Tag: Masako Akeboshi

Shinobi No Mono 6: The Last Iga Spy (忍びの者 伊賀屋敷, Kazuo Mori, 1965)

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Though there’s a clear divide between the first three films in the Shinobi no Mono series and those that followed, one thing that remained constant is that time passed. By the sixth instalment, we’re already in 1637 which is more than 50 years after the setting of the first film which began in 1575 at the tail end of the Warring States era. Hero of films four and five, Saizo had been desperate to return to the chaos of the pre-Seikgahara society in which the ninja could indeed hold sway though as he discovered the pax Tokugawa was definitely here to stay. 

Given that Saizo would now be an old man, the torch is passed to his son, Saisuke (Raizo Ichikawa), who like his father opposes the Tokugawa but also has a desire for revenge against the corrupt petty official who killed him during the battle of Shimabara which definitely sealed the Tokugawa victory. Ieyasu may be dead, but the regime has only become more oppressive while it seems there is still enough intrigue to provide work for the jobbing ninja only now it’s taking place largely within the palace in the de facto one party state of the feudal society. 

On the other hand, there is a degree of destabilisation and societal flux as the old class system struggles to adjust to a world of peace. The nation is filled with disenfranchised samurai and ronin who largely have no real options to support themselves other than becoming mercenaries or taking odd jobs from various lords in the hope of eventually being taken in as a permanent retainer. It’s these ronin that Saisuke, and the rebellion’s leader Yui Shosetsu (Mizuho Suzuki), hope to marshal in convincing them to rise up against Tokugawa oppression and regain at least a little of the freedom their immediate forebears enjoyed.

The evils of this system can be seen in an otherwise sympathetic lord’s insistence that his underling will have to take the blame and commit seppuku if his decision to help the rebels is discovered. As Saisuke later remarks, the era of human knowledge rather than weaponry is already here and battles are largely being fought over parlour games played in court. At this point, the shogun’s sudden demise leaving only an 11-year-old son has opened a power vacuum that allows unscrupulous lords, like Saisuke’s enemy Izu (Isao Yamagata), to exercise power vicariously. Izu has used it to enrich himself by exploiting desperate ronin and spending vast sums on personal projects, yet he proves himself a true politician in effortlessly covering up for the lord who tried to help the rebels doubtless knowing that he now has him in his pocket for life.

Seemingly returning to the low-key social principles of the first few films, Saisuke’s rebellion is also towards the inherently unfair system complaining that the battle for power is a monster that feeds on courage and will crush conscience like an insect. But as Izu says, times have changed and the struggle cannot be ended even if Saisuke argues that anything manmade can be dismantled. Saisuke has to admit that he’s been outplayed, the leader of the revolution also turns out to be corrupt, taking advantage of other people’s desperation and dissatisfaction to enrich himself while Izu’s plotting has left him largely blindfolded as a ninja clearly out of his depth in the new and confusing world of the Tokugawa hegemony. A powerful man is always looking for a victim, he reflects, perhaps echoing the plight of Goemon unwittingly manipulated by the duplicitous Sandayu while admittedly somewhat drunk on his own misplaced sense of self-confidence. 

Deviating a little from the realism of the series as a whole, the film shifts into more recognisably jidaigeki territory revolving around corrupt lords and an exploited populace even if in this case it’s the disenfranchised warrior class experiencing a moment of mass redundancy though apparently unwilling to resist. Peep holes behind noh masks add a note of quirky innovation to the backroom machinations of the Tokugawa regime while silent ninja battles and flaming shuriken add to the sense of noirish danger even as it becomes clear that the ninja is approaching a moment of eclipse, no longer quite necessary in a world of constant duplicity.  

Freezing Point (氷点, Satsuo Yamamoto, 1966)

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freezing point posterRevenge is a dish best served cold, so they say, but just how cold can you go before your own heart freezes over? Based on a novel by Ayako Miura, Freezing Point (氷点, Hyoten) is a somewhat unusual family drama centring on parental responsibility, familial love, and the necessity of forgiveness following betrayal and tragedy. Maintaining Miura’s characteristic Hokkaido setting with its appropriately snowbound vistas, Yamamoto sidesteps the author’s Christianising viewpoint whilst embracing her views on the nature of sin and the innocence of children.

Ophthalmologist Keizo (Eiji Funakoshi) returns home one day to find his wife, Natsue (Ayako Wakao), playing the piano, seemingly in a kind of self involved rapture. The maid has taken their son, Toru, out, and their daughter, Ruriko, is supposedly playing outside. Only, she isn’t – Ruriko has gone missing. Some time later they find the little girl’s body at the riverside, apparently strangled. The killer is caught and commits suicide in prison. Natsue has a breakdown and spends some time in a hospital but on her release Keizo decides to adopt a baby to help her recover from losing Ruriko.

More exactly, Keizo is torn between altruistic, humanist values and a deep and cruel desire for revenge on the wife he believes neglected their daughter while she entertained a lover at home. Keizo’s plan is to adopt the now orphaned baby girl of the man who murdered his daughter both as a way of proving himself a good, forgiving person and of getting his own back on his wife by forcing her to raise a murderer’s child, only revealing the truth once she has come to love it like her own.

Natsue’s heart truly is broken by the death of her daughter. It’s not exactly unusual for small children to be playing outside in ‘60s Japan – in this Natsue is not at fault. Here is the first grain of “sin” – there was indeed someone else in the house that day, another doctor from Keizo’s hospital, Murai (Mikio Narita). What exactly happened is not clear but Keizo is convinced the pair have been having an affair for some time and assumes his wife had asked the maid to take their son out and put Ruriko outside so that her lover could visit unseen. Natsue is also unable to bear any more children due to complications with a previous pregnancy and Keizo seems to think she gave herself free reign in having an affair seeing as there could be no “consequences”. Keizo’s “revenge” is as much about his betrayal as a husband as it is resentment in holding his wife responsible for the death of their daughter even though, as another friend points out, unexpected, random events occur all the time and this one was no one’s fault but the killer’s.

Parenthood, or more specifically motherhood, becomes a persistent theme as Natsue becomes pre-occupied with being a “good mother”. Time moves on and the baby, Yoko (Michiyo Okusu billed here as Michiyo Yasuda), grows up only for Natsue to discover the truth by accident after she finds a letter Keizo had written to a friend in which he expresses his inability to love Yoko knowing what she is. Yoko is not and cannot be responsible for her father’s crime but its effects are visited on her as she is branded a “murderer’s child” or a carrier of “murderous genes”. Once Natsue knows the truth the relationship changes and becomes one of artificial game playing as she and Keizo tiptoe around the issue, each unwilling to give the other the satisfaction of knowing that the game is up. Yoko realises she must be an adopted child but remains cheerful, kind, and innocent, not wanting to be a burden to the family to which she is desperate to belong.

Matters come to a head when Yoko approaches adulthood. Brother Toru (Kei Yamamoto), overhearing his parents’ ugly argument, discovers Yoko is not his blood sister and develops complicated, inappropriate romantic feelings for her (feelings which his mother almost wants to encourage if only as a kind of revenge against Keizo). Meanwhile, he also brings home a university friend, Kitahara (Masahiko Tsugawa), as a possible suitor for her and way out of this dead end tragic love story. Natsue tries to put an end to this by literally getting in the middle of it – cutting off the correspondence between Yoko and Kitahara before trying it on with him herself either as a way of frightening him off completely or positioning herself as a direct rival to her adopted daughter. Rival she already is in the eyes of her son, and also perhaps those of Keizo whose eyes linger on the daughter he couldn’t force himself to love a little too long in realising she is no longer a child and no blood relation. Thus it comes as a relief to him when a family friend offers to make Yoko her heir, paying for a college education or foreign travel if those are things Yoko would like to do.

Yoko, however, wants nothing more than to stay with her family forevermore. This is a common sentiment from a daughter in a family drama, one which usually changes when an appropriate marriage partner is found, but it means more for Yoko whose single concern is feeling unwanted by her parents whilst also feeling grateful to them for taking her in. Her romance with Kitahara provokes a revelation which leaves her feeling internally destroyed. A classically “good” person, she did not want to see any “bad” in herself but now finds out her birth father committed a heinous, senseless crime against people she loves. This, she says, is the freezing point of her heart. Realising that “sin” is everywhere and even if it hadn’t been her father there would be other instances of wrongdoing somewhere in her lineage she feels as if her heart is frozen, her spirit killed, and she can no longer continue.

Of course, there are more revelations to come provoked by yet another tragedy which threatens to bring the whole thing full circle. Nobody expected or intended this as a result of their own petty desires for revenge, but then all they really thought about was themselves and the way they’d been slighted. Keizo asked his doctor friend who facilitated his adoption whether there existed two people in the world who’d be able to love the child of the man who’d killed their own. His friend is sure such people do exist (though it turns out he had his own solution to this particular problem), but Keizo’s desires are less about trying to prove himself one of them than exacting the most painful kind of emotional wound on a wife he feels has humiliated him. This family is a fraud and the only “innocent” member is the adopted daughter whose capacity for goodness they have in part destroyed. Bleak, probing, and extremely uncomfortable, Yamamoto’s adaptation of Miura’s novel is an artfully composed dissection of family values, such as they are, in the post-war world.