Tag: 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.