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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Shuchu nikki / 酒中日記 / (‘Diary of a Drunkard’, 1921)

Obscure Japanese Film #279

Yukichi Iwata

Okawa (Yukichi Iwata) has been a teacher on an island in the Inland Sea for three years. Despite the fact that he’s also a self-confessed drunkard, he’s popular with the children and most of the other islanders, especially O-Tsuyu (Chiyoko Mimura), a young woman who has become his mistress. His past is a mystery but he writes his thoughts in a private diary; in flashback, it’s revealed that he was once a respected headmaster on the mainland. However, he once stumbled upon a bag with a considerable amount of money inside (left unattended by the treasurer for the school rebuilding fund) and decided to keep it; when his conscience began to protest too much, he decided to confess publicly and informed his wife of his decision. Unfortunately, before he could carry out his intentions, she had committed suicide and taken their young son with her…

Chiyoko Mimura

This Shochiku Kamata* production was (like the vast majority of silent Japanese films) long thought completely lost until this 25-minute fragment turned up recently. The original film ran for around 66 minutes and would presumably have been screened with live commentary by a narrator, or benshi; of course, that’s also missing here, as is a music score. What survives – which seems to be most of the first half – is in surprisingly good condition, but the film ends abruptly and we never get to see how things turn out. That’s a pity, because this was obviously a film of some quality – the performances are very natural and the photography, though static, is well-composed.

The film was based on a 1902 story by Doppo Kunikida (1871-1908)**, while the screenplay was written by Daisuke Ito, who made his directorial debut with his own version in 1924 (since lost, of course) and went on to become a major filmmaker. Director Zanmu Kako (1869-1938) also came from the theatre, where he had worked as a playwright and stage director. He made around 90 films between 1921 and 1927, almost all of which are entirely lost. That this substantial fragment survived even the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 – which severely damaged the studio where it was made – is a near miracle.

Leading actor Yukichi Iwata (1887-1980), who is excellent here, was a major star of the Japanese silent screen. A former theatre actor, he made his film debut in 1920 and went on to make over 150 films before retiring from the screen around 1942. Today, his most widely-seen film is Ozu’s A Mother Should Be Loved (1934). His co-star, Chiyoko Mimura (1903-74) was recruited from the theatre by Kako and signed to Shochiku. Film critic and historian Junichiro Tanaka (1902-89) singled out her performance in Diary of a Drunkard, saying, ‘She is small and lacks a striking face, but her acting ability is undeniable.’ She became a popular star before retiring to look after her family in 1927. Mimura had married film director Kiyohiko Ushihara in 1922; today he’s remembered (if at all) for The Ghost Cat and the Mysterious Shamisen (1938) and Rainbow Man (1949).

*Shochiku Kamata was a studio founded in Kamata, Tokyo, in 1920 as an off-shoot of the theatre company Shochiku Gomei Kaisha. It lasted until 1936, when noise from nearby factories caused problems in making films in the new talking picture format and led Shochiku to close it down and transfer their operations to Shochiku Ofuna in Kamakura.

**Kunikida is sufficiently well-regarded that some of his stories have appeared in English translation, although I believe that ‘Diary of a Drunkard’ is not among them. 

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