Tag: Noboru Nakaya

Whirlpool of Flesh (おんなの渦と淵と流れ, Ko Nakahira, 1964)

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A intellectual professor and his wounded wife find themselves trapped in a toxic marriage after returning from Manchuria in Ko Nakahira’s fatalistic drama, Whirlpool of Flesh (おんなの渦と淵と流れ, Onna no Uzu to Fuchi to Nagare). Set in the late ‘40s, the film does indeed position Manchuria as a point of corruption while otherwise suggesting that Japan itself has been emasculated by the Occupation, but otherwise demonstrates how the couple drag each other into a cycling whirlpool of jealousy and obsession that it seems neither of them are really equipped to understand let alone escape.

Claiming to have been struck by her bright and smiling face in her omiai photo, Keikichi (Noboru Nakaya) married Sugako (Kazuko Ineno) in Manchuria without actually meeting her before the wedding. Apparently uninterested in sex, Keikichi was a virgin on their wedding night but harbours doubts Sugako may not have been. In any case, he seems put out that Sugako is not in his opinion his intellectual equal. He chances on her diary in which she details how bored she is by his constant lectures about English literature and that she feels him to be more schoolteacher than husband, but he merely scoffs that it’s not particularly well written. He begins to suspect that she’s sleeping with customers who come into the speakeasy she opens in their home during the days between the Russian invasion and repatriation and succumbs to a generalised sense of impotence hiding out in his room upstairs reading while she takes care of business below. 

In the present day, convinced that she’s having an ongoing affair with a merchant, Otani (Kazuo Kitamura), Keikichi pretends to go to a hot springs resort and then sneaks back to spy on her from an adjacent room. Though he feels no desire for her as his wife, through the eyes of these other men he rediscovers a sense of Sugako as the woman from the photograph for whom he does feel some attraction and satisfies his latent sexual desires through watching her sleep with Otani. As an escape from the war, he’d been working on a translation of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida the heroine of which he seems to superimpose on Sugako in wondering if she is a faithless woman or true, angel or devil. 

Yet from Sugako’s point of view, she begs him for physical intimacy which he refuses to grant despite his jealousy over her relations with other men. Traumatised by her sexual abuse at the hands of her uncle, Sugako believes that she has a body designed to satisfy men’s desires and is drawn into meaningless, and often transactional, sexual relationships. When Keikichi later questions her, it seems she doesn’t remember any of them in detail for to her they were simply “men” and nothing more. The situation is somewhat complicated by the fact that her uncle was a scholar of Chinese literature, which in part aligns him with Keikichi, but also points back to Manchuria as a source of corruption though coming uncomfortably from the opposite direction. 

Sugako equates this corrupted sexuality with the great emptiness inside her that frequently leads to thoughts of suicide. Nakahira constantly shows us shots of Keikichi’s knife as if implying some kind of violence is inevitably going to take place, though in the end it signals nothing so much as Keikichi’s impotence. Then again, the emptiness is also linked to a sense of despair in Japan’s defeat that is manifested most obviously in the house next-door where the widowed mother may have been having an affair with Sugako’s uncle and unsubtly tries to blackmail her by threatening to expose the secret of her sexual abuse about which she had tried to tell Keikichi but he had refused to listen. The daughter has become a sex worker catering to American servicemen to support the family while her brother, Kenichi (Tamio Kawachi), allows her to sacrifice herself for him justifying himself that it’s for the greater good as he’ll eventually become a doctor and save countless other lives. He’s also masquerading as a Christian to get a scholarship to an American university through the church which is all very contradictory not to mention selfish and cynical. The sister, meanwhile, appears to have lost her mind and frequently rants and raves, blaming her mother by claiming that walking in on her with Sugako’s uncle permanently corrupted her sense of self and sexuality. Like Sugako, she exorcises her trauma through abusing her body, in her case through sex work with “nasty GIs who don’t always pay.”

Keikichi refers to this as “post-war nihilism” like the frequent strikes and workers parades that take place around him, but partially repairs his sense of masculinity after moving to Tokyo and getting a job. At work he meets another young woman who is a mirror of the young lady from next-door in that she was also repatriated from Manchuria where her father was a member of the government. With her mother dead and father unable to work, Shimura (Kaori Taniguchi) also supports her family with her secretarial job and often goes without lunch herself to make ends meet. Keikichi notices this and offers her his bento claiming to be feeling unwell, but fails to notice how his pity wounds her dignity even if he meant in kindness while acknowledging that he’s never known hunger. Unlike the mismatched Sugako, Keikichi and Shimura are an ideal match. She also wanted to study English literature and can meet him on his level discussing politics and culture though he does not seem to be aware that he is attracted to her and acts almost paternally in offering to pay her university fees to help her escape her life of poverty, echoing Sugako’s claims that he had become her “little boy” rather than her husband. 

The irony is that Sugako insists Keikichi, who does little but look down on her and alternately complain that she’s either impure or unattractive, is the only man she’s ever loved and blames his lack of sexual interest in her on the unresolved trauma of her childhood abuse. Having asked Kenichi to help her get her hands on some cyanide, she is shocked and disgusted when despite his need he rejects her money and asks for her body instead. He insists that it’s “only the friction of mucus membranes” and that she might as well sleep with him first if she’s going to die, though her refusal is in part a desire to die “pure” and finally overcome the emptiness and despair inside her. This inability to reconcile herself is also aligned with Keikichi’s vision of “post-war nihilism” and suggests that in the end this trauma can’t be healed and must necessarily lead to destruction. Meanwhile, Keikichi seems to have discovered a path towards his rebirth in his friendship with Shimura only to potentially have the rug pulled from under him. His new future too, may end up poisoned by Sugako’s unilateral decision to facilitate it. Dark and twisted in true Nakahira fashion, the film paints the post-war society itself as a deepening whirlpool from which there is no escape or at least not for those like Keikichi and Sugako forever locked in a deathly embrace and drawn ever deeper into the waves.

Flowing (流れる, Mikio Naruse, 1956)

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The denizens of a moribund geisha house contemplate visions of independence in post-war Japan Mikio Naruse’s thriving ensemble drama, Flowing (流れる, Nagareru). There is indeed a flowing through the geisha house, a tumble of comings and goings though mostly connected to money which is itself constantly flowing though the for geisha mainly in the wrong direction. Released in the year of Prostitution Prevention Law, the film casts a shadow over the lives of these women who are unwittingly living in their industry’s twilight but asks if it’s really possible for a woman to survive without a man while each of them is in one way or another badly let down by an inconstant lover. 

We’re constantly told that Tsutanoya is the most respectable geisha house in town yet despite its well appointed interiors, it’s clear that business is not good. As the film opens, a young geisha, Namie, is accusing the owner’s daughter Katsuyo (Hideko Takamine) of diddling her on her pay. Katsuyo acts indignant and tries to shift the blame back onto Namie but later admits that the house has indeed been skimming a little more off their wages than was agreed claiming all the geisha houses do it which is probably true but doesn’t make it right. In any case Namie will eventually quit and end up working at “some third rate place” while her uncle (Seiji Miyaguchi) causes problems for proprietress Tsuta (Isuzu Yamada) complaining that Namie was exploited and wanting both the backpay he feels she’s owed and compensation though it seems unlikely any of that money is finding its way back to Namie. Meanwhile the house is a geisha down with only former office worker Nanako (Mariko Okada) and 50-year-old veteran Someka (Haruko Sugimura) on the books.

Despite their financial situation, Tsuta hires a new maid, Rika (Kinuyo Tanaka) who is immediately renamed “Oharu” on her arrival. Oharu is a salt of the Earth type, infinitely capable, maternal, kind and loyal bringing a much needed sense of stability to the ever flowing geisha house while also fascinated by this exotic and arcane world. But then as Tsuta cautions her geisha houses may look glamorous from the outside but the life inside them isn’t always fun. Oharu runs into trouble on her first trip to the grocers when they inform her Tsuta hasn’t paid her tab and they can’t let her add to it until she does. A 45-year-old widow whose only child died a year previously, Oharu is also trying to live an independent life, a conflicted Tsuta struck with wonder at her ability to survive without a man, but may also have struggled, grateful to have been offered the job which others might have declined because of the stigma towards the sex trade as finding employment as a middle-aged woman is near impossible. 

At the film’s conclusion even she may imply it isn’t really possible to live as a woman without some kind of support or losing one’s humanity suggesting that she may return to her husband’s hometown and the family she claims not have gotten along with after learning of Tsuta’s betrayal at the hands of an old friend and former geisha, Ohama (Sumiko Kurishima), who at any rate seems to be living quite well as the proprietress of a restaurant. Traditionally, the profession of geisha was seen as a kind of independence in itself but it’s also one that by its nature is reliant on men. Tsuta is often described as someone who is not able to do anything else yet is highly skilled at music and dance having spent a lifetime in training. Without a patron she is stuck and as we learn she threw hers over to pursue a man she loved but he left her in the lurch having mortgaged the geisha house to invest in his business by taking a loan from her older sister who seems to have a nice sideline as a polite loan shark also having loaned money to Someka. 

The most outwardly cheerful, Someka is in other ways a dark vision of a geisha’s future surviving on nothing but nihilistic hedonism while apparently living with a much younger man who eventually leaves her to marry into another woman’s family. Katsuyo has rejected the geisha life explaining that she is unable to, as Nanaka puts it, say silly things to men in order to earn her keep and is essentially incapable of ingratiating herself with men she doesn’t like. She claims she has no desire to marry, unconvinced that any man would be interested in a geisha’s daughter while certain that for a man marrying into a woman’s family is humiliating while suggesting the same would be true for her. Putting her faith in industry, she buys a sewing machine and sets about figuring out how to use it less because she envisages being able to support herself and her mother through taking in needlework than she just wants to feel as if she’s doing something. 

Meanwhile, Tsuta’s niece Fujiko observes all the comings and goings of the geisha house learning the traditional arts in preparation for a future which will soon be obsolete. In a typically Narusean touch, Tsuta comes to a resolution about her future and envisages a new beginning for herself but is unaware the rug is soon to be pulled from under her by the underhanded capitalist Ohama who plans to turf her out to turn the geisha house into another restaurant. “My days of seeking favours from men are over,” Tsuta admits, not of her own volition but simply understanding that she no longer has access to that kind of independence though in essence surrendering her autonomy in leaving herself to the mercy of Ohama in order to escape her older sister’s control. Someka had laughed raucously at Katsuyo’s insistence that she need not be dependent on a man (and after everything she’s seen why would she want to be?) but the younger woman is undeterred even as we see her struggling, doubting that her efforts will in the end be enough to win her her freedom. Ever the optimist, Tsuta is perhaps doing something similar but even Oharu is considering giving up and going home, too good to survive in the dog eat dog world of the contemporary capital where the flow of currency is the lifeblood of the city implying that perhaps the answer to her question is no, a woman can’t survive alone, nor can she rely on female solidarity, but she’ll have to try anyway because there is no other choice. 

A Wanderer’s Notebook (放浪記, Mikio Naruse, 1962)

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Many of Mikio Naruse’s most famous films are adapted from the work of Fumiko Hayashi, a pioneering female author who chronicled the life of a working class woman with startling frankness. Yet his dramatisation of her life, A Wanderer’s Notebook (放浪記, Horo-ki), is both a little more reactionary than one might have expected and surprisingly unflattering even in the heroine’s eventual triumph in escaping her poverty through artistry. Even so if perhaps sentimentalising the economically difficult society of the 1920s in emphasising the suffering which gave rise to Hayashi’s art, the film does lay bare the divisions of class and gender that she did to some extent transgress in pursuit of her literary destiny. 

Naruse and his screenwriters Toshiro Ide and Sumie Tanaka bookend the the film with a literal “lonely lane” which the young Fumiko walks with her itinerant salespeople parents. As a small child, she sees her father arrested for a snake oil scam peddling some kind of wondrous lotion, setting up both her disdain for men in general and her determination not to be deceived by them at least unwittingly. She has no formal education but is a voracious reader well versed in the literary culture of the time and intensely resentful of if resigned to her poverty. In the frequent sections of text which litter the screen taken directly from her novels, she details her purchases, wages, and longing for the small luxuries she can in no way afford. 

As an uneducated woman in the 1920s her working opportunities are few. She exasperatedly relates standing in a queue with hundreds of other women waiting for an interview for a company job only to be told they’ll let her know, while her other opportunity involves meeting a theatre director at a station who later takes her to his hotel/office and makes it plain he’s not really interested in her CV. She gets a job at the office of a stockbroker, but lies about being able to do accounts and is flummoxed by double entry bookkeeping getting herself fired on day one. After a brief stint in factory painting toys, she leaves with a friend to become a hostess but is also fired on her first day for getting drunk and being unwilling to ingratiate herself with the boorish men who frequent such establishments. 

Despite her animosity, she is drawn towards men who are callous and self-involved, firstly taking up with a poet and actor who praises her work but turns out to have several “wives” on the go, and then begins living with a broody writer, Fukuchi, who is insecure and violent, resentful at her success in wake of his failure. Perhaps because of her experiences, she seems to resent any hint of kindness though sometimes kind herself, lending money to her friend whose mother is in need and often ready to stand up for others whom she feels are being mistreated. A kindly widower in the boarding house where she lives with her mother, Yasuoka, falls in love with her but she repeatedly rejects him partly as someone suggests because he is not handsome, but mainly because of his goodness and kindness towards her. Nevertheless, he continues to support always ready in her time of need though having accepted that she will never return his feelings or accept his proposal. 

Perhaps her might have liked to have been kinder, but was too wounded by her experiences to permit herself. In any case at the film’s conclusion in which she has achieved success and in fact become wealthy it appears to have made her cold and judgemental. She instructs her maid to send a man away believing he is from a charity set up to help the poor, insisting that the poor must work for industry is the only path out of poverty implying that as she managed it herself those who cannot are simply not applying themselves when she of all people should know how fallacious the sentiment is. As if to bear out the chip on her shoulder, she forces her mother to wear a ridiculous kimono from a bygone era that is heavy for an old woman and makes her feel foolish because of her own mental image of the finery she dreamed of providing her on escaping the persistent hardship of their lives. 

As she says, she’s no interest in the socialist politics espoused by the literary circles in which she later comes to move, pointing out that the poor have no time for waving flags. One of her greatest supporters is himself from a noble family despite his progressive politics and in truth can never really understand the lives of women like Fumiko. He describes her work as like upending a rubbish bin and poking through it with a stick, at once fascinated and repulsed by a frankness he may see as vulgar. At one point he accuses her of writing poverty porn, playing on her humble origins for copy and becoming something of a one note writer. 

In truth, the film is not really based on the novel from which it takes its title but on the play that was adapted from it, while the novel itself was apparently reworked and republished several times in response to reader taste giving rise to a series of questions both about its essential authenticity and what it was that it was attempting to convey. In the film at least, moments after her literary success, Fumiko is challenged by a fellow female writer, Kyoko, who was once her love rival, that she cheated in a contest by failing to submit Kyoko’s entry until after the deadline had passed, though as it seems she would have won anyway. She is occasionally underhanded, perhaps because she feels she has no other choice, but then as we can see there is no particular solidarity between women save the kindly landladies who often let her delay her rent payments. Fumiko feels herself to be alone and her quest is not really for literary success but simply for her next meal, though she feels the slights of the bitchy women and arrogant men who mock her commonness while simultaneously exploiting it as entertainment. 

On the one hand, her success seems to signal a triumph of independence having freed herself from the need to depend on terrible men though she also she seems to have met and married a warmhearted painter who cares for her and supports her work while she has also been able to give her mother the level of comfort they both once dreamed of. Even so, the unavoidable fact that she dies at such a young age implies she’s worked herself into an early grave in a sense punishing her for her rejection of contemporary social norms undercutting her achievements with some regressive moralising while the one thing she still desires, rest, is given to her only in death. In Takamine’s highly stylised performance, as some have implied perhaps intended to mimic the silent screen, Fumiko is at once a carefree young woman who dances and sings and a melancholy fatalist with a self-destructive talent for choosing insecure and self-involved men, but above all else a woman walking a lonely road towards her own fulfilment while searching for a way out of poverty that need not transgress her particular sense of righteousness. 

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Willful Murder (日本の熱い日々 謀殺・下山事件, Kei Kumai, 1981)

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Beginning to piece something together, the dogged reporter at the centre of Kei Kumai’s Willful Murder (日本の熱い日々 謀殺・下山事件, Nihon no Atsui Hibi Bosatsu: Shimoyama Jiken) looks out at an industrial complex and reflects that when he visited it eight years previously it was a “piddling little factory” and has since become a “major company”. His comments might equally stand for Japan itself as Kumai charts the course of the nation’s post-war economic miracle viewing it as a kind of Faustian bargain with the Americans largely conducted by former militarists driven by personal gain and ideological fury. 

Based on the book by Kimio Yada, The Killing: The Shimoyama Incident, the film turns on the mystery surrounding the still unexplained death of Japan National Railways CEO Sadanori Shimoyama whose dismembered body was discovered by the railway tracks in July 1949 suggesting he had been hit by a train. Given the investigative techniques available at the time, Shimoyama’s demise has never been conclusively ruled either a murder or a suicide with experts from rival universities coming to opposing opinions and the police later closing the case in somewhat suspicious circumstances. 

Kumai’s film leans towards the murder angle though like the real life investigators cannot definitively rule out that Shimoyama may have taken his own life presumably due to the pressure he felt himself under after being ordered by the occupation authorities to dismiss 30,000 railway workers from their jobs as part of the so called “Dodge Line” economic plan intended to halt runaway inflation. As the film’s opening voice over also reveals, the Japan Railways Union was at the centre of the labour movement at the moment in which occupational approach was shifting from its original purpose of demilitarisation and democratisation, towards remilitarisation and capitalisation as the Americans sought to make Japan a foreign policy ally in their opposition towards communism in Asia. 

The film’s thesis is that US forces were already planning for the Korean War and urgently needed to crush the labour movement. Shortly after Shimoyama’s death, two other railway incidents occurred firstly with the runaway train in Mitaka which crashed into the station killing six and injuring 20, and then the Matsukawa derailment for which 17 men were falsely convicted (four sentenced to death) all of whom were members of the railway workers’ union. The conclusion that dogged reporter Yashiro (Tatsuya Nakadai) slowly comes to, is that Shimoyama was murdered and the train incidents staged to discredit the labour movement on the orders of the occupation forces while former militarist collaborators continued on the same path in a newly “democratic” Japan.

Japan certainly did very well out of the Korean War the economic stimulus of which allowed that “piddling little factory” to become a “major company” in under a decade much as the nation rocketed towards the economic prosperity which culminated in the 1964 Olympics against which the film’s finale is played. The portrait the Kumai paints is of a nation which has lost its soul, mired in hypocrisy which makes a mockery of “pacifism” and “democracy”. There are in fact at least three unexplained deaths presented in the film, the second of the being that of Michiko Kanba who was killed during the protests against the Anpo security treaty which was later forced through parliament despite clear public opposition. The same possibly corrupt pathologist is assigned to the autopsy and argues that the young woman died as the result of a crowd crush despite the attending physician’s report that the cause of death was strangulation. 

The true villain is however the American occupation and Japan’s continuing complicity even after it ended. Kumai includes several scenes of mass protest against the presence of the American military in Japan, and often places American soldiers ominously hovering in the corners of the frame such as those standing directly outside the police station. Yashiro attempts to interview a Korean man who tried to blow a whistle on the Shimoyama murder only to be arrested by US Counter Intelligence and later physically dragged out of the visiting room by a lurking MP. It all sounds like a conspiracy theory and one Yashiro doesn’t know if he should believe but then has to ask himself why all these people are seemingly being silenced if there is nothing to hide. He maintains his conviction that Shimoyama was murdered, but cannot necessarily say whether it was by a communist foreign nation as the Korean whistleblower had suggested or by the Americans trying to frustrate the “democracy” they’d previously been so keen on lest it disrupt their capitalist agenda. 

In the closing scenes, Yashiro is confronted by yet another death which cannot be ruled suicide or murder along with the realisation that he will never learn the truth. The grills from a grate on the platform of a train station above cast shadowy bars that imprison him in the shady cynicism of the Cold War society. Kumai films in boxy 4:3 academy ratio and in the black and white of golden age cinema, lending a degree of cinematic realism to his devastating tale of post-war moral decline which contains a note of inescapable dread in the faces of two men caught in the intermittent flashes of a train going by obscuring a truth that can never be revealed.

A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness (悲愁物語, Seijun Suzuki, 1977)

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Famously, Seijun Suzuki was let go by Nikkatsu in 1968 after studio bosses became fed up with his apparently “nonsensical” filmmaking. Exiled from the film world, Suzuki made do with TV work before making his comeback with, rather surprisingly, a media satire based on a manga by Ashita no Joe’s Ikki Kajiwara. A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness (悲愁物語, Hishu Monogatari) is at once a dissection of the fluctuating class and social systems of a nation entering an era of high prosperity and a condemnation of the consumerist corruptions of a society increasingly ruled by celebrity.

It is in the corporate that the corruption begins. With mild overtones of cold war paranoia, Nichei Fabrics is alarmed that a rival firm has brought on a top Russian gymnast as a brand ambassador and is convinced they need to find someone who can steal her thunder. Fashion co-ordinator Tadokoro (Masumi Okada) comes to the conclusion that they need a homegrown star and decides to make one by grooming a promising lady golfer to become both a champion and a minor celebrity after achieving an underdog victory in a prestigious tournament. 

One might ask weather society at large is likely to take much interest in who wins the Japanese Women’s Golf Tournament, but then everyone loves an underdog victory and Tadokoro seems to think he can make them care through carefully managed media manipulation. Golf is also, of course, thought of as an upperclass pursuit beloved by a new class of salaryman despite its origins, as sportswriter Miyake (Yoshio Harada) describes them, as a pastime invented by farmers to stave off boredom. Reiko (Yoko Shiraki), Miyake’s girlfriend whom he is in a way agreeing to sell to Tadokoro, is ostensibly a working class woman raising her orphaned little brother who discovered a natural talent for golf while working as a caddy for veteran male golfer, Takagi (Shuji Sano), now her mentor. She is not, however, a natural media star, something not helped by the brand’s decision to photograph her wearing wedge shoes and eventually a bikini on the green to showcase their leisurewear which she otherwise would not necessarily be wearing during a regular golfing tournament. 

The colour green ironically becomes a kind of harbinger of doom, caught in the reflection of psychotic stalker housewife Kayo (Kyoko Enami) and later that of Reiko herself while she is otherwise offered sickly green cocktails or projected against predominantly green backgrounds. The house that Nichiei build for her comes with a tiny putting green that more resembles the catwalk it eventually becomes in the crazed bacchanal organised by Kayo in which she orders the other neighbourhood housewives to strip a near catatonic Reiko of the few clothes she is still permitted to wear. The early photo shoot marked the beginning of a gradual erasure of her identity and its replacement by Reiko the star, to Tadokoro, and Reiko the champion golfer to Miyake. 

Much of Reiko’s golfing technique seems to centre on a kind of cosmic ordering, insisting that she is one with the ball which will land exactly where she envisages it while ignoring her competitor’s attempts to make conversation with her warning that a golfer’s career is long and it’s a bad idea to offend ones seniors. A moment with her stylist is chilling its similarity as she’s told to believe herself happy so that she can smile for the cameras with the otherwise vacant look of a manufactured celebrity. She repeats these mantras to herself constantly even as her own personality is overwritten in part by Nichei fabrics and in part by Kayo who jumps in front of her car while Miyake is driving and thereafter blackmails her into almost total servitude. 

The other housewives had objected to Reiko’s presence in describing her as “low-class” and suggesting that she must be some man’s mistress because it seems unlikely to them that a pro golfer could earn the kind of money to buy a house in their neighbourhood. Their opinion of her is confirmed in their complaints about her noisy garage door, though in truth Reiko doesn’t own the house it almost owns her given that it is provided for her by Nichiei so she can get to the studio to film the daytime show they’ve created for her which mainly seems to be about fashion rather than golf which she now has almost no time to practice despite Tadokoro’s plan for her to participate in a high profile contest against a top American golfer. A classic curtain twitcher, Kayo is taken with the idea of having a celerity living next door and, already ostracised by the other housewives for being a little odd, worms her way into her life eventually deriving a quasi-sexual thrill in being able to manipulate a famous face. “I’m the only one who knows her hair’s not real!” she squeals watching Reiko on TV with her new wig after hacking her hair off as a means of punishment for hitting her with the car. 

Kayo might be, in another way, the true victim of this system. Her life is obviously materially comfortable, but she’s trapped in the role of the conventional housewife while largely ignored by her salaryman husband and, as they have no children, left on her own all day with nothing to do. When she tells Reiko that she’s lonely and just wants a friend, it goes someway to explaining her otherwise bizarre behaviour as it also does for Reiko who later chuckles when Kayo randomly asks her to sleep with her husband as a favour replying that’s it’s fine “because we’re friends”. Reiko’s body, often caught by Suzuki naked in classical poses, is misused by just about everyone from Kayo to Nichei to Miyake, leaving her little more than a grinning mannequin completely hollowed out and devoid of all individuality. 

In some ways, Kayo’s decision to invite the neighbourhood women into Reiko’s home, letting them try on her clothes, drink her booze, and generally jump all over her nice new life, could be seen as an attack on everything she represents by these otherwise conservative women who resent her class transgression and independent success. Yet it’s also a very personal act of self-destruction in erasing this image of herself through that of Reiko which she has equally created. It’s another kind of self-destruction that ends the film and may be another kind of bid for freedom, an attempt to free Reiko from psychological disintegration at the hands of the consumerist society until it all quite literally goes up in smoke. A tale of sorrow and sadness indeed, Reiko is eventually consumed by the consumerist society, a little ball hit into its hole and unable to climb out, while the flames rise all around her.  

A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness Japan Society New York on Feb. 11 as part of the Seijun Suzuki Centennial.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Get ’em All (「みな殺しの歌」より　拳銃よさらば, Eizo Sugawa, 1960)

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A recently released young man is forced onto a nihilistic path of meaningless violence when his bank robber brother is killed in a hit and run in Eizo Sugawa’s moody post-war noir, Get ‘em All (「みな殺しの歌」より　拳銃よさらば, ‘Minagoroshi no uta’ yori kenju yo saraba). Adapted from a novel from Japan’s hardboiled master Haruhiko Oyabu who also provided the source material for Sugawa’s The Beast Shall Die, the film is as much about defeated aspiration and personal despair as it is about the corrupting influence of money and the futility of vengeance.

After waiting a year to divide the loot from a bank robbery, a random syndicate of crooks is shocked to discover that it has gone missing from its hiding place in an ancestral tomb belonging to one of their members along with a gun connected to the crime which is presumably being kept for insurance purposes. Everyone is convinced someone else has taken it with Tanabe (Tetsuro Tanba), the owner of the tomb, most particular about getting his hands on his share as quickly as possible and directing his suspicion towards the heist’s mastermind, Koromogawa (Akihiko Hirata). 

Koromogawa is currently doing quite well for himself, having recently married and moved into a fancy new flat on a danchi. His brother Kyosuke (Hiroshi Mizuwara) has just been released from prison for an undisclosed juvenile crime and evidently has never met his sister-in-law Mamiko (Yukiko Shimazaki). Strangely buoyant and incredibly naive for someone who’s spent time inside, Kyosuke is determined to go straight and is intending to save money to buy a truck he can use to start his own business. He has no idea that his brother’s newfound wealth is down to robbing banks and is absolutely certain that he is a morally upright person who’d never have anything to do with criminality. When Koromogawa is killed in a hit and run after leaving to meet Tanabe, the suspicion is that he’s been murdered by one of the crooks in a dispute over the money though that would admittedly be quite a counterproductive move as if he really has taken it now that he’s dead no one knows where it is.   

Kyosuke is shocked by Mamiko’s apparently indifference to her husband’s death, even going so far as openly flirt with him. After discovering a receipt for a coin locker in his brother’s wallet, he opens it and finds a pistol first planting the seeds of doubt in his mind about Koromogawa’s life and death. The gun, however, begins to take him over. After reuniting with old girlfriend Yuriko (Akemi Kita), Kyosuke was beaten up by her new squeeze but when he tries the same thing again and notices the pistol tucked into Kyosuke’s waistband he immediately backs down. With the gun in his hand, Kyosuke is able to completely humiliate him, forcing the man to crawl on the floor like a pig and drink dirty water from a puddle in the road. This new sense of ultimate power fuels his desire for revenge setting him on a killing spree starting with Tanabe in an effort to figure out what happened to his brother, an exercise often frustrated by his killing those concerned before turning up any real information. 

Meanwhile, using the gun is also quite a stupid and naive thing to do as the police already have it on file from a shot that was fired during the robbery bringing the crime back into police consciousness and therefore making it impossible for any of the men to spend the money should they finally get their hands on it. Each has a different reason for wanting the loot, a clockmaker wanting to support a daughter left with disabilities after contracting polio, a former record producer realising that he’s aged out of his industry, a former boxer with a lame leg (Tatsuya Nakadai) dreaming of buying a small plot of land, and a couple of embezzlers looking for ways out along with in one case divorcing a wife to marry a bar hostess mistress. But then as in the last two cases and Koromogawa’s own it is perhaps the allure of rising consumerism that has already corrupted them. So much of the action revolves around big American cars, while we’re also told that the gun was one manufactured in Nazi Germany and was most likely bought or stolen from an American serviceman. 

So drunk is Kyosuke on the power of the gun that he doesn’t really take stock of what he’s doing until it’s already too late, realising he’s become an accidental serial killer and no longer has a possibility of leading a normal life. He had begun to feel that way before, especially in the wake of his brother’s death, as he finds each of his job applications failing when prospective employers learn of his criminal past. He’s repaid his debt to society, but if society refuses to give him a second chance then realistically he has no other avenue than heading deeper into crime. Kyosuke liked it that the gun made people fear him but is confronted by the illusionary quality of its power when a child suddenly grabs it in the middle of a game of cops and robbers, pointing the gun at him believing it to be a toy while passers-by laugh at the amusing sight of this little boy holding a grownup hostage. It seemed to confuse Kyosuke that Yuriko had not been afraid of him even with the gun in his hand, but her sudden terror on realising that he has killed and may yet kill her only shows him what he’s become. 

He wanted revenge for his brother’s death, but what if it really was just an accident? The gang begin to turn on each other after the money disappears, some believing Koromogawa took it for safekeeping to prevent them incriminating each other by spending it too early and others that he just took it for himself while each suspecting one another believing one of them is slowly killing the others to pocket the whole amount for themselves. But in the end it’s all for nothing, they couldn’t spend it anyway and several of them decide they’d rather not have the bother and are ready to live quiet lives in the country only it’s too late for that now. A final revelation confirming his brother’s criminality coupled with the betrayal of a friend’s well-meaning attempt to keep him in the dark lead only to an internecine confrontation with the futility of crime. With its noirish jazz score and photography reminiscent of contemporary American independent cinema Sugawa captures a sense of restless youth but also the latent desperation of those left languishing on the margins of an increasingly prosperous society.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

The Hunter’s Diary (猟人日記, Ko Nakahira, 1964)

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Ko Nakahira is most closely associated with the seminal Nikkatsu Sun Tribe film Crazed Fruit which sent Yujiro Ishihara to stardom though he began his career at Shochiku in 1948 alongside Seijun Suzuki who like Nakahira would transfer to the newly re-established Nikkatsu when it resumed production in 1954. Suzuki was rather famously let go in 1968 due to creative differences with Nakahira also leaving the studio that year in similar circumstances having decamped to Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong in 1967 where he remade some of his previous hits including 1964’s Hunter’s Diary (猟人日記, Ryojin Nikki). 

Based on a mystery novel by Masako Togawa who in fact stars in her only film role as the hero’s little seen wife, Hunter’s Diary is one of a string of films in the mid-1960s critical of the functioning of the legal system in the post-war society. Nakahira opens with a lengthy sequence introducing new forensic technologies which anticipate the use of DNA as an investigative tool in the use of blood type analysis to place a suspect at a crime scene. This science will however be undercut by the sympathetic lawyer Hatanaka (Kazuo Kitamura) who reminds us that the presence of such evidence is not proof in and of itself in much the same way that DNA has since become the new smoking gun and is as susceptible to misuse as any other kind of forensic technique. 

It’s a problem for the hero, Honda (Noboru Nakaya), because his blood type is incredibly rare. In fact he was once in the paper for saving a baby by coming to the rescue with a donation just in time which as we later discover is ironic because much of his behaviour is shaped by the loss of his own child who was born with osteogenesis imperfecta and did not survive. The traumatic circumstances of the birth left his wife, Taneko, with a fear of pregnancy that eventually destroyed their marriage. The couple now live largely apart, she in her family’s country mansion painting disturbing pictures and he in the city “hunting” women for one night stands adopting the persona of a man who is foreign or part-Japanese. There is something of the fear of foreignness seen in other similarly themed films of the era in the fact that Honda’s child is born in Mexico while the couple had met and married in the US, Taneko convinced that had they returned to Japan earlier her baby may have survived while Honda claims that “intellectual” women are drawn to foreign men as he assumes his rather creepy “Monsieur Soubra” alter-ego complete with a funny accent and slightly broken Japanese. 

He positions his “hunting” as a way of dealing with the collapse of his marriage and his guilt over the death of his child overcoming his sense of impotence through transgressive sexuality though many of the women Hatanaka later interviews describe him as disappointingly vanilla and as we discover his games might have begun long before. Meanwhile the women are themselves judged for their sexuality, the discovery of a male muscle magazine in the home of a mousy spinster somewhat amusing to Honda while the unintended darkness of his sport is brought home by the film’s opening sequence in which a 19-year-old woman who became pregnant after he seduced and abandoned her takes her own life in shame and desperation only to be branded an “idiot” by her grieving sister for having slept with a man she had only just met. When a previous conquest of his is murdered in her apartment, Honda is momentarily worried but assumes it’s a grim coincidence. When her death is followed by that of a woman who could have provided him with an alibi he comes to the conclusion that someone is trying to frame him. 

Hatanaka’s conviction is that “the law is everything in court” and that Honda should not be judged on his moral character for his sleazy philandering only on the basis of the evidence presented which he believes may have been deliberately planted to incriminate him. His investigations take him to unlikely places discovering the potentially unethical practices of blood donation programs along with the illegal sale of blood and other bodily fluids such as semen while seeing the tables turned on visiting a gay bar where a male sex worker reports a weird encounter with a suspicious client, and salesman continues to frequent a Turkish bath hoping to run into a woman who seduced him but may only have been interested in his blood type. Honda soon forgets the name of the woman who took her own life, but is haunted by the visions of the women he has harmed while simultaneously rejecting the labels placed on him as a pervert or a predator and believing that his child’s death is punishment for his “abnormal sexuality” as some may brand it. 

This sense of guilt is also reflected in his worry that he is a “spreader of death”, as if though he did not kill them directly he were the carrier of a disease or else some kind of grim reaper beckoning these women towards their demise though he evidently thinks little of them outside of their status as trophies and does not stop to consider the consequences of his actions on others. Above his bed in his city hideout (officially he lives in a hotel) there is a picture of a fox hunt making plain that his satisfaction lies in the chase rather than its conclusion yet otherwise his motives are rather banal. He cannot leave his wife because he married into her prominent family and his social standing depends on his connection to them, likewise he decides against alerting the police or the building’s caretaker on discovering one of the women’s bodies because his reputation would be ruined if were to become involved in a murder and his secret life exposed. Ironically his salvation comes precisely because of this social standing when his wealthy father-in-law hires Hatanaka to handle his appeal and save him from the death penalty. 

Hatanaka had resigned from a previous position in opposition to the system, disappointed on meeting the lawyer who defended Honda at trial and realising they did not attempt to mount a defence nor investigate his case simply try to mitigate it in the hope of working it down to a custodial sentence. He instructs his naive young assistant who wonders if Honda is the sort of man they should be saving that she should approach every case on its merits as if the defendant is innocent without bringing in external moral judgements on his character. As he tells him, Honda may be legally vindicated but his moral judgement would depend on how he lives his life from then on later offering him a kind of absolution in telling him that one of his conquests, who does not want to be identified, gave birth to a son who is healthy and happy signalling that his is not an original sin and he does not bear that kind of responsibility for the death of his child. Veering towards the avant-garde Nakahira makes frequent use of superimposition and dissolves to reflect Honda’s fracturing mental state along with the persistence of his guilt while shifting into the purely documentarian in his lengthy explanation of forensic techniques and the science behind blood types but always returns to the Hitchcockian interplay of sex, death, and remorse which is true source of Honda’s trial. 

DVD remaster trailer (no subtitles)

Suspicion (疑惑, Yoshitaro Nomura, 1982)

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Suspicion posterBy the early ‘80s, Japan had successfully shaken off post-war desperation for burgeoning consumerism, but even as the nation rocketed into a more comfortable future, social equality proved slow to arrive. Once again adapting a novel by Seicho Matsumoto, Yoshitaro Nomura’s Suspicion (疑惑, Giwaku) makes allies of two very different women who are each in one way or another rejected by the conservative, infinitely rigid society in which they live.

Former bar hostess Kumako (Kaori Momoi) falls under suspicion when she alone survives the car accident that takes her husband’s life. A brassy, aloof woman, Kumako does not behave in the way the police might expect a recently bereaved spouse to behave which instantly turns them against her. This becomes a real problem once they discover that her husband, Shirakawa (Noboru Nakaya), was an extraordinarily wealthy man on whom she had recently taken out a number of life insurance polices. Shirakawa’s public profile ensures that the potentially salacious case is taken up by the newspapers who waste no time proclaiming Kumako a gold digging murderess while openly baying for her blood. Intimidated by the public outcry, the police are determined to charge Kumako with her husband’s murder despite the only existing evidence being extremely circumstantial.

After a prominent lawyer declines to take her case, her legal council stands down citing his poor health leaving Kumako entirely undefended. The court eventually appoints her a new lawyer, a woman – Ritsuko Sahara (Shima Iwashita), more practiced in civil than criminal law and just as much of an outcast as Kumako though in very different ways. Ritsuko has divorced her husband and he has custody of their young daughter whom Ritsuko makes a point of seeing once a month. Though the arrangement seems to suit her well enough, her status as a career woman who has “rejected” the roles of wife and mother also makes her one viewed with “suspicion” by those around her.

The central issue is indeed Kumako’s character. A former bar hostess with a traumatic childhood, Kamako has four previous convictions including assault and blackmail as well as an abrasive personality and a tendency to rub people up the wrong way. She doesn’t do herself any favours, but no kind of justice would be served if she were sentenced to death not for her husband’s murder but for the crime of being an “unpleasant” woman in a society which expects women to be docile and polite.

The papers, however, are very invested in the story of the coldblooded, gold digging murderess. Akitani (Akira Emoto), a local reporter, cosies up to the police for insider information, and does his best to root out Kumako’s sordid past including a sometime boyfriend who might have been her “pimp”. Ritsuko makes “trial by media” a key part of her defence strategy, arguing that her client’s case has been unfairly prejudiced by the image the press has sought to construct of her, but is unaware of the extent to which the police investigation has been distorted by the desire to appease the media or the various ways in which a venal press has gently perverted the course of justice in search of a better story.

Cool and efficient, Ritsuko isn’t really sure whether Kumako did it or not but is determined to ensure she is tried by the codes of law and not of conventional morality. A disgraced Akitani later barks at her that he sees no need to defend “a woman like that” in the papers, but Ritsuko’s having none of it – the purpose of the law is precisely to ensure guilt or innocence is assessed rationally on the basis of the evidence presented, as free of personal prejudice as it’s possible to be. An idealistic claim, given Japan’s famously implacable legal system, but one that sits well with a functioning democracy.

Ritsuko’s defence of Kumako is not particularly a feminist exercise, though a grudging kind of mutual respect eventually arises between the two women who have each in one sense or another rejected socially defined gender roles. While Ritsuko proclaims herself happy enough to be a mother once a month on Sundays, her husband’s new wife is a more territorial sort, eventually asking her to stop seeing her own daughter because she would rather raise her believing that she is hers alone. Kumako, however, is entirely unrepentant, even emboldened, vowing that she will continue using men until the day she dies. The two women remain mirror images of each other, both rejected, viewed with “suspicion” for the choices they have made, and forever at odds with a society which has already found them each “guilty” in the court of public opinion.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

An Inlet of Muddy Water (にごりえ, Tadashi Imai, 1953)

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inlet of muddy water dvd coverTadashi Imai was among the greatest directors of the golden age though his name remains far less known than contemporaries Ozu or Mizoguchi. Despite beginning in outright propaganda films during the war, Imai is best remembered as a staunchly left wing director whose films are known for their gritty realism and opposition to oppressive social codes. An Inlet of Muddy Water (にごりえ, Nigorie) very much fits this bill in adapting three stories from Japanese author Ichiyo Higuchi. Higuchi is herself a giant figure of Japanese literature though little of her work has been translated into English. Like Imai’s films, Higuchi’s stories are known for their focus on female suffering and the prevailing social oppression of the late Meiji era which had seen many changes but not all for the better. Higuchi was not a political writer and her work does not attack an uncaring society so much as describe it accurately though her own early death from tuberculosis at only 24 certainly lends weight to the tragedy of her times.

In the first part of the film which is inspired by one of Higuchi’s best known stories, The Thirteenth Night, a young woman returns home to her parents, no longer able to bear living with an emotionally abusive husband. Oseki (Yatsuko Tanami) had been raised an ordinary, lower middle-class girl but, like many a heroine of feudal era literature, caught the eye of a prominent nobleman who determined to marry her despite their class difference. Life is not a fairytale, and so the nobleman quickly tired of his beautiful peasant wife, belittling her lowly status, lack of education, and failure to slot into the elite world he inhabits.

Oseki’s plight elicits ambivalent reactions in each of her parents though they both sympathise with her immensely, if in different ways. Her mother (Akiko Tamura) is heartbroken – having long believed her daughter to be living a blissful life of luxury, she feels terribly guilty not to have known she had been suffering all this time and believes Oseki has done the right thing in leaving. Her father (Ken Mitsuda), however, also feels sad but reacts in practicality, pointing out that to leave her husband now would mean losing her son forever and probably a long, lonely life of penury. He, somewhat coldly, tells her to go back, grin and bear it. Oseki can see his point and considers resigning herself to return if only to look after her son.

On her way home she runs into a childhood friend whom she might have married if things had not turned out the way they did. “Life gets in the way of the things we want to do”, she tells him by of explanation for not staying in touch. Rokunosuke (Hiroshi Akutagawa), once a fine merchant, is now a ragged rickshaw driver, bereaved father, and divorcee. Like Oseki his life is a tragedy of frustration with the added irritant that he and Oseki might have been happy together, rather than independently miserable, if an elite had not suddenly decided to interfere by crossing class lines just because he can rather than out of any genuine feeling.

The callousness of elites is also a theme in the second story, The Last Day of the Year, in which a young maid, Omine (Yoshiko Kuga), works for a wealthy household dominated by a moody, penny pinching mistress whose mistreatment of her staff is more indifference than deliberate scorn. Omine’s uncle, who raised her, has fallen ill. At the beginning of his illness he took out a loan but he’s got no better and still needs to pay it back so he asks Omine to ask the mistress for an advance of the paltry sum of two yen in the hope that his son will be able to enjoy a new year mochi like the other kids. The mistress says yes and then changes her mind, leaving Omine to consider a transgressive act of social justice.

Where The Thirteenth Night and The Last Day of the Year pointed the finger at uncaring elites, Troubled Waters broadens its disdain to the entire world of men in focussing on two women caught on either side of the red light district – Oriki (Chikage Awashima), a geisha stalked by a ruined client, and the client’s wife, Ohatsu (Haruko Sugimura), who endures a life of penury thanks to her husband’s geisha obsession. Oriki’s sad story is recounted to a wealthy patron (So Yamamura) who is more fascinated in learning the secrets of her soul than her kimono, but like many of her age it begins with parental strife, orphanhood and perpetual imprisonment as a geisha wondering what will become of her when her looks fade and she’s no longer number one. She has no control over the men who spend time with her but is worried by Gen (Seiji Miyaguchi) who ruined himself buying her time and now stalks her in and around the inn. Infatuated and obsessed with Oriki, Gen has turned against his noble wife Ohatsu who is working herself to the bone to support the family while Gen has resorted to a life of casual labour but rarely does much of anything at all.

Recalling Higuchi’s famous diary, Imai opens each of the segments with a brief voiceover detailing the inconsequential details of the weather with a world weary, often melancholy tone as the writer laments too much time spent on fiction and resolves to tell the story of the world as it really is. There is no real connection or overarching theme which unites the three stories, save for the continued suffering of women at the hands of men and the society they have devised. Oseki must return to her abusive husband, Omine will continue to work for her heartless mistress, and Ohatsu will have to make do on her own after being so thoroughly let down by her husband. There is no recourse or escape, no path forward that will allow the women to break free of their oppression or even to learn to be free within it. Each of the stories is bleak, ending on a note of resignation and acceptance of one’s fate as terrible as that may be but Imai’s ending is most terrible of all, reminding us that today is simply another day and the heavy atmosphere of dread and oppression is certain to endure as long as we all remain resigned.

Screened at BFI as part of the Women in Japanese Melodrama season.

Edogawa Rampo’s Beast in the Shadows ( 江戸川乱歩の陰獣, Tai Kato, 1977)

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Edogawa Rampo (a clever allusion to master of the gothic and detective story pioneer Edgar Allan Poe) has provided ample inspiration for many Japanese films from Blind Beast to Horrors of Malformed Men. So synonymous with kinky terror is his name, that it finds itself appended into the title of this 1977 adaptation of his novel Beast in the Shadows (江戸川乱歩の陰獣, Edogawa Rampo no Inju) by veteran director Tai Kato best known for his work in the yakuza genre. Mixing classic European detective intrigue with a more typically Japanese obsession with method over motive, Beast in the Shadows, like much of Edogawa Rampo’s work twists and turns around the idea of atypical sexuality, one side cerebral and another physical as the “Westernised” sadomasochism of the heroine’s husband becomes the driving force of the narrative.

Our hero, Koichiro Samukawa (Teruhiko Aoi), is a best selling author who likes to describe himself as the creator of “serious” mystery novels. In this he contrasts himself favourably with the coming younger generation who rely on sensationalised tricks and twists rather than the intricately plotted, traditionally constructed crime stories which Samukawa prides himself on writing. The particular object of his rage is a recently successful rival, Shundei Oe, who is making quite a splash in literary circles in part due to his mysterious persona. Refusing all in-person contact, Oe’s whereabouts are completely unknown and though he supplies a “real name” at the back of each book, there is great speculation as to who he really is, how he lives, and where he might be.

Down south to supervise a movie shoot based on one of his novels, Samukawa is thrilled to run into a fan – particularly as she’s such a beautiful young woman. Shizuko (Yoshiko Kayama) is the wife of a wealthy businessman, Oyamada, who has recently returned from an extended spell abroad though he doesn’t share her passion for literature even if he brings home such luxuries as fancy European gloves. The relationship moves beyond mutual appreciation when Shizuko asks for Samukawa’s help in investigating a series of threatening letters she’s been receiving from an old boyfriend who may or may not also be stalking her. The real kicker is that the letters purport to be from Shundei Oe – apparently the pen name being used by a man who fell deeply in love with Shizuko when he was a student but couldn’t take no for an answer when his creepy behaviour became too much for the then school girl. Though Samukawa is sure the letters are all talk and commits himself unmasking Oe for the perverted cretin he is, Shizuko’s husband is eventually murdered just as the letters threatened.

Though the final twist is one which most seasoned mystery lovers will have seen coming, Kato keeps the audience on its toes with plenty of intrigue and red herrings as Samukawa attempts to discover the truth behind the death of Shizuko’s husband as well as taking the opportunity to indulge in a little intellectual vanity by unmasking his rival. The movie subplot quickly gets forgotten but Samukawa is also helped/hindered by his publisher, Honda (Tomisaburo Wakayama), who keeps reminding him about the looming deadline for his latest work. The case at hand provides ample distraction for the harried writer whose writer’s block is only made worse by thoughts of Shundei Oe’s growing success and his resentment of this new, sensationalised form of crime novel which seems to be eclipsing his own.

If the way he acts in “real life” is anything to go by, Samukawa’s detective novels owe much to the European tradition but still, there’s a persistent fear of the foreign underlining much of the proceedings despite the heavy presence of Westernised clothing, music and culture which seems to diffuse itself throughout daily life. Shizuko’s husband may have just returned from abroad but it seems he brought back much more with him than some fancy gloves and an elegant English mistress (pointedly named Helen Christie). The English style riding crop in Oyamada’s study is not mere affectation but the cause of the nasty looking wound on Shizuko’s shoulder which first caught Samukawa’s attention. Oyamada’s sadistic tendencies are posited as a credible reason he could himself be masquerading as Oe, getting off on driving his wife half crazy with fear, but his eventual murder would seem to rule that out.

Nevertheless the game is one of pleasure and pain as Samukawa comes to the realisation that he is integral to the plot. Challenged by his literary rival to a game of minds, Samukawa is putting his detective abilities to the test as his rival is writing their latest story in reality rather than on the page. Love, lust, betrayal, violence and tragedy all come together for a classic gothic detective story which looks ahead to noir with its melancholy fatalism yet remains resolutely within the dark and ghoulish world of the gothic potboiler. Kato shoots a prestige picture with the undercurrent of repressed eroticism in his strange low level angles and unusual compositions which bind, tie and constrain the elusive Shizuko within the window panes and doorways of her home. Light levels fluctuate wildly, isolating the haunted protagonists in their supernatural gloom until we hit the expressionism of the theatrical finale which takes place in an entirely red, almost glowing attic space. The atmosphere is one of profound unease as Oe is thought to be perpetually watching, hidden somewhere in the house, out of sight.

The Beast in the Shadows does not just refer to the unseen voyeur but to the repressed eroticism which his actions symbolise and is perhaps brought out in the various sadomasochistic relationships created between each of the protagonists. Then again, where are we in all this – sitting in the dark, watching, undetected, seeing things we had no right to see. Kato takes our own voyeuristic tendencies and serves them back to us with visual flair in a late career masterpiece which perfectly captures Edogawa Rampo’s gothic world of repressed desire and brings it to its cinematic climax as two detectives go head to head in a game so high stakes neither of them quite realised what it was they were playing.

Original trailer (no subtitles, NSFW)