Tag: Ichiro Takakura

Freelance Samurai (桃太郎侍, Kenji Misumi, 1957)

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An abandoned son resolves to wander Japan killing the “demons” of Edo-era society in Kenji Misumi’s adaptation of the popular novel by Kiichiro Yamate, Freelance Samurai (桃太郎侍, Momotaro-Zamurai, AKA The Demon Crusader). Starring a young Raizo Ichikawa in dual roles as twins separated at birth, a familiar jidaigeki plot device, Misumi’s drama is among his most conventional but still finds the demon-hunting hero of the title resolutely rejecting the “silly rules of the samurai” in refusing to serve or be served while resisting the persistent corruptions of the feudal society. 

First spotted returning a paper balloon to some children playing in the street, the hero (Raizo Ichikawa) later gives his name as “Momotaro”, the legendary folklore champion who was born from a peach and then went on to befriend various forest creatures travelling with them to fight the cruel demons who had been oppressing the peasants of the farmland where his adoptive parents lived. The name is a sense ironic in that it reflects his own fatherless existence having discovered that he is actually Shinjiro, the younger brother of the heir to a nearby clan, Shinnosuke (also Raizo Ichikawa). At this particular cultural moment, twins were thought inauspicious with one usually cast out, Momotaro in someways more fortunate than most in that he was sent away and raised by his mother to whom he was apparently devoted. In fact, as he says, he only delayed his demon-killing mission out of consideration for her but that now that she has sadly passed away he is free to pursue justice as a wandering ronin determined to serve no master but himself. 

This insistence on justice and opposition to samurai oppression is made plain in the opening scene in which he rescues pickpocket Kosuzu (Michiyo Kogure) from two samurai she’d robbed who were hassling her. She of course falls in love with him, but is also party to the central conspiracy engineered by high ranking retainer Shuzen (Shosaku Sugiyama) who is plotting to unseat Shinnosuke in favour of the lord’s illegitimate young son Mantaro (Junta Yamamoto) with the help of ambitious underling Iga (Seizaburo Kawazu). Momotaro is swept into the intrigue when he rescues the beautiful daughter of loyal retainer Iori (Gen Shimizu), Yuri (Yoko Uraji), from an attempted kidnapping. Both sides want to recruit him for his bravery and sword skill, but Momotaro is reluctant to help either of them especially on discovering the ironic coincidence that he finds himself caught up in a succession struggle in the very clan which previously cast him out. 

Deciding to help when hearing that Shinnosuke has been poisoned, Momotaro demonstrates his strategic abilities in coming up with a ruse to trick the conspirators but remains somewhat conflicted remembering his mother’s dying words that he should hold no grudges even as a part of him continues to resent his abandonment. That may in part explain his defiant rejection of the hierarchal society, ignoring the “silly” rules of the samurai while insisting on equality in refusing to serve or be served by anyone else. In a nod to the folktale, his greatest friend is a humble peddler, Inosuke “the monkey man” (Shunji Sakai) who gives him a place to stay in the rundown tenement where he lives affectionately known as “ghost apartments”. Even so, Inosuke as much servant as sidekick, and while he is in a sense torn between the earthy pickpocket Kosuzu who is later redeemed through her loyalty to him and the beautiful samurai daughter Yuri it seems fairly clear that he will eventually opt for his class-appropriate match the only surprising thing being that it is she who transgressively breaks with convention in abandoning her samurai home in order to follow Momotaro out on the road as he hunts other “demons” corrupting the social order all over Japan. 

Shot in colour academy ratio, Freelance Samurai features little of Misumi’s trademark natural vistas save for the poignant pillow shots of flowers growing in the compound though it does reflect his preoccupation with absent fathers and perpetual wandering. In the many dualities in play, it is also interesting that Momotaro is depicted as the more capable of the brothers, Ichikawa’s characterisation of the cosseted Shinnosuke as a kind and compassionate, effete young man rather than the strapping warrior the heir to a clan is expected to be hinting perhaps at the perceived weakness that allowed the conspirators to assume they could usurp him. Similarly, it’s Michiyo Kogure’s tragic pickpocket undone by her love for the noble samurai that makes the deeper impression rather than the rather insipid Yuri who makes her mark only in her final decision to follow Momotaro unbidden. Momotaro’s quest may in a sense be ironic in that he outwardly rejects the superiority of the samurai but effectively preserves it even as he determines to clean out the oppressive “demons” intent on corrupting the land just as his folkloric namesake had done, but in its own way has its defiant nobility in his fierce love of justice and equality. 

Sword Devil (剣鬼, Kenji Misumi, 1965)

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An orphaned son’s attempts to overcome his cursed destiny are poisoned by the duplicities of the samurai society in third part of Kenji Misumi’s loose “Sword Trilogy”, Sword Devil (剣鬼, Kenki). Perhaps unfairly dismissed by some as a mere genre craftsmen, Misumi was also an intense visual stylist, a quality very much on show in this vibrant drama which pits the beauty of the natural world against the samurai order but eventually finds its hero succumbing to cruelties of his age unable to outrun himself or his destiny. 

In the prologue which opens the film, shot in an arty theatrical style, a young peasant woman formerly a maid to the late Lady Makino gives birth to a “stranger’s” child after having been promoted and given a place in the women’s quarters as a reward for her loyalty in continuing to serve her mistress in the depths of her “madness”. Lady Makino claims that Kin’s kindness brought her back to reality and is keen to ensure she continues to be taken care of after her death, but also asks her to take charge of her precious pooch hoping that she will treat it “as herself”. This is perhaps why it is rumoured that the child, given the name “Hanpei” which ironically is in part inspired by the dog-like “Spot” coupled with a suffix which implies a lowly rank, is in fact the product of a taboo union between the maid and the dog (rather than admit he is almost certainly the illegitimate son of Lord Masanobu). For some reason this bizarre rumour persists throughout the boy’s life, cast out as he is from the palace and raised in an ordinary village as the son of a low-ranking samurai who appears to be kind and loving, worried enough about Hanpei’s (Raizo Ichikawa) future to advise him to find a special skill that will allow him to support himself and perhaps overcome some of the persistent prejudice against him after the old man’s death. 

The skill he perfects, however, continues to set him apart from his fellow men in that he chooses the cultivation of flowers. A particularly snotty neighbour describes Hanpei’s art as “annoying”, though others are impressed enough by his skill to marvel that they have such a man in their clan while also pointing out that in these times of peace becoming a samurai florist might be much more useful than perfecting the art of the sword. Ironically, however, it drags him back towards the court and intrigue when he’s invited to craft a flower garden to cheer up the present young lord who seems to be succumbing to the same “madness” as his mother. The trouble starts when the garden is completed to the lord’s satisfaction but marred by the sudden and apparently unexpected arrival of a bumblebee which damages the lord’s tranquility and provokes a violent outburst in which he begins to hack at the flowers hoping to punish the one which “rudely” invited the bee to the garden. Hiding behind a tree, Hanpei perfectly aims a rock at the lord’s head to prevent him destroying his precious work and is spotted by his chief retainer, Kanbei (Kei Sato), who earmarks him for future use in his nascent conspiracy. 

Hanpei finds himself at the centre of intrigue, increasingly seduced by promises of advancement that he might be “titleless” no more and perhaps in fact escape his lowly position as the son of a dog. He ingratiates himself by, like his mother, being one of the few servants willing to bear the lord’s violent rages in volunteering to accompany his horse even though he has none of his own and has to run along behind thereby demonstrating his slightly supernatural athletic ability that gives further credence to his canine origins. In similar fashion he learns by observation, captivated rather than appalled on witnessing an old ronin practicing his sword technique by cutting in half a butterfly in the forest. Preoccupied by his lowly status and consequent lack of sword skills, Hanpei is reassured by the man’s explanation that there’s nothing more to it than draw, strike, and sheath but takes yet another step towards the samurai dark side in accepting the gift of a sword. Later he breaks it, meaning to break with the cruel path on which fate has set him, only to pick up another, supposedly cursed sword to which he was attracted because of its “evil spirit”.

Osaki (Michiko Sugata), a kind and innocent woman seemingly attracted to Hanpei because of his difference in his gentle sensitivity in contrast to the rough men around her, refuses to believe the rumours he has become an assassin working for Kanbei because no one who loves flowers like he does could be a coldblooded killer. This is in fact what he has become, sent, like a dog, after Kanbei’s enemies killing without even knowing who it is who must die only to be remorseful on discovering he has killed someone known to him. There is division and sedition within the court caused by the lord’s madness, Kanbei and his associates keen to rule in his stead while keeping his mania secret from the shogun while others, a small group of lower samurai rebels, prefer to depose him in favour of his adopted heir. Hanpei is once again a pawn, taking no side in this debate but unthinkingly doing Kanbei’s dirty work in the service of his sword. He hopes that by taking the “evil” instrument in his hands he might double his bad luck to overcome his unhappy destiny, gazing at his distorted face in its reflection, but discovers himself merely outcast once again as the villagers begin to realise he is an obstacle to their rebellion and responsible for the assassinations of their loved ones. 

The ironic conclusion finds the hero’s planned flower garden, a shared endeavour with love interest Osaki, rendered a bloody graveyard, men cut down like weeds as Hanpei’s quick draw philosophy makes a mockery of their fancy samurai fencing. The poisonous samurai legacy, infected with madnesses literal and figural, destroys everything, all beauty and grace falling under Hanpei’s “evil” sword as he finds himself, quite literally, chased out of town like a stray dog condemned to wander exiled from human society. 

A Lustful Man (好色一代男, Yasuzo Masumura, 1961)

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“Why are women in Japan so unhappy?” the carefree Casanova at the centre of Yasuzo Masumura’s 1961 sex romp A Lustful Man (好色一代男, Koshoku Ichidai Otoko) laments, never quite grasping the essential inequalities of the world in which he lives. Masumura is best known for extremity, a wilful iconoclast who flew in the face of golden age cinema’s genial classism, but shock was not his only weapon and he could also be surprisingly playful. Adapted from a well known novel by creator of the “floating world” Ihara Saikaku, A Lustful Man finds him indulging in ironic satire as his hero sets out to “make all the women in Japan happy” chiefly by satisfying their unfulfilled sexual desire while resolutely ignoring all of the entrenched patriarchal social codes which ensure that their lives will be miserable. 

Set in the Edo era, the film opens not with the hero Yonosuke (Raizo Ichikawa) but with his miserly father who berates a servant after discovering a single grain of rice on the hall floor. According to him, the central virtues necessary to become rich are endurance, diligence, and vitality. You must treasure each and every grain of rice in order to accumulate. A cruel and austere man who only thinks of money, Yonosuke’s father keeps his wife in earnest poverty despite their wealth, angrily grabbing an obviously worn kimono out of her hands and insisting that it’s still good for another year, apparently caring nothing for appearances in the otherwise class conscious Kyoto society. It’s this meanness that Yonosuke can’t seem to stand. He hates the way his father disrespects his mother, and her misery is a primary motivator in his lifelong quest to cheer up Japan’s melancholy women though the weapon he has chosen is sex, a convenient excuse to live as a genial libertine to whom money means essentially nothing. 

Yonosuke’s father has set him up with an arranged marriage into a much wealthier family, which is not something he’s very interested in despite the fact she seems to be quite pretty but on learning that she has transgressively found love with the family butler he determines to help her instead, ending the marriage meeting by chasing her round the garden like a dog in heat. Several similar stunts eventually get him sent away from his native Kyoto to Edo but he takes the opportunity to escape, travelling all over Japan making women “happy” as he goes. 

As the first example proves, Yonosuke genuinely hates to see women suffer. His own pleasure, though perhaps not far from his mind, is secondary and he never seeks to take advantage of a woman’s vulnerability only to ease her loneliness. Despite that, however, he remains essentially superficial opting for the transience of postcoital bliss while ignoring the very real societal factors which make an escape from misery all but impossible. During an early adventure, he spends all of the money he conned out of his new employer on redeeming a geisha (at more than three times the asking price) so that she can be with the man she loves, but he continues to visit sex workers without interrogating their existence as indentured servants, “merchandise” which is bought and sold, traded between men and entirely deprived of freedom. In fact, he proudly collects hair cuttings from the various geishas he has known as a kind of trophy only to later discover the grim truth, that the hair likely doesn’t belong to the geisha herself but is sold to them by middlemen who get it by digging up dead bodies. 

Yonosuke remains seemingly oblivious to the duplicitous hypocrisy of the yoshiwara, but is repeatedly confronted by the evils of Edo-era feudalism with its proto-capitalist cruelty where everything is status and transaction. He is often told that as he is not a samurai he would not understand, but seems to understand pretty well that “samurai are idiots” and that their heartless elitism is the leading cause of all the world’s misery. To some a feckless fool, Yonosuke refuses to give in to the false allure of worldly riches. As soon as he gets money he spends it, and does so in ways he believes enrich the lives of women (even if that only extends to paying them for sex), eventually getting himself into trouble once again reneging on his taxes after trying to prove a geisha is worth her weight in gold. 

Yogiri (Ayako Wakao) complains that women are but “merchandise”, valued only as toys for men. “Japan is not a good country for women” Yonosuke agrees, suggesting they run away together to find a place where women are respected, indifferent to Yogiri’s rebuttal “no, wherever you go, no one can change women’s sad fate”. Yonosuke’s naive attempts to rescue women from their misery often end in disaster, a runaway mistress is dragged back and hanged, the woman he was set to marry goes mad after her father and lover are beheaded for having the temerity to speak out about corrupt lords, Yogiri is killed by a samurai intent on arresting him for tax evasion, and his own mother dies seconds after his father only to be immediately praised as “the epitome of a Japanese wife”. Yet he remains undaunted, wandering around like an Edo-era Candide, setting off into exile to look for a supposed female paradise without ever really engaging with the systems which propagate misery or with his own accidental complicity with them. Nevertheless, he does perhaps enact his own resistance in refusing to conform to the rules of a society he knows to be cruel and unfair even if his resistance is essentially superficial, self-involved, and usually counterproductive which is, in its own way, perfectly in keeping with Masumura’s central philosophies on the impossibilities of individual freedom within an inherently oppressive social order.