Author: Hayley Scanlon

The War in Space (惑星大戦争, Jun Fukuda, 1977)

January 19, 2020by Hayley Scanlon

The tokusatsu movie had been Toho’s signature line since the mid-‘50s, but 25 years later it was more or less played out. The late ‘70s saw the studio diversifying into other types of populist cinema while trying to find new directions in a rapidly changing industry. 1977’s The War in Space (惑星大戦争, Wakusei Daisenso), technically a “sequel” to Ishiro Honda’s Gorath from 1962, very much exemplifies the decline while trying to meld a fairly standard Star Trek-esque tale of interplanetary conflict with Star Wars-inspired fantasy.

In the distant future of 1988, the United Nations Space Force in Japan has been having trouble contacting the space station because of continued electromagnetic interference. Miyoshi (Kensaku Morita), a former team member making an unexpected return from America, tells them that they’d been having the same problem over there and not only that, there had been a worrying increase in UFO sightings across the nation. Making brief contact with the space station confirms their fears when the pilot suddenly starts screaming about a giant Roman spaceship approaching at speed before contact is lost once again. It seems that the Earth is now under attack from an extraterrestrial invasion, and the electromagnetic interference appears to be coming from Venus.

Miyoshi reconnects with his mentor, Takigawa (Ryo Ikebe), and tries to persuade him to resume an old research project to develop a high powered spaceship known as Gohten, but he remains reluctant. Part of the reason for his lack of enthusiasm is that Miyoshi had been his best student and Takigawa still bears him some resentment for his abrupt decision to leave for America rather than staying to contribute to Japan’s future while his feelings are further complicated by the fact that Miyoshi had been in a serious romantic relationship with his daughter, Jun (Yuko Asano), whose heart was broken when he left. A Space Force employee, Jun is now engaged to fellow officer Muroi (Masaya Oki) who is glad to see his old friend Miyoshi return, but also a little anxious.

With the Earth facing imminent destruction, however, there’s little time to worry about past heartache. Takigawa finds himself forced into restarting the Gohten project when he realises that the “Venusians” can pose as regular humans by possessing their bodies. As usual, everything rests on the team pulling together to finish the mammoth project in a record three days before the aliens obliterate their base just like they’re doing to most of the Earth’s major cities. Eventually, the team realise that the aliens aren’t from Venus at all, but from another major solar system and led by a man calling himself “Commander Hell” (Goro Mutsumi) who, for some reason, is dressed like a Roman emperor. Like the Romans, their aim is colonisation. They’ve worn out their home planet and are looking to move, but want somewhere kind of the same so they’ve set their heart on one three away from the sun, like the Earth.

Aside from the classical trappings, War in Space was apparently rushed out to cash in on the success of Star Wars and even includes a scene which seems to anticipate Leia’s capture by Jabba the Hut in Return of the Jedi when Jun is kidnapped and forced into hotpants while chained to a Chewie-esque furry minotaur carrying a giant axe, which might be mixing their classical metaphors somewhat as Jun and Miyoshi, arriving to rescue her, attempt to escape from Commander Hell’s ship. Takigawa and co. make their way to Venus to try and take out Commander Hell’s base, but are faced with a terrible choice. The reason Takigawa didn’t want to finish the Gohten project is that the ship is armed with a terrifyingly powerful, universe destroying bomb which he worries it was irresponsible of him to invent. Hypocritically, he now knows he’ll have to use it but is hoping that in doing so it will be destroyed along with everything else except perhaps the Earth.

Unlike in Star Wars, it’s the good guys who blow up a planet to save their own though at least no one seemed to be living there, only Commander Hell’s evil minions. Bowing out with a slightly more bombastic evocation of the original tokusatsu messages about the dangers of irresponsible science, War in Space is a fairly generic exercise in genre but has its moments in its bodysnatching spy aliens, groovy ‘70s production design, and charmingly earnest sincerity.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Suzaki Paradise: Red Light (洲崎パラダイス　赤信号, Yuzo Kawashima, 1956)

January 18, 2020by Hayley Scanlon

By 1956, things were beginning to look up. Post-war privation was receding into the distance with the consumerist future already on the horizon, but as much as there were possibilities for some others found themselves floundering, unable to find direction in a world of constant change. Yuzo Kawashima’s Suzaki Paradise: Red Light (洲崎パラダイス　赤信号, Susaki Paradise: Akashingo)* was released in the same year that the anti-prostitution law came into force forever changing the face of the red light district and like its heroes finds itself hovering on a precipice caught between an old world the new.

Lovers Tsutae (Michiyo Aratama) and Yoshiji (Tatsuya Mihashi) have found themselves at a crossroads, or more accurately on a bridge, unsure whether to go forward, or back, or some other place entirely. Tsutae is disappointed in Yoshiji, expecting him as the man to have some kind of plan, while he is a little resentful of her fortitude and tendency to take the lead. Yoshiji grows maudlin and moody, berating himself for his failure of manhood, a failing for which Tsutae has little sympathy. Fed up with him, she runs off and catches a bus. He chases her, and they both get off at Susaki, home to a famous red light district. Yoshiji isn’t happy with this development, worried that Tsutae will cross the bridge and fall back into her “old self”, perhaps hinting at the kind of life she lived before. Luckily for them, Tsutae spots a help wanted sign at a tiny bar firmly on this side of the river. The landlady, Otoku (Yukiko Todoroki), is a kind woman raising her two sons alone, but is wary of handing the job to a woman the like of Tsutae. As she tells her, no one stays here long, most just see it as a stepping stone, a place where they can acclimatise themselves to the idea of crossing the bridge into the ironically named “Susaki Paradise”.

Once you cross the bridge, most seem to say, you never really cross back. Later we learn that Tsutae is from the other side of the water and seemingly forever trying to escape her past though mostly through trying to attach herself to a man she thinks can carry her out it. Yoshiji seems to be aware that Tsutae is a former sex worker and is desperate to prevent her returning to her previous occupation, worried that he’ll lose her if she does or perhaps just unfairly judgemental. Likewise, we learn that he lost his job through some kind of impropriety, perhaps committed trying to keep Tsutae with him. Each of them is in one way or another trapped by patriarchal social codes, Tsutae believing that the only way she can save herself is by finding the right man to save her, and Yoshiji increasingly resentful for not living up to the male ideal. He can’t keep his woman, can’t provide for or protect her, most pressingly he cannot find a job but is also proud, shamed by the idea of accepting low paid manual work. He feels belittled and humiliated and is embittered by it.

Tsutae meanwhile takes to Otoku’s bar like a duck to water, quickly bringing in a host of male custom while bonding with the cheerful owner of a radio shop in nearby electronics centre Kanda, Ochiai (Seizaburo Kawazu). Otoku manages to find a job for Yoshiji delivering soba noodles in a local restaurant which he decides to take despite his intense resentment and wounded male pride. Ironically enough, the name of the soba restaurant is “Damasare-ya” which sounds like “tricked”, explaining why he might be reluctant to take the job, but the biggest problem is that he can’t trust Tsutae and is always paranoid about her meeting men in the bar or deciding to cross the bridge in his absence. Eventually, Ochiai offers to make Tsutae his mistress and provide a flat for her in Kanda, leaving her with a choice – “love”, if that’s what it is, with the feckless and jealous Yoshiji, or perfectly pleasant yet transactional comfort with Ochiai. Yoshiji, meanwhile, attracts the attentions of an earnest waitress in the soba noodle restaurant (Izumi Ashikawa) who seems to support his attachment to Tsutae but is also rooting for him to get over himself and live an honest life of hard work by knuckling down at his new job.

Yet that post-war restlessness won’t seem to let either of them go. Once you fall, you fall and it may not be possible to climb back up, or at least not without the right person to help keep you from slipping back down. Otoku has managed to keep a steady hand on the tiller, apparently waiting, we’re told, for the return of her husband who ran off with a woman from the red light district four years previously. The red light district, like toxic masculinity, cuts both ways and you’ll pay a heavy price for crossing the bridge. “People had better live honestly” a middle-aged man avows after having apparently seen the error of his ways, but it’s easier said than done.

When their worlds come crashing down, Tsutae and Yoshiji find themselves right back where they started, hovering on the bridge. “We have to live until we die” Tsutae once said, dismissing any fears we might have had that the pair might jump, but their course is both set and not. Now chastened, Tsutae’s decision to take a step back is both a reflection on the failure of her Susaki experiment, and also perhaps a mild concession to patriarchal social norms as she actively assumes the submissive role, affirming that she will follow Yoshiji’s lead while he reassumes his masculinity by finally taking charge. No longer quite so liminal they move on, another pair of floating clouds, perhaps more at home with who they are and can never be, but with no clear destination in sight.

*The reading of this place name is “Susaki” but the film has become more commonly known under the title “Suzaki Paradise”

Currently streaming on Mubi as part of an ongoing Yuzo Kawashima retrospective.

Title sequence (no subtitles)

Suspicion (疑惑, Yoshitaro Nomura, 1982)

January 17, 2020by Hayley Scanlon

By the early ‘80s, Japan had successfully shaken off post-war desperation for burgeoning consumerism, but even as the nation rocketed into a more comfortable future, social equality proved slow to arrive. Once again adapting a novel by Seicho Matsumoto, Yoshitaro Nomura’s Suspicion (疑惑, Giwaku) makes allies of two very different women who are each in one way or another rejected by the conservative, infinitely rigid society in which they live.

Former bar hostess Kumako (Kaori Momoi) falls under suspicion when she alone survives the car accident that takes her husband’s life. A brassy, aloof woman, Kumako does not behave in the way the police might expect a recently bereaved spouse to behave which instantly turns them against her. This becomes a real problem once they discover that her husband, Shirakawa (Noboru Nakaya), was an extraordinarily wealthy man on whom she had recently taken out a number of life insurance polices. Shirakawa’s public profile ensures that the potentially salacious case is taken up by the newspapers who waste no time proclaiming Kumako a gold digging murderess while openly baying for her blood. Intimidated by the public outcry, the police are determined to charge Kumako with her husband’s murder despite the only existing evidence being extremely circumstantial.

After a prominent lawyer declines to take her case, her legal council stands down citing his poor health leaving Kumako entirely undefended. The court eventually appoints her a new lawyer, a woman – Ritsuko Sahara (Shima Iwashita), more practiced in civil than criminal law and just as much of an outcast as Kumako though in very different ways. Ritsuko has divorced her husband and he has custody of their young daughter whom Ritsuko makes a point of seeing once a month. Though the arrangement seems to suit her well enough, her status as a career woman who has “rejected” the roles of wife and mother also makes her one viewed with “suspicion” by those around her.

The central issue is indeed Kumako’s character. A former bar hostess with a traumatic childhood, Kamako has four previous convictions including assault and blackmail as well as an abrasive personality and a tendency to rub people up the wrong way. She doesn’t do herself any favours, but no kind of justice would be served if she were sentenced to death not for her husband’s murder but for the crime of being an “unpleasant” woman in a society which expects women to be docile and polite.

The papers, however, are very invested in the story of the coldblooded, gold digging murderess. Akitani (Akira Emoto), a local reporter, cosies up to the police for insider information, and does his best to root out Kumako’s sordid past including a sometime boyfriend who might have been her “pimp”. Ritsuko makes “trial by media” a key part of her defence strategy, arguing that her client’s case has been unfairly prejudiced by the image the press has sought to construct of her, but is unaware of the extent to which the police investigation has been distorted by the desire to appease the media or the various ways in which a venal press has gently perverted the course of justice in search of a better story.

Cool and efficient, Ritsuko isn’t really sure whether Kumako did it or not but is determined to ensure she is tried by the codes of law and not of conventional morality. A disgraced Akitani later barks at her that he sees no need to defend “a woman like that” in the papers, but Ritsuko’s having none of it – the purpose of the law is precisely to ensure guilt or innocence is assessed rationally on the basis of the evidence presented, as free of personal prejudice as it’s possible to be. An idealistic claim, given Japan’s famously implacable legal system, but one that sits well with a functioning democracy.

Ritsuko’s defence of Kumako is not particularly a feminist exercise, though a grudging kind of mutual respect eventually arises between the two women who have each in one sense or another rejected socially defined gender roles. While Ritsuko proclaims herself happy enough to be a mother once a month on Sundays, her husband’s new wife is a more territorial sort, eventually asking her to stop seeing her own daughter because she would rather raise her believing that she is hers alone. Kumako, however, is entirely unrepentant, even emboldened, vowing that she will continue using men until the day she dies. The two women remain mirror images of each other, both rejected, viewed with “suspicion” for the choices they have made, and forever at odds with a society which has already found them each “guilty” in the court of public opinion.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Japan Academy Prize Announces Nominees for 43rd Edition

January 16, 2020by Hayley Scanlon

The Japan Academy Prize, Japan’s equivalent of the Oscars awarded by the Nippon Academy-sho Association of industry professionals, has announced the candidate list for its 43rd edition which honours films released between Dec. 16, 2018 and Dec. 15, 2019. This year, perhaps surprisingly, crowd pleasing surrealist comedy Fly Me to the Saitama has topped the charts with nominations in 12 categories including film, director, screenplay, leading actor, leading actress, and supporting actor, while Shinsuke Sato’s wuxia-inspired blockbuster Kingdom and Michihito Fujii’s political thriller The Journalist also pick up multiple nominations. The winners will be announced at the star-studded awards ceremony at Grand Prince Hotel New Takanawa on March 6.