy for the owners to exploit the workers mercilessly and without fear of legal consequences. Many of those doing the canning are mere children, while the men are worked like slaves, frequently beaten and occasionally lost overboard with no attempt being made to rescue them. This brutal regime is overseen by Asakawa (Ko Mihashi), who even gives orders to the weak and ineffectual ship’s captain (Minosuke Yamada), whom he forbids to respond to an SOS call from another ship. 

Ko Mihashi

 

Minosuke Yamada

The Crab Cannery Ship was the first of six films to be directed by So Yamamura, an actor perhaps most familiar outside Japan for playing Admiral Yamamoto in Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). He gives himself a small part here as a fugitive who has joined the crew to escape the police. Yamamura also wrote the screenplay and invested his own money into the production. 

 

So Yamamura

It was the second film made by Gendai Eigasha, an independent company established in 1951 by former Toho employee Tengo Yamada (1916-88) to produce such left-wing, social conscience works as this and Tadashi Imai’s Darkness at Noon (1956). Since Yamada’s death, the company has been headed by his widow, Hisako Yamada (b.1932), and, although its output has been sporadic, continues to produce films at the time of writing. 

Jun Hamamura (left) and unidentified others

 

Unsurprisingly for this kind of story, there are no shades of grey to be found in the characterisations – everyone is either victim or victimiser, and the acting is pretty broad throughout. There is no star part, and the strengths of the film are in the realism of its setting, its fast pace and its often impressive camerawork. Cinematographer Yoshio Miyajima (who won an award for his work here) crowds the screen with grim, shadowy faces, lending the picture an almost tangible sense of claustrophobia while tilting the camera horizontally left and right appropriately (the film is not recommended to anyone prone to seasickness). Meanwhile, Akira Ifukube’s music is so ominous it sounds like he’s warming up for the following year’s Godzilla.

 

Ko Mihashi and unidentified others

Japan’s later economic recession led to the novel becoming a surprise best-seller again in 2008, and a remake appeared the following year. 

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

The Beauty and the Water Dragon / 美女と怪龍 / Bijo to umi ryu (1955)

Obscure Japanese Film #86

Nobuko Otowa

This Toei production filmed at their Kyoto studios is an adaptation of a kabuki play dating back to 1684 entitled Narukami after one of its main characters, a monk (here played by Chojuro Kawarasaki) who has been promised a new temple by the local lord for supposedly changing the sex of the lord’s heir from female to male by means of prayer while the child was still in the womb. However, Prince Hayakumo (Kunitaro Kawarasaki) suspects Narukami of being a Tartuffe-like charlatan and fears that providing a new temple for him will anger a group of monks from a different sect, so he cancels the project. 

Prince Hayakumo (Hayakumo = fast spider, hence the cool kimono)

 

In revenge, Narukami creates a drought by imprisoning the dragon god in a waterfall. After 100 days without rain, the crops have failed and the peasants are revolting, so something must be done. It is said that the reading of a certain scroll will break Narukami’s spell, but the only person who might be able to decipher the ancient characters is Lady Taema (Nobuko Otowa). Although in reality she also has no clue how to read it, Taema keeps this to herself and decides to use her womanly charms against the celibate priest instead… 

Chojuro Kawarasaki flanked by Shinosuke Ichikawa and Taiji Tonoyama

 

Kozaburo Yoshimura’s film was made to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Zenshinza, a Tokyo-based kabuki troupe, and many Zenshinza actors are featured among the cast, including Chojuro Kawarasaki as Narukami. However, this was not the first time Zenshinza had been involved in a film project (the 1937 picture Humanity and Paper Balloons being another example), and not all of the actors featured here were members of the troupe. The most familiar faces to film fans will probably be Nobuko Otowa and Taiji Tonoyama, both favourites of filmmaker Kaneto Shindo, who wrote the witty screenplay for this adaptation. 

Shinosuke Ichikawa (left) and Taiji Tonoyama (right)

Tonoyama and Shinosuke Ichikawa (in his only film role; presumably a member of Zenshinza) are great fun as Hakkun and Kokkun, bickering apprentice monks/servants to Narukami who are more interested in alcohol, women and forbidden snack foods than spiritual training. This is purely speculative, but I wonder whether they might have inspired Kurosawa to create the two squabbling peasants played by Minoru Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara in The Hidden Fortress (1958), which later famously inspired George Lucas to create C-3PO and R2-D2 in Star Wars. We’ll probably never know, but the date fits and it’s highly likely that Kurosawa would have seen The Beauty and the Water Dragon.

Nobuko Otowa

Considering its basis in one of the canonical kabuki plays and the fact that a kabuki company was heavily involved in the production, it’s somewhat surprising that director Kozaburo Yoshimura’s film is not in the least precious, even at one point featuring a clearly anachronistic dance which looks like something you might see in a 1950s nightclub, but probably not in the Heian era, during which this story is set.  However, it’s worth noting that Zenshinza were one of the more progressive kabuki troupes at the time, featuring as they did a number of female performers when the majority of such theatre companies still used only male actors even in the female roles. 

The film is bookended by scenes of the play being performed in traditional style in a theatre, but the bulk of the film abandons the kabuki style and features more naturalistic acting. In Yoshimura’s version, The Beauty and the Water Dragon is very much a comedy, and I would assume that it was traditionally played straighter than it is here. In any case, of the 10 Yoshimura films I’ve seen so far, this is my joint favourite alongside his 1951 version of The Tale of Genji, and in my opinion it’s a very fine film quite unlike anything else I’ve seen. Special mention should be made of the beautiful cinematography by Yoshio Miyajima, who later became Masaki Kobayashi’s right-hand man. 

Note about the title:

The complete title is 歌舞伎十八番「鳴神」美女と海龍 / Kabuki juhachiban ‘Narukami’ Bijo to umi ryu, which translates as Kabuki 18 "Narukami": The Beauty and the Water Dragon (the ‘18’ refers to the fact that Narukami is one of the 18 kabuki plays selected by top kabuki actor Danjuro Ichikawa VII [1791-1859] as having special merit).