Mori no Ishimatsu / 森の石松 (‘Ishimatsu of Mori’, 1949)

Obscure Japanese Film #267

Susumu Fujita

Takashi Shimura 

Ishimatsu (Susumu Fujita, best-known for playing the title role in Kurosawa’s Sanshiro Sugata) is a poor tenant tea farmer fed up with working like a slave for a pittance. After losing the little money he had in a dice game against gambling boss Shimachidori (Takashi Shimura), he resolves – with the encouragement of tea house hostess Oshin (Kyoko Asagiri) – to abandon agriculture and turn to crime despite the objections of his mother (Choko Iida) and best friend Gosaku (Taiji Tonoyama). He finds employment with the famous yakuza Jirocho Shimizu (Komei Minami) but has little success in his new endeavour until, determined to make a name for himself, he shows reckless bravery in a fight but loses an eye in the process. Now with a formidable reputation to live up to, he falls in love with Ofuji (Yukiko Todoroki), but she won’t marry him unless he gives up his life of crime…

Yukiko Todoroki

Mori no Ishimatsu was said to have been a subordinate of the real life Jirocho Shimizu (1820-93), but it’s unclear whether Ishimatsu was, in fact, a real person. In any case, he had already been the subject of at least half a dozen movies by the time this one was made and would go on to inspire many more, most of which seem to be comedies, which is understandable given that Japanese Wikipedia states that he was traditionally portrayed as ‘a lovable character who is a drunken ruffian but has a strong sense of loyalty and compassion, and is somewhat absent-minded.’

This Shochiku production was based on an original screenplay by Kaneto Shindo and directed by his regular associate Kozaburo Yoshimura. Also frequently comic in tone, with a rather dim-witted hero and the sword fighting scenes emphasising the clumsiness and reluctance of the opponents, their film nevertheless has its serious side and criticises both gangsterism and the exploitation of workers by the old feudal system. Indeed, it was probably these themes that saw it approved by the censors of the Occupation authorities, who prevented many period films from being made at the time (this was Yoshimura’s first) as they felt that such stories often gave tacit approval to feudalism, the mindset of which had allowed the military to take over the government of Japan and lead it into war.

Taiji Tonoyama

As a film, this is no lost masterpiece, but it is a well-made and enjoyable watch which clearly had quite a lot of effort put into it – the period details, for example, look quite authentic, and there is some effective use made of real locations, nifty tracking shots (courtesy of Yoshimura’s regular cinematographer at the time, Toshio Ubukata) and a number of complex, well-staged scenes in which elaborate sets and large numbers of extras are also used. Another asset is the cast, in which Shimura makes a fine villain, while Choko Iida stands out as Ishimatsu’s put upon, sutra-chanting mother. Other notables featured are Koji Mitsui, Sadako Sawamura and an almost unrecognisable Chishu Ryu. 

Choko Iida

Chishu Ryu

Note on the title:

Although it’s often translated as ‘Ishimatsu of the Forest’, there’s no sign of a forest; apparently, the ‘Mori’ of the title actually refers to Mori-machi village, in what was then the Enshu region, and is where Ishimatsu was said to be from.

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The Maid’s Kid / 女中ッ子 / Jochukko (1955)

Obscure Japanese Film #239

Sachiko Hidari

This Nikkatsu production stars Sachiko Hidari – best-known for The Insect Woman (1963) and A Fugitive from the Past (1965) – as Hatsu, a young woman from snowy Akita Prefecture who goes to Tokyo to work as a maid in the house of middle-class couple Kyohei (Shuji Sano) and his wife Umeko (Yukiko Todoroki). 

Shuji Sano

Yukiko Todoroki

At first, Hatsu seems like the stereotypically naive country bumpkin, but she’s also a hard-working, cheerful bundle of energy who turns out, in many ways, to be the perfect maid. The family also includes two young boys who have been left to their own devices by their parents and become totally out of control. When Hatsu develops a strong bond with the younger child, Katsumi (Teruo Iba), he begins to be mocked by his classmates, who call him the ‘son of a maid’...

Teruo Iba

Based on a just-published novel by female author Yuki Shigeko (1900-69), The Maid’s Kid was directed by the underrated Tomotaka Tasaka, who also co-wrote the screenplay together with Katsuya Susaki. Tasaka had a tendency to make long films, and this one is no exception at 142 minutes, but he also had a rare gift for never making them feel overlong. In fact, his readiness to linger on a shot feels quite modern today in the wake of the Slow Cinema movement. He also makes excellent use of real locations and elicits fine performances from all involved – most notably Hidari, of course; it’s difficult to imagine any other actor pulling this role off as well as she does here. It’s the sort of drama that stands or falls on its main performance, and Hatsu could easily have ended up seeming too unconvincingly saintly if played by a less skilled or less suitable star. Other familiar faces among the supporting cast include Chieko Higashiyama, Tanie Kitabayashi and, in one of his earliest film appearances, a pre-cheeky Joe Shishido.

Perhaps the main point of the story is that a person’s social status bears no correlation to their worth as a person; Kyohei and Umeko say they don’t believe in titles like ‘master’ and ‘mistress’, but they act with oblivious selfishness and disregard for Hatsu, at times treating her more like a slave than a servant so that she barely gets a moment’s rest. At one point, she’s even rebuked for not understanding that some people are more important than others. However, another strength of the film is that, although the couple’s hypocrisy is quite evident to the viewer, they are not reduced to one-dimensional villains and are portrayed as basically decent, if misguided, people.

Tasaka’s avoidance of melodrama and intelligent handling of the material is complemented by the work of his regular cinematographer Saburo Isayama as well as by Akira ‘Godzilla’ Ifukube’s fine score. The film was ranked 7^th best of its year by Kinema Junpo magazine, but is less well-known than it deserves today. It was remade in 1976 as Dongurikko by director Katsumi Nishikawa in a version starring the singer Masako Mori.

Thanks to A.K.

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The Makioka Sisters / 細雪 / Sasameyuki (‘Light Snowfall’, 1950)

 

Hideko Takamine

 

 

 

**The first four paragraphs are mostly identical to those in my review of the 1959 version**

Junichiro Tanizaki’s novel Sasameyuki is widely recognised as a classic of Japanese literature. Translated into English as The Makioka Sisters in 1957 by Edward G Seidensticker, it’s remained constantly in print ever since. The book was originally published in serial form beginning in 1943, but this was soon halted by the Japanese War Ministry – not because it criticised the government, but because, according to them at the time, ‘The novel goes on and on detailing the very thing we are most supposed to be on our guard against during this period of wartime emergency: the soft, effeminate, and grossly individualistic lives of women.’* I would have thought they should have been more worried about the enemy, but in any case, Tanizaki was forced to wait until the war had ended to resume publication, with the final instalment appearing in 1948.

 

Yukiko Todoroki

 

The story itself takes place between 1936 and 1941, ending around eight months before the attack on Pearl Harbour, and it seems that Tanizaki’s intention was partly to provide a record of a way of life he had seen rapidly vanishing before his eyes. The Makioka sisters are four adult siblings whose parents are deceased. Once a grand family, their fortunes are on the wane but they remain very well-to-do in comparison with most Japanese and keep a number of servants. The eldest, Tsuruko (played here by Ranko Hanai in what amounts to a minor role), lives apart from the others with her husband and children in what is referred to as the ‘main house.’ She is a peripheral character, but, as the senior surviving member of the family, the other sisters must defer to her and her husband before making any important decisions. Tsuruko later goes to live in Tokyo when her husband has to relocate for his job, but her sisters remain in their hometown of Osaka.

 

Hisako Yamane

The other three sisters live together. In order of age, they are Sachiko (Yukiko Todoroki, who went on to play Tsuruko in the 1959 version), Yukiko (Hisako Yamane) and Taeko, familiarly called ‘Koi-san’ (Hideko Takamine). Sachiko is married to Teinosuke (Seizaburo Kawazu), with whom she has one child, Etsuko (Takako Yamazaki). Although Sachiko is held responsible for her two younger sisters by the main house, little of the drama revolves around her. Instead, much of it concerns the attempts to find a husband for Yukiko, whose shy and sometimes stubborn nature makes this difficult. Ever since her original fiancée was killed in an accident, each marriage proposal has come to naught for one reason or another, and Yukiko is already approaching 30 when the story begins. Complicating matters further is the fact that Taeko must wait until Yukiko is married before getting married herself in order not to humiliate Yukiko and leave her looking like an old maid that nobody wants. Taeko is the closest thing to a rebel in the family, generally doing as she likes and indulged by her older sisters, who make allowances for her due to the fact that their parents died when she was so young. She has a long-running on-and-off relationship with the wealthy Kei-bo (Haruo Tanaka). 

 

Hideko Takamine

The sisters are likeable characters who live their lives trapped in a web of etiquette. Overly-concerned with what others think, they are unable to make a move without first ensuring that what they do will not offend anyone else or damage their own social status, but there’s little in the way of arrogance about them. Rather, they are simply behaving according to the rules by which they were brought up and it doesn’t even occur to them to do otherwise. In the book, Tanizaki paints a minutely-detailed picture of their lives, but never tells us what to think about it. The future of the family is left open at the end, but it’s impossible to be unaware of the dark cloud of war that awaits them just over the horizon, and no doubt Tanizaki planned it that way.

 

Haruo Tanaka

 

This first film version of the novel was produced by Shintoho and is probably the most faithful of the three overall. According to Japanese Wikipedia, it had ‘a budget of 38 million yen, an unprecedented sum for a film at the time.’ The 1959 version updated the story to what was then the present day, but this one retains the pre-war setting of the book and, being around 35 minutes longer, is also able to fit a little more in. Both the 1950s adaptations were scripted by Toshio Yasumi, who in this one includes the dark spot on Yukiko’s face that comes and goes and is supposedly a common affliction of unmarried women (something which was dropped from the 1959 film). 

 

Hisako Yamane

The later version is probably the more technically (and visually) impressive of the two – here, although there is quite an impressive flood sequence, we only hear about Koi-san’s rescue – but this one is well-done for its time and much superior to the one other film I’ve seen by its director, Yutaka Abe (the recently-reviewed 1956 film The Confession). He was no flashy stylist; instead, he rightly lets the camera be the actors’ friend here, using close-ups judiciously and tracking shots when necessary. Another asset is the music by Kurosawa favourite Fumio Hayasaka, which is certainly one of the less grating and more effective scores of its era. 

 

 

Although technically an ensemble piece, this is Hideko Takamine’s film all the way, partly because her character goes through the most changes and she gets the lion’s share of the screen time, but also because she’s so photogenic and charismatic that everyone else seems to fade into the background when she’s in view. As Koi-san, she rejects her family’s obsession with tradition and form, deciding that a man’s actions are more important than his education or lineage – an ideology which would have found favour with the occupying Americans whose approval was needed for all films produced in Japan at the time. All in all, albeit not impressive enough to qualify as a masterpiece, this is at least a fine version of a literary classic, with a great star at its centre, and as such it deserves to be restored and more widely seen.

Bonus trivia: Future star Kyoko Kagawa appears briefly in one of her first roles as Itakura’s sister.

Thanks to A.K.

Yamane and Takamine

 

Five Sisters / 女の暦 / Onna no koyomi (‘A Woman’s Calendar/Almanac’, 1954)

Obscure Japanese Film #177

Kyoko Kagawa

 

Yoko Sugi

 

Their parents now deceased, two adult sisters now live together in their old family home on an island, Shodoshima, in the south of Japan. The youngest of five sisters, they are Kuniko (Yoko Sugi), a schoolteacher who is reluctant to get married, and Mie (Kyoko Kagawa), who is around nine years younger and has a very different attitude – unbeknownst to Kuniko, she’s in love with a burly pig farmer (Gen Funabashi) and wants to marry him. 

 

Gen Funabashi, Kyoko Kagawa and friend

 

As the anniversary of their father’s passing is approaching, Kuniko and Mie decide that it’s time to have a family get-together, so they invite their three elder sisters to visit. The most senior, Michi (Kinuyo Tanaka), lives in Hiroshima and has five children of her own and a lazy, pachinko-addicted husband (Hisao Toake), while Takako (Yukiko Todoroki), who lives in Tokyo, is married to a man who’s in prison for getting caught up in a demonstration. Finally, there’s Kayano (Ranko Hanai), who lives in Osaka and is unhappily married to Sugie (Masao Mishima), who’s always unfavourably comparing her to his first wife. Will the examples of the three visiting sisters deter Mie from marriage as they have in Kuniko’s case? Or has she been scared into thinking she must get married in order not to end up like Ofuku (Eiko Miyoshi), a crazy old maid who lives on the island? 

 

Kinuyo Tanaka

 

Yukio Todoroki

Ranko Hanai

This Shintoho production was based on a story by Sakae Tsuboi, entitled simply Koyomi (‘calendar’ or ‘almanac’) and first published in 1940. Tsuboi (1899-1967) was the youngest of five daughters from Shodoshima, so she may well have based the character of Mie on herself. She also wrote Twenty-Four Eyes, which is also set on Shodoshima. Her only full-length work to have been translated into English, it was, of course, turned into a highly successful film by Keisuke Kinoshita in 1954. 

 

 

Like Policeman’s Diary (1955), the only other film I’ve seen by director Seiji Hisamatsu, this one is also reminiscent of Kinoshita’s work. Looking back at my review of that film, I described it as ‘a charming, bittersweet comic drama from a more innocent age’, a description which could equally apply to Five Sisters. However, unlike Kinoshita – who had a fondness for slightly gimmicky visual techniques – Hisamatsu’s direction is the kind that never draws attention to itself. Nothing terribly dramatic happens in this film, yet somehow I was never bored, and few films have dealt with the theme of marriage in such a light but thoughtful way.  It was screened in competition at Cannes in 1955, but seems to have rarely been seen since, at least outside of Japan. 

 

 

 DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles)

 Thanks to A.K.

The Makioka Sisters / 細雪 / Sasameyuki (‘Light Snowfall’, 1959)

Obscure Japanese Film #148

Junko Kano and Fujiko Yamamoto

Junichiro Tanizaki’s novel Sasameyuki is widely recognised as a classic of Japanese literature. Translated into English as The Makioka Sisters in 1957 by Edward G Seidensticker, it has remained constantly in print ever since. The book was originally published in serial form beginning in 1943, but this was soon halted by the Japanese War Ministry – not because it criticised the government, but because, according to them at the time, ‘The novel goes on and on detailing the very thing we are most supposed to be on our guard against during this period of wartime emergency: the soft, effeminate, and grossly individualistic lives of women.’* I would have thought they should have been more worried about the enemy, but in any case, Tanizaki was forced to wait until the war had ended to resume publication, with the final instalment appearing in 1948.

 

Yukiko Todoroki

 

The story itself takes place between 1936 and 1941, ending around eight months before the attack on Pearl Harbour, and it seems that Tanizaki’s intention was partly to provide a record of a way of life he had seen rapidly vanishing before his eyes. The Makioka sisters are four adult siblings whose parents are no longer alive. Once a grand family, their fortunes are on the wane but they remain very well-to-do in comparison with most Japanese and keep a number of servants. The eldest, Tsuruko (played here by Yukiko Todoroki), lives apart from the others with her husband and children in what is referred to as the ‘main house.’ She is a peripheral character, but, as the senior surviving member of the family, the other sisters must defer to her and her husband before making any important decisions. Tsuruko later goes to live in Tokyo when her husband has to relocate for his job, but her sisters remain in their hometown of Osaka.

 

Machiko Kyo and Fujiko Yamamoto

The other three sisters live together. In order of age, they are Sachiko (Machiko Kyo), Yukiko (Fujiko Yamamoto) and Taeko, familiarly called ‘Koi-san’ (Junko Kano). Sachiko is married to Teinosuke (Kyu Sazanka), with whom she has one child, Etsuko (Takako Shima). Although Sachiko is held responsible for her two younger sisters by the main house, little of the drama revolves around her. Instead, much of it concerns the attempts to find a husband for Yukiko, whose shy and sometimes stubborn nature makes this difficult. Ever since her original fiancée was killed in an accident, each marriage proposal has come to naught for one reason or another, and Yukiko is already approaching 30 when the story begins. Complicating matters further is the fact that Taeko must wait until Yukiko is married before getting married herself in order not to humiliate Yukiko and leave her looking like an old maid that nobody wants. Taeko is the closest thing to a rebel in the family, generally doing as she likes and indulged by her older sisters, who make allowances for her due to the fact that their parents died when she was so young. Even so, her disregard of the rules only goes so far and she avoids direct confrontation. 

 

Junko Kano

 

The sisters are likeable characters who live their lives trapped in a web of etiquette. Overly-concerned with what others think, they are unable to make a move without first ensuring that what they do will not offend anyone else or damage their own social status, but there’s little in the way of arrogance about them. Rather, they are simply behaving according to the rules by which they were brought up and it doesn’t even occur to them to do otherwise. In the book, Tanizaki paints a minutely-detailed picture of their lives, but never tells us what to think about it. The future of the family is left open at the end, but it’s impossible to be unaware of the dark cloud of war that awaits them just over the horizon, and no doubt Tanizaki planned it that way. 

 

The first film version appeared in 1950, directed by the forgotten Yutaka Abe, but notably starring Hideko Takamine as Taeko. When Koji Shima came to direct this remake for Daiei, Tanizaki was still alive (aged 74), and permission was sought from him to update the story to the present day, which he granted. I doubt whether this was to save money as the Japanese film industry seemed to have plenty to throw around in 1959, so I suspect the idea was to broaden the appeal to the modern audience. The story transfers with surprising ease to the Japan of the late ‘50s, but of course the feeling of watching a vanishing way of life is mostly lost. 

 

The wisdom of attempting to condense a novel which comes in at 530 pages (in its English translation) into a film running an hour and 45 minutes is also open to question. This episodic kind of material is probably better-suited to television and, in fact, there have been six different versions made for Japanese TV over the years. These misgivings aside, screenwriter Toshio Yasumi does a creditable job under the circumstances, choosing to concentrate less on the attempts to arrange a marriage for Yukiko and instead focus on the events revolving around Taeko, which are somewhat more dramatic. 

 

 

One of the best things about this film is the casting – all of the main actors are well-suited to their roles and are talented enough to make them feel like real people. It also looks a treat, with some interesting lighting choices including director Koji Shima’s trademark orange glow of sunset in several scenes, while the music – at least once the main credits are over – is restrained and tasteful. Cinematographer Joji Ohara and composer Seitaro Omori were both regular collaborators of the director. Shima had a fondness for storms as well as sunsets, which is just as well as the book contains a dramatic storm sequence which he pulls off nicely here. He also shows great skill at co-ordinating his actors, who perform all sorts of little bits of business during their dialogue scenes with great naturalism. Along with films such as The Beloved Image and A Rainbow at Every Turn, The Makioka Sisters provides further proof that Koji Shima was not simply a hack who made Warning from Space and The Phantom Horse, but was also a true artist when he wanted to be.  

 

 

Bonus trivia: After 20 years of being blacklisted, Fujiko Yamamoto (who plays Yukiko here) was invited back to the big screen by Kon Ichikawa to play Tsuruko in his 1983 remake. After thinking about it for six months, she said no and decided to stick with her stage work.

 

 *Rubin, Jay. Injurious to Public Morals: Writers and the Meiji State. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984. P.264.

Blu-ray at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles). This comes with a bonus DVD of a rare early Machiko Kyo film apparently, but I haven't been able to determine the title.

DVD at Amazon Japan (no English subtitles).

Thanks to A.K.