The Gate of Youth / 青春の門 / Seishun no mon (1975)

Obscure Japanese Film #165

Tomohiro Tanabe and Sayuri Yoshinaga

 

Based on the first part of a bestselling doorstop novel by Hiroyuki Itsuki (b.1932) and running over three hours, this big-budget Toho production spans a period of over 30 years from 1918 to the 1950s, and tells the story of Shinsuke, the son of a Fukuoka coalminer, as he is raised alone by his stepmother (after his father is killed attempting to rescue some trapped Korean miners), survives the Second World War, grows into a man and has his first sexual and romantic experiences. 

 

Tatsuya Nakadai

The first half hour focuses on Shinsuke’s father, Juzo, a tough, brawling miner with a sense of justice, who not only tries to save the exploited Koreans, but had earlier fought against the army as they tried to suppress the workers’ rebellion during the rice riots of 1918. Played in full scenery-chewing mode by Tatsuya Nakadai, he is known as the ‘climbing spider’ and sports a large spider tattoo on his back à la Ayako Wakao in Irezumi (1966). He completely dominates the opening scenes, then departs with a fart gag and is only briefly glimpsed again in a couple of flashbacks. 

 

Once Juzo dies, Shinsuke and his stepmother become the focus. As the character grows from a very young child into a man during the course of the movie, Shinsuke is played by a number of actors, but mainly by Tomohiro Tanabe as a pre-teen and teenager, and by Ken Tanaka as an adult. His stepmother, Tae, is portrayed by Sayuri Yoshinaga, a big star in Japan who has remained little-known abroad but delivers the film’s most convincing performance. 

Sayuri Yoshinaga

 

The beginning of the movie, with its use of speeded-up film and voiceover from a narrator (Shoichi Ozawa) who sometimes even pops up on screen (once during a sex scene, of which there are some weird ones) made me wonder if I was in for some irreverent, Kihachi Okamoto-inspired wackiness, but these eccentric touches ultimately proved too intermittent to seem anything other than occasional bits of whimsy on the part of the director, Kirio Urayama. A former assistant to Shohei Imamura, Urayama had won the Blue Ribbon Award for Best New Director for his debut film, Foundry Town (1962), also starring Sayuri Yoshinaga. Subsequently, he appeared to struggle to find enough work and only managed to complete 10 films before his death at 54 in 1985. Perhaps personal hygiene may have been a reason for his lack of employment, as his Japanese Wikipedia page states:

He hated baths, and when he went to Seijun Suzuki's house while drunk, he was locked naked in the bathroom by Seijun and his common-law wife (whom he later married) because of the terrible smell. However, he managed to escape naked through the bathroom window.

The film proved to be a huge hit at the Japanese box office, leading not only to a sequel two years later, but to a remake (with its own sequel) a mere six years after the original as well as a number of TV adaptations. 

Ken Tanaka

 

Shot in academy ratio, the film looks pretty good, making effective use of real locations and suggesting close attention to historical details in the dressing of the sets, etc. However, I found the character of Shinsuke unsympathetic and many of the performances too broad, while I felt that the writing never rose above the standard of melodrama, the music was uninspired and the whole thing too vulgar and sentimental. In fairness, though, I should point out that a lot of people seem to like this movie and other opinions are available… 

 

Watched with dodgy subtitles.

Thanks to A.K.

Woman Walks the Earth Alone / 女ひとり大地を行く / Onna hitori daichi o yuku (1953)

Obscure Japanese Film #70

Isuzu Yamada

The story begins in 1932. Sayo (Isuzu Yamada) and Kisaku (Jukichi Uno) are a married couple with two young children living in Akita Prefecture. Times are hard and they are struggling to make ends meet. Kisaku decides that the only thing for it is to go off to Hokkaido and work in the coal mines. He very quickly realises his mistake when he witnesses a co-worker being tortured to death by a supervisor. Kisaku decides to run away, but on the day of his escape there’s an explosion at the mine and he is presumed to be among the fatalities. 

Jukichi Uno

 

Hearing nothing from her husband, Sayo travels to Hokkaido with her children, where she is informed of his death. She decides to stay on and work as a miner herself. Eventually, she becomes involved with a male co-worker, Kaneko (Isao Numasaki), but he is drafted into the army and killed in World War 2. After the war, the harsh military regime rapidly collapses and conditions at the mine improve a little, enabling Sayo to get an easier job sorting the coal away from the mine. Her eldest son, Kiichi (Jinkichi Orimoto), hates the life of a coal miner and runs off with a nurse, Fumiko (Yoshiko Sakurai), while her younger son, Kiyoji (Taketoshi Naito), joins the union and starts going out with Takako (Hatae Kishi), but becomes involved in a conflict with her father, who has been collaborating with the bosses. 

Given the subject matter and the fact that one of the screenwriters is Kaneto Shindo, it will be no surprise to learn that this is a very left-wing film. Like some of Satsuo Yamamoto’s similarly-oriented films of the same period, it was made outside the studio system with money raised from thousands of union members each making a small contribution. The production company responsible, Kinuta Productions, had been established with funds paid by Toho Studios to the Japan Film and Theatre Workers’ Union in settlement of a legal dispute. Kinuta Productions had already made Haha nareba onna nareba (something like ‘A Mother is also a Woman’) the previous year, also starring Isuzu Yamada and directed by Fumio Kamei (1908-87). Kamei was a radical who had studied in the Soviet Union and subsequently worked at Toho before the content of his work had angered the Japanese authorities, who actually put him in prison for some time as a result. He also made documentaries, but the fact that he had to work outside the studio system due to his politics seems to have restricted his output more than it did that of his friend Satsuo Yamamoto, partly because Woman Walks the Earth Alone was a commercial failure.

Tanie Kitabayashi

 

As the film was shot on location, the cast and crew stayed with local coal mining families, lending authenticity, but perhaps partially explaining the lack of well-known names among the cast. Aside from Isuzu Yamada and Jukichi Uno, the most familiar faces are probably Kon Ichikawa favourites Tanie Kitabayashi (as a friend of Sayo’s) and Jun Hamamura, the latter in an uncharacteristic role as a bullying supervisor. Although Yamada is the ostensible star, the film spends a lot of time with its other characters and her role is not one of her most memorable. One reason the film is not better known may simply be because, as a non- studio picture, it has fallen through the cracks somewhat, but it would also be difficult to claim this as a forgotten masterpiece. Some of the characters are too one-dimensional, the ending is sentimental, and it occasionally lapses into melodrama, with the brutality of the supervisors particularly being overdone and straight out of the playbook of Soviet propaganda cinema. 

Originally, the film ran at 164 minutes, but an organisation known as the Film Ethics Committee (or ‘Eirin’ for short) objected to the references to the Korean War, and this was apparently the reason why it was cut to 132 minutes (the pressure to increase coal production that leads to the miners’ protest towards the end of the film was originally attributed to aiding the U.S. military in the Korean War, in regard to which Japan was officially neutral). The shorter version is the one I have seen and I feel that it would probably have more impact in the longer cut (which, happily, still survives, although is yet to be released on home video).

Isuzu Yamada

 

Watch on YouTube (no subtitles)
 

The Eleventh Hour /どたんば/ Dotanba aka They are Buried Alive (1957)

Obscure Japanese Film #24

Eijiro Tono

Based on a television play by Ryuzo Kikushima[1] which was itself based on a true story, this Toei production concerns five coal miners who become trapped underground after a flood and the subsequent attempt to rescue them before they suffocate. One of the endangered miners is played by Kurosawa favourite Takashi Shimura, who seems set up to play an important part, but unfortunately he soon disappears for most of the film as Uchida and co-screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto decide to focus attention on events above ground. Indeed, The Eleventh Hour is not only a film without stars, but also one which lacks any major characters to speak of, and this choice rather dissipates the drama in my view. However, there are certainly some familiar faces among the ensemble, including Eijiro Tono as the bad-tempered foreman and Eiji Okada (who went on to star in Hiroshima Mon Amour and Woman of the Dunes) as the spokesman of a Korean mining team. Okada had apparently worked as a coal miner himself, while Uchida also had experience of working in the mines during the war. 

Eiji Okada

 

As the fate of the miners hangs in the balance, it sparks a media frenzy and a crowd gathers at the mine while an ice cream seller makes a killing. These scenes briefly recall Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole (1951), but ultimately Uchida’s film has little in common; the reporters portrayed here are polite, respectful, and appear to be genuinely hoping for a positive outcome. Instead, Uchida gives us a surprisingly sentimental and typically Japanese movie in which people have to work together in order to surmount their difficulties and achieve a common goal, although he does add an extra wrinkle; in this case, they also have to overcome their anti-Korean prejudice as they will need the help of the Koreans working at another mine nearby if their rescue efforts are to succeed.

Takashi Shimura

Given that Uchida has made some really excellent films and the script was co-written by the great Shinobu Hashimoto, I had hoped to discover a hidden gem here, but actually found something that more closely resembled a lump of coal – a functional item with little sparkle. The Eleventh Hour is by no means a bad film, and technically the underground sequences are very well achieved (presumably in the studio), but these should have been much more suspenseful, so overall it’s not difficult to see why this particular Uchida film has remained so little-known.

 For more on this film, see The International Uchida Tomu Appreciation Society website

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[1] Like Shinobu Hashimoto, Kikushima frequently worked as a screenwriter for Akira Kurosawa. The TV play was broadcast live the previous year on NHK and featured the TV debut of Rentaro Mikuni. As a kinescope recording was made at the time, this work still exists. It was directed by Hiroshi Nagayama, who seems to have no film credits and presumably worked only in television.