Tag: Kaoru Yumi

The Phoenix (火の鳥, Kon Ichikawa, 1978)

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The people of early Japan contemplate different visions of immortality in Kon Ichikawa’s sprawling adaptation of the first chapter in Osamu Tezuka’s manga series, The Phoenix (火の鳥, Hi no Tori). Featuring a mix of animation and live action, the film takes place in an ancient, pre-modern Japan in which just about everyone chases the mysterious fire bird in belief that drinking its blood will confer eternal life. They each want it for different reasons, some more to stop someone else getting it than for themselves but all discover that there are other ways of living on than the strictly literal. 

Broadly speaking the film takes place during the era of possibly mythical sorceress queen Himiko (Mieko Takamine) who rules over the nation known as Yamatai which is the name given to a kingdom in Japan in ancient Chinese sources. Himiko wants the phoenix because she fears that her power is founded on a youth and beauty which has begun to fade while the people are beginning to lose faith in her magic, not least because her rule is oppressive and authoritarian. She also fears that should the Chinese emperor drink the phoenix blood first, they will forever be under his yoke yet the seal that confers her rule was in fact given by him so perhaps they are already. Her brother, Susano (Toru Emori) whom she also fears may usurp her, enlists famed hunter Yumihiko (Masao Kusakari) from the state of Matsuro to help them capture the phoenix seeing as the two nations have some kind of treaty. Yumihiko says he doesn’t really care about that, but ends up helping anyway.

In any case, Matsuro is soon overrun in a surprise attack by warlord Jingi (Tatsuya Nakadai) from Takamagahara who is set on colonisation, which is in its way another bid for “immortality” if culturally rather than literally. After all, he claims “I will implant our civilisation in these lands” before explaining that “not even the greatest kings live forever” but history will. Meanwhile, Yamatai doctor Guzuri (Ryuzo Hayashi) is washed up on the shores of remote kingdom Kumaso where Uraji (Masaya Oki) is hunting the phoenix in the hope of saving his seriously ill wife Hinaku (Reiko Ohara). Uraji is soon burnt to a crisp by the Phoenix’s light, but Guzuri is able to save Hinaku using “modern” medicine, that is by applying “blue mould” which as the onscreen text explains contains penicillin. Perhaps feeding someone mould doesn’t sound much more scientific than the bizarre folk medicine proposed by the witchdoctor which involves rubbing the severed heads of cats and ravens together and putting fish bones on the patient’s head while burning their buttocks, but it works which is not exactly a means of “immortality” but does promise the ability of temporarily overcoming death without the Pheonix’s help. 

But medicine can’t help you with an invasion, and when the Yamatai suddenly turn up and raze the village to get better access to the phoenix after realising it lives in a nearby volcano only Hinaku and her brother Nagi (Toshinori Omi) survive. Hinaku reluctantly remains with Guzuri and vows to rebuild her kingdom through childbirth vowing that she will enable the survival of Kumaso by passing her culture on through successive generations. Uzume (Kaoru Yumi), a dancer from Matsuro, later says something similar to Jingi in reminding him that “women have their own weapons” and he will “never be able to destroy life” as an abstract concept. There might be something a little uncomfortable in the implication that the phoenix is an allegory for childbirth in suggesting that one body is born in the ashes of another, but it is in the end the continuity of a lifecycle which wins out as the natural order of things. In the film’s concluding moments, the son of Hinaku and Guzuri in a sense experiences a kind of rebirth as, guided by the phoenix, he climbs out of the cave in which he has lived all his life and gazes at the vast expanses of a new world all around him. 

Ichikawa originally trained as an animator and includes several animated sequences throughout the film from cartoonish special effects when an elderly courtier bangs his head to a trio of foxes dancing to pink lady. His visual design is also heavily influenced by Tezuka’s manga with the young boy Nagi in particular striking Tezuka-esque poses and otherwise resembling Astroboy who does in fact make a surprise appearance in a brief animated sequence in which Nagi is kicked by a horse. Similarly, the conflicted general Saruta (Tomisaburo Wakayama) later gains a ridiculous Tezuka-style nose after being locked in a room filled with wasps, and Ichikawa’s vistas sometime echo the centrefold of a manga with the heroes reduced to tiny figures dwarfed by the majesty of the landscape. Even so, a rain-soaked battle pays ironic homage to Seven Samurai, while Ichikawa otherwise keeps violence to a minimum. The heads are chopped off horses and fall like cushions, entirely bloodlessly, but there is also a scene of implied attempted rape which may be out of keeping with the otherwise family-friendly approach. Despite the sense of defeat which may colour some of the closing scenes, the film ends on a note of optimistic wonder in a new journey for humanity emerging from scenes of desolation towards a bright new world. 

Espy (エスパイ, Jun Fukuda, 1974)

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espy posterBy 1974 the Toho SFX movie was perhaps long past its heyday though Jun Fukuda’s Espy (エスパイ) was far from the last. Clearly influenced by popular spy franchises such as James Bond as well as more serious cold war spy dramas, Espy is a jet setting tale of superpowered assassins, international conspiracy, and love as an unexpected source of salvation, but as much as it embraces its hippyish message of total communication it also moves further into the realms of exploitation, skewing closer to Nikkatsu’s ’70s output than the more child friendly supernatural adventures of ages past.

The world is at breaking point. A small conflict in a tiny East European nation known as Baltonia threatens to spark a third world war. A UN delegation is currently en route to a conference in which they hope to settle the conflict in a peaceful way but all hope is lost when a sniper equipped with X-ray vision takes them all out with maximum precision.

Meanwhile, back in Japan, test driver Miki (Masao Kusakari) gets into trouble on the course when he swerves to avoid some pigeons. The car spins out of control but just at the last minute, Miki turns it around through his dormant psychic powers which brings him to the attention of the IPPG – the International Psychic Power Group. Following the assassination of the UN delegation, all eyes are on Japan where the prime minister of Baltonia is due to meet the US president in what is hoped will be a bold new development in international relations but the IPPG have reason to believe an attempt will be made on the prime minister’s life and only their ESP equipped team can stop it.

Espy takes the essential components of both the spy thriller in its international conspiracy set up, and the B-movie science fiction adventure in its presentation of the good and evil possibilities of advanced technologies or in this case innate superpowers. The Espy team are pitted against the Anti-Espy who have similar powers but are committed to using them to harm mankind. The leader of the Anti-Espy, Ulrov (Tomisaburo Wakayama), sees himself as a superior being to regular Earthlings and, believing that humans have overpopulated the planet which they continue to damage, is convinced the best solution is a mass cull. He plans to do this by helping the “lesser” humans destroy themselves by provoking a third world war or a hundred mini conflicts in which thousands will die.

Ulrov’s arguments tie in nicely with Toho’s trademark environmentalism and ambivalent attitude towards scientific development, but they go against the prevailing sense of humanism which is to be found in the studio’s genre output. In Ulrov’s fascistic view of the world, he and the other ESPers are a superior race whose existence is threatened by weaker humans and their reckless disregard for the planet as a whole. Due to a traumatic childhood incident, he believes that humans are cruel beasts who lust for blood and talk of peace with hearts filled with hate. He may have a point, but his message conflicts with the positive movement for peace which is advanced by the Baltonian PM who doesn’t want a world in which peace is brokered and balanced but one of true unity.

Espy is, however, of its time and fails to fully live out its peace and love ideals. Team member Maria (Kaoru Yumi) is kidnapped by Anti-Espy and taken to Ulrov’s lair where she is forced to dance lasciviously in front of fellow team member Tamura (Hiroshi Fujioka) with whom she shares an especially strong connection. Tamura’s arms and legs are cuffed as he communicates telepathically with Ulrov, semi-hypnotised by Maria’s strange dance. Maria is then approached by a large dark-skinned man wearing only a loincloth who proceeds to tear open her shirt at which point she snaps out of her trance, frees Tamura, and rips out the attacker’s tongue.

Meanwhile, new recruit Miki has failed in his mission and killed a man for the first time sending him into a kind of depression. Though Miki was introduced as the protagonist, he is in fact absent for most of the film though his journey is among the strangest as he reminisces about a foreign girl he was friends with as a child and enjoys an unusually strong bond with his intrepid dog, Caesar, who teaches the gang a few lessons about unconditional love. Maria is severely traumatised by her attack while Tamura reconsiders his sense of self worth having temporarily lost his powers, but eventually the team realise that their psychic abilities are nothing more than a manifestation of a great love. Ulrov later has the same epiphany but the team’s decision to consider him possessed by something “inhuman” is a worrying one. They don’t want to accept that it was humans who made him that way because it would be too sad, but not to do so is a failure to recognise humanity’s darkness as well as its light.

Espy bites off a little more than it can chew in failing to deal with some of the more interesting ideas it raises though it makes the most of its meagre budget to present an exciting spy thriller voyaging from Japan to Turkey and Switzerland. Skewing more towards Nikkatsu’s brand of exploitation action, Espy is definitely among the more adult orientated of Toho’s SFX adventures but its messages are broadly the same in its insistence on human interconnectedness as the ultimate superpower.