Tag: Chuji Kinoshita

Apostasy (破戒, Keisuke Kinoshita, 1948)

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Hakai still 1For all his good hearted humanism and intense belief in the simple power of human goodness, the films of Keisuke Kinoshita can also be surprisingly conservative, most particularly in their attachment to the old, pre-war Japan which they often see as unsullied by the corruption and ugliness of the militarist era. A new constitution film, Kinoshita’s adaptation of the Toson Shimazaki novel The Broken Commandment, The Apostasy (破戒, Hakai), opens with a series of bold titles proclaiming “Freedom and equality”, and “respect for human rights” before breaking into an attack on the persistent feudalism which has managed to survive into the new era along with prejudice and contempt. Zooming back to the missed opportunity of Meiji-era liberation, Kinoshita too remains somewhat ambivalent about the the decline of a social order in a Chekhovian lament for the rise of the petty middleman and the fall of noble aristocracy.

In Meiji 35 (1902), despite the advent of the Meiji Restoration and abolishment of the class system, prejudice against the “burakumin” – untouchable “outcasts” who lived in isolated settlements and (historically) made their living in occupations connected with death, was still very much in existence. This is all too apparent to Segawa (Ryo Ikebe). A bright young man, Segawa’s father sent him out of their village to make something of himself with the solemn promise that he must never reveal his burakumin origins to anyone. The world being as it is, however, Segawa is conflicted especially as he has fallen in love with his mentor’s daughter Oshiho (Yoko Katsuragi) and wonders if it would be fair to marry a non-burakumin woman without telling her truth and live with the threat of discovery forever over their heads.

The Broken Commandment would later be adapted again by Kon Ichikawa whose focus is, perhaps quite surprisingly, very different to that of Kinoshita who, uncharacteristically, chooses to prioritise class concerns over the right to live freely and honestly in a compassionate society. Ichikawa’s adaptation deliberately widens the implications of Segawa’s dilemma, making it plain that he is talking not just about burakumin rights but directly to all oppressed peoples and most particularly to those who feel obliged to keep their true natures a secret in an oppressive and conformist society. Strangely, Kinoshita chooses not to engage with this theme which might otherwise seem tailor made for his persistent concerns if perhaps a little close to home, preferring to focus not on Segawa’s gradual shift into accepting his own identity and hearing the call to activism but on the reactions of the changing world around him which seems to be imploding while besuited upstarts enact their petty revenge on the chastened nobility.

This is most clearly seen in the unfair treatment of Segawa’s mentor and landlord, Kazama (Ichiro Sugai) – a former samurai and until recently the local school teacher. Mere months away from his retirement, Kazama has been instructed to resign so that the school will not need to pay his pension while his position has been taken by a pushy local man with limited education whose sole claim to the job is being of the people. Kazama is understandably resentful but stoic. Segawa’s liberal colleague, Tsuchiya (Jukichi Uno), takes the school board to task for its unreasonableness and underhanded attempt to save money by forcing an old man out of his position with no thought for his 30 years of service. Though Tsuchiya might be broadly in agreement with the changes taking place in Meiji-era society, he too worries about the greedy upstarts usurping privilege rather than seeking to eradicate it.

Stepping back for second, Apostasy is a post-war film designed to echo the egalitarian philosophies of the new constitution drawn up under the American occupation. It is then somewhat subversive that our villains are the Westernised lower middle classes of Meiji-era society who seem to have embraced “modernity” by dressing in suits but refuse to abandon ridiculous ancient prejudices such as that towards burakumin, doubtless because those prejudices largely work out in their favour. It would be tempting to read these prejudices as foreign imports, but that against the burakumin is wholly Japanese and truth be told somewhat backward in contrast to (the kimono’d) Tsuchiya’s forward looking socialist beliefs which superficially at least seem more in keeping with the age.

Yet it is in some senses Segawa himself who struggles to emerge from the feudal yoke. His promise to his father is a sacred vow underlined by loss and sacrifice. He feels it is his duty to live as his father wished, as a “normal” Japanese citizen in success and comfort, but also begins to become acutely aware that to do so may be cowardly and selfish. If he chooses to keep his promise to his father and never reveal himself as a burakumin, he will be complicit with the systems which oppress him and thereby ensure those like him will always be oppressed. His awakening comes, in a sense, from a second father – Inoko (Osamu Takizawa), a burakumin who has come out of the closet and loudly fought for burakumin rights along with the general liberty of all oppressed people. Caught between two fathers and his growing love for Oshiho, Segawa remains lost while one of the suited proto-militarists threatens to out him leaving him floundering in the face of intense social stigma and the possibility that those he loves may turn against him.

Segawa has to free himself or risk becoming like Kazama – a man haunted by the feudal past, as Tsuchiya puts it. Kazama himself is painted in broadly sympathetic terms, forced to endure the melancholy fate of being eclipsed by a Lopakhin-esque member of the insurgent middle-classes, but his prejudice is later exposed despite his original support of Segawa when he notices one of the suits smirking at him and instantly feels humiliated, turning his impotent rage back on the outcast as if his presence further dishonours him as a samurai. Segawa’s aim as a teacher had been to teach his children the power of individual thought, which would seem to be the best weapon against prejudice but his message has been cut off at source thanks to the self-interested school board who have been all to quick to claim the benefits of modernity with none of the responsibility. Resolved to fight for a freer future, Segawa finally accepts his responsibility as a burakumin spokesman in the knowledge that his calling is to educate and that only through education can anything ever change. The lessons of Meiji may have gone unheeded, but the opportunity presents itself again to abandon the feudal past in favour of an egalitarian modernity built on fairness and compassion rather than obligation and oppression.

Titles/opening (no subtitles)

The Girl I Loved (わが恋せし乙女, Keisuke Kinoshita, 1946)

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The Girl I loved DVD coverThe post-war era, as confusing and chaotic as it was, offered several choices, among them that to change to course, choose to create a better, kinder world than the one which had led to so much suffering. As always, however, the human temptation is to choose the opposite and allow anger and resentment to make everything even worse than it had been before. Occasionally censured for his sentimentality, Keisuke Kinoshita was perhaps among the more defiantly positive of the post-war humanists whose fierce love human goodness knew no bounds. In The Girl I Loved (わが恋せし乙女, Waga Koiseshi Otome) he puts his ideas to the ultimate test as a young man recently returned from the war must learn to cope with various kinds of disappointment but eventually resolves to take solace in other people’s happiness even at the cost of his own.

The tale begins some years earlier when a baby girl is abandoned in front of the Asama Ranch, her mother apparently having taken her own life by jumping from a nearby cliff. The Asamas are good people and moved by the letter they find with the baby so decide to take her in. Yoshiko (Kuniko Igawa) is raised alongside older brother Jingo (Yasumi Hara) as an adopted sister always aware of her origins but very much a full member of the family.

Flash forward to the present day and Yoshiko has become a beautiful young woman. Jingo has returned from five years of war in perfect physical health, keen to resume his idyllic farm life in the beautiful Japanese countryside. The fact is that Jingo has long been in love with Yoshiko, though the situation is understandably complicated seeing as they were raised as siblings even if there is no blood relation between them. Somehow it seems a perfectly natural idea that the pair will marry and many assume this will be the case. Jingo, however, remains somewhat reticent and afraid to voice his feelings. It seems Yoshiko has something to tell him too and so he dares to hope as they both agree to share their respective secrets after the harvest festival.

At the festival, however, Jingo gets a shock. He sees the way Yoshiko looks at another man and realises that what she wanted to tell him was probably that she had fallen in love with someone else. Shaken and confused, Jingo bites his tongue. He knows to say anything now would only create more pain and suffering for everyone while he alone will suffer if he decides to stay quiet.

Nevertheless the temptation is there. Mr. Noda (Junji Soneda), Yoshiko’s intended, is a quiet man, an intellectual who returned from the war early thanks to injury and still walks with a cane. Yoshiko has been fearful that her family may object to the marriage on the grounds of Noda’s disability – something he has also been aware of and warned her about in explaining the potential hardship she may have to endure as his wife seeing as he is also merely a poor schoolteacher. Jingo could try to refuse her permission to marry, try to force her to marry him instead, or refuse to give his blessing for her to marry anyone at all, but if he did that all he’d be doing is condemning both of them to eternal misery. It would be understandable if he began to resent Noda and most particularly his disability which brought him home from the war early and enabled him to be here to fall in love with Yoshiko while Jingo was away and dreaming of home, but then it could so easily have been the other way around.

In the end, Jingo’s love is selfless and good. What he wants is for Yoshiko to be happy and if being with Noda is what that means then Jingo will not stand in her way no matter how much it may hurt him to stand aside. After all, as Noda says, aren’t they both lucky to be alive in this beautiful place? Having suffered so much, the two men understand how precious life is and know it’s far too short for pettiness or resentment. A quiet, gentle tale The Girl I Loved is a sad story of youthful disappointment in love, but it’s also a kind of melancholy manifesto for the new post-war world built on compassion and understanding as a young man decides to take the noble path in accepting that the girl he loved loves someone else and that’s sad but it’s also happy and if you can learn to rejoice in someone else’s happiness even in the midst of your own pain then perhaps everything will be alright after all.

Titles and opening scene (no subtitles)

Good-for-Nothing (ろくでなし, Kiju Yoshida, 1960)

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Good for nothing dvd coverIn the mid-1950s, Nikkatsu had accidentally provoked social outrage with a series of films later known as “taiyozoku” or Sun Tribe movies which revolved around aimless post-war youth who largely rejected the strident ambition of their parents for lives of dissipated abandonment. While the original author of the book that kickstarted it all fully intended to create moral panic, Nikkatsu perhaps hoped to capitalise on the inherent cool of adolescent rebellion and did it seems find an audience they hoped to continue courting with their youth movies even after the forced end of the taiyozoku movement. Shochiku, the home of polite melodrama, was a world away from Nikkatsu’s brand of angry young man but declining receipts encouraged them to get in on the action and so they began giving some of their younger ADs a chance to direct features in the hope of finding bold new voices who could speak to youth (a demographic their usual fare was not perhaps reaching).

Among these directors, Kiju (Yoshishige) Yoshida would go on to greater heights of avant-garde cinema but his Shochiku debut is perhaps more or less the kind of thing the studio was looking for. Released in the same year as Koreyoshi Kurahara’s The Warped Ones, Good-for-Nothing (ろくでなし, Rokudenashi) is another tale of youth gone wild only one with a much deeper sense of self pitying futility which casts its ill-fated hero as a noble soul left without purpose in the rapidly stratifying society of post-war Japan.

Against a heady yet whimsical jazz score (composed by Shochiku stalwart Chuji Kinoshita, brother of Keisuke), the action opens with a gang of petty delinquents kidnapping the secretary of one of their fathers, Hisako (Kakuko Chino), as she leaves the local bank. Toshio (Yusuke Kawazu) is in many ways the typical taiyozoku hero in that he is extremely rich and therefore filled with ennui because his life has no real purpose. He is not, however, the hero of Yoshida’s film. Gradually, our focus shifts to the intense figure of university student Jun (Masahiko Tsugawa) who, unlike the other members of the gang, remains internally conflicted as to the forward direction of his life and his complicated relationship with Toshio.

Whereas the taiyozoku films most often focussed on the bright young things of the new era – the children of those who had become rich in the post-war economy but had few values and were content to bury themselves in imported hedonistic pleasures, the “heroes” of Good-For-Nothing are the collaborators. If the taiyozoku were despised by the older generation as parasites living off inherited wealth and contributing nothing to society, then the guys like Jun are the parasites on the parasites. This is perhaps a view Jun holds of himself, wilfully embracing the “rokudenashi” label as expression of his intense self-loathing and acting in accordance with its values as an act almost of self-harm.

Toshio rebels against his sense of powerlessness in the darkest of ways – by setting his sights on taking his father’s “haughty” secretary down a peg or two. He may not like her confidence, self possession, and earnest determination towards honest industry but it is exactly these qualities which begin to attract Jun as representative of the society he has rejected but secretly longs to belong to. A poor student, he’s tried doing things the “right” way – part-time jobs, hard work etc, but has little interest in the student movement and views himself as “weak” for allowing himself to be swayed by the easy life of those like Toshio even in the full knowledge that he cannot live that way forever and his time at the beach will be as short as a summer vacation.

Hisako sees the conflict in Jun and tries to pull him towards a more positive path but is also attracted to him because of his darkness and nihilistic ennui. She too is unhappy with the status quo, living with her brother and his wife who quarrel about money and the disappointments of the salaryman dream while the office playboy hassles her at work and is only spurred on by her constant rejections. Hisako knows getting involved with Jun is playing with fire, especially if it keeps her in the orbit of the continually declining Toshio whose worrying behaviour is perhaps enabled by his well meaning liberal (though arch capitalist) father who is hoping his son will find his own way through hitting rock bottom, but salvation is a temptation it’s difficult to resist.

The heroes of the taiyozoku movies are aimless because they have no economic imperatives towards individual progress, but those like Jun or indeed like those of The Warped Ones are aimless because they see no sense of purpose in an intensely class bound society in which, paradoxically, all the cards are held by men like Toshio. Some, like Jun’s gang mate, decide the best way forward is to become a willing underling living off Toshio’s largesse who is, in his own way, intensely lonely and filling the friendship void with minions. Others, like Hisako, decide to plug on anyway despite the disappointments of socially conservative success. For men like Jun, however, the prognosis is as grim as in much of Yoshida’s later work, suggesting his nihilism is justified because there is no hope for men without means lost in the widening gulf of post-war inequality where any attempt at moral righteousness is likely to be rewarded only with further suffering.

Original trailer (Japanese with French/Traditional Chinese subtitles)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDtyXoKKv0k

A Legend or Was It? (死闘の伝説, Keisuke Kinoshita, 1963)

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A Legend or Was it posterIn 1951’s Boyhood, Kinoshita had painted a less than idealised portrait of village life during wartime. With pressure mounting ranks were closing, “outsiders” were not welcome. The family at the centre of Boyhood had more reasons to worry in that they had, by necessity, removed themselves from a commonality in their ideological opposition to imperialism but newcomers are always vulnerable when they find themselves undefended and without friends. 1963’s A Legend or Was It? (死闘の伝説, Shito no Densetsu, AKA Legend of a Duel to the Death) tells a similar story, but darker as a family of evacuees fall foul not only of lingering feudal mores but a growing resentment in which they find themselves held responsible for all the evils of war.

Beginning with a brief colour framing sequence, Kinoshita shows us a contemporary Hokkaido village filled with cheerful rural folk who mourn each other’s losses and share each other’s joys while shouldering communal burdens. A voice over, however, reminds us that something ugly happened in this beautiful place twenty years previously. Something of which all are too ashamed to speak. Switching back to black and white and the same village in the summer of 1945, he introduces us to Hideyuki Sonobe (Go Kato) who has just come home from the war to convalesce from a battlefield injury. Hideyuki’s engineer father went off to serve his country and hasn’t been heard from since, and neither has his brother who joined the air corp. His mother (Kinuyo Tanaka), sister Kieko (Shima Iwashita), and younger brother Norio (Tsutomu Matsukawa) have evacuated from Tokyo to this small Hokkaido village where they live in a disused cottage some distance from the main settlement.

The family had been getting by in the village thanks to the support of its mayor, Takamori, but relations have soured of late following an unexpected marriage proposal. Takamori’s son Goichi (Bunta Sugawara), a war veteran with a ruined hand and young master complex, wants to marry Kieko. She doesn’t want to marry him, but the family worry about possible repercussions if they turn him down. It just so happens that Hideyuki recognises Goichi and doesn’t like what he sees – he once witnessed him committing an atrocity in China and knows he is not the sort of man he would want his sister to marry, let alone marry out of fear and practicality. Hideyuki, as the head of the family, turns the proposal down and it turns out they were right to worry. The family’s field is soon vandalised and the police won’t help. When other fields meet the same fate, a rumour spreads that the Sonobes are behind it – taking revenge on the village on as a whole. The villagers swing behind Goichi, using the feud as a cover to ease their own petty grievances.

City dwellers by nature, the Sonobes have wandered into a land little understood in which feudal bonds still matter and mob mentality is only few misplaced words away. The village serves a microcosm of Japanese society at war in which Takamori becomes the unassailable authority and his cruel son the embodiment of militarism. Goichi embraces his role as a young master with relish, riding around the town on horse back and occasionally barking orders at his obedient peasants, stopping only to issue a beating to anyone he feels has slighted him – even taking offence at an innocuous folksong about a man who was rejected in love and subsequently incurred a disability. Despite all of that, however, few can find the strength to resist the pull of the old masters and the majority resolutely fall behind Goichi, willing to die for him if necessary.

As the desperation intensifies and it appears the war, far off as it is, is all but lost, a kind of creeping madness takes hold in which the Sonobes become somehow responsible for the greater madness that has stolen so many sons and husbands from this tiny village otherwise untouched by violence or famine. An embodiment of city civilisation the Sonobes come to represent everything the village feels threatened by, branded as “bandits” and blamed for everything from murder to vegetable theft. The central issue, one of a weak and violent man who felt himself entitled to any woman he wanted and refused to accept the legitimacy of her right to refuse, falls by the wayside as just another facet of the spiralling madness born of corrupted male pride and misplaced loyalties.

Kinoshita returns to the idyllic countryside to close his framing sequence, reminding us that these events may have been unthought to the level of myth but such things did happen even if those who remember are too ashamed to recall them. Tense and inevitable, A Legend or Was It? reframes an age of fear and madness as a timeless village story in which the corrupted bonds of feudalism fuel the fires of resentment and impotence until all that remains is the irrationality of violence.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Marriage (結婚, Keisuke Kinoshita, 1947)

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Marriage DVD coverGenerally speaking, the heroes in the world of Keisuke Kinoshita are those who stick steadfastly to their principles and refuse to become corrupted by the world around them. This is all very well but perhaps somewhat idealistic given the pressures of the post-war world. 1947’s Marriage (結婚, Kekkon) finds the director working with scriptwriter Kaneto Shindo whose view of humanity was perhaps a little more pragmatic than Kinoshita’s and therefore recasts his heroes as essentially good people who eventually come to the conclusion that their moral rigidity is causing more unhappiness than compromise might and that an acceptance of complicity may in fact be the only possible way forward.

Fumie (Kinuyo Tanaka) became engaged to Sugawara (Ken Uehara) before he went away to war and the couple have been waiting to marry ever since. Though Sugawara returned promptly, unharmed, and seems to be in regular employment, they have been unable to formalise their union because Fumie and her sister are the only members of her family currently working which means that they cannot do without her paycheck. Things begin to look up when Fumie’s father Kohei (Eijiro Tono), formerly an accountant who lost his job when his previous employer went bust, runs into an acquaintance who’s now the owner of a successful restaurant. Shimamoto (Eitaro Ozawa) promises him a job which has the family overjoyed, not least Fumie who may now finally be able to marry, but their happiness is to be short lived. Kohei realises that Shimamoto’s business is built on underhanded practices intertwined with black market profiteering and wants no part of it. The two men argue. Kohei refuses the job and storms out. Fumie is back to square one.

Though Sugawara reiterates that he understands the demands of the situation they find themselves in and will wait as long as is necessary, he too is under pressure from his family to bring the matter to a suitable conclusion. Sugawara’s mother is in poor health and wants to see him settled before she goes. She understands that he has someone in mind, but would rather he marry as soon as possible even if that means marrying someone else entirely – for example, a lovely girl from the village whose omiai photo his aunt has helpfully delivered. Sugawara bears all of this with good grace, but stands firm in insisting he will wait for Fumie even if that means he never marries at all.

The dilemmas are two fold and occur across two generations. Fumie finds herself torn between a duty to her family who are now almost entirely dependent on her as a breadwinner, and her romantic desire to become Sugawara’s wife – a promise made before the war which the post-war world conspires to make impossible. Despite their dire circumstances, the Matsukawas are a happy family doing their best to muddle through though there is obvious tension between teenage son Kei (Shozo Suzuki) and his father over Kohei’s rigid refusal to compromise himself as the times seem to demand. Kinoshita captures the atmosphere of a precarious household with easy confidence, an icy silence descending as Kohei returns with a face like thunder making plain that his job opportunity has not worked out as planned. Everyone is upset and disappointed, but no one has the energy for an argument and so silence is all there is.

Fumie becomes ever more conflicted, especially after a strained meeting with Sugawara’s aunt who seems nice enough but drops a few hints about the girl waiting in the country and Sugawara’s sickly mother. She begins to wonder if her romantic dreams are selfish in a world so wracked with ruin that it seems unlikely that she will ever be in a position to marry. Perhaps it would be more responsible, or just less painful, to end things with Sugawara for good so that he at least can move on. As things stand, the couple only have their Sundays which are endlessly prolonged with additional activities to put off the time that they must part as long as possible. The destabilising visit from the aunt is followed by an awkward, almost celebratory dinner in which sake pushes difficult emotions to the fore. Fumie vacillates, unable to dance she eventually decides to give things a go, affirming that she will simply hold onto and follow Sugawara – seemingly unaware of the wider implications of her statement. During the dance, however, in which she is literally swept off her feet, she changes her mind again, shamed by her brief moment of joy into feeling selfish and self involved as if all those around her suffer in service of her eventual romantic fulfilment.

Where Kinoshita might have introduced a deus ex machina in which the Matsukawas would be the beneficiaries of divine reward for their selfless goodness, Shindo makes way for a more realistic (though perhaps equally melodramatic) solution in which Kohei reassumes his role of the head of the family and chooses his daughter’s happiness over his principles. As such he recognises that he must make the sacrifice that will save them all in abandoning moral righteousness and becoming complicit with the murkiness of the world in which he lives. Pragmatism, this time, wins out but only as a lesser evil in which a compromise is made in the favour of happiness which might, in a round about way, produce a greater change in an already unhappy world.

Titles and opening (no subtitles)

Fireworks Over the Sea (海の花火, Keisuke Kinoshita, 1951)

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In the films of Keisuke Kinoshita, it can (generally) be assumed that the good will triumph, that those who remain true to themselves and refuse to give in to cynicism and selfishness will eventually be rewarded. This is more or less true of the convoluted Fireworks Over the Sea (海の花火, Umi no Hanabi) which takes a once successful family who have made an ill-advised entry into the fishing industry and puts them through the post-war ringer with everything from duplicitous business associates and overbearing relatives to difficult romances and unwanted arranged marriages to contend with.

The action begins in 1949 in the small harbour town of Yobuko in Southern Japan. Tarobei (Chishu Ryu) and his brother Aikawa (Takeshi Sakamoto) run a small fishing concern with two boats under the aegis of the local fishing association. The business is in big trouble and they’re convinced the captain of one of the boats has been secretly stealing part of the catch and selling it on the black market. Attempts to confront him have stalled and the brothers are at a loss, unsure how to proceed given that it will be difficult to find another captain at short notice even if they are already getting serious heat from their investors and the association.

Luckily things begin to look up when a familiar face from the past arrives in the form of Shogo (Takashi Miki) – a soldier who was briefly stationed in the town at the very end of the war during which time he fell in love with Tarobei’s eldest daughter, Mie (Michiyo Kogure). Shogo has a friend who would be perfect for taking over the boat and everything seems to be going well but the Kamiyas just can’t seem to catch a break and their attempt to construct a different economic future for themselves in the post-war world seems doomed to failure.

The Kamiyas are indeed somewhat persecuted. They have lost out precisely because of their essential goodness in which they prefer to conduct business honestly and fairly rather than give in to the selfish ways of the new society. Thus they vacillate over how to deal with the treacherous captain who has already figured out that he holds all the cards and can most likely walk all over them. They encounter the same level of oppressive intimidation when they eventually decide to fight unfair treatment from the association all the way to Tokyo only to be left sitting on a bench outside the clerk’s office for three whole days at the end of which Tarobei is taken seriously ill.

However, unlike Kinoshita’s usual heroes, Tarobei’s faith begins to waver. He is told he can get a loan from another family on the condition that their son marry his youngest daughter Miwa (Yoko Katsuragi). To begin with he laughs it off but as the situation declines he finds himself tempted even if he hates himself for the thought. He never wanted to be one of those fathers who treats his daughters like capital, but here he is. Both Miwa, who has fallen in love with the younger brother of the new captain, and her sister are in a sense at the mercy of their families, torn between personal desire familial duty. Mie, having discovered that her husband died in the war, is still trapped in post-war confusion and unsure if she returns Shogo’s feelings but in any case is afraid to pursue them when she knows the depths of despair her father finds himself in because of their precarious economic situation. Shogo is keen to help, but he is also fighting a war on two fronts seeing as his extremely strange (and somewhat overfamiliar) sister-in-law (Isuzu Yamada) is desperate to marry him off to her niece (Keiko Tsushima) in order to keep him around but also palm off her mother-in-law.

Meanwhile, a lonely geisha (Toshiko Kobayashi) who has fallen into the clutches of the corrupt captain is determined to find out what happened to someone she used to know who might be connected to Shogo and the Kamiyas and falling in desperate unrequited love with replacement captain Yabuki (Rentaro Mikuni) who is inconveniently in love with Mie. Kinoshita apparently cut production on Fireworks short in order to jet off to France which might be why his characteristically large number of interconnected subplots never coalesce. Running the gamut from melancholy existential drama to rowdy fights on boats and shootouts in the street, Kinoshita knows how to mix things up but leaves his final messages unclear as the Kamiyas willingly wave their traumatic pasts out to sea with a few extra passengers in tow still looking for new directions.

Titles and opening (no subtitles)

Danger Stalks Near (風前の灯, Keisuke Kinoshita, 1957)

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Keisuke Kinoshita is often regarded as a sentimentalist but he wasn’t completely immune to bitterness and cynicism as many of his farcical comedies bear out. Danger Stalks Near (風前の灯, Fuzen no Tomoshibi) begins in serious fashion as a trio of young toughs set on burgling the home of an elderly woman they assume has money but quickly descends into absurd dark humour as we discover there’s just as much money-grubbing thievery going on inside the house as out.

Two street toughs bully a nervous young man who needs money to get back to the country into joining them in a plot to rob a suburban house owned by a mean old woman whom they assume must be hiding a serious amount of cash inside. Having watched the place before, they know that it’s generally just housewife Yuriko (Hideko Takamine), her young son Kazuo (Kotohisa Saotome), and grumpy grandma Tetsu (Akiko Tamura) at home during the day after husband Kaneshige (Keiji Sada) has gone to work at his lowly job as a shoe salesman. Today, however, their aspirations towards crime will be thwarted because it’s all go at the Sato residence – flouncing lodgers, sisters with issues, tatami repair men, and mysterious faces from the past all mean that today is a very bad day for burglary but a very good one for entertainment.

Kinoshita deliberately upsets the scene by casting familiar actors Hideko Takamine and Keiji Sada in noticeably deglammed roles – she with a ridiculous pair of large round glasses and he with a giant facial mole designed to make them look “ordinary” but accidentally drawing attention to their star quality in the process. The Satos are, however, a very ordinary family in that they’re intensely obsessed with money and with their own precarious status in the improving but still difficult post-war economy. Tetsu is Kaneshige’s step-mother which is perhaps why he urges his wife to put up with her tyranny seeing as Tetsu is old and will probably not be around much longer, which means it’s just a waiting game until they inherit the house. Whatever else she may be, Tetsu is a mean old woman whose only hobbies are penny pinching and occasional trips to the cinema where she watches heartwarming dramas about filial piety. Her haughty attitude is perhaps why the crooks assume there is cash in the house but sometimes mean people are mean because they really don’t have money rather than just being stingy by nature.

Nevertheless, Tetsu’s iron grip is slowly destroying the family unit. Kaneshige (whose name ironically means “money multiplying” and uses a rather pretentious reading for his name kanji which are often misread by the postman etc) sneaks home to tell his wife he’s won second place in a competition, worrying that if Tetsu finds out she’ll expect her share of the prize money. The old woman is so mean that she even keeps her own stash of eggs in her personal cupboard along with tea for her exclusive use and takes the unusual step of locking the doors when Yuriko is out running errands because she feels “unsafe” in her own home – an ironic state of mind once we discover how exactly Tetsu was able to buy this house as a lonely war widow in the immediate aftermath of the defeat.

Tetsu is, in a fashion, merely protecting her status as matriarch in oppressing daughter-in-law Yuriko by running down her every move as well as those of her sisters whom she criticises for being dull despite their “cheerful” names but also chastises for lack of traditional virtues. Sakura (Toshiko Kobayashi) pays a visit to the Satos because she needs help – her husband has been accused of embezzlement, but is also hoping Yuriko is going to feed her in return for help with domestic tasks only the pair eventually fall out over a missing 30 yen and some crackers. Meanwhile, second sister Ayame (Masako Arisawa) also turns up but with a “friend” (Yoshihide Sato) in tow whom she hopes can become their new lodger after they ended up throwing the old one out because she burned a hole in the tatami mat floor through inattentive use of an iron. Neither Tetsu nor Yuriko could quite get their head around previous tenant Miyoko’s (Hiroko Ito) liberated, student existence of rolling in late after dates and lounging around reading magazines but a male lodger wasn’t something they had in mind either.

Persistent economic stressors have begun to wear away at family bonds – Tetsu is not a nice old woman, but it probably isn’t nice to be living in a house where you know everyone is just waiting for you to die. At least little Kazuo is honest enough to admit he only likes grandma when she gives him candy. Yuriko seems to be a responsible figure for both her sisters, but resents their relying on her for money while enjoying the various gifts they bring to curry favour including a large amount of fish cake from the prospective lodger/Ayame’s intended (if he doesn’t wind up being swayed by the dubious charms of the seductive Miyoko who insists on sitting in her empty room for the rest of the day because she already paid today’s rent). Meanwhile, Yuriko’s attempt to palm off a pair of unwanted tall geta that were a “present” from Kaneshige’s boss (who also heard about the prize money) leads to an accusation of attempted murder as if she hoped Tetsu might topple to her death after trying them on! The burglars have wasted all day sitting outside watching the ridiculous comings and goings as they bide their time waiting to strike only for the police to arrive on a completely unrelated matter. Turns out, inside and outside is not so different as you might think in a society where everything is a transaction and all connection built on mutual resentment.

Titles and opening scene (no subtitles)

Boyhood (少年期, Keisuke Kinoshita, 1951)

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Boyhood (Kinoshita) screencapIt’s easy to look back in judgement with the benefit of hindsight, but much less so to see clearly in the moment. Keisuke Kinoshita’s Boyhood (少年期, Shonenki), arriving just six years after the events that it depicts, is a painful if sympathetic look at the conflicts of the age seen through the eyes of a conflicted adolescent as he struggles to understand his place in a world which is becoming ever colder.

In the spring of 1944, 16-year-old Ichiro (Akira Ishihama) and his mother (Akiko Tamura) investigate the possibilities of retreat, back to the country and away from the increasingly fraught and dangerous city. Their first prospect which offered the comfort of family nevertheless proves too inconvenient and so Ichiro’s mother decides perhaps Suwa, a rural area not quite so out of the way, might be better even if it would mean starting all over again with no friends or family to offer support. Ichiro, however, doesn’t want to leave at all. He is afraid of being thought a coward and doesn’t see why he should have to leave his school and classmates behind just because there’s a war on. If he had his druthers, he’d be a pilot dropping bombs, not a resentful schoolboy torn between his feelings for his family and the increasingly austere demands of militarism.

Ichiro may be 16, and if it were not for his poor health perhaps he might already have been drafted, but he seems younger and is trapped in the difficult gulf between boy and man which makes him petulant and occasionally unreasonable. His father (Chishu Ryu), a professor of English literature, is a well known social liberal which is a problem that eventually makes it impossible for the family to stay on in the city. They decide to sell the house and move to Suwa, allowing Ichiro to stay behind alone as a lodger for the family of greengrocers who are the new occupants, but despite his insistence on his independence Ichiro is not yet ready for self sufficiency and misses his family, especially his mother, dearly, while he also experiences harsh treatment from the military instructors at school thanks to his general lack of soldiering aptitude.

Like his nation, Ichiro is lost in a fog of confusion – torn between the prevailing ideology of the age and that of his gentle hearted father. His problem is that as he is still “a child” and the conditions in which they find themselves make openness difficult, nobody is willing to talk to him seriously about the issues at hand – his father perhaps less out of fear or reticence than because he is acutely aware that his son must come to his own conclusions even if those conclusions prove contrary to his own. Thus, much to Ichiro’s consternation, he refuses to allow him to enrol at a military academy but does not explicitly state why, leaving him with only the vague idea that his father is “anti-war” and therefore a social pariah in a nation where everyone is expected to do their duty.

Ichiro begins to resent his father for the family’s plight, certain that he is the reason they were forced out of their home and also the ongoing cause of his mother’s suffering as she finds herself becoming the family breadwinner as an unlikely milk lady – a job she was only able to get thanks to the friendship of a gregarious neighbour, herself a fellow evacuee in a similar position. Far from the community spirit such situations are said to engender, Ichiro and his family find themselves perpetually excluded, viewed with suspicion as “outsiders” and at the bottom of the pile when it comes to the distribution of resources. “Extra” people get only the extra after the real villagers have had their fill. Meanwhile, Ichiro is bullied by the full on fascists at school, one of whom is the son of a local military commander and has fallen completely under the militarist spell.

Everyone is always telling Ichiro that he will come to understand when he is older. Being young, he resents this intensely but eventually comes to see that they were right, some things can only be understood with the weight of experience. With the war’s end and the eventual defeat of militarism, the fog begins to lift, allowing him to see that the prevailing ideology is not always the correct one and that there’s something to be said for quiet resistance and sticking steadfastly to one’s principles even if it would be much easier to go along with the majority. His father, however, reminds him that those who chose to do just that can hardly be blamed and will likely suffer in whatever is to come. They will need the all love and compassion in the world in order to find a new, less destructive path than the one they had been obliged to walk through a time of fear and madness. Using imperialistic song and propaganda to ironic, somewhat chilling effect Kinoshita presents a characteristically empathetic portrait of a “difficult age” in the life of a young man and his country who each find themselves emerging from chaos and confusion into something completely unknown and perhaps frightening but open and filled with possibility.

Title sequence and opening (no subtitles)

The Garden of Women (女の園, Keisuke Kinoshita, 1954)

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garden of women still 1Things changed after the war, but not as much as some might have hoped. Sadly still topical, Keisuke Kinoshita’s Garden of Women (女の園, Onna no Sono) takes aim both at persistent and oppressive patriarchal social structures and at a compromised educational system which, intentionally or otherwise, systematically stifles attempts at progressive social change. A short few years before student protests would plunge education into crisis, Kinoshita’s film asks why it is that the establishment finds itself in conflict with the prevailing moods of the time and discovers that youth intends to have its brighter future even if it has to fight for it all the way.

The setting is an exclusive private woman’s university in the elegant historical city of Kyoto. The ladies who attend this establishment are mostly from very wealthy families who have decided to educate their daughters at the college precisely because of its image of properness. As one student will later put it, there are two kinds of girls at the school – those who genuinely want to study in order to make an independent life for themselves and intend to look for work after graduation, and those who are merely adding to their accomplishments in order to hook a better class of husband. Everyone, however, is subject to a stringent set of rules which revolves around the formation of the ideal Japanese woman through strictly enforced “moral education” which runs to opening the girls’ private letters and informing their families of any “untoward” content, and requiring that permission be sought should the girls wish to attend “dances” or anything of that nature.

As might be expected, not all of the girls are fully compliant even if they superficially conform to the school’s rigid social code. Scolded for her “gaudy” hair ribbon on the first day of school, Tomiko (Keiko Kishi) rolls her eyes at the over the top regulations and enlists the aid of the other girls to cover for her when she stays out late with friends but her resistance is only passive and she has no real ideological objection towards the ethos of the school other than annoyance in being inconvenienced. Tomiko is therefore mildly irritated by the presence of the melancholy Yoshie (Hideko Takamine). Three years older, she’s come to college late and is struggling to keep up with classes but is, ironically enough, prevented from studying by the same school rules which insist she go to bed early.

Meanwhile, dorm mate Akiko (Yoshiko Kuga), from an extraordinarily wealthy and well connected family, is becoming increasingly opposed to the oppressive atmosphere at the school. However, as another already politically active student points out, Akiko’s background means there are absolutely no stakes for her in this fight. She has never suffered, and likely never will, because she always has been and always will be protected by her privilege. Fumie (Kazuko Yamamoto), a hardline socialist, doubts Akiko’s commitment to the cause, worrying that in the end she is only staging a minor protest against her family and will eventually drift away back to her world of ski lodges and summer houses. Despite her ardour, Akiko finds it hard to entirely dispute Fumie’s reasoning and is at constant battle with herself over her true feelings about the state of the modern world as it relates to herself individually and for women in general.

This is certainly a fiercely patriarchal society. Even though these women are in higher education, they are mostly there to perfect the feminine arts which are, in the main, domestic. They are not being prepared for the world of work or to become influential people in their own right, but merely to support husbands and sons as pillars of the rapidly declining social order that those who sent them there are desperate to preserve. For many of the girls, however, times are changing though more for some than others. Tomiko rolls her eyes and does as she pleases, within reason, and even if she eventually wants to see things change at the school it is mostly for her own benefit. She sees no sense in Akiko’s desire for reform as a stepping stone to wider social change, and perhaps even fears the kinds of changes that Akiko and Fumie are seeking.

Akiko and Fumie, and to an extent, Tomiko, seem to have a degree of agency that others do not as seen in the tragic story of Yoshie whose life has been largely ruined thanks to the selfish and heartless actions of her father. From a comparatively less wealthy family, Yoshie worked in a bank for three years during which time she met and fell in love with an earnest young man named Shimoda (Takahiro Tamura). However, her father, having become moderately successful, developed an appetite for social climbing and is determined she marry “well” to increase his own sense of superiority as a fully fledged member of the middle classes. He sees his daughter as nothing more than a tool or extension of himself and cares nothing for her thoughts or feelings. In order to resist his demands for an arranged marriage, Yoshie enrolled in school and is desperate to stay long enough for Shimoda to finish his education so they can marry.

Yoshie is trapped at every turn – she cannot rely on her family, she cannot simply leave them, she cannot yet marry, if she leaves the school she will be reliant on a man who effectively intends to sell her, but her life here is miserable and there is no one who can help her. All she receives from the educational establishment is censure and the instruction to buck up or get kicked out. She feels herself a burden to the other girls who regard her as dim and out of place thanks to their relatively minor age gap and cannot fully comprehend her sense of anxiety and frustration.

Finally standing up to the uncomfortably fascistic school board the girls band together to demand freedoms both academic and social, insisting that there can be no education without liberty, but the old ways die hard as they discover most care only for appearances, neatly shifting the blame onto others in order to support their cause. “Why must we suffer so?” Yoshie decries at a particularly low point as she laments her impossible circumstances. Why indeed. The oppressive stricture of the old regime may eventually cause its demise but it intends to fight back by doubling down and the fight for freedom will be a long one even if youth intends to stand firm.

Titles and opening scene (no subtitles)

Spring Dreams (春の夢, Keisuke Kinoshita, 1960)

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vlcsnap-2019-01-10-00h23m29s867Let them eat sweet potato? The heartless bourgeoisie at the centre of Keisuke Kinoshita’s absurdist satire Spring Dreams (春の夢, Haru no yume) have found themselves accidentally engulfed by the revolution which seems to be attacking them on every front including from inside their palatial, Western-style mansion. Things are about to change in the Okudaira world, but then again maybe not all that much.

The Okudairas are the owners of a large scale pharmaceuticals firm. Widowed patriarch Shobei (Eitaro Ozawa) is the CEO, but he’s at the constant mercy of his mother-in-law (Chieko Higashiyama) who acts as the guardian of the family business’ legacy. Meanwhile, he has three problematic children – oldest daughter Tamiko (Yatsuko Tanami) who has become a promiscuous playgirl with a taste for “mothering” college students, Chizuko (Mariko Okada) who is the only “normal” one in the house and has fallen in love with an impoverished painter, and Mamoru (Yusuke Kawazu) who is a kind of melancholy Hamlet waxing on his existential angst while eating everything in sight.

Into this already strained household comes the unexpected figure of sweet potato salesman, Atsumi (Chishu Ryu). With the house empty for a change, romantically conflicted maid Umeko (Yukiyo Toake) calls one of her boyfriends down at the fish shop to get the potato guy to come round. Kimiko (Meiko Nakamura), the other maid, goes out to pick some up but ends up flirting with a delivery boy so sends Atsumi inside where Umeko ropes him into helping shift some furniture which is how he ends up having a minor stroke in the Okudaira’s living room. Luckily for Atsumi, the person who finds him is Shobei’s compassionate spinster secretary, Kazuko (Yoshiko Kuga), who has some sad experience in this area as her father passed away after a stroke when she was a teenager, they say because someone moved him too early. A visit from the family doctor (Shuji Sano) backs up her advice and Atsumi will be staying put in the living room for the foreseeable future.

Of course, this doesn’t go down well with most of the Okudairas. Shobei wants him gone but what can you do? Atsumi stays because on balance it would be awkward if he ended up dying and staining the Okudaira name. Sadly, greed and indifference are not unique to the bourgeoisie as we discover when a parade of “well wishers” from Atsumi’s tenement house begin showing up to see how he is. Aside from the kindly, filial Eiichi (Shinji Tanaka) who has taken time off work to look after the old man, everyone else thinks Atsumi’s time has come. They know his tragic history, that he’s all alone now since both his sons were killed in the war and the rest of his family lost in the bombing. They want to get in with him to be remembered in the will, or even get their hands on his wallet for something like an advance. Poor old Atsumi is just an object fit for exploiting – a symbol of the Okudaira’s largesse, and of a potential windfall when the inevitable happens.

Meanwhile, the winds of change are blowing. Shobei is tied up with a labour dispute at the factory, obsessed with the idea of crushing the unions while the workers’ rousing chorus of the Internationale echoes ever more loudly in the distance. Grandma advises “just fire them all”, but things aren’t as easy as they were back in Meiji. Grandma thinks Shobei is a bit useless, especially since her daughter died and he’s been allowed to get off easy. She needs to find a successor seeing as Mamoru’s too weird to take over which means one of the girls needs to get married. Tamiko’s ruled herself out thanks to her eccentric love life, which leaves only Chizuko who wants to marry a painter and has no real interest in saving the family business. Chizuko is determined to oppose the idea of an arranged marriage, she’s a post-war girl after all, but grandma is firm. When she was a girl they made her give up on her first love, who happened also to be named “Atsumi”, to marry an Okudaira and so Chizuko is merely being unreasonable.

Nevertheless the presence of Atsumi begins to soften grandma’s heart with memories of her youth and the cruelty with which her youthful dreams were stripped away. Love blossoms in the cold Okudaira mansion, genuine bonds between people are recognised while the opportunist are rejected, and the young regain their freedom from the old who now recognise how destructive the old order could be. Will the house of the Okudaira’s fall? Probably not. Revolutions don’t take hold over night, but greed at least is on its way out paving the way for a better, kinder future for all.

Titles and opening (no subtitles)