Kohitsuji / 小羊 (‘The Lamb’, 1923)

Obscure Japanese Film #280

Tsuzuya Moroguchi

A 19-year-old engineering student, Toshihiko (Tsuzuya Moroguchi), falls in love with a stage actress (Yuriko Hanabusa) and writes her adoring letters, but when he finally summons up the courage to speak to her, she laughs at him and flings his letters back in his face. Heartbroken, he takes to wandering the country alone until he finally arrives in Hokkaido, where he collapses from hunger and exhaustion. He’s rescued by a shepherdess, O-Toyo (Yoshiko Kawada), whose father (Heijiro Osono) takes him in and gives him a job on the farm, but a fellow farmhand, Otokichi – known as ‘the Wolf’ – (Yotaro Katsumi), is jealous and wants to get rid of him…

Yoshiko Kawada, Moroguchi and Yotaro Katsumi

Like the previously-reviewed film Diary of a Drunkard, this Shochiku Kamata production was directed by Zanmu Kako, but in this case the film seems to have survived more or less in its entirety. Also as in that film, Kako elicits natural performances and demonstrates a good eye for composition. However, the downside here is that the overly-contrived plot has dated badly and hinges on a couple of massively unlikely coincidences. It’s also somewhat confusing at times – perhaps at the time some accompanying benshi narration would have made things clearer.

Kohitsuji clearly has a strong Christian influence, even quoting the story of Jacob’s Ladder from the Book of Genesis in the opening and closing title cards, while in the Bible, the lamb is of course a symbol of innocence, purity and sacrifice, although it was unclear to me whether the lamb of the title is supposed to refer to Toshihiko or O-Toyo (or possibly neither). In any case, the rather uninspired message is simply that the wicked will eventually be punished and the good rewarded.

The film is thought to have been based on an unfinished screenplay by one Norikuni Yasuda, who has 19 director credits on IMDb between 1924-29, and shot by Hiroshi Nomura, who later worked for Hiroshi Shimizu, Heinsosuke Gosho and Yasushi Sasaki. The two leads, Tsuzuya Moroguchi and Yoshiko Kawada, were big stars of the day who were frequently cast together – here, they were about halfway through the (at least) 40 films in which they co-starred. However, it’s Yuriko Hanabusa who would go on to have the longest career, racking up 242 credits on IMDb stretching from 1920 until shortly before her passing in 1970. Among these are starring roles in Souls on the Road (1921), often cited as Japan’s first important film, and Naruse’s Wife! Be Like a Rose (1935).

Yuriko Hanabusa

The director and cast came to films from the theatre, where they had worked not in kabuki or Noh, but in the new Western-influenced Shingeki (or Shin-engeki) movement. For further info (in Japanese) and to watch the film (without English subtitles), visit the Eiga Meets Shin-engeki website. 

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Shunsetsu / 春雪 / (‘Spring Snow’, 1950)

Obscure Japanese Film #164

Yasuko Fujita

 

Takako (Yasuko Fujita) is a young woman who works on the ticket desk at her local train station in Denenchofu on the outskirts of Tokyo. The eldest child of a father (Takashi Shimura) who has been made redundant - though he doesn’t tell his family for a month - she hopes to wed train driver Toshio (Shuji Sano), but they cannot yet afford to marry. Not only are the family are struggling to get by, but Takako’s mother (Yuriko Hanabusa) is unwell and her younger brother (Teiji Takahashi) has started hanging out with a bad crowd. But when Takako’s younger sister Tomoko (Akiko Sawamura) finds work as a maid to a wealthy orchestra conductor (Ichiro Ryuzaki) who takes a shine to Takako, it looks like the family’s problems could be solved if she would only forget Toshio and marry him instead…

Takashi Shimura

 

Shuji Sano

 

Teiji Takahashi

Akiko Sawamura

This Shochiku production is unrelated to the later Yukio Mishima novel which shares its English title and was written as an original screenplay by Kaneto Shindo, one of around 40 he wrote for the director of this film, Kozaburo Yoshimura. I don’t remember the war itself being mentioned, but the poverty of the post-war years is emphasized throughout, and the family even try to grow vegetables in their garden to save a few yen. They tend to put up a  cheerful front when together, but often fall into depression on their own. We see Takiko riding a train and staring at the tracks as it speeds along as if seeing her life laid out before her in a straight line leading to nowhere, while her father eats his packed lunch in the ruins of the steelworks where he used to be employed and which was, presumably, demolished due to the war ending. Typically for Japanese drama, the story revolves around a classic giri (obligation) versus ninjo (inclination) conflict – in this case, if Takako marries the rich guy, her family will be saved. As it was made during the American occupation, however, the film also promotes western culture and values, and on one occasion we see Takako attending a ballet, while on another she and Toshio are seen sitting outside a Christian church where a wedding is taking place and admiring the sound of the choir singing a hymn within. 

 

Yasuko Fujita

The star of this film, Yasuko Fujita, was a theatre actress who had been hand-picked by Yoshimura to play the lead role despite never having appeared in a film before. It’s an impressive debut, and she not only looks the part, but acts it in such a way that she seems like a natural for the movies, betraying not even a hint of theatricality in her performance. Unfortunately for the Japanese cinema, she married a well-known music promoter in 1953 and retired from acting having made a dozen films, the most widely-seen of which is probably Yoshimura’s Clothes of Deception (1951), in which she co-starred opposite Machiko Kyo. Her Japanese Wikipedia page contains the enigmatic comment that ‘She reportedly made the most of her good looks when interacting with foreign celebrities.’ Yasuko Fujita passed away in 2015 aged 88.

Among the rest of the cast, the most notable is Takashi Shimura, and it’s nice to see that he’s not totally wasted here as he was so often when not working with Kurosawa. In Spring Snow, he gets to play a character with more than one dimension who goes through his own struggle against both himself and his circumstances. 

 

Although I wouldn’t go as far as to claim it as any kind of forgotten masterpiece, Spring Snow has quite a lot going for it, including the cinematography of Toshio Ubukata (who also worked for Kurosawa) and the mostly well-developed characters, who feel worth spending time with.

Thanks to A.K.