Shimizu goes on holiday! Again! Actually, when you think about it going on holiday is always inherently sad because just like everything else holidays end and you have to return to whatever it was that made you want to go on holiday in the place only with the painful reminder that a more cheerful world exists and you’re no longer in it. That rather depressing preamble out of the way, it’s time to join the temporary residents of a small hot springs resort in the picturesque countryside where a mislaid hairpin is about to kickstart a series of mini epiphanies in the diverse collection of guests.
We arrive at the inn in the company of Emi (Kinuyo Tanaka) and her friend Okiku (Hiroko Kawasaki) on a brief visit from the city. The inn is very full right now with a festival in town and everybody seems to want a massage! Another guest, the extremely grumpy professor Katae (Tatsuo Saito), is put out that the tour groups are sapping all the hotel’s resources and complains vociferously to his go partner who is staying at the inn with his two grandsons Jiro and Taro. Other guests at the inn include a mild mannered husband and his wife, Mr. (Shinichi Himori) and Mrs. (Hideko Mimura) Hiroyasu, and a recuperating soldier, Mr. Nanmura (Chishu Ryu). Eventually the tour groups go home taking Emi and Okiku with them, but Emi discovers she’s left her ornamental hairpin behind and sends a letter offering to pay for the return postage if anyone should find it.
Mr. Nanmura finds it in his foot one day as he’s enjoying the hot springs and even though he’s not that bothered about it, complaining expert Professor Katae can’t make enough of a fuss about the supposedly shoddy conditions at the hotel. When the hotel owners write to Emi and explain to her what’s happened she jumps straight on a train to apologise in person.
Nanmura had actually been quite happy about getting skewered by the pin. He says he found it “poetic”, as if the atmosphere of the place had penetrated deeply into his skin. The supposedly learned Katae doesn’t quite understand the soldier’s poetic leanings and starts debating whether the owner of the pin will be pretty or not, as if that would make a difference to the soldier’s romantic construction of events. Emi is indeed very beautiful, through perhaps a little sad and obviously contrite about the pin. Everyone in the inn is quite invested in witnessing a true love miracle between the bizarrely crippled soldier and the wounded beauty from Tokyo.
Once again the inn is a constructed world, a safe haven far away from the trouble and strife which exists outside it. The guests indulge themselves in the tranquil atmosphere taking in the beautiful scenery and killing time on otherwise trivial pursuits which occasionally include projecting a kind of narrative on their new found friends. The two boys, totally bored by this deliberately unstimulating environment, turn everything into a competition – even cheering on their grandfather as snores along side the equally noisy professor with the result that pretty much no one else is getting any sleep. Later they help the injured soldier recover with a set of endurance games which see him trying to walk unaided from one tree to another and eventually across a bridge.
Further comic relief is provided by the Hiroyasus with the husband being the sort of mild-mannered man who has no idea what he actually thinks so he just goes along with everything everyone says (and later checks with his wife who has the ultimate authority). Hiroyasu often defers to the professor whose authoritative tone gets things done for him though he is in fact an extremely self centred prig who just loves to complain out of a desperate need to be validated. He’s the loudest snorer of all and is keeping everyone awake yet he constantly complains about the noise of the other guests and is quick to shout at the inn keeper when he can’t get a massage because they’ve been booked by the visiting tour groups the very presence of which also annoys him. Eventually he gets so grumpy he just goes home which is probably a win/win for everyone.
But what of Emi herself? She too is escaping from something. The loss of the ornamental hair pin and its rediscovery leading her to the inn and perhaps to Nanmura has pushed her into a further consideration of her life in Tokyo. She doesn’t want to go back, this brief respite has been too pleasant and she wishes it could go on like this forever, though she knows, of course, that it can’t. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do now, but at least while she stops at the inn the sun will light the way. This is 1941, Nanmura will probably be going back to the war, the future is uncertain for everyone, but in here everything is beautiful, calm, safe. It’s just a shame it can’t last.
Ornamental Hairpin (簪, Kanzashi) is the fourth and final film in Criterion’s Eclipse Series 15: Travels with Hiroshi Shimizu box set.
Clip of one of Nanmura’s “trials” (no subtitles):
Hiroshi Shimizu takes another relaxing sojourn in 1938’s The Masseurs and a Woman (按摩と女, Anma to Onna), this time in a small mountain resort populated by runaways and bullish student hikers. Once again Shimizu follows an atypical narrative structure which begins with the two blind masseurs of the title and the elegant lady from Tokyo but quickly broadens out to investigate the transient hotel environment with even a little crime based intrigue added to the mix.
Windows on Worlds 