Tag: Roppa Furukawa

Roppa’s Honeymoon (ロッパの新婚旅行, Kajiro Yamamoto, 1940)

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One of the most surprising things about Kajiro Yamamoto’s defiantly silly comedy Roppa’s Honeymoon (ロッパの新婚旅行) is how devoid it seems to be of political import with no overt patriotic content or references to the ongoing conflict even if the central messages of the necessity of enduring hardship are otherwise very on brand. Likewise and contrary to expectation, the film is clearly influenced by Hollywood comedies and heavily features American ragtime music presented largely without prejudice. 

In fact it’s the confrontation of these different influences which eventually sparks a crisis between father and son. As the film opens, beer magnate Garamasa is sitting in his bath practicing his gidayu recitation with the help of a shamisen player in an adjacent room, but his idiot son Ichiro (Roppa Furukawa) keeps singing “stupid Western songs,” which is very annoying for him but apparently not enough to actually get out of his bath which is why he rings an employee and gets him to ring Ichiro to tell him to shut up. This seems in part to be a slightly subversive gag poking fun at fat cat CEOs with Garamasa weirdly berating the staff member for being lazy and suggesting that he’s probably only just got up despite it being already 7am even if Garasama himself is still in the bath. The employee has, however, been busily at work for quite some time and spends the rest of the film toadying up to Garamasa. Later on, Yamamoto includes a similar gag in which a maid is forced to run back and forth between Ichiro’s annex and Garamasa’s office to deliver messages between the two.

In any case, Garamasa’s grand plan to get his son to be quiet is to marry him off to someone who also likes Western music which is why he visits a pair of servants he actually kicked out of the house when they decided to get married 20 years previously but have since opened a shop selling Western records. They suggest a young woman, Eiko, known as the nightingale of Japan (real life opera singer Hamako Watanabe) who is also a member of the nobility and the daughter of one of Garamasa’s friends, yet Ichiro has been seeing a young woman, Chiyo, who works in an oden restaurant and in fact finds out he is “engaged” from the same newspaper article she does. Eventually he makes the decision to run away from home and elope only to flounder while being entirely ill-equipped to live a “normal” life in which he must attempt to support himself financially.

Star Roppa Furukawa was himself a member of the aristocracy and one of a small number of performers popular enough in the 1930s that their names were often inserted into the titles of the files in which they appeared even if their characters did not share it. Roppa was well known for his rather comical face, round and a little pudgy with big round glasses which seem to capture something of the zeitgeist of the interwar years. He was also an excellent singer and the film is quite notable for its use of an ironic song in which Roppa narrates his “honeymoon” in which he and Chiyo are forced to move several times, first sitting in their living room on the back of a truck before their belongings slowly decrease from truck to cart to hand. Chiyo is eventually forced to return to work at the oden restaurant while the relationship suffers because of Ichiro’s refusal to do a common man’’s job. Ironically, he is disturbed by the singing of Eiko who lives close by and on visiting to tell her to be quiet is talked into buying a pair of charity concert tickets.

Chiyo actually approves because she doesn’t like the idea of people looking down on them for not having the money to pay, but is then jealous, insisting that she’ll pay for the tickets herself while forbidding Ichiro to go. It’s this that forces him to accept a job he previously thought demeaning as the leader of a marching band singing a ragtime-themed jingle for a brand of toothpaste. All of this absurd silliness might be thought too trivial for the early 1940s in which censorship concerns usually some kind of patriotic content (aside from gidayu) but there is a message to be found in Garamasa’s eventual acceptance of their relationship in which he thanks Chiyo for introducing his son to hardship and thereby making a man of him as reminding the audience that a little bit of suffering is character building though doubtless they don’t have such wealthy parents to bail them out nor can they really look forward to better days any time soon. In any case it paints a rather rosy of picture of life in the early ‘40s, harking back to a distinctly ‘30s brand of foppish comedy with Ichiro a kind of Bertie Wooster suddenly plunged into “real” life and realising being the stupid son of a CEO obsessed with gidayu recitative wasn’t so bad after all.

Radio Queen (ラヂオの女王, Shigeo Yagura, 1935)

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The conflict between warring neighbours of differing dispositions deepens when their children want to get married in Shigeo Yagura’s modernising comedy, Radio Queen (ラヂオの女王, Radio no Oujo). Against a backdrop of rising militarism, the film explores a generational shift in a new world increasingly dominated by mass media that quite literally speaks to the young not only through the newly established ubiquity of wireless radio but the talkie too leaving the old somewhat left behind confused by the rapid motion of progress.

In fact, the film opens with Kawamura, owner of a factory that makes aeroplanes that can’t fly, being woken up by his neighbours performing radio taiso callisthenics exercises. Kawamura dislikes radio on a conceptual level, though his dislike of it may also have a slightly subversive quality given the underlying element of coercive conformity that sees the nation performatively warm up for another day of national unity and hard work towards the growth of the empire. Then again, Kawamura is the film’s most ridiculous character finally giving a speech that he would be proud to sacrifice his son’s life for the nation by getting him to fly one of their biplanes to China as a kind of publicity stunt.

Publicity stunts are, however, a particular talent for Kingo who has very modern ideas about how to make not only his business but that of his father’s neighbour and frenemy Misome a success. Soon to finish university, Kingo plans to marry Misome’s daughter, Kimiko (Sachiko Chiba), who is currently working as a primary school teacher though both father fiercely object to the union. Kingo puts the kibosh on the idea of eloping mainly for practical reasons that they will be unable to support themselves financially on a running start but also for reasons of filial piety which probably do correspond with the censorship demands of the time. One of his ideas for winning over Misobe is to help him make his business of selling cough sweets for stage performers more successful through modern advertising and publicity techniques. Though originally rejecting his ideas, Misobe often takes his advice but pretends it was all his own idea further souring their relationship.

In any case, he wants to Kimiko to marry his chosen suitor, Kyuichi, who is training to become a pharmacist but also struggles with maths and has secretly been embezzling money in contrast to Kingo who is much more organised than his own father and has real business talent. Misome describes Kimiko’s job as a “hobby” and regards it as something she’s doing to keep busy until she gets married, a notion perhaps encouraged by social expectation given that it involves taking care of children which places her in a quasi-maternal position. She could presumably support herself, but the option is never given to her as even she tries to chivvy Kingo along by warning him that if he fails to win her father over she’ll end up married to the pharmacist as if she had no say in it at all. 

In any case, in a rather strange turn of events her singing in the school is heard by a film crew who’ve just had their lead actress pinched by a rival studio. They cast her in the part of a Christian nun who is also a schoolmistress but in contradictory fashion is involved in a romance which scandalises Kimiko and leads her to walk off set refusing to be exploited by the unscrupulous directors insisting that no such thing had been mentioned to her when she agreed to take the job. But it’s this that finally propels her to become the “Radio Queen,” taking a much more wholesome role singing nursery rhymes and reading fairytales for children across the nation through the new medium of the wireless. Kingo does not object to her fame and sees it as a positive sign that may cause his father’s opinion of her to change for the better despite his dislike of the device, though he does later become put out that the demands of her career leave her less time to spend with him.

In that sense, it’s also “modernity” that disrupts their relationship along with changing gender and social roles while there is also a necessarily problematic element of then largely unregulated mass media. An unscrupulous consumerism seems to have taken hold with the foolish Kawamura also addicted to collecting “antiques” many of which are akin to religious relics of an age of modernity. We see a man drop a piece of wood on the floor outside which is later picked up by dealers and sold as a piece of the propeller of the first of ever plane which Misome jokingly offers to buy for Kawamura in the hope his aircraft might actually fly one day. On entering an antiques fair, they’re confronted by an object claimed to be the clasp from Rockerfeller’s wallet echoing some of Misome’s frequent allusions to his success as a self-made man while Kawamura conversely frequently alludes to Mussolini as if making plain his own slightly priggish attachment to militarism. 

Misome concedes that Kingo is a bright and promising young man and objects to him only on the grounds that he is Kawamura’s son and he prefers the pharmacist because he thinks it more advantageous to himself before realising what sort of a man Kyuichi is really is. In the end, they’re both bamboozled by mass media when Kimiko rushes to the airfield where Kingo is about to take off having petulantly agreed to the test flight after arguing with her. As she petitions the already in motion plane, he manages to pull her up into the passenger seat while the radio announcer announces their engagement live on air granting it a new legitimacy neither of the fathers can really argue with. The film ends with them flying off into a blue sky which suggests a victory for youth and freedom even if it seems a little too simple leaving the older generation behind on the ground with only the wireless for comfort.

A Mother’s Love (母情, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1950)

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mothers-loveShimizu’s depression era work was not lacking in down on their luck single mothers forced into difficult positions as they fiercely fought for their children’s future, but 1950’s A Mother’s Love (母情, Bojo) takes an entirely different approach to the problem. Once again Shimizu displays his customary sympathy for all but this particular mother, Toshiko, does not immediately seem to be the self sacrificing embodiment of maternal virtues that the genre usually favours.

Tellingly, when we first meet Toshiko she’s asleep on a bus as her three children badger a friendly artist who’s entertaining them by drawing a picture of their pretty mother. The boys are quick correct themselves when talking about the woman they’re with – she’s their “aunt” not their mother, but the artist sees through the ruse. Toshiko is heading to visit her brother in the country in the hope that he will look after her children for awhile offering the explanation that she wants to get married again. Her brother is sympathetic to her problems, but has six children of his own already (and perhaps a seventh on the way) so taking in three extra mouths to feed is not really an option. Agreeing to look after the youngest girl, they suggest trying an elderly uncle but remind her that he has a rather conservative mindset and may ask all sorts of questions about Toshiko’s recent past which she might not want to answer.

Not to worry, the uncle seems to have mellowed with age though he can’t take in two growing boys either and suggests asking a friend of his who’s been trying for a baby for years but has been unable to have one. When that doesn’t work out Toshiko deposits her second son at the uncle’s and travels on with just her oldest boy, Fusao, but as time goes on Toshiko begins to rethink her decision to have her children fostered out and wonders if just being together might be worth more than a stable economic life founded on the pain of abandonment.

The protagonists of “hahamono” which praise the idea of the noble, self sacrificing mother are not universally saintly but the one thing they never do is consider leaving their children. In this regard Toshiko is not immediately sympathetic. Rejecting the name “mother” for “aunt” in the hope of hooking a prospective husband, Toshiko has already marked herself as falling outside of the idealised mother standards and her rather cool, snappy way of addressing the children does not go in her favour either. Her brother greets her warmly (even if he seems to suspect that she’s probably come because she wants something) and has no desire to drag up the past but points out that other people might not be so charitable given that all three children have different fathers and Toshiko has never revealed how she supported herself towards the end of the war and in its immediate aftermath. Nevertheless, Shimizu refuses to judge her. Her life has been a hard one and she herself was fostered out herself as a child. Toshiko’s decision may not be one everyone would agree with but that doesn’t mean it was an easy one for her to make, or that she feels nothing in giving up her children.

The biggest tragedy is that the kids will be separated. Apparently often left to fend for themselves at home whilst Toshiko works, the children are a mini band of three and it seems even more cruel that they will be deprived not only of a mother but of their siblings too. Though the youngest girl tries to run after her mother and brothers, and the second son cries so much that his brother goes back to give him one of his comic books to cheer him up, Fusao is even more upset and anxious as the last remaining child. Constantly wetting the bed which costs him his place at a few prospective new homes, Fusao is plagued by the idea that his mother is about to abandon him and finally pleads with her that he can take care of his siblings by himself if only they can all stay together.

Fusao’s pleas eventually soften his mother’s heart though she begins to think again after coming across a band of itinerant performers, one of whom is nursing an infant despite her poverty and the harshness of her life. The young woman seems devoted to her child and is determined to take care of it even though she has no husband to help her. The child’s grandmother urged her daughter to give the baby up to someone with more resources to raise it but the girl refused, no matter how hard it may turn out to be. Moved, and feeling even more guilty in witnessing the hardships another mother is bearing for her child, Toshiko’s resolve begins to weaken.

When Toshiko is taken ill at an inn and her friend from the city, Mitsuko, comes to visit her it is revealed that Toshiko’s plan is not another marriage but that the two women are in the process of opening a bar – hence why she needs to farm out her children. Mitsuko has also sent her daughter to a relative so that she can plow all her time and money into the enterprise though no one knows how long it will take until the place is successful enough to support the full families of both women. It may be, therefore, that Toshiko’s desire to run her own business is for the ultimate benefit of her children who will finally have a degree of economic security. On thinking again, she wonders if it isn’t selfish vanity and that she’s sacrificing her children to fulfil her own desires.

Shimizu takes a more conservative viewpoint than that found in his other work by encouraging Toshiko to reject the prospect of being her own boss to embrace the traditional values of her natural maternity. The old nurse Toshiko visits in the hope that she will take in Fusao (which she almost certainly would have done) remarks that a full belly isn’t everything and being together might be enough, but that doesn’t quite explain what the obviously desperate Toshiko is going to do to survive from here on in. One can only hope that she somehow finds a way to make the bar work (even if it takes a little longer) rather than be left with nothing all over again. Focusing less on the children than on the maternal conflict as Toshiko becomes torn by the traditional values as seen in her rural hometown and the less forgiving modernism of the city, Shimizu retains an understanding tone but also eschews the concessions to pragmatism which so often went hand in hand with his forward looking idealism, for a reassertion of conservative values which fly in the face of his usually compassionate acceptance of the very real difficulties faced by women in a conformist and male dominated society.