Tag: Hiroshi Shimizu

Dawn Chorus (暁の合唱, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1941)

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“Before me flows a wide and serene river of life,” a young woman writes in an unexpectedly poetic essay, “I beg you to pray for my just and happy future.” Yet Tomoko (Michiyo Kogure) does appear to be pretty happy with her choice, even if the just future she’s forging for herself might not be what others see as just. Though she cites her family’s poverty and a minor disability as her reason for giving up on education, there seems to be another side of her that eagerly embraces independence and looks for it in unexpected places.

That would be her desire to become a bus driver, an occupation then thought to be inherently masculine. Perhaps in that way, it reflects her desire to be in control of her own destiny, while her apparent love of life on the bus hints at another for travel and ever-expanding horizons. Another of Shimizu’s travelling films, he often as in Mr Thank You includes scenes shot through the bus’ rear window including that of a flock of boys off to school on their bikes that makes Tomoko think of her stepbrother Ginjiro (Giichi Okita) who has a voracious appetite despite their family’s poverty. There are indeed all kinds of people who get on the bus, including, at one point, a melancholy woman in a bridal outfit who nevertheless pitches in when the bus gets stick in a ditch and needs a push. Tomoko fixes the bride’s makeup and gives her her compact, but there’s no avoiding the fact that she looks miserable despite the joy of the older women accompanying her.

Even Tomoko remarks that she isn’t sure whether her tears were in joy or sorrow even while wishing her a broad-shouldered husband. Later the bus catches her again trailing behind the man to whom she was married, older than her and not particularly handsome, pulling a cart. She still doesn’t look very happy, and is presumably bound for a life of drudgery over which she has little say. Her fate contrasts with that of Tomoko who is actively choosing her way forward even if the bride’s plight forces Tomoko to think about marriage and her womanhood as does the birth of a baby on the bus. Everyone is always telling Tomoko that she ought to get married quickly, and not least among them Eiko (Kiyoko Hirai) who declares herself tired by life. Working for a newspaper, she had apparently been the girlfriend of Saburo (Toshiaki Konoe) whose late brother once owned the company while now he runs a cinema. Saburo has apparently tired of her, though he appears to have developed a fondness for Tomoko which might seem slightly problematic to modern eyes because of Tomoko’s relative youth while she is in the process of coming of age and into herself uncertain if marriage is even something that she’s interested in.

On the other hand, her tomboyish qualities leave her in a slightly liminal space as reflected in her desire to become a driver, rather than a conductress. In learning to drive, she mostly wears trousers while Eiko remarks on her “big hands” and she prides herself on her physical strength when engaging in an impromptu arm wrestling match with Yoneko (Hiroko Kawasaki), the widow of Saburo’s brother who now manages the bus company and has a crush on handsome driver Ukita (Shin Saburi) who also had to drop out of university for undisclosed reasons. Tomoko loses the match because she’s overcome by tears without really knowing why, which might in its way be a manifestation of her returning femininity along with her maturity, but there’s also something strangely transgressive about the scene featuring two women under mosquito net randomly arm-wrestling in the middle of the night.

Nevertheless, Tomoko’s life seems otherwise happy and pretty care free even if there are signs of corruption all around her. One of her first challenges while working as a conductress is an old woman (Choko Iida) who tries to get out of paying. It seems like the old woman probably can’t really afford to pay, but puts on a show of having tried to cheat them deliberately to save face. She suggests to Tomoko that she simply neglect to punch a ticket and pocket the money she’s already given her, until the bus driver, a man, gets out to exert his authority and tell her off despite Tomoko’s offer to make up the shortfall out of her own money. Later it’s discovered that two of the other conductresses have been made unhappy enough to consider quitting their jobs and are deliberately avoiding riding with one particular driver because he’s forcing them to embezzle ticket money in this way on his behalf, hinting at a kind of greed and immorality that might not necessarily be motivated by abject poverty.

It is though a presence Tomoko is able to dispel, bringing on Kimie (Chiyoko Fumiya) as her own conductress when she finally becomes a driver in her own right. Though the film hints at her feelings for Saburo, it does not end on marriage but with Tomoko’s personal fulfilment if tempered by the idea that a woman must now be useful and productive in the wider world while the men are away which might be how it gets around the censors despite otherwise avoiding overtly patriotic or imperialistic themes. Based on a novel by Yojiro Ishizaka, the film rather validates Tomoko’s desire to take charge of her life and drive off towards the future as an independent woman.

Evil Dead Trap (死霊の罠, Toshiharu Ikeda, 1988)

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The embattled host of a late-night TV show is confronted by the image of corrupted maternity after receiving a snuff film in the mail that seems to feature herself in Toshiharu Ikeda’s body horror slasher, Evil Dead Trap (死霊の罠, Shiryo no Wana). A giallo-esque slasher echoing alternately by Argento and Cronenberg, the film is in part an exploration of changing gender norms at the height of the Bubble era in which the career woman hero is essentially stalked by a monster baby because she reminds him of a mother he for some reason hates.

Nami’s (Miyuki Ono) late night TV show “for those who can’t sleep” relies on viewers for its content, making use of newfangled VHS technology to play videos sent in to the studio. Her bosses are thinking of canning it for being too “fluffy” which might be one reason Nami does not immediately call the police after receiving a disturbing video of a woman being tortured and killed who is later revealed to have her own face. Instead, she gets the all female (plus one “bodyguard” who is the boyfriend of one of the team) crew together and heads out to the abandoned US military base which appears to feature in the video. 

At several points, the women remark on how difficult it is for them working in the TV industry where they need a big story just to earn their place in their room. Nami even jokes that if she were to die investigating the tape it would only boost the ratings while simultaneously putting her life on the line for the sake of her career. Meanwhile, we later realise that Nami is being targeted in part because the killer, who has a child’s voice, thinks she looks like his mother whose voice is frequently heard playing on a loop via reel to reel tape. He later attempts to kill Nami by wrapping what appears to be an umbilical cord around her neck, while she is finally subjected to a forced birth as maternity is visited on her almost as an act of rape even as she resists it. It could even be said that she is a kind of mother to the group, and one who ultimately fails to take care of family as each of her team falls victim to one of the traps set by the killer.

Meanwhile, the film adopts a slasher-esque morality in which the first victim is killed shortly after having sex with her “bodyguard” boyfriend, assistant director Kondo (Masahiko Abe), who had up until that point been suffering with erectile dysfunction only to be sexually revived thanks to the violent and eerie space of the abandoned military base. Another of the women attempts to leave the compound, but is caught by a random man claiming to be working for the killer who violently rapes her but also strangely answers some of her questions about what’s really going on as he does he does so. Nami is also less than shocked by the video after putting it in the machine, giving a response which suggests it’s not unusual to receive this kind of material or to witness such brutal treatment of women. 

The killer does indeed make good and ironic use of new technology, at one point putting one of the victims on TV begging for their life to taunt Nami and having a giant set up featuring several screens plus the reel to reel tape. A mysterious man also lurking around the military base suggests to Nami that the sender of the video is likely a crazed stalker, a pervert who wanted to see her naked who lured her to this remote location and then murdered all her friends when actually it’s almost the reverse that’s true and Nami is being targeted both for and not being a mother. Often switching to a Testuo-style shuttling camera and blue-tinted filter, Ikeda enlivens his genre adventure with interesting composition and a fantastic use of lighting right down to the oscillating blue police light in the killer’s lair as Nami attempts to retake control of her image and escape the penetrating gaze of her audience along with the patriarchal cage of an oppressive society.

Trailer (dialogue free)

Mermaid Legend (人魚伝説, Toshiharu Ikeda, 1984)

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“Even if someone kills you, you wouldn’t die,” a drunken husband somewhat sarcastically replies having pledged to come back and haunt his wife if he died and she married a man who didn’t drink. His words take on a prophetic quality given that the heroine of Toshiharu Ikeda’s Mermaid Legend (人魚伝説, Ningyo Densetsu) takes on a quasi-supernatural quality as an embodiment of nature’s revenge after someone tries, and fails, to kill her having already killed her husband for witnessing their murder of another man who’d tried to resist their plans of buying up half the town to build a nuclear plant. 

By the mid-1980s, Japan’s economy had fully recovered from post-war privation and was heading into an era of unprecedented prosperity which is to say that the coming of a power plant was not welcomed with the same degree of hope and excitement as it may have been in the 1950s when it was sold not only as a new source of employment for moribund small towns but an engine that would fuel the new post-war society. Several industrial scandals such as the Minamata disease had indeed left those in rural areas fearful of the consequences of entering a faustian pact with big business, which is one reason why the guys from Kinki Electric Power sell it as an amusement park project though even this has the locals wary not just of the disruption it will bring to their lives and potential ruin of their livelihoods which are dependent on the protection of the natural environment but that what is promised simply won’t be delivered. Fisherman Keisuke (Jun Eto) says as much when lamenting a previous aquaculture programme which didn’t pan out and caused lasting damage to marine life. 

In any case, as others say there’s no money in going out to sea anymore and its clear that the old-fashioned, traditional way of life practiced by Keisuke and his newlywed wife Migiwa (Mari Shirato) is no longer sustainable. Migiwa is an abalone diver working without modern equipment but using heavy weights to dive deep enough to reach the shells. As such she’s dependent on her husband to pull her back up to the boat when she tugs the rope. She must put her life entirely in his hands though in truth, he does not seem to take his responsibility all that seriously. The couple bicker relentlessly and not even she really believes him when he says he witnessed a murder which might be understandable given the extent of his drinking. All of which is further evidence against her when she manages to escape from the assassination plot and runs straight to the nearest policeman who thanks her for turning herself in implying he believes she is responsible for Keisuke’s death. 

The possible collusion of the policeman hints as a further sense of distrust in authority which has become far too close to corporate interests. Shady industrialist Miyamoto (Yoshiro Aoki) ropes in both the mayor and the head of the fishing association in his talks with Kinki Electric Power along with Shimogawa from the local tourist board who evidently opposes the plans as he is the man Keisuke witnesses being murdered. As Miyamoto says “sometimes your hands get a little dirty” though he never “directly” involves himself matters such as these. The situation is complicated by an unresolved love triangle between Miyamoto’s spineless son Shohei (Kentaro Shimizu), a sometime photographer, who is resentful of Keisuke and in love with Migiwa complaining that Keisuke always outdrinks him and gets the girl too hinting at his sense of wounded masculinity. Isolated by his class difference, he appears not to approve of his father’s actions but later does little to stop them and eventually sides with corporate interest over his feelings for Migiwa who in any case seems to have become more attached to Keisuke following his death which she vows to avenge. 

There is there is something quite strange in the prophetical quality of Keisuke’s words also predicting the “black sweat” of the Jizo on the beach and the mystical storm which does eventually sweep everything clean destroying the signs for the new nuclear power plant already installed on the beach. In this way, Migiwa becomes a vengeful force of nature taking up arms against those who wilfully ravage and pollute the natural environment while damaging the lives of those who lived on its shores such as herself and Keisuke. She takes revenge not only for the murder of her husband by corrupt capitalists but against that corruption itself even as she laments that “no matter how many I kill, they just keep coming.” “Don’t worry, maybe all this was just a dream,” Keisuke once again prophetically intones though it’s difficult to know if it’s defeating the capitalist order that is a fantasy or the maintenance of the idealised rural life to which Migiwa seemingly finds her way back swimming into an unpolluted sea surrounded by the floating barrels of ama divers and clear blue skies, a creature of nature once again.

Mermaid Legend screened as part of this year’s JAPAN CUTS.

Children of the Great Buddha (大仏さまと子供たち, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1952)

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Following Children of the Beehive, and Children of the Beehive What Happened Next, Hiroshi Shimizu completes the trilogy with Children of the Great Buddha (大仏さまと子供たち, Daibutsu-sama to Kodomotachi) this time taking place n Nara and focussing on war orphans who remained alone but are trying to make new lives for themselves as tour guides around the temples of the ancient capital. The existence of tour guides in itself implies a change in circumstances in a resurgent tourist industry while it’s also true that Nara is one of the few cities to have escaped the war largely unscathed and free from the destruction seen in industrial centres such as Tokyo or Osaka or that seen in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. 

There is indeed a particular contrast between the ragged children and the guests they escort who appear generally well dressed and seem to have employed them partly out of a sense of pity. The oldest of the boys, Ko, is later gifted some better clothing but doesn’t wear it explaining that he couldn’t get customers dressed like that so he’s put the nice clothes away in a box. The film never really makes it clear where the boys sleep though they can assumed be homeless or otherwise that the temples themselves are their home. Ko has been able to save up some vouchers and sent away for a pair of binoculars putting the Nio guardian statues down as the addressee. He takes his job very seriously and is slightly put out when he discovers part of his patter is inaccurate, made up by his mentor, Ichuin, who has since been adopted by a temple as a novice monk, to better entertain the customers. 

Ichiuin tells a sculptor the boys collectively refer to as “Mr Failure” that his superiors at the temple are quite upset about this new trend in tourism, that they fear people only come to admire the statues as pieces of art rather than to worship Buddha. The fact that people now have money and time for travel signals that the age of post-war privation is coming to an end though those who arrive from outside Nara also talk of destruction and a sense of displacement. A demobbed soldier remarks that it’s only in Nara that he feels he’s come “home” hinting at a concept of Japaneseness that’s survived in the ancient capital but not elsewhere. Meanwhile, Ko is charged with escorting a Japanese-American woman travelling alone in a rented car having returned to visit her grandparents’ graves. The woman, who the boys refer to as “Miss Second Generation,” treats them warmly and includes them in her picnic which itself is quite elaborate and made with rare and expensive foodstuffs. Later her purse goes “missing,” leading Ko to assume some of the other boys have taken it. He’s right, they have. But they were too frightened to spend any of the money because there was such a lot of it expressing this new idea of America as a land of plenty in contrast to Japan at the end of the Occupation.

When Ko takes the money back to her she buys him new clothes, leading the other boys to incorrectly assume she’s going to adopt him and he’ll be leaving for a better life in America. Despite the sense of solidarity that’s arisen between the orphans, they continue to long for more conventional families or at least to be adopted as Ichiuin has been by the temple. Genji, Ko’s friend, has longing for a small statue of Buddha from a local shop only to end up heartbroken on learning it’s been sold. But the woman who buys it unexpectedly offers to adopt him, aligning Genji himself with the statue and explaining that she had a son his age but he died. Genji originally seems reluctant, saying he will stay with Ko perhaps partly out of guilt but is later persuaded though Ko declares that he will always be at the temple. Caught in a kind of limbo, he religiously listens to the missing person programmes for news of his father whose whereabouts, like many even so many years after the war, are still unknown. 

This may be one reason behind the hope that the orphans of Japan could sleep in the lap of Buddha if in a more literal sense, that they maybe embraced by a more spiritual entity in a society that otherwise appears indifferent to their fate. In any case, Shimizu spends a lot of time with the statues capturing them in a documentary style as if we ourselves were receiving this tour and becoming acquainted with the picturesque environment of the ancient capital somehow free from the corruptions of the war itself or the post-war era and in its own way accepting of these orphaned children to whom it offers a home in Buddha’s palm if not quite so literally.

Children of the Great Buddha screens at Japan Society New York on 1st June as part of Hiroshi Shimizu Part 2: The Postwar and Independent Years.

Children of the Beehive: What Happened Next (その後の蜂の巣の子供たち, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1951)

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All things considered, Hiroshi Shimizu’s Children of the Beehive ended with the happiest ending it was possible to have to in the Japan of 1948 despite the tragedy that colours its final scenes. Yet for some reason, Shimizu returns three years later to ask what happened to the orphan boys afterwards having adopted several war orphans himself. What results is a strangely meta experience of documentary-style fiction focussing on the sense of community that has arisen at the Beehive. 

The excuse for this is a visit from a journalist for a magazine who wants to ask what’s happened to the boys since then. Yoshibo, who did not die, once again takes centre stage along with Shin who continues to be a leader among the boys while Ho also takes a prominent role as the facility’s cook. Echoing Introspection Tower, the key element is that the orphanage is dependent on the children’s labour which is seen as character-building and a means for them to develop a social conscience though the former soldier now looking after the kids reveals that there are no real rules, the children do as much as they want. They are given access to education through regular visits from tutors, the soldier explaining that it was awkward for the older children whose education had been interrupted to be in classes with kids much younger than them. Most of the boys are currently engaged in building a cabin to be used as a schoolroom and study base.

But the soldier also resents the journalist’s coming. In a meta touch, the journalist came because of the film and then several more kids turn up after seeing the magazine article along with one adult man who declares it’s his lifelong dream to cultivate the land while looking after orphans. A rather cynical Shin points out that’s what everybody says, while a sign on the chalkboard inside instructs the kids to ask visitors to leave politely rather than scaring them away. The soldier’s objections are easily understandable given that the magazine article also provokes the arrival of well-meaning people who want to help but generally end up creating more problems. Two young women turn up with the intention of spending their holiday helping out and get stuck in without even really asking but quickly upset the routines and rhythms that have been set up at the beehive. The soldier explains that the children value their work and enjoy it so a pair of adults doing their jobs for them isn’t helping, rather it makes them feel as if they’ve been deprived of something or haven’t been doing their work properly. The other problem with do-gooders is they obviously can’t stay longterm so there will be another period of adjustment to go through when they eventually leave. 

The presence of the two women also adds a note sexism that hadn’t been present before though this time around there are also female orphans who didn’t feature in the first film including Reiko who is Ho’s kitchen rival eventually kicking him out claiming it’s ”women’s work” with the approval of the two women. Ho later counters her by repeating the same thing but claiming that he told her what do as if trying to claim his right to superiority as a male. Meanwhile, the openness of the first film seems to have ben diluted in the unwillingness to accept newcomers given the scarcity of resources. Shin talks the others into accepting a pair of orphans who appear to have been bullying him only for them to run off with the other boys’ things leaving him feeling responsible in his decision to bring them into the group. 

In any case, the main thrust of the film is concerned with how the orphans live now and captures their cheerful industry through a series of episodes from working together to catch a racoon to being given a science lesson accompanied by a cute animated sequence of a butterfly. A strange subplot in which the mother of one of the boys long assumed to have died contacts the magazine but eventually decides against meeting her son on learning he is happy at the Beehive hints at post-war displacement and reinforces the idea that the children are completely dependent on this community and the mutual solidarity of their fellow orphans which might also in its way explain why some may later decide to leave. Shimizu’s lengthy tracking shots along with the misty rural landscape lend the Beehive an elegiac quality even while insisting that the war orphans are living happily in a kind of commune largely divorced from the chaotic and increasingly selfish post-war society. 

Children of the Beehive: What Happened Next screens at Japan Society New York on 31st May as part of Hiroshi Shimizu Part 2: The Postwar and Independent Years.

Image of a Mother (母のおもかげ, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1959)

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“Does happiness even exist nowadays?” replies a still youngish widow pushed towards the prospect of remarriage but for her own reasons reluctant. The final film from Hiroshi Shimizu, Image of a Mother (母のおもかげ, Haha no Omokage) examines the changing nature of family dynamics through the experiences of a blended family and a little boy whose grief and loneliness in the wake of his mother’s death are little acknowledged by those around him who are unable to understand why he cannot simply just move on.

This may partly be down a practical mindset having not so long ago experienced a time in which there was so much death it would not have been possible to grieve it all, but there is something nevertheless quite insensitive in the way little Michio (Michihiro Mori) is more or less told he must forget his late mother. Though it appears she only passed away less than year previously, Michio’s father Sadao (Jun Negami) is under immense pressure from his uncle to remarry so that Michio will have a mother. The latest prospect in what seems to be a long running series of possible matches is a widow Sadao’s own age with a young daughter. Sonoko (Chikage Awashima) works in the canteen at the local hospital where Sadao’s uncle delivers the tofu from his shop but is originally quite resistant to his attempts at matchmaking before finally giving in. Neither of them really wanted to marry again and the meeting itself is quite awkward but against the odds they do actually get on and eventually decide to get married. 

Sonoko is a very nice woman and kind to Michio, determined care for him as if he were her own son but hurt by his continuing distance towards her. Aside from the emotional distress, it’s also true that Sonoko is under a lot of pressure to present herself as the perfect image of motherhood especially having joined a larger extended family from whom she may fear judgement though are actually very fond of her and glad they found someone so nice. The extended family in particular are quite put out that Michio has yet to call Sonoko “mum,” and are cross with him for not doing so while Sonoko too is forced to feel as if it’s a slight on her character, that she’s not living up to her new role and the otherwise happy family they’ve begun to build may fall apart if she can’t completely win Michio over. 

The family don’t seem to understand at all that Michio is still attached to his late mother’s memory, and the insensitive attitude of Sadao’s younger cousin Keiko (Satoko Minami) does much to fuel the fire in her insistence that Michio hide the photograph of his mother to which he is still saying goodbye when he leaves each morning for school. They tell him that because he has a new mother now he must forget the old, but to him it seems like a betrayal. He likes Sonoko, and he likes being mothered, but he can’t bring himself accept her in the place of the mother he’s lost. It’s not Sonoko who tells him he must do any of this, and in fact she is the one who tries to suggest that there’s room for more than one mother even if the idea is immediately rejected by her daughter Emiko (Sachiyo Yasumoto). But it’s many ways this attempt to hide the past, to avoid dealing with it that prevents the new family from cementing itself. Only once the adults have listened to and fully accepted Michio’s feelings does he finally feel comfortable enough to call Sonoko his mother. 

Even so, Michio’s bullying at the hands of his classmates who keep feeding him stories about evil stepmothers points to a lingering stigma towards remarriage and families that might differ from the norm. In this he finds himself doubly conflicted, defending Sonoko to his obnoxious classmates while unable to accept her at home. Maintaining the lateral tracking shots that become increasingly prevalent in his later career, Shimizu makes the most of the scope frame to capture Michio’s loneliness and isolation if also that of Sonoko who finds herself in an awkward situation trying to adjust to this new family life in what was another woman’s home knowing she can’t ever take her place but must try to find her own within it. Yet what he gives them in the end is a kind of mutual salvation that promises new futures for both and that even nowadays happiness may still exist.

Image of a Mother screens at Japan Society New York on May 23/30 as part of Hiroshi Shimizu Part 2: The Postwar and Independent Years.

Sound in the Mist (霧の音, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1956)

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In the opening scenes of Hiroshi Shimizu’s Sound in the Mist (霧の音, Kiri no Oto), a young woman tells another that “as women, we need to create our own happiness,” though as it turns out it’s something that neither of them are really able to do. A classic melodrama, the film once again hints at Shimizu’s mistrust of romance and the frustrating inability of men and women to communicate or embrace their love for one another even when the seeming barriers preventing it have been removed.

To that extent, it’s interesting that the chief disagreement between unhappily married botanist Kazuhiko (Ken Uehara) and his wife Katsuyo is over her feminist politics and desire to devote herself to women’s emancipation under the new post-war constitution. The main bone of contention is that she wants to sell a mountain owned by Kazuhiko’s family to fund her political career though as he later says this mountain is his life. In any case he lets her sell it, believing there’s no point putting up a fight. He puts up even less of one in his relationship with Tsuruko (Michiyo Kogure), his assistant who is hopelessly in love with him yet after his wife’s angry visit decides to absent herself feeling as if she’s in the way.

It was her friend Ayako, a Tokyo dancer, who told her that women need to make their own happiness but in the end she couldn’t do it either. She was similarly involved with a weak-willed married man who continued to vacillate over leaving his wife offering the justification that he didn’t want to mess things up for his children. Eventually the pair find escape through double suicide which only emphasises the futility of their romantic connection. Tsuruko similarly makes several comments about the idea of death and dying, stating that if she were to die she’d want to go to a particular spot in the mountain which seems like heaven to her.

Though Katsuyo describes it as a “filthy” place the cabin does indeed become a kind of haven, a bubble of apparently chaste love and longing inhabited only by Kazuhiko and Tsuruko as the voiceover says hiding out from post-war chaos. Tsuruko seems to be the kind of woman Kazuhiko regards as the ideal wife in that she cares for him and supports his work even if he tells Katsuyo he just needed someone to run errands and do the grocery shopping so Tsuruko is there as his maid. Both are at pains to emphasise that no physical relationship exists between them but are otherwise prevented from acting on the their love because of Kazuhiko’s marriage along the existence of his daughter, Yuko (Keiko Fujita), who may be adversely affected by her parents’ decision to divorce in an age when such things were less common.

Kazuhiko continues to return to the mountain cabin which has since become an inn at regular intervals to see the Harvest Moon, as does Tsuruko though she also carries a degree of shame that makes her fear re-encountering Kazuhiko having become a geisha apparently solely to ensure her proximity to the mountain. Once again filming with the gentle lateral motion familiar from his later films, Shimizu focuses on the landscape and suggests that these lovers are only free to love in the natural world unconstrained by the petty concerns of civilisation which prevent them from embracing their desires. The sound in the mist is perhaps that of Kazuhiko’s latent romanticism and the implication that to him it may be better to suffer for love than to accept it. The same may be true for Tsuruko who is equally powerless if filled with regret that in the end she gave up so easily rather than fight for the love of her life.

On the other hand, the cabin seems to have given rise to a love match between Kazuhiko’s daughter Yuko and her husband who vow to continue the tradition of coming to the inn on the occasion of the Harvest Moon which marks both their wedding anniversary and the time they met. Yuko’s melancholy expression on coming to an understanding of her father’s “special memories” suggests a gentle sympathy but also that this younger generation is freer to love though no less romantic.The poignant closing scenes in which Kazuhiko wanders into the mist are nevertheless filled with irresolution, regret, and a longing that express only a deep sadness for the misconnections and misunderstandings of a less open past.

Sound in the Mist screens at Japan Society New York on May 23/30 as part of Hiroshi Shimizu Part 2: The Postwar and Independent Years.

Dancing Girl (踊子, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1957)

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The sudden arrival of a younger sister throws the despair and disappointment of an ageing chorus dancer into stark relief in Hiroshi Shimizu’s Dancing Girl (踊子, Odoriko). Chiyo (Machiko Kyo) is indeed a dancing girl, waltzing her way through post-war Japan with seemingly little thought for others or the consequences of her actions aware only of her ability to dazzle and what it might win her if used in the right way while her sister quietly yearns for a more comfortable, conventional kind of life.

Hanae (Chikage Awashima) apologises for Chiyo’s childishness when she suddenly gets up to marvel at the snow during in an important meeting with choreographer Tamura (Haruo Tanaka) who has offered to take her on as a trainee dancer but he simply replies that it’s what makes her special in the way Hanae herself perhaps is not. In that sense there’s something a little uncomfortable in Tamura’s first word on meeting Chiyo being simply “sexy” uttered as if he were already salivating over her when the key to her appeal seems to lie in the awkward juxtaposition of her naivety and curvaceous figure. In many ways, it’s childishness that is Chiyo’s defining characteristic. She follows her impulses and is incapable of thinking beyond them. In a repeated motif we see her eat heartily as if she had not for eaten days or else to be snacking on something or other at a time when food is scarce. We later discover that she’s some kind of kleptomaniac, stealing at every opportunity even when she has no need to, simply taking something she wants without considering why it might not be right to do so as if all the world belonged to her. Meanwhile she embraces her sexuality without shame, sleeping with whomever she chooses but also doing so in a calculated effort to advance her own cause. 

The irony is that her rise coincides with her sister’s fall. Hanae has passed the age at which she might have become a star and is beginning to age out of her career as a chorus dancer. She tells her husband, Yamano (Eiji Funakoshi), that what she wants is a comfortable life and to become a mother though the couple have been married for five years and not yet conceived a child leading her wonder if there’s medical issue in play though Yamano confesses in what turns out to be an ironic comment that he doesn’t really want children anyway. In any case, they are each becoming tired of life in Asakusa and their mutually unsatisfying careers. Crushingly they each fear they have disappointed the other, Hanae sorry that she never made it as a dancer and wondering if Yamano would have been better off marrying someone from a less stigmatised profession, while he feels guilty that he could not give her a better standard of life and has failed to progress in his own career as a violinist. Chiyo’s arrival reinvigates them both in different ways. Hanae shifts into a maternal mode otherwise denied her in looking after Chiyo as she begins her career as a dancer, while Yamano begins with her a sexual affair that rekindles his masculine drive. 

But Chiyo also remains flighty and elusive. Essentially lazy, she soon tires of dancing and decides to become a geisha because it requires less rehearsal, then to give that up too to become someone’s second mistress. She rejects the conventional, settled life Hanae has come to long for and describes that in the countryside as “boring” when she suggests moving there having selflessly offered to adopt the baby Chiyo has also rejected which maybe Yamano’s or perhaps Tamura’s or someone else’s entirely not that it necessarily matters. The closing moments of the film perhaps imply a moralising rebuke of the new post-war vision of liberated sexuality, a despondent Chiyo once again making a surprise appearance and wanting to see her child but being afraid to do so unable to match up to the unsullied maternity of Hanae. Shimizu lends her passage a kind of transient quality in his restless camera which is in constant motion sliding laterally from one scene to another often coming to rest on emptiness even amid the bustling streets of a neon-lit Asakusa and the false promises of its illusionary glow.

Dancing Girl screens at Japan Society New York on May 18 as part of Hiroshi Shimizu Part 2: The Postwar and Independent Years.

Tomorrow There Will Be Fine Weather (明日は日本晴れ, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1948)

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According to the driver aboard the bus at the centre of Hiroshi Shimizu’s Tomorrow There Will Be Fine Weather (明日は日本晴れ, Asu wa Nipponbare),  “that ridiculous war ruined everything”. Shimizu had directed a similar film in 1936, Mr Thank You, in which times had been hard for all but people tried to stay cheerful and help where they could. But here, by contrast, the atmosphere is much less jovial. Everyone is fed up, unhappy, dissatisfied, and irritated far beyond the inconvenience of being delayed on their journey.

Once again shot on location, the film follows a bus on the outskirts of Kyoto making the journey along a mountain pass from the city to an onsen town before breaking down half way. It’s several miles across difficult mountainous terrain to the nearest town in either direction and many people aboard the bus are elderly or have disabilities that make simply walking the rest of the way a difficult prospect while no one can really say when help will come because they’re dependent on the arrival of the following service or some other form of transport that could get a message out for a mechanic or replacement bus. 

In any case, just as in Mr Thank You there is a diverse contingent aboard each of whom have particular reasons for travelling and for being upset about the delay. A trio of men begin by complaining that this journey which once took two hours now takes three while the bus itself has become worn down and unreliable. Even so, the fares are now much more expensive. What’s most surprising is that the men loudly and openly discuss their occupation as black market traders while simultaneously complaining about an increased police presence interfering with their work. An irritated, besuited man sitting across the aisle is the only one to challenge them, asking if they pay taxes on their clearly illegal earnings to which the answer is obvious though the men mostly complain about how it wouldn’t be worth their while if they did rather than outright denying a responsibility to pay. The man tells them that they’re part of the problem and that the future of the country is assured only if people pay their taxes, with which the men otherwise seem to agree. When the bus breaks down, one of them is most worried that his late arrival will cause concern for his wife who may assume he’s been caught and arrested.

But there’s a small drama playing out in the front of the bus too as the conductress gossips with the driver certain that the beautiful woman sitting half-way back is a well-known Tokyo dancer, Waka, who she’s heard is on her way to bury the ashes of her child seemingly born out of wedlock. The driver, Sei, grimaces slightly as if he didn’t want to have this conversation and as we later discover once knew Waka long ago before the war which has changed each of them. A blind man, Fuku, now working as a masseur after losing his sight in the war, once knew them both hatches a plan to try and get them to patch things up. But as Sei later says, they’ve both been through far too much and are no longer the same people. Nothing can be as it was before, but in a way that’s alright. There is still hope for the future on the broken bus that is post-war Japan if only someone can figure out how to get the engine going again. 

Nevertheless, the scars from this war are still very noticeable. One of the black-marketers has a missing leg and later lays into an old man who confesses that he was a military commander, hounding him for his responsibility for the folly of the war which men like him forced them to continue long after it was obvious that it was lost. Fuku is much more sanguine and after a minor misunderstanding able to find a way to communicate with an elderly man who is deaf despite the incompatibility of their disabilities as they help each other board the replacement bus to the new Japan. Sei, and the slightly younger conductress who is not so secretly in love with him, meanwhile remain stuck on the broken bus symbolically unable to move forward no matter how much Sei insists it’s time to “get over the war” and that he just wants to forget the past and start living again. Perhaps it’s for men like him who seem fine on the surface that the scars run deepest, overburdened by all that this “ridiculous war” took from them in unlived futures and broken dreams. Meanwhile Shimizu follows the other bus onward along the precarious and winding mountain roads hoping for better weather in the hot springs town ahead.

Tomorrow There Will Be Fine Weather screens at Japan Society New York on May 17 as part of Hiroshi Shimizu Part 2: The Postwar and Independent Years.

Sayon’s Bell (サヨンの鐘, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1943)

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Like all directors of his era, Hiroshi Shimizu made a series of National Policy propaganda films though he was often able to circumvent their requirements by focussing on themes that interested him more directly such as teamwork or childhood. Sayon’s Bell (サヨンの鐘, Sayon no Kane) is however an unavoidably propagandist film filled with praise for the Japanese empire and to modern eyes incredibly problematic in its depictions of the indigenous peoples of Taiwan many of whom did “volunteer” to serve in the Japanese imperial army a notable example being that of Li Kuang-hui who was the last Japanese soldier to be discovered hiding in the Indonesian jungle in 1974 having been recruited from the Amis people.

The film opens with a lengthy series of title cards explaining that the film is dedicated to the Takasago Volunteers, “Takasago” being, aside from the title of a famous noh play, the name Japanese gave to the indigenous people of Taiwan believing them to have been “civilised” by Japanese rule. Thus in the opening sequences, we see the role of the Japanese military personnel as essentially paternal. They are policemen, doctors, teachers, instructors, and directors of construction who are dedicated to raising the aboriginal people to level of Japanese citizens through forced assimilation. 

Inspired by a real life incident that also inspired a popular song of an indigenous woman who drowned in a river while carrying the belongings of a Japanese policeman, the film uses the titular Sayon as an arbiter of Japaneseness enhanced by the casting of Li Koran, later known as Shirley Yamaguchi/Yamaguchi Yoshiko, who was actually Japanese but presented as Chinese in the propaganda cinema of the time having been born in Machuria and fluent in Mandarin. Somewhat awkwardly given that Sayon is supposed to be an indigenous woman herself, she is the one schooling the local children in how to be Japanese reminding them that they should “use Japanese properly” rather than their indigenous language and praising one young boy for abandoning his indigenous name and adopting that of “Taro” instead. Japanese rule in Taiwan was not as oppressive as it was in the other parts of the empire and they did have some local support thanks to their investments in infrastructure and modernisation. Nevertheless, they did attempt to enforce the use of the Japanese language and the taking of Japanese names though it should also be noted that the KMT government did exactly the same thing only with Mandarin when it gained control of the island. 

That aside the indigenous people were often treated poorly in comparison to the rest of the of the population and we can see that the framing of them is often racist and derogatory such as when an abandoned baby is taken to the police and they remark that the indigenous community have too many children and they all look alike. The eligible men from the village, including Sayon’s love interest Saburo (Hatsu Shimazaki), have been sent to Japan for a kind of militarist re-education and are eagerly awaiting their opportunity to serve the emperor in the army. Though this may seem surprising, it apparently reflects a real fervour among indigenous men who were convinced to enlist by the money on offer and a campaign of rumours that suggested men who did not do so were unmanly and therefore unattractive to the local women. When the first round of volunteers is selected, a great amount of time is given to consoling the men who were not chosen many of whom protest and plead to volunteer their services. 

In an effort to inject some drama the film includes a love triangle between Sayon, Saburo, and Mona (Kenzo Nakagawa) who is said to be moody out of jealousy and unrequited love for Sayon but later reveals he was only jealous of Saburo in respect of playing second fiddle to him as a worthy man of the village again eager to serve the Japanese emperor. Led by Li Koran, there are several renditions of a patriotic war song singing the praises of the Taiwanese army that read that like a call to arms, though the audience for this film is certainly domestic and it seems unlikely that it would be screened in these mountain villages in Taiwan.

The first part of the film is basically ethnography featuring picturesque scenes of the local scenery and footage of the indigenous people living the “simple, peaceful life” patronisingly described in the opening titles while there is some exoticisation of the aboriginal culture in the elaborate costumes and scenes of indigenous rituals. Perhaps the most shocking aspect is that Sayon is encouraged to break a traditional taboo by entering a sacred lake where women are forbidden to go lest they anger the god Uttofu. With her new cultural re-education, Sayon thinks Uttofu is a myth and goes to the lake to help Saburo assess it because the Japanese are planning to drain it to create a rice paddy. For this she is expected to drown herself in the water to placate Uttofu and is urged to do so by the tribal elders with the Japanese basically agreeing with them deciding that they should catch an animal to sacrifice and if that doesn’t work, while it’s “unfortunate”, Sayon should indeed hurl herself into the lake if the for the good of the empire rather than Uttofu. 

It is quite odd to think that the Japanese military personnel would go along with human sacrifice rather than clamp down on a practice they would otherwise term backward, though in that light it’s impossible not to see her later death by drowning as a rejection of the “modernity” the colonial authorities represent and a re-assertion of indigenous culture. The bell referenced in the title refers to one given to the village to commemorate the incident bearing an inscription of Sayon’s name. When the KMT gained control of Taiwan, they erased the inscription on the bell and removed it as a symbol of Japanese rule though it was later restored after the end of martial law and the monument re-erected beside the bridge which was also named “Sayon’s Bridge” in a evocation of the complicated relationships between the three nations. The film is however rather uncomplicated in its themes which to modern eyes prove extremely unpalatable despite the often beautiful cinematography capturing the idyllic Taiwanese countryside.

Sayon’s Bell screens at the Museum of the Moving Image May 11 as part of Hiroshi Shimizu Part I: The Shochiku Years.