Tag: Nikkatsu

Burden of Love (愛のお荷物, Yuzo Kawashima, 1955)

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Two decades into the new century, Japanese society finds itself gripped by a population crisis. Supposedly “sexless”, young people constrained by a stagnant economy and a series of outdated social conventions have increasingly turned away from marriage and children to the extent that the birth rate is currently at the lowest it’s ever been. How strange it is then to revisit Yuzo Kawashima’s baby boom paranoia comedy Burden of Love (愛のお荷物, Ai no Onimotsu) in which the very same anxieties now expressed for the declining population are expressed for its reverse – that it will damage the economy, that it is the result of a moral decline, and that society as we know it is on the brink of destruction. 

All of these arguments are made by the Minister for Health, Araki (So Yamamura), as he tries to chair a committee meeting put together to find a solution to the baby boom crisis. The government policy he’s putting his name to is a birth control advocacy programme coupled with greater education to discourage couples from having so many children. Some object on the grounds that encouraging the use of birth control will inevitably lead to promiscuity and sexual abandon, which is why Araki’s government intends to limit its use only to married couples to be used for proper family planning. A feminist politician challenges him again, first citing the go forth and multiply bits from the bible to imply she objects to birth control on religious grounds only to trap Araki by reminding him that that is exactly what the government encouraged people to do during the wartime years. She thinks limiting birth control to married couples is little more than thinly veiled morality policing which will fail to help those really in need, suggesting that if this is the road they want to go down perhaps they should think about relaxing abortion laws so that those who become pregnant without the means to raise a child will have another option. Predictably, Araki is not quite in favour, but takes her point. In any case, events in his personal life are about to overtake him. 

The first crisis is that his son, Jotaro (Tatsuya Mihashi), is in a secret relationship with Araki’s secretary Saeko (Mie Kitahara), who has now become pregnant and is quite smug about it because Jotaro will finally have to sort things out with his family so they can marry. There are several reasons why he’s been dragging his feet: firstly, Saeko is a very good secretary and it’s customary for women to stop working when they marry (though as we later find out Jotaro is a progressive type who has no intention of stopping Saeko working if she wants to even after they marry and have children), secondly, his mother Ranko (Yukiko Todoroki) and younger sister Sakura (Tomoko Ko) are old fashioned and may feel marrying a secretary is beneath him, and thirdly he’s just a lackadaisical sort who doesn’t get round to things unless someone gives him a push. Sakura has an additional concern in that she’s engaged to an upperclass dandy from Kyoto (Frankie Sakai) and worries his family might object if they know that Jotaro has undergone a shotgun wedding to someone from the “servant class”. Araki’s oldest daughter, Kazuko (Emiko Azuma), is happily married to a gynaecologist (Yoshifumi Tajima) but ironically has been unable to conceive after six years of marriage. All of which is capped by the intense irony that his own wife at the age of 48 may be expecting a late baby of their own. 

The press is going to have a field day. Araki, for all his faults, is a surprisingly progressive guy, a moderate in the conservative party but one who, worryingly, doesn’t seem to believe in much of what he says as a minister of government, merely doing what it is he thinks he’s supposed to do. It’s perhaps this level of hypocrisy that Jotaro so roundly rejects, insisting he wants neither a career in the family’s pharmaceuticals company (which, it’s worth saying, also produces the birth control Araki’s policy seeks to promote), or a career in politics, and insists on being his own man. Tinkering with various bits of modern technology, he eventually gets a job in research and development of cheap TV sets, signalling his allegiance to the new all while dressing in kimono to visit kabuki clubs with Saeko. Saeko too is a modern woman – she speaks several languages and has a university degree, supporting herself independently even though she is “only” secretary albeit to a cabinet minister. Sakura, a more traditional sort, originally looks down her for being all those things, but later comes to a kind of admiration especially when she finds herself in need of advice from another modern woman. Jotaro’s mother, however, only comes around when she hires a detective who discovers Saeko might be posh after all. 

“Children have their own worlds to live in” one of Araki’s grownup kids later emphases, unwilling to rely their father for money or career advancement, they want to make their own way in the world. Jotaro, a kind man and something of a socialist, wonders if they shouldn’t be using some of this money the government has earmarked for defence on social welfare, suggesting perhaps that’s the best way to deal with the population crisis rather than pointlessly trying to police desire. Burden of Love was released in 1955, which is immediately before Japan instituted its anti-prostitution law doing away with the Akasen system that existed under the American occupation. Araki goes to visit an establishment in the red light district and declares himself horrified, but is unable to come up with a good solution when the women working there point out that they support entire families who will starve without their income. He may have a point that the pimp’s identification of himself as a social worker is disingenuous because he profits from the exploitation of women, but Araki’s later visit to a tavern staffed by geisha raises a series of questions about a continuing double standard. 

Araki exposes his own privilege when he tells Jotaro that he’d do anything for a single slice of bread before he’d ever do “that”, which is ignoring the fact that it’s very unlikely he’d ever have to consider it. Araki’s father, himself a retired politician, is also a fairly progressive sort who actively gets involved in the kids’ nefarious plans to get around their parents so they can marry the people the want when they want to marry them, while Araki remains largely preoccupied with his political position, even suggesting to his wife, despite what he said in the committee meeting, that she get an abortion to spare him the embarrassment caused by increasing the population while proposing a series of population control policies. Ranko is distraught because to her the child is the product of their love, even if to Araki it is also a “burden”, but being a traditional sort thinks first of her husband and is minded to do as he says. The younger generation think and feel differently. They want to make decisions for themselves, not just about what they do but who they love and how they live. The lesson is perhaps that this isn’t something to be overly worried about. Children are the “burden” of love, but we carry them together, and it’s a happier society that is content to figure it out rather than trying  to pointlessly police forces beyond its control. 

Original trailer (no subtitles)

The Perfect Game (完全な遊戯, Toshio Masuda, 1958)

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In the mid-1950s, Nikkatsu had courted controversy with a series of films depicting the amoral excesses of the immediate post-war generation. The “Sun Tribe” movies embedded themselves in a world of new bright young things who were largely independently wealthy and thoroughly bored by the ease of their lives. Nikkatsu was forced to halt production on the Sun Tribe films after only three (Toho and Daiei added one each of their own), but they did precipitate a wholesale shift towards youth movies which became the studio’s signature theme. 

Best remembered for his contributions to Nikkatsu’s action noir, Toshio Masuda’s The Perfect Game (完全な遊戯, Kanzenna Yugi, AKA The Tragedy of Today) arrived two years after the Sun Tribe craze but neatly picked up the baton dropped by Kon Ichikawa’s Punishment Room in its tale of nihilistic college boy amorality. As the film opens, our four heroes are playing mahjong and lamenting their lack of funds. They are all, it goes without saying, middle class boys largely supported by their parents who, as far as we know, are high ranking salarymen. They are not hungry, or worrying about how to pay rent or tuition, they are just bored and want extra money to go out having fun before they they are forced into the corporate straightjacket with the regular salaryman jobs many of them already have in the bag thanks to the tremendous power of nepotism. 

As the the opening text implied, they viewed their money making exploits as a game, proving how clever they think they are in getting one over on the universe, but all too quickly it spirals out of control. Toda (Yasukiyo Umeno), the ring leader, has come up with an ingenious money making scheme. It turns out that there’s an illegal betting office some distance away from the bicycle racing stadium that keeps taking bets until someone rings from the track and tells them who won, which means there’s about a five minute delay between the winner being declared and bets being called. The boys figure that if they can somehow beat the lag they can win big. To make it work, they ask their “friend” Kazu (Masumi Okada), who they seem to regard as a bit dim, to join them as well as recruiting an old codger to call the race before the boards go up. Surprisingly it works out, but unfortunately the yakuza-backed bookmaker, Matsui (Ryoji Hayama), wasn’t banking on such a big win and doesn’t have the funds to pay out in one go. 

Toda in particular is pissed off. The wind taken out of his sails, he’s not sure what to do which is when So (Akira Kobayashi), the pretty boy of the group, suggests an ironic punishment. Matsui had joked that he’d put up his adorable kid sister Kyoko (Izumi Ashikawa) as collateral if he couldn’t pay out, so why don’t the boys take him at his word and kidnap her. Rewinding a little, these snotty college boys are about to become kidnappers, adding a little blackmail on the side. This isn’t a fun game anymore, someone is going to get hurt whatever happens even if they can’t know the extent to which their plan to earn a few bucks to blow on jazz bars and pool rooms is going to incur collateral damage. 

Unlike the boys, Kyoko is a working class girl. She wants to keep her head down and work hard, not quite approving of her brother’s involvement with the yakuza and wishing he’d find an honest job but also acknowledging that he had few options and it’s his job at the bookies that’s been keeping them all this time. Their father died in the war, and their mother (Yumi Takano) is very ill, bedridden with heart trouble. Kyoko is no innocent, she brushes off So’s attempts to court her by revealing that dozens of creepy guys try the same thing every day, and most of them don’t stop at passing notes. For whatever reason she ends up warming to him, making him take her to a theme park while her mother worries at home, while he also begins to feel conflicted about the plan in falling for her for real. 

So’s mistake is the childish belief that they’re still playing a game and everything will be alright in the end. He foolishly trusts that his friend’s are men of honour and that Matsui will come up with the money and redeem his sister in no time at all. But money’s not easy to come by even if you’re a yakuza, and the boys might not want it anyway if it comes with additional complications. Visiting with Kyoko’s sickly mother, he perhaps begins to see the gap between his comfortable existence and theirs of constant struggle. He’d been so proud to tell Kyoko that he had an interview lined up at a big company because of family connections, but when he arrives there he feels irrelevant. The interview board only ask him questions about his dad, as if he didn’t really exist. Finally they ask him to talk about what he did at uni, what his “passions” are, if he did anything of note in the past few years, perhaps even fall in love? They’ve unwittingly touched a nerve, but So is in any case forced to reflect on the meaninglessness not only of his adolescence, but of his future. This interview has been a farce, but they’re giving him the job anyway because he’s his father’s son. What more is there to say?

The other boys are also worried about their job prospects, concerned that someone might talk and they’ll be forever tarnished by “youthful exuberance”, refusing to take any personal responsibility for the consequences of their “perfect game”. Unlike So they still want to live in that inherently unfair world which exists for upperclass men to do as they please. Toda and So weren’t quite like their friends. They felt conflicted. Toda embarrassed to be borrowing money from his girlfriend but rejecting the others’ belief that you don’t have to pay women back, only to angrily bark at her that there’s “no way a woman can understand” the intensely masculine debate he’s just had with So about responsibility, which he accepted by deflecting in pushing So’s complicity back on him in an attempt to share his guilt. Unlike the Sun Tribe films, youth takes responsibility for itself and its friends, but can find no way to atone for its moral abnegation. 

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Tales of Ginza (銀座二十四帖, Yuzo Kawashima, 1955)

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“If we all work together we can make Ginza’s night, no the whole world, bright and at peace” insists the hero of Yuzo Kawashima’s chronicle of changing times Tales of Ginza (銀座二十四帖, Ginza 24 Chou), trying to sell a brighter post-war future to a jaded reactionary. By 1955, the consumerist revolution was already on the horizon, and nowhere did it beckon as invitingly as in the upscale Ginza with its elegant department stores and swanky nightlife, but as Hiroshi Shimizu’s Tokyo Profile had shown two years earlier, it wasn’t all glitz and glamour. The world looked very different to the people who lived and worked in the city within a city than it did to those who just dropped in to have a good time. 

Our hero, the incongruously named Mr. Coney (Tatsuya Mihashi), is an earnest florist doing his best to brighten up the city. He’s taken three orphaned teenage girls into his shop, allowing them to support themselves honestly while he teaches them valuable skills, and has also employed the rather less earnest Jeep (Asao Sano). Jeep has had trouble with drug dependency in the past and, Coney fears, is drawn to the easy pleasures of the post-war underworld. The main drama kicks into gear when the upper middle-class Wakako (Yumeji Tsukioka) wanders past the shop and fancies a few roses, asking one of the girls to deliver them to her home later in the day. 

Wakako is currently in the middle of arranging some paintings which belonged to her late father for an exhibition in a gallery where she hopes to sell them. As we discover, she’s in need of money fast because she’s become estranged from her husband, Kyogoku (Seizaburo Kawazu), who has been seduced by post-war criminality. Wakako wants a divorce, but the situation is complicated by the fact her mother-in-law has taken custody of her daughter. In the course of sorting through paintings, the gallery owner spots one Wakako didn’t really want to part with – a portrait of herself as a teenager painted by one of her father’s apprentices when they lived in Manchuria during the war. The painting is signed “G.M”, and the only concrete thing Wakako can remember is that the boy was called “Goro” and was a beautiful, kind soul whom she’d dearly like to see again. 

The “G.M” mystery begins to whip up a small storm in the already volatile Ginza. Coney comes to believe that his older brother, whom he’d long believed to be dead, may be the man Wakako’s looking for but he doesn’t really want to say so until he’s 100% certain. Meanwhile, there are a surprising number of GMs in the city, including a rather sleazy, womanising “doctor” (Toru Abe) who goes to the papers and tells them he painted the picture though Wakako is not convinced and would be a little disappointed to think the man she wondered about all those years turned out to be a cheesy lounge lizard. Other contenders include a melancholy baseball scout (Shinsuke Ashida) who turns out to have connections to the underworld, and, unbeknownst to Coney, the drugs kingpin of post-war Japan known as the “G.M. of Ginza”. 

Drugs are something that Coney is particularly worried about. He’s seen the effect they’re having on his city, and resents that their influence is making Ginza “dark”. The orphaned girls he has working at the shop all lost their parents to drug abuse, and Coney has made getting Jeep off the stuff a primary goal. Jeep, however, is unconvinced. He thinks Coney is a sucker, and that floristry isn’t a profession for a grown man. In part, he’s kicking back against Coney’s well-meaning paternalism, but is also attracted by the flashing neon signs and easy pleasures of the modern Ginza of which the drugs trade is an increasingly big part. For Jeep, the post-war future is one of amoral and thoughtless hedonism, getting rich quick though low level, “innocent” crime, like peddling drugs and porn. 

Wakako too is tempted by that future, though mostly through lack of other options. She’s planning to open a bar with the money from the paintings, but eventually decides to go into business with Coney, working for his brighter future in the florist’s. The pair perhaps fall in love, but the future is still too uncertain for romance. Wakako refuses to see her husband, insisting only on obtaining a divorce and with it her freedom. Coney volunteers to talk to him on her behalf, essentially arguing that his wife will he happier with him because the kind of future they desire is essentially the same. Kyogoku cannot really argue with him. He is a sad and broken man who realises that his choices have robbed him of the future he desired, forced onto the run unable to see his wife and daughter. He justifies himself with the rationale that if he didn’t run drugs in Ginza, “foreigners” would take over and crime would be rampant. He claims that life is survival of the fittest, and that he has no need of love. Kyogoku never felt loved by the aristocratic mother who raised him only as an heir to their name. The only time he felt loved was by his best friend who was, he says, murdered because he lacked power and because his good heart made him weak. 

There maybe something a little reactionary in Coney’s moral absolutism. He condemns his brother for getting involved with student politics which made him “hate Japan”, though he later signs a student petition himself, and has only contempt for Ginza’s famous nightlife while willingly wandering through it selling flowers to romantically-minded guys in bars, but does his best to avoid judgment as he tries to coax those he feels have strayed back onto a better path. Coney believes in a brighter future where good people work together peacefully, while the Kyogokus of the world are content to plunge us all into darkness in a nihilistic pursuit of empty pleasures. No one really “wins” in the end. Coney gets some answers, but remains too diffident to fight for love, while Wakako is perhaps prevented from doing so in feeling called towards another kind of future, which is in effect the past, because of her maternity. Ginza is changing, and you can’t change it back, but you can do your best to be your best, saying it with flowers if with nothing else.

Currently available to stream on Mubi in the US.

Opening titles (no subtitles)

Suzaki Paradise: Red Light (洲崎パラダイス　赤信号, Yuzo Kawashima, 1956)

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Suzaki paradise posterBy 1956, things were beginning to look up. Post-war privation was receding into the distance with the consumerist future already on the horizon, but as much as there were possibilities for some others found themselves floundering, unable to find direction in a world of constant change. Yuzo Kawashima’s Suzaki Paradise: Red Light (洲崎パラダイス　赤信号, Susaki Paradise: Akashingo)* was released in the same year that the anti-prostitution law came into force forever changing the face of the red light district and like its heroes finds itself hovering on a precipice caught between an old world the new.

Lovers Tsutae (Michiyo Aratama) and Yoshiji (Tatsuya Mihashi) have found themselves at a crossroads, or more accurately on a bridge, unsure whether to go forward, or back, or some other place entirely. Tsutae is disappointed in Yoshiji, expecting him as the man to have some kind of plan, while he is a little resentful of her fortitude and tendency to take the lead. Yoshiji grows maudlin and moody, berating himself for his failure of manhood, a failing for which Tsutae has little sympathy. Fed up with him, she runs off and catches a bus. He chases her, and they both get off at Susaki, home to a famous red light district. Yoshiji isn’t happy with this development, worried that Tsutae will cross the bridge and fall back into her “old self”, perhaps hinting at the kind of life she lived before. Luckily for them, Tsutae spots a help wanted sign at a tiny bar firmly on this side of the river. The landlady, Otoku (Yukiko Todoroki), is a kind woman raising her two sons alone, but is wary of handing the job to a woman the like of Tsutae. As she tells her, no one stays here long, most just see it as a stepping stone, a place where they can acclimatise themselves to the idea of crossing the bridge into the ironically named “Susaki Paradise”.   

Once you cross the bridge, most seem to say, you never really cross back. Later we learn that Tsutae is from the other side of the water and seemingly forever trying to escape her past though mostly through trying to attach herself to a man she thinks can carry her out it. Yoshiji seems to be aware that Tsutae is a former sex worker and is desperate to prevent her returning to her previous occupation, worried that he’ll lose her if she does or perhaps just unfairly judgemental. Likewise, we learn that he lost his job through some kind of impropriety, perhaps committed trying to keep Tsutae with him. Each of them is in one way or another trapped by patriarchal social codes, Tsutae believing that the only way she can save herself is by finding the right man to save her, and Yoshiji increasingly resentful for not living up to the male ideal. He can’t keep his woman, can’t provide for or protect her, most pressingly he cannot find a job but is also proud, shamed by the idea of accepting low paid manual work. He feels belittled and humiliated and is embittered by it.

Tsutae meanwhile takes to Otoku’s bar like a duck to water, quickly bringing in a host of male custom while bonding with the cheerful owner of a radio shop in nearby electronics centre Kanda, Ochiai (Seizaburo Kawazu). Otoku manages to find a job for Yoshiji delivering soba noodles in a local restaurant which he decides to take despite his intense resentment and wounded male pride. Ironically enough, the name of the soba restaurant is “Damasare-ya” which sounds like “tricked”, explaining why he might be reluctant to take the job, but the biggest problem is that he can’t trust Tsutae and is always paranoid about her meeting men in the bar or deciding to cross the bridge in his absence. Eventually, Ochiai offers to make Tsutae his mistress and provide a flat for her in Kanda, leaving her with a choice – “love”, if that’s what it is, with the feckless and jealous Yoshiji, or perfectly pleasant yet transactional comfort with Ochiai. Yoshiji, meanwhile, attracts the attentions of an earnest waitress in the soba noodle restaurant (Izumi Ashikawa) who seems to support his attachment to Tsutae but is also rooting for him to get over himself and live an honest life of hard work by knuckling down at his new job.

Yet that post-war restlessness won’t seem to let either of them go. Once you fall, you fall and it may not be possible to climb back up, or at least not without the right person to help keep you from slipping back down. Otoku has managed to keep a steady hand on the tiller, apparently waiting, we’re told, for the return of her husband who ran off with a woman from the red light district four years previously. The red light district, like toxic masculinity, cuts both ways and you’ll pay a heavy price for crossing the bridge. “People had better live honestly” a middle-aged man avows after having apparently seen the error of his ways, but it’s easier said than done.

When their worlds come crashing down, Tsutae and Yoshiji find themselves right back where they started, hovering on the bridge. “We have to live until we die” Tsutae once said, dismissing any fears we might have had that the pair might jump, but their course is both set and not. Now chastened, Tsutae’s decision to take a step back is both a reflection on the failure of her Susaki experiment, and also perhaps a mild concession to patriarchal social norms as she actively assumes the submissive role, affirming that she will follow Yoshiji’s lead while he reassumes his masculinity by finally taking charge. No longer quite so liminal they move on, another pair of floating clouds, perhaps more at home with who they are and can never be, but with no clear destination in sight.

*The reading of this place name is “Susaki” but the film has become more commonly known under the title “Suzaki Paradise”

Currently streaming on Mubi as part of an ongoing Yuzo Kawashima retrospective.

Title sequence (no subtitles)

Our Blood Will Not Forgive (俺たちの血が許さない, Seijun Suzuki, 1964)

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Our blood will not forgive posterIn Japan, “kaeru no ko wa kaeru”, or “a frog’s son is also a frog”, is an often heard idiom, sometimes disparaging but often affectionate. Can a yakuza’s son become anything other than a yakuza, or does your blood define you in ways you cannot defy? Our Blood Will Not Forgive (俺たちの血が許さない, Oretachi no Chi ga Yurusanai), an early semi-absurdist gangster drama from Seijun Suzuki’s mid-period at Nikkatsu, asks just that question as two brothers battle the legacy of their slain father whose dying wish it was that the yakuza line die with him.

After their father was assassinated at home by sword, the Asari brothers were raised by their mother, Hatsu (Chikako Hosokawa), who did her best to keep them out of the underworld. After the war, however, times were tough. Older brother Ryota (Akira Kobayashi) had to work as a delivery boy to keep the family fed, studying hard at the same time and getting in to a good university. Now grown up, he’s a smart suited night club manager. His younger brother Shinji (Hideki Takahashi), meanwhile, is a clownish goof-off with a good job at an ad agency he’s always in danger of losing (like a fair few jobs before). Today, Shinji was meant to collect his bonus, but he’s bunked off to take part in a local festival which is unfortunate, because he’s got a visitor – Tobita (Akifumi Inoue), the man who killed their father without knowing why and now regrets it. He’s managed to track Shinji down thanks to the fact he looks just like his dad and has a habit of doing stupid things that get his picture in the papers like winning eating competitions and getting lucky on the horses only to get mugged outside.

Tobita’s desire to apologise to the boys exposes their father’s sordid yakuza past and forces them to deal with the legacy of their gangster blood. Though Ryota is more sanguine and simply declares that he “hates all yakuza” before asking Tobita to leave and never come back, Shinji immediately attacks him but then becomes enamoured of the romanticism of the gangster life and considers restarting the Asari clan after getting fired when a picture of him fighting with thugs on the company away trip makes the papers with the headline “yakuza’s son”.

The central irony is that Ryota, who was his mother’s favourite and ostensibly the steady, respectable son, has secretly been a yakuza for quite some time. The club he runs is a yakuza front, which is why he tries to talk Shinji out of trying to get a job there, leading him to feel rejected enough to have too much to drink and start a bar fight, causing problems for Ryota with his boss.

“All yakuza are the same,” Ryota confesses to Shinji as they argue in a car incongruously surrounded by roaring waves, “they’re violent because they’re afraid”. Despite graduating from Tokyo University, Ryota couldn’t get an honest job because they always found out his dad was a yakuza. Out of other options, he decided he had no other choice but to become one too, that he could not escape his blood but might be able to make sure his brother could. Shinji has romantic dreams of the yakuza lifestyle (his bedroom wall’s covered in pictures of Al Capone et al), but Ryota knows what it means, which is why he hates all yakuza, including himself. He’s planning to marry his secretary girlfriend, Yasuko (Chieko Matsubara), but his emotions are so corrupted that he isn’t quite sure if he really loves her or is only making a bid for respectability as a kind of atonement to his mother. In any case, he also feels guilty, knowing that just as his father eventually made his mother miserable, no woman can be happy with a yakuza.

“Yakuza are so stupid, you’re all obsessed with dying – what’s the point?” Shinji eventually exclaims, finally thoroughly disillusioned as his brother goes out in search of an honourable ending rather than trying to escape from certain death at the hands of his vengeful boss. “It may not be easy to live, but there’s nothing honourable about dying!” he tells him, undercutting a series of cultural signifiers, but finally crawling out of the yakuza trap and vowing to live on muddling through with his mother and perky girlfriend, Mie (Yuri Hase) whose birthday party he’s currently missing. Blood does not forgive, but it does eventually release if only you can learn to see it for what it is and choose to be free of it.

Opening (no subtitles)

The Dragon of Macao (マカオの竜, Mio Ezaki, 1965)

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Dragon of Macao DVD coverNikkatsu’s “borderless” action was famously internationalist, but as Japan’s place on the world stage began to change in the mid-60s, it also betrayed a slight anxiety in the nation’s new status as a burgeoning economic power in the Asian sphere. The Dragon of Macau (マカオの竜, Macao no Ryu), while indulging in the genre’s characteristically xenophobic vision of China as an exporter of criminality, is another attempt to cash in on James Bond cool as its suave, British passport-carrying hero tries to wrestle a precious gem away from fiercely amoral “pirates” while protecting a betrayed young woman trying to avenge the death of her parents at the hands of duplicitous gangsters.

Set in the bustling port town of Yokohama, the film opens with the harbour patrol forcibly boarding a ship to look for smuggled gold. However, it turns out that the two men they’re searching are members of the patrol themselves on an undercover mission trying to expose organised crime while the guys dressed as policemen are actually members of a gang trying to steal a precious diamond. Fearing the operation blown, the gangsters’ plant offs the lot of them and makes off with the loot.

Meanwhile, “Dragon of Macau” Ryu (Akira Kobayashi) lurks about on the harbour while rival gangster Tsukada (Asano Sano) tries to get the police onside and convince them that someone else is targeting his operation though the police are apt to wonder if he staged the whole thing himself to get rid of the undercover agents. The truth, however, is that ambitious harbour punk Aizu (Jo Shishido) is after a precious diamond known as the “Himalyan Star” which is rumoured to be cursed seeing as everybody who’s come into contact with it has ended up dead.

Unsurprisingly, Aizu gets his hands on the gem from a Chinese broker, Chen, who warns him that two gangsters, Gordon and Boomerang, will do “anything” to get their hands on it. Ryu later turns up a bar run by Tsukada and gets into a bar fight with a series “damn foreigners”, sailors who’d had too much to drink and started hassling the staff. The “damn foreigners” quip is especially ironic seeing as we later discover Ryu is a British citizen who seems to have grown up in Hong Kong after being rescued by a British vessel when the boat he and his parents were travelling on was torpedoed during in the war. Introducing himself to Tsukada, Ryu says that he works for the aforementioned “Gordon”, presumably an imperialist Brit engaged in shady colonial shenanigans out of Hong Kong. The truth about “Ryu” at least turns out to be slightly different, but for the moment he’s a Bond-inspired unflappable agent of cool complete with a fancy white three-piece suit and a collection of gadgets (a cigarette lighter blowtorch, pistol that dispenses matchstick flares, and a tiny nail gun) that would be the envy of any cold war spy.

Not to be outdone, however, Aizu has his own share of surprises including the tiny dagger hidden in the cigarette which permanently hangs from his lip. Temporarily entering this land of intense amorality, Ryu plays along but retains his nobility and remains permanently one step ahead as he attempts to get his hands on the Himalayan Star and return it to its “rightful” owners. Aizu’s main gambit is weaponising women – Aizu’s sister is a plant working at Tsukada’s bar and apparently also his mistress, while he also makes use of another young woman, Nami (Yukiyo Toake), whose late father was a patron of his. She believes Tsukada is responsible for the deaths of her parents and is participating in the plan as revenge, but eventually falls for Ryu’s suave nobility and refuses to betray him when faced with Aizu’s continuing duplicity.

A few narrative machinations later, we’re told that Ryu is “a person without a motherland” but also that he has always been a force for “good” or at least order in that he wants the gemstone not for himself but to get it away from the gangsters and back to its “official” owners (which sort of ignores the fact that the stone was “stolen” from the eye of a Buddhist statue which is presumably why people think it’s “cursed”, and that his primary motivation is avoiding a giant insurance payout). Having fallen for Nami, he leaves her a message that he’d have liked to take her back to Macau but is unsure she’d be happy with someone like him, asking her to look after another young woman who came all the way from Hong Kong to warn him that Gordon and Boomerang have finally taken each other out.

Perhaps in contrast to Nikkatsu’s other international crime dramas, the “threat” turns out to be wholly homegrown in Aizu’s rapidly individualist stance that “life is cruel”, “mercy is for fools”, and those who stand in one’s way must be eliminated. The solution comes, paradoxically, from destabilising internationalism at the hands of a man who is both Japanese and not, speaks several languages, and works as an agent for colonising imperial powers to whom he eventually exiles himself, job done. A rip-roaring spy drama complete with modern day pirates and an extremely ineffectual police presence, The Dragon of Macau is a surprisingly complex effort from Nikkatsu’s “borderless” action strand which makes the case for Japan as a part of wider world rather than a isolated island fearful of losing out in an increasingly globalised environment.

Singing Lovebirds (鴛鴦歌合戦, Masahiro Makino, 1939)

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singing lovebirds still 5With things the way they were in the Japan of 1939, you might have expected cinema to have taken a universal turn to the dark side but surprisingly enough there was still room on the silver screen for silliness as the improbable marvel of Singing Lovebirds (鴛鴦歌合戦, Oshidori Utagassen) makes plain. Legend has it that musical master of the jidaigeki Masahiro Makino threw Lovebirds together in record time in order to fill a production gap after big time star Chiezo Kataoka was struck down by appendicitis in the middle of filming On the Road with Yaji and Kita. Kataoka is also Lovebird’s nominal male star though his appearance is understandably limited (his scenes were shot later and apparently in a matter of hours) leaving veteran actor Takashi Shimura to pick up the slack as an antiques obsessed disenfranchised former samurai who finds himself at the centre of a dastardly plot orchestrated by the higher ups to solve an ongoing romantic crisis among the youngsters.

The crisis revolves around the handsome Reizo (Chiezo Kataoka) – a young ronin betrothed to a young lady from a well to do family, Fujio (Fujiko Fukamizu), whose father is keen to make the marriage official as quickly as possible. Reizo, however, has fallen for Oharu (Haruyo Ichikawa) – the daughter of ronin umbrella maker Shimura (Takashi Shimura). Meanwhile, Reizo has also become an object of affection for the daughter of a wealthy local merchant, Otomi (Tomiko Hattori), who is spoilt and entitled to the extent that Reizo’s resistance only enflames her ardour. If all that weren’t enough to be going on with, a randy local lord (Dick Mine) is also actively chasing most of the women in the area and after getting turned down by Otomi has his sights set on Oharu.

Peaceful times allow for small bursts of chaos and ongoing romantic silliness which is where we find our conflicted heroes, yet there is a persistent strain of anxiety in the precarious lives of the disenfranchised ronin who find themselves trapped in a cycle of wilful degradation which prevents them from taking on work unbefitting of a gentlemen and, consequently, permanently on the brink of starvation. Umbrella making, a frequent ronin-friendly occupation in the world of the jidaigeki, is one such way of making ends meet, but Shimura can only afford to feed his daughter barley much to her consternation. Rather than use his meagre resources for short term satisfaction he’s decided to “invest” them in various “antiques” which he believes both bolster his status and can be sold to provide a dowry for Oharu when she decides to marry.

Unfortunately, Shimura is mistaken – he’s not got as good an eye for antiques as he thought and is a well known mark for the local hawker. Everything he has is a fake and he’s wasted a small fortune on useless trinkets. Shimura’s antiques mania also leaves him open to other kinds of scams and manipulation when he gets himself into a small amount of debt to the randy lord and Fujio’s dad (Mitsuru Toyama) who have tricked him in order to try and get Oharu out of the Reizo picture and into the lord’s bedchamber. Unlike many Jidaigeki dads, however, Shimura is a nice guy and tells the higher ups where to get off because what kind of father sells his daughter for the price of a pretty tea bowl?

Shimura’s logic might not make much sense to the lords, or to many other residents of the jidiaigeki world, but is perfectly in keeping with the film’s surprisingly humanist morality in which all are made to realise that greed is bad, money is silly, and at the end of the day all that really matters is true love (even if you have to live in a hovel and survive on barley gruel for the rest of your life). Even the spoilt Otomi is finally forced to realise that you can’t force love and the best you can do is try to support other people’s happiness while you wait for yours to come along (which it is more likely to do once you start being nicer to everyone including your long suffering manservant).

Bright, cheerful, and filled with zany humour Singing Lovebirds is a refreshingly warmhearted piece of eminently hummable escapist fluff providing a much needed distraction from the austere world of 1939 in which its particular brand of anti-capitalist humanism would seem to be extremely out of place. Nevertheless, the corrupt and oppressive samurai order gets a much needed comeuppance, the little guy realises he doesn’t need to play their game anymore, and a young woman realises the only person she needed to feel good enough for was herself. A happy ending for all and an umbrella wielding dance routine to boot – who could ask for anything more?

Brief clip (extremely poor quality, no subtitles)

Cupola, Where the Furnaces Glow (キューポラのある街, Kirio Urayama, 1962)

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(C) Nikkatsu 1962

cupola-poster-e1539038053246.jpgThe “shomin-geki” is generally associated with naturalistic depictions of the lives of “ordinary people”, but in reality most often focuses on the polite lower middle classes – white collar workers, shop keepers, small business holders etc, in short the sort of people who aren’t wealthy but aren’t starving either and generally live in moderate family homes rather than tenements or cramped apartment blocks. Blue collar lives are a less frequent sight on screen – something director Kirio Urayama seems to highlight in his mildly exoticised opening which introduces us to Kawaguchi, Saitama, a small town across long bridge not so far from Tokyo.

Unlike the bustling city still fighting its way back from post-war privation, Kawaguchi is a “town of fire and sweat” where the landscape is dominated by the “cupolas” of the title (Cupola, Where the Furnaces Glow , キューポラのある街, Cupola no aru Machi, AKA Foundry Town). Rather than the beautiful architectural domes the name might imply, these cupolas are the industrial kind – chimneys from the 500 foundries which are the area’s dominant economic force. There is, however, trouble in that the steel industry has been decline since the immediate post-war heyday and increasing automation is changing the face of working life.

Our heroine, Jun (Sayuri Yoshinaga), is a young woman with post-war ambitions trapped in the depressing blue collar world of Kawaguchi. She’s currently in her last year of middle school and is determined to carry on to high school and perhaps even beyond, but the family is poor and her father, Tatsugoro (Eijiro Tono), has just lost his job at the local steel works. The family’s neighbour, Katsumi (Mitsuo Hamada), is big into the labour movement and has been protesting the changes at the works which has been bought by a bigger concern who are intent on compulsory layoffs. Tatsugoro, however, likes to think of himself as a “craftsman” rather than a “worker” and refuses to join the union partly out of snobbery and partly out of an entrenched fear of “communism”. He refuses to fight his compulsory redundancy because he is still wedded to the old ideas about loyalty to one’s superiors whilst simultaneously viewing himself as “better” than the other workers because of his long experience and skilled craftsmanship.

Nevertheless, Tatsugoro continues to selfishly abnegate his responsibilities to his family, refusing to insist on his severance pay and drinking the little money he still has left. Tatsugoro has four children ranging from teenager Jun to an infant born just as he lost his job. Some way into the film, Jun and and her younger brother Takayuki (Yoshio Ichikawa) take their father to task for his continued selfishness but the confrontation ends only in defeat. Tatsugoro simply doesn’t care. Loudly exclaiming that he has no daughter and will send Takayuki to the boys’ home, Tatsugoro destroys their hopes by reminding them that their fate is the same his – leave school early, work in a factory, marriage, children, drink yourself into an early grave. The argument proves so disheartening that Jun gives up on a school trip she’d been given a special subsidy to attend to roam around the streets, sadly visiting the prefectural high school that she has now given up on attending and accidentally witnessing another reason to give up on life that she, naively, misunderstands.

Meanwhile, Jun and Takayuki have also made friends with a family from North Korea who will be returning (without their mother) under a preferential “repatriation” programme organised by North Korean officials in Japan with the backing of the US and the Japanese government which, uncomfortably enough, saw only advantage in reducing the ethnic minority population. Though the film adopts a mildly positive view of repatriation – after all, no one really knew what North Korea was like in 1961 and many saying goodbye to their friends fully expect to stay in touch and perhaps meet again one day, it does highlight the persistent layer of xenophobic prejudice that the children face. Sankichi (Hideki Morisaka), one of Takayuki’s best friends, is taunted from the audience whilst on stage in a children’s play by cries of “Korean Carrot” (he is wearing a funny wig at the time) while Jun’s mother makes no secret of her dislike of the children’s friendships, believing that the Koreans are “dangerous”. Others associate the North Korean (in particular) population with communism and possible insurrection, fearing that Japan might be pulled into another nuclear war in Asia by political troubles across the sea.

The repatriation program is attractive not only as a means of escaping a world of constant oppression, but because of the entrenched poverty of the Kawaguchi area and the relative impossibility of escaping it. In a poignant, resentful school essay Jun wonders why her future is dictated by a lack of money, why she alone will be prevented from going on to high school and pulling herself out of the lower orders solely because of her responsibility to her family and father’s fecklessness. Tatsugoro is eventually offered another job thanks to the kindness of the father of one of Jun’s wealthier school friends, but continues to view himself as a “craftsman” and resents being ordered around by youngsters. What’s more, the factory is much more advanced – doubtless, the father of Jun’s friend (so different from her own) thought it might be better for Tatsugoro whose health is poor because the work would be less physically strenuous, but Tatsugoro finds it impossible to adapt to automated working methods and soon quits, leaving the family cash strapped once again.

An inability to adapt is Tatsugoro’s tragedy though he later makes amends when he consents to join Katsumi’s union and takes a job in a new factory, confident that he can’t be summarily dismissed ever again. Jun, meanwhile, has discovered a third way. Longing to escape the burden of her family she resolves to step forward alone but also instep with her society. Having discovered the existence of a progressive factory which is run with friendliness and consideration and even provides education for employees, Jun realises she can have the best of both worlds. Though Jun’s decision is perhaps one of individualism and a bold assertion of her own agency, it’s also in keeping with the broadly socialist message of the film which insists that a problem shared is a problem halved and places its faith in ordinary people to look after each other. Optimistic, perhaps, but a perfect encapsulation of post-war humanism and growing hopes for the future for those who are prepared to work hard on behalf not only of themselves but also for the social good.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Cupola, Where the Furnaces Glow was scripted by Shohei Imamura whose work often focusses on the working classes and rural poor. As such it shares some similarity with his early film My Second Brother which also touches on the lives of ethnic Koreans living in Japan though this time in a mining village where the labour movement is engaged in actively opposing the exploitative practices of the corporate mine owners.

The Black Gambler (黒い賭博師, Ko Nakahira, 1965)

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Black Gambler poster

Nikkatsu’s “Mighty Guy” Akira Kobayashi occupied a very particular space in the studio’s collection of leading men. Where Yujiro Ishihara was known for his roguish cheek, Tetsuya Watari for his bruiser nobility, and Joe Shishido for his detached efficiency, Kobayashi’s chief selling point was his gentlemanly charm and unflappable decency. The “Gambler” series which ran to eight films in all cast him as a James Bond-esque wandering cardsharp with a well tailored suit and keen intellect capable of defeating even the most devious of opponents. The sixth in the series, simply titled The Black Gambler (黒い賭博師, Kuroi Tobakushi), finds Koji Himuro (Akira Kobayashi) returning to Tokyo and straight into the middle of international intrigue as he gets mixed up with a global gambling syndicate hellbent on bringing its particular brand of funny business to the Japanese capital.

Himuro, renowned for his skills at the gaming table, is called to an exclusive gambling party where he entertains the French Ambassador and ruins a cheating rival in the process. Inumaru (Asao Koike), humiliated by his defeat, sends his mistress Reiko (Manami Fuji) to spy on Himuro and figure out all his secrets so they can get their revenge. However, Himuro gets himself mixed up in a bigger crisis when he comes to the rescue of a foreign woman in a park running away from a scary looking gangster. The woman, Nina, claims to be an air stewardess flown in from Hong Kong who has fallen foul of a Chinese gangster named Yang. Yang has apparently tricked her into amassing vast debts and thereafter attempted to recoup his investment in other ways. Himuro is a noble sort of guy and so decides to pay off Nina’s debt by defeating Yang in a game of cards, but Yang is a different kind of opponent than he’s hitherto faced and Himuro finds himself floundering unable to figure out Yang’s particular cheat.

Nikkatsu’s action line was famous for its “borderless” approach, making an international milieu one of its many selling points. This is not to say its vision of global Japan was altogether positive – in fact the reverse was often true. Once again, the Chinese have been designated the criminal element of choice with Yang painted as a villainous cheater complete with a horrible Fu Manchu beard and delirious cackle, sure that his unique method for ensuring victory cannot be beaten. Meanwhile, Himuro’s first engagement dropped him straight into a world of international diplomacy and it comes as no surprise to learn that Yang’s activities are merely a facet of a wider conspiracy which turns out to be run by a Jewish gambler who apparently used his ill gotten gambling gains to finance the Nazis during the second world war. Perhaps it’s wise not to even start trying to unpack that one.

Himuro’s upscale world of high stakes games played in well appointed rooms by men wearing tuxedos and drinking martinis may be a world away from the dirty backstreet shenanigans of Nikkatsu’s other gambling adventures, but there is bite in its defiant bid for frivolity. When Himuro first rocks up at the French Ambassador’s residence, his assistant doesn’t really want to let him in. He is infuriated that with a war going on in Vietnam his boss is taking time out to play silly games of chance rather than getting on the with real business of diplomacy. Vietnam is referenced again in the ironic closing freeze frame in which Himuro covers his face with a newspaper bearing the headline “America bets on bombing North Vietnam” – politics itself is now a game played by men in smart suits trying to stave off the boredom of being alive by using the lives of real men and women as gambling chips with little more feeling for them than for the tiny scraps of plastic which stand in for meaningless little bits of paper in the centre of a table covered in green felt.

Women, it seems, are a more immediate casualty of a gambler’s vice. Reiko, sent to spy on Himuro but drawn to his cardsharp’s acumen, was herself gambled away by her father who lost her to Inumaru in a bet. She holds no affection for the man who won her, but feels bound to him all the same and has vowed to become a top gambler as an odd kind of revenge. Nina too suffers at the hands of gangsters and criminals, drawn to Himuro because of his heroic nobility and unable to escape the underground world of grifters and chancers without the help of a seasoned player.

Sticking to a house style, Nakahira finds little scope to express himself in another B-movie adventure for the sophisticated gambling man. Nevertheless, there’s enough Bond-inspired silliness to keep the franchise fans happy from Himuro’s ball bearing loaded car to the gaming intrigue and intricate cheats that define it. The Black Gambler is a fairly typical example of Nikkatsu’s regular programme picture with little to distinguish it but it does what it sets out to well enough and with crowd pleasing style.

Opening scene (no subtitles)

Tokyo Knights (東京騎士隊, Seijun Suzuki, 1961)

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Tokyo Knights posterUnlike those from elsewhere, Japanese teen movies can often exist inside their very own bubbles in which the central characters refuse their coming of age stories and either die senselessly or simply carry on from their zany adventures as if nothing had really happened. Tokyo Knights (東京騎士隊, Tokyo Knight) definitely falls into the comedy category as its teen heartthrob hero, played by the then up and coming matinee idol Koji Wada, pulls a Hamlet in being called back from overseas studies to become CEO in waiting to his late father’s company only to suspect there’s something rotten in the state of Matsubara Construction. Quirky high school antics quickly give way to conspiracy thriller, but Koji (Koji Wada) remains steadfast and unwavering in the face of adversity as he faces off against the forces of darkness with little more than Nikkatsu spirit.

The film opens with a rather strange ceremony in which high school student Koji is instated as the new CEO of his father’s company. Koji’s dad apparently died suddenly in a freak accident meaning Koji has had to come home early from studying abroad in the US. Despite apparently being an amazing student who is good at absolutely everything and has joined all the after school clubs on offer, Koji has chosen the Catholic Elizabeth Academy because it’s well known as a coasting school where you can graduate with average grades. Fairly low attainment goals might be just as well because Koji is about to have his hands full with another mission. He’s convinced his dad’s death wasn’t an “accident” and he suspects his deputy, Mishima (Nobuo Kaneko), who is also getting close to his mum, might know more about it than he’s letting on.

In the grand tradition of heroes in Japanese teen drama, Koji has just found himself at the centre of a huge and dark conspiracy involving dodgy yakuza construction deals, blackmail, and murder. He does not lose heart or look to the grown ups for help but decides to handle the problem himself, settling back into the Hamlet-esque role he’s been assigned in neatly setting traps for the treacherous Mishima only doing it with a little more cosmopolitan flair carried back from abroad. Swapping roles like one of his much loved Noh costumes, he then becomes a kind of Romeo to the high school darling Yuriko (Mayumi Shimizu) whose dad, unbeknownst to her, turns out to be a horrible gangster who might be involved in the nefarious plan to take over the family firm. Enjoying a minor romance with the melancholy Yuriko, Koji considers the best way to get revenge and expose evil while protecting his mother, surrogate little sister figure, and his newfound love (?) Yuriko who will undoubtedly suffer now that she knows what kind of man her father really is.

Suzuki apparently incited the wrath of studio bosses when he took a serious crime script and turned it into an anarchic teen comedy but then you have to wonder what they thought it was he would do with it. The impossibly cool Koji is certainly an unrealistic hero, presented unironically he’d be sure to irritate – guys like Koji are, after all, more usually the antagonist set up to make our imperfect everyman feel inferior while he progresses towards some kind of self actualisation as a result of the standard narrative. Koji is, however, heroic and easily likeable as he assumes complete control, handling every situation with practiced ease and remembering to remain kind and just while he does so. He even stops to listen to his mother’s problems, sympathising with her when she reveals her unhappiness with his father, and urging her to grasp happiness wherever she sees it without worrying whatever he or anyone else might think.

Perhaps because of the relative simplicity of the plot, and the opportunity to shoot in colour, Suzuki flexes his muscles a little more than usual in adding in a fair few post-modern techniques including on screen graphics such as a series of large question marks zooming out of the major players Koji suspects may be involved in his father’s death and making a joke out of the need to include the songs of the day with frequent cuts to a teen cabaret club. For all of the tale’s darkness and almost Shakespearean overtones, Suzuki keeps his tongue firmly in cheek with a cartoonish sense of fun and lightness, allowing our heroes to emerge from their ordeal fairly unscathed while honour and justice are preserved. Who knew Catholic school could be so much fun?

Available as part of Arrow’s Seijun Suzuki: The Early Years Vol. 2 Border Crossings box set.

Original trailer (English subtitles)