Tag: Kyoko Aoyama

My Wonderful Yellow Car (吹けよ春風, Senkichi Taniguchi, 1953)

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A kind-hearted taxi driver becomes our guide to the post-war society in a cheerful omnibus movie co-scripted by Akira Kurosawa and directed by Senkichi Taniguchi, My Wonderful Yellow Car (吹けよ春風, Fukeyo, Haru Kaze). Inspired by a Reader’s Digest column titled “human nature as seen in the rearview mirror”, the film follows cheerful cabbie Matsumura (Toshiro Mifune) as he drives around Tokyo in 1953 picking up various fares and sometimes adding commentary or trying to help with whatever kind of problem seems to be bothering them.

Then again, he stays well out of the first fare’s business as a young couple have obviously had some kind of falling out. Bursting into tears, the girl (Mariko Okada) announces that she wants to postpone the wedding and maybe even rethink this whole thing, while the boy reiterates with slight irritation that he’s said he’s sorry with the implication that that should be the end of it though we have no idea what (if anything) he’s actually done. In any case, they eventually patch things up over some canoodling in the back seat and ask to be dropped off so they can get something to eat. In some ways, the young couple represent a more hopeful vision of post-war youth who have no apparent worries besides their tiff and are financially comfortably enough not only to be getting married but can afford to travel by taxi and pay for a meal on the same occasion. 

Their situation is later contrasted with that of an older couple who’ve moved from Osaka to Tokyo in their old age and have bought a box of live lobsters to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary but as Matsumura notes though they appear to be quite well off they also seem somehow sad. That turns out to be because they lost their only son the previous summer and have moved into his old apartment. The old lady also cries in the back seat, but for a completely different reason. As they’ve only just moved here, they don’t have friends or anything to do and are completely lost in the wake of their son’s death. Matsumura’s kindness is demonstrated when he borrows three flowers from a bouquet delivered to a girl at the petrol station and presents them as an anniversary gift. The couple are so touched they invite him to enjoy their anniversary dinner with them and by the end of it have made the decision that they should go back to Osaka and restart their lives by re-opening their old business.

Throughout all this, Matsumura is very conscious of the meter. Every second he spent in the old couple’s apartment cost him money, but as he’s fond of saying you can’t always think of things like that. Even so, he reminds himself he has a wife and child so should be mindful of the clock but still turns down a fare to go back to the station and check on a young girl he’s pretty sure is trying to run away from home. A weird guy was sniffing around her and was in fact just about to lead her off when Matsumura gets back and announces he’s come to pick her up. Matsumura spends the rest of the ride trying to convince her to go home, repeatedly reminding her that most of the “panpans”, or streetwalking sex workers catering to US servicemen, were also once runaway girls. To more modern eyes we might wonder if sending her home is what’s best without knowing the reasons she wanted to leave. He goes so far as to buy her ramen which costs him more money on top of the lost fare which doesn’t collect from her either when he, a little less responsibly, abandons her when she refuses to tell him where she lives. Thankfully, it all seems to work out. The girl made a sensible decision to go home after all and is later seen happily doing her Christmas shopping with her mother who also thanks him for looking out for her.

Perhaps these kinds of altruistic acts of kindness explain why Matsumura’s own clothes are quite ragged with a hole in his jumper and a tear to the shoulder of his jacket. He’s driving the cab in straw sandals which apart from anything else is probably quite cold in the winter. He spends another afternoon giving a free ride to some children, about 15 of them, who’ve crowdfunded 100 yen because they’ve never been in a car before and want to go as far it’ll take them having no idea that 100 yen is actually the initial charge so you can’t go anywhere on it all. Of course, Matsumura ends up taking them a bit further, and then realises he’ll have to take them back to where they were because they won’t have any other way of getting there or of knowing where they are now.

On the other hand, sometimes he ends up with nuisance fares such as two drunk guys who keep singing their university song. One of them even climbs out of the window and up onto the roof, causing Matsumura to assume he’s fallen off somewhere and he’ll have to go back and look for him to make sure he’s not hurt only to find him burbling in the footwell. He also ends up getting hijacked by a crook with a gun on his way back from Yokohama but getting a telling off from the police rather than a thank you for catching him after unwisely taking hold of the gun himself and messing up all the fingerprints. 

One might think the time he had a famous actress in the back of his cab who even sang along with the jingle he’d written for the cheerful yellow vehicle might make up for all that, but he says the story that best exemplifies why he loves driving a taxi is that of a middle-aged couple he picked up at the harbour shortly after a boat had docked repatriating people from China. Even in 1953, some had not yet returned after becoming trapped by the Chinese Civil War and eventual Communist victory. The man is dressed in military uniform and says he’s just been demobbed when Matsumura asks him, trying to lighten the mood while there’s obviously some degree of tension between the man and his wife. But as we gradually come to understand, it’s all just a ruse and he has in fact been in prison in Japan for the last seven years for an unspecified crime.

His wife asks Matsumura to drive around the city and attempts to show him how much things have recovered, suggesting that they can now put the past behind them and start over. But the man remains sullen and grumpy. He’s afraid to go home, afraid to face the neighbours worrying if they know what he did and that he’s been in prison. But most of all he’s afraid to face his children, the youngest of which he’s never met. The kids have been teaching themselves to say “Welcome home, Daddy,” in Mandarin believing he’s been in China all this time which the wife has to explain before they get there. The man tells his wife he understands if she doesn’t want him back, but she assures him that the children are excited as is she to start their new life together. Nevertheless, though they’ve been eagerly practicing, the older two children simply freeze when confronted by this anxious stranger who turns around to leave again feeling as if he doesn’t have the right to come back here after all only for the youngest one to suddenly pipe up with the phrase note perfect. It’s this kind of scene, getting people to where they need to be physically and emotionally, that seems to make Matsumura’s job worthwhile. In essence, he’s ferrying people towards the cheerful post-war future his cute yellow cab represents while driving round the rapidly changing city wondering who it is that’s going to end up in the rearview mirror today.

Title song (no subtitles)

Road Warriors (あやめ笠 喧嘩街道, Tai Kato, 1960)

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A penniless wanderer finds himself mixed up in chaos and conspiracy after deciding to help a lady travelling alone for the purposes of revenge in Tai Kato’s Toei chanbara, Road Warriors (あやめ笠 喧嘩街道, Ayame Kasa: Kenka Kaido). Truth be told, the hero isn’t much of a warrior at all and wisely prefers to avoid a fight if possible but is prepared to put his sword where his mouth is when the occasion calls. Still the conspiracy in this instance is small scale and incredibly petty as a trio of ambitious retainers attempt to frame their one time bodyguard for the murder of a lord.

Before all that, however, Gantaro (Ryuji Shinagawa) is as he’s fond of introducing himself a penniless traveller who makes his ends meet through gambling. In debt to local boss Hidegoro (Ushio Akashi) he agrees to act as an intermediary in a dispute with the greedy Onizo (Eijiro Yanagi) who has usurped some of their territory. Gantaro suggests they settle the matter through gambling but is then challenged to combat by the gang’s bodyguard, Akiyama (Shin Tokudaiji). The young man looks noticeably afraid, sweating at the temples and gripping his sword at an unusual angle, but holds his own in the fight until Onizo tries to cheat by sending in one of his minions to finish him off. Noticing what’s happening, Akiyama proves his nobility by ending the fight and accepting defeat. Onizo appears cheerful and even asks Gantaro to join his gang, but seconds after the young man leaves he sends his guys out after him and evidently has no intention of enforcing a truce with Hidegoro.

Meanwhile, Gantaro runs into a melancholy samurai woman, Miyuki (Kyoko Aoyama), chasing after a thief who has stolen something from her far more precious than money. Discovering the thief has robbed him too, Gantaro springs into action and soon discovers that Miyuki is on a quest for revenge against the man who killed her father but that she’s been betrayed by her three retainers and has managed to ditch them to proceed alone. Unsprisingly, the prime suspect appears to be Akiyama but as stabbing a man in the back and running away don’t seem to fit with the noble character he displayed in the fight, Gantaro has an idea that something’s not quite right. 

Of course, he also begins to fall for Miyuki despite the obvious affection held for him by Hidegoro’s daughter Omitsu (Hiromi Hanazono) which he otherwise seems keen to escape. It’s reasonable to assume that loveable rogue Gantaro is the love them and leave them type, though his love for a samurai’s daughter is always going to be an impossibility no matter how much she may come to admire him. Even so, the conspiracy angle along with Onizo’s smug and overbearing duplicity do begin to awaken his sense of justice especially while travelling with an incredibly cynical thief who will sell anything or anyone in search of a quick buck. Even he however eventually comes around to the idea of helping Miyuki get away from her retainers and enact her revenge especially after overhearing the truth while cowering behind some barrels. 

It may be an overly familiar chanbara tale if one enlivened by Gantaro’s wisecracking antics, but Kato brings to it his characteristic sense of uncertainty in the potent mists that seem to surround Gantaro and Miyuki as they travel the mountain paths in search their enemy. Then again, there are shades of unexpected darkness not least in the implication that Gantaro was about to rape Miyuki before she fainted and brought him back to his senses. Nevertheless, her retainers may tell her that she has “no choice” but to obey them, but Gantaro seems to feel differently if abruptly giving up his intention of protecting her on learning that she has someone else in her heart. This is indeed a harsh world for women samurai and otherwise, a mother and daughter are saved by Akiyama after being harassed by Onizo when he annexes the local market while both Miyuki and Omitsu are left to finish their father’s unfinished business in the wake of their untimely deaths. Notably, it is indeed they who finally strike the final blow to eliminate the corruption which surrounds them. Penniless wanderer Gantaro doesn’t have it that easy either, gambling his life away and ending up with debts both financial and moral that may have dangerous consequences while often beset by cynicism even if latterly deciding to help those in need for no reward. In any case, like any good wanderer all he can do is smile and wave as he departs for the next adventure on the violent streets of the Edo-era society.

I Live in Fear (生きものの記録, Akira Kurosawa, 1955)

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Which of us is “crazy”, the man who lives in fear or the rest of us who live in its denial? By 1955, a decade had passed since the bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but even if the world seemed “peaceful” it was only superficial. The Korean War had “ended” in an uneasy truce only two years earlier and the world was already mired in a cold war which daily threatened to turn hot with both sides in possession of a nuclear deterrent. Akira Kurosawa’s I Live in Fear (生きものの記録, Ikimono no Kiroku) asks us if we can really say a man is “insane” if his life is ruled by a rational anxiety and if it is our refusal to accept the threat he sees which eventually drives him out of his mind. 

Our guide is gentle dentist Harada (Takashi Shimura) who has a sideline as a mediator at the family court. The case he has been called in on one particular afternoon is that of the Nakajima family which is attempting to have the ageing patriarch, Kiichi (a near unrecognisable Toshiro Mifune), declared legally incompetent on account of his increasing paranoia about nuclear attack and latent radioactivity. A wealthy self-made man and foundry owner, Kiichi has frittered away vast sums on harebrained schemes to keep himself and his family safe but after a plan to build a bunker in a remote area had to be abandoned, he’s set his heart on moving everyone to Brazil where he believes they will be safer. 

The problem is partly one of changing times as Kiichi, “despotic and selfish” as his son describes him, attempts to railroad his family into a safety they do not want or need. His two legitimate sons now operate the foundry and their lives are dependent on it, which is not to say that they are dependent on Kiichi, but if he goes through with selling the the foundry to finance his new life it will leave them all high and dry. It would be, to a certain way of thinking, the ultimate paternal betrayal but in Kiichi’s mind all he’s trying to do is “save” his family from an invisible threat. 

That family, meanwhile, is one he’s already undermined through patriarchal selfishness in fathering a series of illegitimate children he is also supporting financially but has never legally acknowledged. The parents of the illegitimate kids are worried that if the family succeeds in having Kiichi declared legally incompetent, his wife will get her hands on the purse strings and they’ll be left out in the cold. Kiichi, meanwhile, has an old-fashioned view of filial relations and never considers that the other kids might not want to come with him either even if it’s unexpectedly nice of him to include them, or that inviting your two mistresses to live in the same house as your legal wife might be awkward for all concerned. 

On the face of it, the case is open and shut. If a man causes his family to suffer through frittering money away on drink or pachinko, they would approve the motion to give another family member legal control over his finances. So why is it taking them so long to decide if Kiichi is a liability to his family or not? The problem is, his fear is entirely rational. It’s only its extent which is the problem. It’s perfectly understandable to be afraid of the ebola virus or brain-eating amoeba, but we can’t afford to spend every minute of every day consumed by fear and so they retreat into the background anxiety of our lives while we try to go on living. Yet, could it be that Kiichi has it right and we’re merely living in denial, sleepwalking into a preventable disaster while he alone has a plan for survival? 

“No place is safe” Kiichi’s son-in-law exasperatedly explains to him after he has taken drastic and somewhat ironic action, a kind of scorched earth policy designed to force his sons to follow him into a new world of safety. Pushed over the edge, Kiichi gets a rude awakening, realising that it was perhaps selfish of him only to think of salvation for his immediate family when his actions will essentially throw his workforce under the bus. Belatedly, he promises to find a way to take them to Brazil too, never realising that people have their own lives that aren’t so easily uprooted. He thinks Brazil is safer because the currents of the world seem to blow ill winds over Japan, but there are already more than enough nuclear bombs lying in warehouses to destroy the planet several times over. 

In any case, Kiichi has already destroyed his family through his various transgressions. They don’t want to go in part because they don’t particularly like him, are sick of his gruff authoritarianism, and resent his tendency to make unilateral decisions on their behalf. Strapped for cash he tries asking the illegitimate kids to return some of the money he gave them, but they too are insecure in their positions and cannot trust that they will continue to be provided for if Kiichi is deposed. Meanwhile, when Kiichi falls ill the legitimate children are only too quick to start discussing the inheritance in the absence of a will. Perhaps Kiichi isn’t much more to them than a walking wallet, all of which lends a rather poignant quality to his continual attempts to protect his family from the nuclear apocalypse in fulfilment of his fatherly duty even as he wagers their economic security to do so. 

If Kiichi is a Cassandra prophesying the end of the world, we won’t be here to be sorry we didn’t listen, but Harada and other more rational minds are shaken by the intensity of his vision. They cannot say that he is “mad” even if his anxiety has consumed his life, but nor can they allow him free rein to pursue his plans because they do not concern only himself but greatly affect the lives of others. They are forced to wonder if it isn’t we who are “insane”, quietly living our lives while all these preventable threats hover in the background, ignored. Kiichi’s mistake was perhaps that he wanted only to be “safe” in an unsafe world, not to cure it of its dangers. Few us are actively trying to eliminate ebola or brain-eating amoebas, just as few actively opposed an increasingly nuclear society, powerless as we are and were in the face of a greater threat. Perhaps Kiichi was the sanest one of all, retreating into a world of madness and infinite safety in a delusional bubble of survival in an otherwise crazy world.

I Live in Fear screens at the BFI Southbank, London on 6th & 13th February 2023 as part of the Kurosawa season.