Tag: Kiyoko Hirai

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.

The Pit of Death (怪談おとし穴, Koji Shima, 1968)

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The building at the centre of Koji Shima’s dread-fuelled horror noir Pit of Death (怪談おとし穴, Kaidan Otoshi Ana) is said to be haunted by the spirits of the many people who died during its construction. In his opening voiceover, anti-hero Kuramoto (Mikio Narita) likens the city to a hornet’s nest, the salaryman drones mindlessly buzzing around the business district as if driven by some supernatural force. In that sense, the office building itself becomes an eerie place, the nexus of the salaryman dream which in the end drags all to hell. 

Largely a retelling of Yotsuya Kaidan for the mid-20th century with a little A Place in the Sun thrown in, the film finds Kuramoto an ambitious man deluded by consumerism and resentful of the classism and snobbishness which limit his prospects as a man who has otherwise been able to pull himself out of poverty. His boss pointedly speaks of his talents which include the ability to speak several languages despite only having attended night school rather than university while it’s unusual for a man of his background to hold this kind of position even if he’s only a secretary and not yet an executive. Nevertheless, his boss clearly sees him as a potential successor and plans to marry him to his daughter (Mako Sanjo) who has in some ways inexplicably developed a crush on him.

But Kuramoto is already in a relationship with typist Etsuko (Mayumi Nagisa). In fact, the reason the boss is so pleased with him is largely down to her in that he asked Etsuko to sleep with their foreign client, Mr Hancock, to seal the deal which she duly did. Kuramoto plans to throw her over in order to pursue his dream of taking over the company so he can look down on those who once looked down on him. He tells Etsuko that the marriage will be in name only, that he isn’t attracted to the boss’ daughter Midori, and their relationship will continue as before only to be confused when Etsuko is not totally on board with the plan. She tells him she’s pregnant with his child though he callously points out it could be Hancock’s and insists on an abortion thereafter determining he must kill her so that he can fulfil his destiny by joining the executive class. 

His desires are obvious when he steps into Midori’s home and gazes at a painting crassly asking how much it’s worth, admitting that he’s the kind of poor person who has a fascination with luxury. His forward propulsion is driven by a fear of poverty, the trauma of the hard life he’s had and the futility he felt in his inability to escape it. Yet it’s also a kind of class rebellion motivated by resentment for the prejudice held against him as a man without means in a highly stratified society. Paradoxically, he will do anything and everything to be accepted as a member of the elite class including murdering Etsuko, the symbol of the working class past he fears will drag him down.

Etsuko does indeed drag him down eventually in her own revenge against his callousness and the double standards of a patriarchal society. Her relationship with Kuramoto seems to be a secret in the office while he uses and discards her when no longer useful to him. She too is trapped within this building of a newly corporatised society but can rise no further alone and is in a fairly bleak position without Kuramoto for she has already thrown away her only bargaining chip by entering a sexual relationship with him. Should she attempt to raise his child alone as a never married single mother, her life would be very difficult indeed if not actually impossible. Nevertheless, she does have real power over Kuramoto in her ability to expose the affair and ruin his chances of career advancement through dynastic marriage destroying any possibility of his future success. 

In Kuramoto’s mind, Etsuko cackles like a witch or evil spirit. Her hair billows out into the wind like a vengeful ghost, though the first few times Kuramoto only imagines her death. He sees himself push her off a roof, only to be surprised to see her still standing over him. Etsuko haunts Kuramoto while alive as an image of his destruction all while he silently plots hers. He plans to use the building against her, hiding her body inside it where he assumes no one will see. In the end, it’s as if this building, an edifice of soulless corporatising capitalism, consumes them both, drawing them in with their unfulfilled desires until they fall into the bottomless pit of post-war ambition. Shima makes frequent use of solarisation and film noir lighting to destabilise Kuramoto’s world as his mental state starts to fracture along with innovative use of split screens to lend the space a sense of eerie continuity but ultimately posits the salaryman society as a kind of death trap beckoning greedy souls towards their demise with an inexorable fatalism.

Beast Alley (けものみち, Eizo Sugawa, 1965)

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In the opening title sequence of Eizo Sugawa’s Beast Alley (けものみち, Kemonomichi), a thick blob of inky blackness gradually expands over an aerial view of the city until it obscures it entirely. The title card which then appears is written in plain white, but will reappear at the film’s conclusion this time ashen as if it too had been singed by the deeply ironic flames with which the film ends. Based on a novel Seicho Matsumoto and scripted by The Beast Shall Die’s Yoshio Shirasaka, the film similarly takes an incredibly cynical view of the modern post-war society in which it is revealed the militarists are still basically in charge and presiding over a deeply corrupt social order. 

The big bad, Kito (Eitaro Ozawa), says as much when he states the need for reforming the nation’s “rotten political system” by which he means post-war democracy. Kito made his made his money doing deeply dodgy things in Manchuria in addition to running an exploitative coal mine in Japan. Now mainly bedridden, he basically runs the country as a far-right political fixer working in tandem with big business and the yakuza who have traditionally been big supporters of conservative and nationalist forces. Early on we see one of his underlings negotiating with politicians to ensure that Taiyo Roads will be hired be hired for a large scale construction project planning to put highways all the way through Tokyo. As we later discover, he’s prepared to go to great lengths in order to achieve his goal, going so far as to have a sex worker murdered to implicate the uncooperative CEO of a rival construction film into resigning by threatening to frame him for the crime so they can install their stooge in his position. 

It’s into this world that everywoman Tamiko (Junko Ikeuchi) is drawn while working as a hotel maid at a traditional Japanese inn. Trapped in a bad marriage to a man who is also bedridden yet still attempts to rape her when she returns home to find him in bed with the housekeeper, Tamiko longs for escape and is therefore ripe for the picking when approached by Kotaki (Ryo Ikebe), the manager of an upscale Western hotel, to join him in an unspecified enterprise which will apparently make her very rich. The only catch is that she will have to “get rid” of her “dependent”, which she probably wanted to do anyway, by burning down her house with him inside it. Once she’s done this, there is no turning back for her even if she had not developed complicated feelings for Kotaki who is both her salvation and damnation. 

Tamiko’s husband had failed to give her the comfortable life that he had promised, something which she thinks Kotaki can deliver even if it requires her to become the plaything of Kito whom does she actually seem to like even if aware of the precarity of her position and still in thrall to Kotaki. Leaving the hotel so abruptly was however a strategic error as it arouses the suspicious of (originally) earnest cop Hisatsune (Keiju Kobayashi) who quickly realises that Tamiko set the fire to kill her husband. Though he seemed to be motivated by justice, Hisatsune too is soon corrupted explaining to Tamiko that he has become cynical and jaded. Years of police work have shown him that true criminals know how to break the law and get away with it so he can’t do anything about them, but “good” people, like he implies Tamiko, are pushed into crime by desperation and are easily caught. Tamiko wields her sexuality against him by agreeing to a tryst, though when it doesn’t go to plan he tries blackmail and then rape before she, ironically, manages to escape from his bungled crime. 

Hisatsune’s corruption is gradual and self serving. He starts with suspicion, tailing Tamiko in the interests of justice but also because he desires her, before stumbling on the conspiracy, putting the pieces together, attempting to use them for his own gain and trying to blow a whistle mostly out of resentment. Kito’s reach is all encompassing. Hisatsune is warned off investigating certain aspects of the crime by his senior officers and is then fired on Kito’s instructions for fiddling his expenses after harassing Tamiko. He tries to give his findings to his boss but it goes nowhere and then tries the press but is given the brush off, the editor his reporter friend refers him to gently implying he’s just a crank with an axe to grind. Of course, it turns out that the reporter is already in league with dodgy lawyer Hatano (Yunosuke Ito) who is Kito’s right-hand man. 

The connections between the three men, Kotaki who was once a communist, Hatano, and Kito go back to Manchuria and the corruptions of militarist era which it becomes clear has never really ended. Kito has only one rival and it’s another faction of the conservative ruling party who are probably just waiting for him die. Attempts are made on his life and they don’t go well for those who make them. Even if Hatano hoped to simply inherit an empire he, as he points out, put in much of the work to build he is sorely mistaken while Tamiko may intellectually understand that Kito’s death would place her in a precarious position but carries on regardless. “You never know who will betray you in this world” Kotaki laments, echoing Kito’s later claim that his Buddhist statues are the only ones will never betray him even as sleeps next to a statue of Aizen Myo whom he ironically claims protects mankind from their lust and desire. 

It could be said that desire is Tamiko’s undoing, but as Hisatsune had suggested perhaps you couldn’t blame her for longing to be free of the bedridden husband who had not delivered what he promised her. As she said, she was doing what could to survive even if you’d think she’d know putting on a ring taken from the finger of a murdered woman is akin sealing your own fate. Sugawa shoots with a noirish sense of dread, tracking Tamiko with her coat drawn up around her face as she tries to leave the scene of her crime, and makes the most of his fiery imagery before ending on a note of cynical laughter amid the inescapable hell the of post-war society. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Miss Oyu (お遊さま, Kenji Mizoguchi, 1951)

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“I never realised how heavy this kimono was” a young woman exclaims towards the conclusion of Kenji Mizoguchi’s Miss Oyu (お遊さま, Oyu-sama), adapted from the Junichiro Tanizaki short story The Reed Cutter, finally collapsing under its weight having committed what amounts to an act of spiritual suicide in an internalised betrayal. Mizoguchi’s highly selective adaptation excises much of Tanizaki’s trademark perversity and targets instead the repressive social codes of the era which proceed to ruin three lives in frustrated affection, shame, and self-harming guilt. 

The trouble begins when Shinnosuke (Yuji Hori), a young man in search of a wife, mistakes his prospective bride for her sister and is forever smitten. Oyu (Kinuyo Tanaka), a widow with a young son, is only accompanying her younger sister, Oshizu (Nobuko Otowa), but is perhaps herself taken with the handsome suitor whom she repeatedly brands a “fine gentleman”. Having objected to all of Oshizu’s previous matches, she encourages her sister to marry this one not least because of his physical proximity that would allow the pair to visit each other regularly. The pain on Oshizu’s face is however readily apparent as Oyu relates the amusing incident to their brother, the younger sister clearly consumed with an inferiority complex in the shadow of the beautiful and elegant Oyu. 

It’s never quite clear to what extent Oyu is aware of her sister’s feelings, if she says these things thoughtlessly or with an intent to wound though she obviously cares deeply for Oshizu. Similarly the extent of her feelings for Shinnosuke remains oblique. As a woman well aware of her beauty and its power, perhaps she simply enjoys being desired or is so accustomed to male attention as to barely notice that Shinnosuke has fallen in love with her. Then again perhaps she knows all too well and for the sake of politeness pretends not to though in that case the decision to encourage her sister to marry him would seem perverse or suggest that she is attempting to deny her own feelings which she may not even understand by rendering Shinnosuke a “brother” in an attempt to remove him from the pool of potential romantic suitors. 

Even so there is an underlying quality of incestuous desire of Oshizu for her sister to whom she remains devotedly besotted, willing to sacrifice her own happiness in the hope of ensuring Oyu’s. After agreeing to marry Shinnosuke, she explains to him that she intends their marriage to be purely symbolic. She refuses to consummate their union on the grounds that it would be a betrayal of Oyu whom she knows to be in love with Shinnosuke while realising that he has married her only to be connected with her sister. When the trio take a trip together the strangeness of the ménage à trois is brought home by the confusion of the hotel maid who assumes that Oyu and Shinnosuke are the married couple, commiserating with Oshizu for being a third wheel. While Oyu childishly makes light of it, Oshizu is hurt and confused, jealous in two directions but pleading with Shinnosuke to be only his sister rather than a wife. 

Yet the wrongness of the arrangement is signalled on Oyu’s return home when she discovers not only that her son, Hajime, has fallen mortally ill in her absence but that rumours have begun to circulate about her unusual relationship with her brother-in-law. It is impossible to avoid the implication that Oyu is being punished firstly for betraying her maternity in having gone on holiday without her son to experience freedom as a woman, secondly for feeling sexual desire, and thirdly for feeling it for a married man who is now technically a brother in being her sister’s husband though as we know no one’s sexual desires are currently being fulfilled in this incredibly complicated and destructive arrangement. 

Though Tanizaki might have been more interested in exploring the darker aspects of human sexuality, Mizoguchi pulls back from the author’s trademark perversity to take aim at the repressive social codes of a patriarchal society which brought such a fraught situation into being. Oyu is unable to marry Shinnosuke because she is bound to her late husband’s family and by the responsibility to her son whom she would have to leave behind even if she were given permission to take another husband. Once her son dies, her ties to marital family are severed and they, disapproving of the rumours surrounding her unconventional relationship with her sister and brother-in-law, send her back to her brother who is also reluctant to accept her. On learning of the reality of her sister’s marriage, she decides to accept a proposal from a sake merchant in another town but the separation breeds only more destruction. Oshizu and and Shinnosuke move to Tokyo and three years later are living in poverty, Shinnosuke now dishevelled and dressing in Western suits with a modern haircut and a scraggly, half-hearted moustache. Oshizu’s eventual pregnancy which confirms that theirs is now a “full” union while Oyu’s is “symbolic” only the slows implosion of the trio’s repressed desires. 

Mizoguchi stops short of arguing for a transgressively new arrangement that would have allowed the trio to live together as a family but nevertheless attacks the repressive social codes that prevent them from speaking honestly about their feelings and force them into self-sacrificing acts of subterfuge which create only more suffering. He dramatises the claustrophobia of their lives through the obvious artificially of the stage sets which stand in such stark contrast to the expansive beauty of nature albeit sometimes unruly but always free, while lending their tragic tale a hint of the parabolic in its mists and rugged gardens as Shinnosuke finds himself alone under the cold light of the moon on a distant shore, a romantic exile from a repressive society. 

The Great White Tower (白い巨塔, Satsuo Yamamoto, 1966)

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“It’s about the right thing to do, it’s about conscience, and Prof. Zaizen lacks conscience” according to a star witness at the conclusion of a medical malpractice trial in Satsuo Yamamoto’s adaptation of the novel by Toyoko Yamasaki, The Great White Tower (白い巨塔, Shiroi Kyoto). One of a series of films heavily critical of the medical system in the midst of rising economic prosperity, Yamamoto’s tense political drama presents the succession intrigue at a university hospital as an allegory for the nation as a whole implying that lingering feudalistic and authoritarian thinking has poisoned the contemporary society. 

This is in part reflected in the way in which major hospitals are often run as large family businesses where succession is a dynastic matter. In this case, however, the scene is a prominent university hospital in Osaka at which the head of the surgical department, Azuma (Eijiro Tono), is about to retire. Generally, one of his assistant professors would simply move up after being approved by a board comprised of other department heads but the problem is no one, and especially not Azuma, is particularly happy with the most likely candidate, Zaizen (Jiro Tamiya). The issue between them seems to be one of ambition and authority. Zaizen is regarded by all as an excellent doctor with a stellar track record but he is also cold and arrogant with no regard for departmental protocol all of which of course offends Azuma as does his background and person. The son of a country teacher, Zaizen prospered through the dedicated labour of his widowed mother along with family connections before marrying into the extraordinarily wealthy and influential Zaizen family who run a large obstetrics clinic. Consequently, he is free to pursue his interests and lacks the economic anxiety that might make another employee wary of pushing his luck. 

His humble background might have placed a chip on Zaizen’s shoulder but it’s also clear he’s part of a new generation that does things differently from the last, apparently keen to build a public media brand appearing in a glossy magazine which brands him “the magic scalpel” thanks to his success in treating pancreatic cancer. While they might not be able to argue with his track record, other doctors worry that Zaizen has developed a god complex and is slapdash with his practice often timing his operations and smugly pleased with himself when hitting a new record. Azuma first picks him up on this in the case of elderly patient, questioning his treatment decisions in accusing him of neglecting to fully consider the patient’s post-op wellbeing. This then becomes something of a recurring theme as good doctor Satomi (Takahiro Tamura) is minded to bring Zaizen in on the tricky case of a man, Sasaki (Nobuo Minamikata), he suspects may have pancreatic cancer but has been repeatedly diagnosed with chronic gastritis. 

Though it’s political intrigue that in some senses leads him to Zaizen, Satomi is otherwise depicted as the responsible physician who deeply cares for his patients’ wellbeing and not much at all for interoffice politics. Thus he continues to investigate Sasaki’s case even when other doctors tell him he’s wasting too much time on one patient and should just leave it at gastritis. Zaizen, meanwhile, is the exact opposite taking one look at the X-rays and deciding it is pancreatic cancer after all but thereafter ignoring Satomi’s advice after taking over the case refusing to run a CT scan to verify that the cancer hasn’t spread to the lungs as Satomi fears it might have. 

For Zaizen Sasaki ceases to matter, to him the human body is no different to a machine and he perhaps more engineer than doctor even as he proclaims medicine more art than science in insisting that he just knows the early signs of pancreatic cancer while others are unable to detect them. After the first operation we see him perform, a grateful wife stops to thank him profusely for saving her husband’s life though he treats her coldly and implies it’s all part of the job before going outside to celebrate his private glory in his record-breaking feat. It’s then a minor irony that he finds himself later slapped with a malpractice suit by Sasaki’s wife upset that he was unavailable as her husband was dying because he was preoccupied with the ongoing elections for Azuma’s successor.

The implication is that the dehumanisation of the health industry has reduced it to the status of any other company, the head doctors no better than ambitious salarymen whose lives are defined by their job titles. The various department heads eventually descend into factions with Azuma plumping for an external candidate, Kikukawa (Eiji Funakoshi), while others line up behind Zaizen or his internal rival Kasai (Koichi Ito). Influence is brokered largely by outright bribery or industry manipulation by external influential players including Zaizen’s wealthy father-in-law and a professor in Tokyo who can offer monetary perks, access to funding, and potential promotions to those willing to vote for their chosen candidate. The main argument against Zaizen is his bad character, yet the fact he has been carrying on an affair with a bar hostess is never used against him even as they prepare to smear a rival candidate with his mistress even suggesting they hire a hitman to take him out completely. Zaizen’s minions meanwhile make an ill-advised visit to Kikukawa to ask him to withdraw bizarrely stating the importance of maintaining “democracy” even as they themselves deliberately undermine it for their own gain.  

It’s this sense of feudalistic, fascistic authoritarian chumminess that Azuma’s daughter Saeko (Shiho Fujimura) later decries in asking her father why he did nothing to change such a destructive system while he himself had the power to do so the implication being that he saw no need because he continued benefit from it. Only she and Satomi present any kind of challenge to the hypocrisy that pervades the medical system but eventually discover that there is no place for integrity in the contemporary society. Zaizen miraculously falls upwards every time because his success is more expedient that his failure. Even the Tokyo professor brought in as an expert witness during the malpractice suit declares that Zaizen is unfit to be a physician because of his arrogance and total lack of human feeling but pulls back from testifying that he caused the death of his patient through negligence later explaining to a colleague that if a university professor were to be found guilty of malpractice it would undermine public faith in the medical system. 

If can’t they can’t have faith in the medical system, the very people who are supposed to care for them when they are most in need, how can they have faith in anything else? As the rather bleak conclusion makes clear, the entire system is rotten to the core and no longer has any place for idealists like Satomi who are continually pushed to the margins by those jockeying for power in this infinitely corrupt society defined by hierarchy and cronyism while ordinary people, like Sasaki, continue to pay the price. Just as in his opening sequence, Yamamoto takes a scalpel to the operations of the medical industry to expose the messy viscera below but ultimately can offer no real cure in the face of such an overwhelming systemic failure. 

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Street of Violence: The Pen Never Lies (ペン偽らず　暴力の街, Satsuo Yamamoto, 1950)

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vlcsnap-2020-01-16-00h05m26s354The immediate post-war era was one marked by fear and anxiety. The world had turned upside down, food was scarce, and desperation had provoked a widespread moral decline which rendered compassion a luxury many thought they could ill afford. Yet, in hitting rock bottom there was also the opportunity to rebuild the world better than it had been before. Street of Violence: The Pen Never Lies (ペン偽らず　暴力の街, Pen Itsuwarazu Boryoku no Machi), is one of many pro-democracy films arriving in the wake of Japan’s new constitution and makes an unlikely hero of the local newspaperman as the sole means of speaking truth to power in the fierce belief that the people have a right to know.

Tojo, a small town Northwest of Tokyo, was once the centre of the silk trade but as the industry declined, it gradually became home to gangs and a hub for wartime black market shenanigans. The sad truth is that the growing nouveau riche middle-classes profiting from post-war shadiness have more or less got the town sewn up. The corrupt police force is in cahoots with the gangsters who call themselves a “police support organisation” and make a point of wining and dining the local police chief, while also making sure the local paper is firmly in their pocket. The trouble starts when rookie reporter Kita (Yasumi Hara) is invited to a policeman’s ball and figures out the whole thing is sponsored by the silk traders’ union, which he thinks is not quite right. He takes what he’s learned back to his editor and is warned off the story but publishes something anyway, quickly becoming a target for prominent “politician” Onishi (Masao Mishima).

Street of Violence opens with onscreen text taken from the press code which emphasises that mass media has a duty to preserve the truth. Kita’s paper had been in league with the police and the gangsters enabling the atmosphere of casual violence which is gradually consuming the town. Kita, a new recruit, is not yet inured to the way things are and immediately thinks his duty is to blow a whistle, most obviously on the corrupt police force and judiciary. He is only allowed to do so because the previous editor stepped down and a similarly idealistic older gentleman (Takashi Shimura) from out of town has taken over. He decides to fight back, standing up to the crypto-fascist goons by continuing to publish the truth about the links between the police, black market silk traders, gangsters, and the rest of the local press who eventually gain the courage to join him.

Onishi continues to masquerade as a “legitimate businessman” and “respectable politician” claiming that he’s “striving for democracy” to help the “downtrodden”, but is also responsible for directly targeting Kita’s mother and sister in an attempt to intimidate him. The editor assigns another reporter, Kawasaki (Ryo Ikebe), to keep Kita safe and starts trying to find locals who will consent to be interviewed about gang intimidation while Kita’s friends from the Youth Association generate a kind of resistance movement holding protests and handing out flyers condemning the atmosphere of violence which has ordinary citizens turning off their lights and avoiding going out after dark to protect themselves from thuggery.

The silent cause of all this strife is of course post-war privation which has made the blackmarket the only means of survival for those otherwise starving but has also given free rein to selfish immorality. The Onishis of the world, the spineless police chief, and the cynical local press, have all abnegated their human responsibilities in wilfully taking advantage of a bad situation to further their own cause. When the press chooses not to turn a blind eye to entrenched corruption, it raises a flag that ordinary people can follow. Too intimidated to speak out, the townspeople had been living in fear but post-war youth has the courage to say no and demand a better future. A mass rally crying out “democracy” and insisting on an end to the cronyism and the corrupt systems of pre-war feudalism produces a people power revolution that can’t be ignored, forcing Onishi into submission, and a clean out of corrupt law enforcement. But, the earnest voice over reminds us, the victory is only partial – violence still exists and will rise again when it thinks no one’s looking. The press, most of all, cannot afford to look away if “democracy” is to be maintained.

The Wandering Princess (流転の王妃, Kinuyo Tanaka, 1960)

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Wandering Princess posterAs in her third film, The Eternal Breasts, Kinuyo Tanaka’s fourth directorial feature, The Wandering Princess (流転の王妃, Ruten no Ouhi), finds her working with extremely recent material – in this case the memoirs of Japanese noblewoman Hiro Saga which had become a bestseller immediately after publication in 1959. Tanaka’s filmic adaptation arrived mere months later in January 1960 which was, in an ironic twist, a year before the real life tale would meet something like the conventional romantic ending familiar from classic melodrama. Nevertheless, working with Daiei’s top talent including Kon Ichikawa’s regular screenwriter (and wife) Natto Wada, Tanaka attempts to reframe the darkness of the preceding 20 years as the defeat of compassionate idealism at the hands of rigid austerity and unstoppable oppression.

Tanaka opens with a scene taking place in 1957 which in fact depicts a somewhat notorious incident already known to the contemporary audience and otherwise unexplained on-screen in which the older Ryuko (Machiko Kyo) tenderly bends over the body of lifeless schoolgirl. The camera then pulls back to find another girl in school uniform, Ryuko, twenty years earlier. A young woman with innocent dreams, Ryuko’s life encounters the usual kind of unwelcome disruption in the unexpected arrival of a marriage proposal but this is no ordinary wedding. Ryuko, as the oldest daughter of a prominent noble family, has been selected as a possible bride for the younger brother of the former Qing emperor now installed as the symbolic leader of the Japanese puppet state of Manchuria. Against the odds, Ryuko and her new husband Futetsu (Eiji Funakoshi) are well matched and endeavour to build a happy home together just as they intend to commit themselves to the creation of a new nation born from the twin legacies of the fallen Chinese empire and the resurgent Japan.

Foregrounding Ryuko’s experience, the film does its best to set “politics” aside but the inescapable truth is that each of our protagonists is a prisoner of the times in which they live. The second scene finds Ryuko in 1937 as an innocent schoolgirl gazing at the young men in uniform as they march past her. She remains out of step with them, walking idly and at her own uneven rhythm while they keep rigorous and seemingly unstoppable time. The family are understandably wary of the implications of the marriage proposal, especially as it comes with a military escort, with Ryuko’s beloved grandmother the only one brave enough to ask to see whoever’s in charge of this outrage only to be told that their fates are in the hands of the nebulous concept known as “army” which knows no individual will.

Assured by her family that the decision rests with her, Ryuko consents – not only to becoming a stranger’s wife (which would have been her fate in any case) but to being a kind of ambassador, the presentable face of imperial ambition. On her marriage she’s presented with a deep red cheongsam and continues to dress in Chinese fashion for remainder of her life in Manchuria where she learns to speak Mandarin and devotes herself to becoming as Chinese as it’s possible to be. Meanwhile, her husband Futetsu busies himself with a complementary desire to become Japanese, intensely worried that the sometimes degrading treatment he and his family receive is exclusively caused by his problematic nationality. When their daughter, Eisei, is born, the couple determine to raise her as the child of a new world, the embodiment of idealised cultural integration.

The world, however, is not so kind and the blunt force of militarism continues to present a barrier to familial harmony. Futetsu is prevented from seeing his brother by the officious forces of the military police while the lonely, paranoid “emperor” suspects that Ryuko is nothing more than a Japanese spy sent to undermine his rule. Ryuko was sent to Manchuria to be the bridge between two cultures. Her, in a sense, feminine energy which attempts to build connection through compassion and understanding is consistently contrasted with the prevailing male energy of the age which prizes only destruction and dominance. Filled with the naivety of idealism, she truly believes in the goodness of the Manchurian project and is entirely blind to the less altruistic actions of her countrymen engaged in the same endeavour.

Confronted by some children in a park while pushing the infant Eisei in a pram, Ryuko is identified as a Japanese woman by her accent while conversing in Mandarin. She assures the children that Eisei is Manchurian like them, and that seeing as she married a Manchurian she is now too despite her Japanese birth. The kids are satisfied, so much so that they warn her that some Manchurians were killed recently in this park by Japanese soldiers, adding a mild complaint that it upsets their parents when Japanese people come to their restaurant and leave without paying. Mortified, Ryuko decides to use some of her (meagre) resources to buy all of the kids and everyone else in the park some sweets from a nearby stand, fulfilling her role as a Japanese ambassador even while insisting that she is a proud citizen of the newly born state of Manchuria.

Nevertheless the Manchurian project is doomed to fail, the kind of idealism fought for by Ryuko and Futetsu crushed under the boot of militarism. Despite everything, Ryuko still wants to be the bridge if only to prevent a catastrophe of this kind happening again (while perhaps refusing to engage with some of the reasons it happened in the first place) but in Eisei’s eventual death, foreshadowed in the melancholy opening, a deeply uncomfortable implication is made that the kind of cross-cultural harmony that Ryuko dreams of may not be viable. In contrast to the salaciously reported real life events (somewhat alluded to by presence of a schoolboy’s cap next to the body) which hinted at a suicide pact or murder, Ryuko attributes Eisei’s decision to end her life to an inability to reconcile her twin heritage coupled with the heavy burden of being the last descendent of the Qing Dynasty. Despite this minor misstep of tying the fate of Eisei to the failure of the Manchurian dream and the loss of its misplaced idealism, Ryuko ends her account on a hopeful note in admiring the flowers she planted finally in bloom and looking forward to a more hopeful age governed by warmth and compassion rather than violence and austerity.

The Wandering Princess was presented by Japan Foundation London as part of a series of events marking the publication of Tanaka Kinuyo: Nation, Stardom and Female Subjectivity.

Warning from Space (宇宙人東京に現わる, Koji Shima, 1956)

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Warning_from_Space_1956
Taro Okamoto illustration from Japanese DVD liner notes

Apparently the citizens of Japan are a little more cautious than some of their contemporaries when it comes to extraterrestrial contact. After all, the kindly aliens who visit with helpful advice in The Day the Earth Stood Still end up leaving in a huff because humanity is just not ready to accept their offers of interplanetary research and is constantly trying eliminate the alien “threat”. Hence, though the people of Japan recoil in horror from the Pairans in their scary starman shape, they start paying attention when they come in the form of a pretty showgirl. Somethings never change, eh?

Mysterious flying objects have been spotted above the skies of Tokyo. Nobody knows what they are with some leaning towards aliens and others becoming paranoid that Japan is under attack from another nation who are positioning spy satellites above its capital city. There have also been sightings of mysterious creatures near sources of water, usually accompanied by blue flickering lights.

These strange creatures turn out to be a scientific delegation from the planet Paira (inconveniently located directly opposite Earth but behind the sun which is why it’s never been discovered). They are a race of star shaped bipedal creatures with a single eye in the middle of their chests. Actually, they are quite cute and completely non-threatening in appearance and seem quite hurt that the Earthlings think they are ugly and are too frightened to talk to them. Consequently, they send their best scientist through a special process to change his appearance to one humans find more appealing which just happens to involve copying that of a local superstar showgirl.

The Pairans have come in peace! With their advanced technology they can see a rogue planet is about to crash into Earth and destroy it forever. This is bad news for everyone so they’ve come to warn humanity and try to help, if only they could get someone to listen to them. They also know that Doctor Matsuda has been developing a nuclear weapon which is far more powerful than the atomic bomb. The Pairans think this is a very bad idea and he should stop, but only after they’ve used it to destroy the rogue planet before it’s too late.

Warning from Space (宇宙人東京に現わる, Uchujin Tokyo ni Arawaru) is Daiei’s first colour sci-fi film though it’s actually not all that colourful aside from that weird blue light. In contrast to many other films from the era and even those previously made by Daiei, Warning From Space seems to have an oddly ambivalent view on weapons of mass destruction. The Pairans have chosen Japan because they think the Japanese are the best placed to appreciate the destructive power of an atomic bomb and will therefore share their stance on the necessity of abandonment. Yet, they also know Dr. Matsuda has been working on an even more destructive weapon – the Pairans also discovered this power at some point in their history but abandoned it over fears of its power being misused. They supposedly developed a much safer way to harness nuclear energy but now need Matsuda’s research to destroy the rogue planet. Like much of the Pairan’s behaviour, this doesn’t make complete sense (at least, to those of us used to Earth logic).

The Pairans are very friendly, but a bit shy. Their idea of “making contact” seems to be running away when the humans spot them and start screaming. Seeing something so unusual is probably quite traumatising, but the Pairans are so cute with their starfish outfits and comical waddle that it’s strange to think anyone could find them threatening. The Pairans are even a little upset that Earthlings find them “ugly”. They think the best thing to do is appear in a more pleasing form so they freak everyone out by visiting a popular musical show and stealing a picture of the star to clone. Because every scientist on Earth is going to want to listen to the advice of a cabaret showgirl, right? That’s always how it happens. She doesn’t even care very much about maintaining her disguise and keeps doing alien stuff like jumping really high in the air or dematerialising in one place and rematerialising somewhere else, but then no one seems to find this that weird anyway.

Basically, the Pairans have come to tell the Earthlings not to go ahead with their weapons research because they don’t know what they’re getting into. However, they also need to use this research to destroy the rogue planet which is a bit contradictory. The Pairans are apparently too shy to actually talk to the UN and think the other nations are kind of mean anyway so Japan will have to sort this out on their own while the Pairans nod appreciatively in the background (other than when they randomly disappear for a whole month until coming back to sort everything out because humans are rubbish). Of course, evil corporations are also after Matsuda’s super weapon but he’s a proper scientist and doesn’t want to sell, so they kidnap him and tie him to a chair out of spite while the world simultaneously floods and burns thanks to the rogue planet’s effect on the atmosphere.

Finally, science saves the day in a quiet and methodical way! All the creatures of the Earth emerge from underground. The birds are singing, turtles are swimming, racoons are doing racoon stuff again all while the sun is shining brightly and children are singing, so it’s definitely all going to be OK and Earth has probably made a whole new set of star shaped friends! All in all it was probably worth near destruction. Warning from Space is the kind of science fiction film which is always 100% serious, with the consequence that it’s not serious at all. Not as much fun as some of other B-movies of the era it nevertheless adds its own charms particularly in the form of the completely batty Pairans and their cute star shaped suits but fails to offer anything memorable beyond them.

Original trailer (poor quality, no subtitles)

The adorable starfish-like Pairans were designed by iconic Japanese artist Taro Okamoto who is probably best known for the Tower of the Sun constructed for Expo ’70.

The Rainbow Man (虹男, Kiyohiko Ushihara, 1949)

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The Rainbow Man“The Rainbow Man” sounds like quite a cheerful fellow, doesn’t he? How could you not be excited about a visit from such a bright and colourful chap especially as he generally turns up after the rain has ended? Daiei have once again found something happy and made it sinister in this 1949 genre effort which is sometimes called Japan’s first science fiction film though there isn’t really any sci-fi content here so much as a strange murder mystery with a weird drug at its centre.

The story begins with lady reporter Mimi beating her rival Akashi to an important scoop but soon after she runs into an old school friend who seems about to become a major story herself. Yurie has been taken in for questioning regarding a mysterious incident in which a rural cottage burnt down with the body of a murdered man hidden inside it. Heading into town with her maid, Yurie was taken ill near the crime scene and the maid left to go get help meaning Yurie can’t account for the hour or so that she was alone there and being so ill her memories aren’t clear either.

The case at hand concerns the extremely strange Maya family which is led by the mad scientist father who insists on studying artificial rainbows despite an ancient curse on his family which makes this a very bad idea. He is joined by his equally mad artist son Katsuto who creates disturbing, psychedelic paintings, younger son Toyohiko who has recently returned after a five year absence, and his second wife who likes Yurie and cats but not much else. The murdered man, Hachiro, was also connected to the family and was the first to fall victim to the curse of the Rainbow Man!

Unlike some of Daiei’s other genre pictures from this period, Rainbow Man (虹男, Niji Otoko) is a little more straightforward and doesn’t feature any particularly complex special effects. That said, the most notable feature of the film is the rainbow effect itself – right before the murders occur, the victims start shouting about the Rainbow Man whilst hallucinating bright rainbow-like colours. At this point, the screen erupts with psychedelic colours in strong contrast to the regular black and white footage of the rest of the movie. As surprising as this effect is now, it must have been truly shocking to the audience of 1949 who were understandably much less used to colour movies let alone the use of colour in films otherwise monochrome.

Though The Rainbow Man is tagged as sci-fi or horror, it’s really much more of a regular murder mystery with a scientific bent. In the end, it all comes down to the effects of the perfectly natural real world drug mescaline which though unusual is not a scientific fiction. The only instance of strangeness is in the bizarre rainbow man curse in which the Maya family is not supposed to be asking questions about rainbows, which is fairly odd thing to be cursed with, but then they are a very odd family in all aspects. There is, however, a strong mad scientist vibe which, mixed with the creepy old Western style house and persistent stormy weather, makes for an excitingly gothic atmosphere.

The special effects were once again designed by Eiji Tsuburaya and, even if this isn’t such a FX heavy film as some of Daiei’s other movies from the period, are always quite exciting. Director Kiyohiko Ushihara does a nice job of keeping the tension up and provides several interesting set pieces filled with unusual compositions which also make good use of gothic lighting.

The Rainbow Man is also quite interesting as an example of female led genre cinema as lady journalist Mimi takes the central investigator spot and is presented as a talented reporter who always seems to outsmart her male counterpart from a rival newspaper, Akashi. The police too, who are also depicted as competent and open minded, take Mimi seriously by valuing her investigative skills and her desire to protect her presumably innocent friend from harm. The Rainbow Man might not be the sci-fi/horror film it is often supposed to be, but it does provide an intriguing murder mystery with gothic overtones and light layer of genre inflected strangeness.

Can’t find any clips of the movie but here’s a recording of the main theme plus some stills:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxPYAg9U9tI