Tag: Shinnosuke Ogata

Sword of Destiny (孤剣は折れず　月影一刀流, Yasushi Sasaki, 1960)

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A wandering swordsman winds up in intrigue on returning to his fencing school to find his old master murdered in Yasushi Sasaki’s Sword of Destiny (孤剣は折れず　月影一刀流, Koken wa Arezu: Tsukage Ittoryu). A classic jidaigeki adventure, it nevertheless has to be said that this one is a little more sexist than most in actively pushing its series of female warriors into the background as the hero by turns sends them all back to typically feminine roles while declaring that he will be the one to claim vengeance and clear up corruption in the court itself caused by a woman’s apparent forgetting of her place. 

At least, this is what Mikogami Genshiro (Koji Tsuruta) is told by an old friend, Izu, after an altercation with the fiery princess Kazu (Hibari Misora). The Shogun’s nurse, Lady Kasuga, has apparently taken an interest in politics and has most of the inner palace in her grasp enriching herself in the process. Izu believes that she may also be behind the assassination of Geshiro’s former mentor Ono while working in league with the Yagyu who coveted the position of fencing master to the Shogun. He asks Genshiro to kill her which he’s only too happy to do while seeking vengeance for Ono, but later gains a second reason after meeting the two orphaned daughters of a former retainer forced to take his own life thanks to Lady Kasuga’s machinations. 

Itoya (Yoshiko Fujita) wanders round with a gun and disrupts Genshiro’s first assassination attempt. He later tells her to leave the killing business to him and live “the life of a woman” insisting that one girl has no power to kill Lady Kasuga anyway. Meanwhile, he also makes an enemy of the Shogun’s sister Princess Kazu after challenging her in the street on seeing her callous disregard for a peasant her horse had run over. Princess Kazu falls in love with him after he defeats her in a duel, temporarily rebelling in insisting she will resist a dynastic marriage and take no other husband though he eventually rejects her partly on the grounds of their class difference and partly because he is a wandering sword who lives in the moment and may know no tomorrow. 

Nevertheless, she is later seen capitulating to her proper role as a princess who exists largely to continue the family line, marrying a man chosen by the Shogun and his advisors with no real power to chose anything other than her obedience. In much the same way he does with Itoya, Genshiro pushes her back towards the typically feminine while falling for Itoya’s meek, sickly sister Mine (Hiroko Sakuramachi) who is otherwise an idealised image of femininity in her softness and naivety while like every other woman in the picture falling for Genshiro because of his robust manliness and ability to protect her by gaining the sisters’ vengeance on their behalf. 

Meanwhile, Genshiro also facing off against the rival Yagyu school whom he suspects of having killed Ono to usurp his place as the shogunate fencing master with the assistance of underling Takagaki who has now taken over leading to a mass exit of students fed up with his authoritarian teaching methods. Interestingly enough, Genshiro is temporarily imprisoned by the Yagyu alongside a dissident Christian whose death they’d faked while keeping him alive in order to torture the names of other Christians out of him. On fulfilling his request to take his cross to his daughter who has become a sex worker, Genshiro succeeds only in endangering her while she also falls in love with him. 

All in all, he’s not much of a responsible hero also reckless with the life of his former burglar sidekick Kurobei (Shin Tokudaiji) who uses his ninja tricks to get him out of prison. As expected, it all ends with in a battle against a treacherous swordsman and the spineless Takagaki with the final revelation that Lady Kasuga (who just dies of old age) had not much to do with anything anyway despite having been a “meddling” old woman who forgot her proper place. Even Mine is forced to admit that she can’t come between Genshiro and his sword so she plans to become a nun while Kazu sends him an elaborate katana to remember her by certain that he will not accept a place in the Shogun’s household but will return to the road to continuing his training. In any case, a kind of justice is done and order restored even if that order is in itself fairly unideal. 

Road Warriors (あやめ笠 喧嘩街道, Tai Kato, 1960)

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A penniless wanderer finds himself mixed up in chaos and conspiracy after deciding to help a lady travelling alone for the purposes of revenge in Tai Kato’s Toei chanbara, Road Warriors (あやめ笠 喧嘩街道, Ayame Kasa: Kenka Kaido). Truth be told, the hero isn’t much of a warrior at all and wisely prefers to avoid a fight if possible but is prepared to put his sword where his mouth is when the occasion calls. Still the conspiracy in this instance is small scale and incredibly petty as a trio of ambitious retainers attempt to frame their one time bodyguard for the murder of a lord.

Before all that, however, Gantaro (Ryuji Shinagawa) is as he’s fond of introducing himself a penniless traveller who makes his ends meet through gambling. In debt to local boss Hidegoro (Ushio Akashi) he agrees to act as an intermediary in a dispute with the greedy Onizo (Eijiro Yanagi) who has usurped some of their territory. Gantaro suggests they settle the matter through gambling but is then challenged to combat by the gang’s bodyguard, Akiyama (Shin Tokudaiji). The young man looks noticeably afraid, sweating at the temples and gripping his sword at an unusual angle, but holds his own in the fight until Onizo tries to cheat by sending in one of his minions to finish him off. Noticing what’s happening, Akiyama proves his nobility by ending the fight and accepting defeat. Onizo appears cheerful and even asks Gantaro to join his gang, but seconds after the young man leaves he sends his guys out after him and evidently has no intention of enforcing a truce with Hidegoro.

Meanwhile, Gantaro runs into a melancholy samurai woman, Miyuki (Kyoko Aoyama), chasing after a thief who has stolen something from her far more precious than money. Discovering the thief has robbed him too, Gantaro springs into action and soon discovers that Miyuki is on a quest for revenge against the man who killed her father but that she’s been betrayed by her three retainers and has managed to ditch them to proceed alone. Unsprisingly, the prime suspect appears to be Akiyama but as stabbing a man in the back and running away don’t seem to fit with the noble character he displayed in the fight, Gantaro has an idea that something’s not quite right. 

Of course, he also begins to fall for Miyuki despite the obvious affection held for him by Hidegoro’s daughter Omitsu (Hiromi Hanazono) which he otherwise seems keen to escape. It’s reasonable to assume that loveable rogue Gantaro is the love them and leave them type, though his love for a samurai’s daughter is always going to be an impossibility no matter how much she may come to admire him. Even so, the conspiracy angle along with Onizo’s smug and overbearing duplicity do begin to awaken his sense of justice especially while travelling with an incredibly cynical thief who will sell anything or anyone in search of a quick buck. Even he however eventually comes around to the idea of helping Miyuki get away from her retainers and enact her revenge especially after overhearing the truth while cowering behind some barrels. 

It may be an overly familiar chanbara tale if one enlivened by Gantaro’s wisecracking antics, but Kato brings to it his characteristic sense of uncertainty in the potent mists that seem to surround Gantaro and Miyuki as they travel the mountain paths in search their enemy. Then again, there are shades of unexpected darkness not least in the implication that Gantaro was about to rape Miyuki before she fainted and brought him back to his senses. Nevertheless, her retainers may tell her that she has “no choice” but to obey them, but Gantaro seems to feel differently if abruptly giving up his intention of protecting her on learning that she has someone else in her heart. This is indeed a harsh world for women samurai and otherwise, a mother and daughter are saved by Akiyama after being harassed by Onizo when he annexes the local market while both Miyuki and Omitsu are left to finish their father’s unfinished business in the wake of their untimely deaths. Notably, it is indeed they who finally strike the final blow to eliminate the corruption which surrounds them. Penniless wanderer Gantaro doesn’t have it that easy either, gambling his life away and ending up with debts both financial and moral that may have dangerous consequences while often beset by cynicism even if latterly deciding to help those in need for no reward. In any case, like any good wanderer all he can do is smile and wave as he departs for the next adventure on the violent streets of the Edo-era society.

Samurai Wolf 2: Hell Cut (牙狼之介 地獄斬り, Hideo Gosha, 1967)

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“We ronin must live without mercy” insists a fugitive on a quest for vengeance and riches only to meet his match in the justice-loving wanderer Kiba (Isao Natsuyagi) making his return for Samurai Wolf II: Hell Cut (牙狼之介 地獄斬り, Kiba Okaminosuke: Jigoku Giri). Like the second instalment in many series, Gosha’s avant-garde chambara largely follows the same formula picking up several familiar elements from the first film if giving them a new spin as Kiba once again finds himself caught up in intrigue provoked by the amoral venality of late Meiji society. 

In this case, he makes a rod for his own back by humiliating some swordsmen after catching them harassing a young woman, mocking them when they try to claim that their treatment of her is part of their “training”. Kiba saves the girl, Oteru (Rumiko Fuji), who has some kind of etherial quality and doesn’t quite seem to know what’s going on immediately throwing herself at Kiba who turns her down in gentlemanly fashion. Sometime later, he runs into a convoy of officials transporting criminals to the nearest judicial centre and stops to give the prisoners some of his own water explaining that that from the stream is polluted thanks to leaks from a nearby goldmine. In any case, Kiba is struck by the appearance of one of the men, Magobei (Ko Nishimura), who reminds him of the father who was killed by swordsmen he’d humiliated with his skill. 

Magobei is in chains for murdering the manager of the mine which previously belonged to the shogun but has now been shut down, its seam apparently exhausted. But like the toxins that poured into the river, the mine is a poison to society and in more ways than one. Magobei tells Kiba that he’s been set up. He was hired to kill the manager by a duplicitous gang leader named Jinroku (Bin Amatsu) who has found a new seam and has been operating the mine illegally taking all the gold for himself so obviously Magobei wants revenge. After seeing off an ambush, Kiba agrees to act as a bodyguard delivering both Magobei and the other prisoner, Kihachi (Out Yokoyama) who claims to be a big time bandit in trouble for robbing a samurai family, to the nearest city but secretly seems to sympathise with the injustice dealt to Magobei and the female prisoner who later joins them, Oren the Thistle (Yuko Kusunoki), who murdered a judge who killed her lover. 

Yet Kiba’s memories of his father cloud his judgment about Magobei who is definitely not a man worthy of his faith in him. “What good would pity do?’ Magobei asks, certain that compassion is a weakness and that if he were to give in to human feeling he would immediately be betrayed. The men misunderstand each other, assuming they are alike when in reality they are opposites. Kiba bets on Magobei’s humanity and loses, while Magobei assumes that Kiba will easily be won over by the riches to be found in the goldmine and help to wipe out Jinroku’s gang which is also a family of which Oteru is a member. “Life’s tough that’s how it is” he justifies, but Kiba cannot forgive him not least for his callous murder of a man who was only a frightened braggart and could not have harmed him and a woman who was otherwise blameless. Just as Sanai had in the first film, Magobei tells him that “one day you will be like me” a future that Kiba once again violently rejects. 

But then again he can never escape the world where goldmines pollute the rivers and money can buy anything, even the hearts of men. Just like his father, he’s pursued by the swordsmen he’s unwittingly insulted while discovering his desire to serve justice backfiring, eventually robbing him of the only thing he actually wanted just as it had at the end of the previous film. Even so, Kiba retains his sense of humanity and unlike so many jidaigeki (anti-)heroes refuses to give in to nihilism or despair. A little less avantgarde than the previous instalment, Gosha nevertheless conjures a world of dazzling violence in freeze-frame and silence while once again leaving Kiba the furious wolf to wander, a lonely figure in an unforgiving landscape.

Samurai Wolf 2: Hell Cut opens at New York’s Metrograph on Dec. 26 as part of Hideo Gosha x 3

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Killing in Yoshiwara (妖刀物語花の吉原百人斬り, Tomu Uchida, 1960)

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Killing Yoshiwara posterHaving led a somewhat floating life, Tomu Uchida returned to Japan in only in 1953 after a sustained period with the Manchurian Film Cooperative followed by a brief flirtation with Maoism. Before the war Uchida had been closely identified with the Keiko Eiga movement of broadly left-wing filmmaking but later fell hard for the inherent romanticism of militarist ideology during his time in Manchuria. Nevertheless it was apparently the Maoist doctrines of progress through contradiction that influenced his later dramatic philosophy in which he came to think of narrative as a series of conflicts which culminate in an explosive act designed to resolve them (or not, as we will see). 1960’s Killing in Yoshiwara (妖刀物語花の吉原百人斬り, Yoto Monogatari: Hana no Yoshiwara Hyakunin-giri, AKA Hero of the Red Light District) is perhaps a prime example as it takes a seemingly generic story inspired by a kabuki play and uses it to tell a melancholy tale of parallel yet mutually thwarted desires for vengeance against a cruel and oppressive society.

Ostensibly, our “hero” is Jiro (Chiezo Kataoka) – a successful silk merchant. A good and kind man, Jiro is beloved of all his staff for his careful consideration of them as people as well as employees. This concern is, however, perhaps not as wholly “good” as it seems. Jiro’s major problem in life is that he is an adopted child, taken in by his parents who auspiciously discovered him abandoned on the anniversary of their own child’s death. Jiro, apparently of noble birth, was abandoned because he has a prominent grey birthmark “staining” his face. This is the reason he has so far been unable to find a wife despite his good character and relative wealth. Desperately grateful to the couple who took him in “despite” his “imperfection”, Jiro feels this failure heavily in his current inability to provide them with a male heir to take over the family business.

Being good and earnest, Jiro has never dared to fritter money away in the red light district but is tempted when invited by a valued client whom he would not want to offend by refusing. Nevertheless, his first visit to the Yoshiwara is not an altogether pleasant experience as even the seasoned courtesans find it difficult to bear the sight of his “monstrous” face. Embarrassed, the innkeepers finally decide to employ a lowly servant, Otsuru (Yoshie Mizutani), who is not a trained courtesan but a woman convicted for illegal prostitution, to minister solely to Jiro. Otsuru does her work and is relatively unbothered by Jiro’s facial abnormality – something which endears her to Jiro’s heart and has the desired effect of hooking him through his weakness.

Otsuru, later “Tamarazu” the courtesan, is in many ways our villainess but she is also Jiro’s mirror and merely another outsider trying to escape oppression through any means possible. Uchida is careful to frame Otsuru not as a cruel and amoral adventurer, but someone who has decided to survive and can at least be honest about her intentions. We see her caged, imprisoned inside the Yoshiwara to do inside it what was declared “illegal” outside and acknowledging that she may well die here to met by a lonely funeral and rest unnamed in a communal grave. Otsuru decides that if she has to stay in the Yoshiwara then she will be its queen and then use that success to catapult herself into a more comfortable life even if she knows that it will be little more than a nicer kind of cage.

Jiro and Otsuru are each victims of the oppressive society in which they live as symbolised by the cruelly hypocritical worldview of the brothel owners who set out to exploit them both. Otsuru, worldly wise, is fully aware of the ways in which she is and will continue to be exploited but has chosen to be complicit within them as a means of effecting her escape. Jiro, meanwhile, is obviously aware that the “stain” across his face is the reason for his unhappy destiny but has only ever sought to minimise the distress his appearance causes to others. Thus he overcompensates by being relentlessly nice and infinitely humble, grateful for each and every concession which is extended to him as a fully human being rather than the “monster” which he is later branded by the innkeepers in a rare moment of candour which exposes their venial desires. 

This extreme desire for acceptance is in itself a symptom of his self loathing and internalised shame regarding his appearance which is after all merely an accident of birth over which he had no control. Abandoned by his birthparents who left him with a “cursed” destiny in the form of an unlucky sword, Jiro has been working overtime to overcome social prejudice but finding his path continually blocked. He latches on to Otsuru simply because she was nice to him without understanding the peculiar rules of interactions within the Yoshiwara, or as she later puts it “no money, no love”. Jiro ruins himself out of frustrated loneliness and a forlorn hope of repaying the debt he owes the couple who took him in by being able to provide them with a male heir to inherit the family business.

It is these mutual conflicts which eventually lead to the explosive finale hinted at by the violence of the title. Otsuru’s star rises while Jiro’s falls – not only is he fleeced by the innkeepers and an unrepentant Otsuru, his business also fails thanks to an act of God while his reputation lies in tatters once his associates get to know of his “frivolous” behaviour in the Yoshiwara. This in itself is doubly hypocritical as it was this same major client who introduced Jiro to the “pleasure” quarters in the first place only to remind him that business is a matter of trust and that they no longer trust him because he has broken his promise of keeping away from the Yoshiwara.

Pushed to the brink by successive humiliations, Jiro’s rage erupts in a singular act of violence which takes the sword not only to the Yoshiwara but the entrenched systems of oppression and exploitation which it represents. Otsuru, now an oiran, is literally trapped by her ostentatious outfit (in reality the very purpose it is designed to serve) as she struggles to escape male violence, her hand on the gate of the Yoshiwara which refuses to release her. Their parallel quests for revenge eventually converge only to defeat each other in a staggering act of futility which remains unresolved as the curtain falls on a moment of unanswerable rage.

Actress vs. Greedy Sharks (小判鮫 お役者仁義, Tadashi Sawashima, 1966)

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actress vs greedy sharks soundtrack albumA studio director at Toei, Tadashi Sawashima is best remembered for his work in the studio’s ninkyo eiga genre – prewar tales of noble gangsters, and samurai movies but he also made the occasional foray into the world of musical drama, teaming up with top name singing star Hibari Misora on a few of her historical action musicals. In 1966’s Actress vs. Greedy Sharks (小判鮫 お役者仁義, Kobanzame Oyakusha Jingi) Hibari once again plays a dual role though this time her casting is entirely arbitrary and the visual similarity of the legit actress and the acrobatic outlaw is never explicitly remarked upon.

The action opens with Shichi (Hibari Misora), an acrobat and member of a Robin Hood style band of outlaws (they don’t so much give to the poor as “share” with the less fortunate) interrupting the plot of Yamitaro (Yoichi Hayashi) – a nobleman in disguise to pursue revenge against corrupt lord Doi (Eitaro Shindo) who exiled his father to Convict Island when he began to raise questions about judicial corruption. Meanwhile, Yuki (also played by Hibari) is a top stage actress who is plotting against Doi for sending her father to Convict Island 20 years previously on a trumped up charge. Just as the “tomboyish” Shichi is beginning to fall for the mysterious Yamitaro, he teams up with Yuki to pursue their mutual quests for revenge which has Shichi feeling (needlessly, as it turns out) betrayed and vengeful.

Once again, the samurai order is shown to be corrupt beyond redemption. Doi, a greedy lord, is planning to sell off his only daughter, Ran (Yumiko Nogawa), as a concubine to the shogun. Meanwhile, he is also engaging in a rice profiteering scheme in order to bolster his financial resources. He is also still misusing his influence, just as he did when he had Yuki’s father sent to prison and got rid of Yamitaro’s so he couldn’t expose him.

As in her other movies, Hibari cannot allow this corruption to continue and becomes a thorn in the side of authority. However, the situation this time around is further complicated by her double casting in which she plays two visually identical characters who are, nevertheless, entirely unrelated and the resemblance between them entirely unremarked upon. The “tomboyish” Shichi, apparently falling in love for the first time much to the confusion of herself and others who regarded her lack of traditional femininity as a barrier to romance, becomes awkwardly resentful of the graceful Yuki whose charms she assumes will sway the handsome Yamitaro. Shichi does not seem to consider a class barrier between herself and Yamitaro as a problem but fears his natural affinity with a woman she perceives as superior to herself in her refinement, yet Yuki proves herself as staunch a fighter as Shichi and just as feisty. She appears to have little romantic interest in Yamitaro even if she resents Shichi’s rather blunt instructions to back off, and aside from concentrating on her revenge, spends the rest of the film dealing with the rescue of Doi’s daughter Ran who has drawn inspiration from her stage performances to rebel against her cruel fate and father.

Ran is just another symptom of her father’s corruption in his obvious disregard for her feelings as he prepares to send her off as a concubine to buy himself influence with only the mild justification that her ascendence to the imperial court is an honour even if she will never be a wife, only one of many mistresses. Unlike Ran, Yuki and Shichi have managed to seize their own agency, living more or less independently and as freely as possible within the society they inhabit. Experiencing differing kinds of bad luck and betrayal, they find themselves at odds with each other yet on parallel paths despite their obvious dualities.

With less space for song, Hibari’s dual casting does at least offer twice the fight potential as the outlaw and the actress finally find themselves on the same side to tackle the persistent injustice of Edo era society as manifested in the corrupt Doi and his slimy cronies gearing up for the mass brawl finale in which the wronged take their revenge on the wicked lord by proving him a villain in the public square and earning themselves not a little social kudos in the process. All of which makes the strangely melancholy ending exiling one aspect of Hibari to the outer reaches somewhat uncomfortable but then it does provide an excuse for another song.

Hibari’s musical numbers

Hibari Ohako: Ojo Kichisa (ひばり十八番お嬢吉三, Yasushi Sasaki, 1960)

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Ojo Kichisa still 1Following Benten Kozo, Ojo Kichisa (ひばり十八番お嬢吉三, Hibari Obako Ojo Kichisa) is the second in a small series of movies starring Hibari Misora in a tale adapted from a well known kabuki play and featuring a cross dressing hero/heroine. This time around Misora plays a young woman dressing as a man for the purposes of revenge who eventually meets up with two men sharing the same “Kichisa” name – a lord (Obo), and a priest (Osho), to form a brotherhood of three including her “Ojo” as in “young lady”. Together they fight the injustices of the feudal world (which are myriad) whilst helping Ojo Kichisa get revenge on the men who murdered her parents forcing her into a precarious life of self preservation.

Beginning with Misora singing the title song of the three Kichisa, the action then switches to a small drinking house where a young woman gets herself into trouble with a bossy samurai who accuses her of spilling sake on him. Though the woman, Otose (Eiko Maruyama), apologises profusely, the samurai threatens to make her pay with her body. Fortunately Ojo Kichisa strides in and fights the samurai into submission, temporarily saving the day. Unfortunately, the samurai come back later brandishing a loan agreement Otose’s father had signed and demand immediate repayment or they will take Otose in its stead.

Once again the feudal world is one of intense unfairness and corruption in which the samurai class abuse their privilege to oppress the ordinary men and women of the Edo era. The samurai who takes such extreme offence at Otose’s possible slip-up has no real reason to do so other than expressing his superiority and once humiliated by Ojo Kichisa feels himself duty bound to double down. The samurai order looks after its own and so his underlings spring into motion to manipulate Otose’s family into giving her up. The two loan sharks gleefully celebrate their good luck, confessing that a major reason for lending money to the needy is for occasions such as this – not only for the interest but for the leverage in getting the desired outcome in ongoing schemes.

Meanwhile, there is a bigger game at play concerning the new finance minister and local governor. The governor accepts “gifts” from a shopkeeper hoping to be promoted onto the council whilst subtly hinting that more “gifts” might be an idea while he needs to be turning a blind eye to the smuggling that’s currently going on in town. Of course, the governor turns out to be involved in Ojo Kichisa’s mission too and is currently being blackmailed by an old acquaintance who once helped him steal a famous sword from its rightful owner.

Another of Misora’s frequent cross-dressing roles, Ojo Kichisa starts out as male but is later revealed to be female having adopted male dress to survive in male dominated Edo and pursue revenge on those who rendered her an orphan. After losing her parents, Ojo Kichisa and her young brother Sannosuke (Takehiko Kayama) were travelling in search of relatives when they were abducted by slave traders and separated. Presumably, both managed to escape at some point and have been living by their wits vowing revenge and reunification but apparently largely untouched by the darkness of feudal society.

The darkness is something which gets pushed into the background in this otherwise comedic tale of the little guy standing up to corrupt elites. The three Kichisas each represent various areas of society – the priest, the noble lord who hates the cruelty of his class, and the elegant lady, Ojo. Obo Kichisa (Tomisaburo Wakayama), the lord with a conscience, is committed to protecting the weak and fighting injustice everywhere he sees it, but it’s not long before pretty much everyone has decided the governor has to go thanks to his inherently corrupt approach to governing in which he’s all about take and never about give, neglecting the townspeople under his care and prioritising his personal gain.

Hibari Misora sings the title song twice – at the opening and closing, as well as another insert song but her brother Sannosuke also gets an opportunity to showcase his singing his voice in a mild departure from the star vehicle norm (actor Takehiko Kayama was also Misora’s real life brother). As in Benten Kozo, Wakayama takes on the bulk of the heroic fighting but Misora gives it her all in the many fight scenes in which she too gets to defeat injustice and rescue maidens to her heart’s content. A straightforward jidaigeki idol movie, Ojo Kichisa is unremarkable in many ways but nevertheless another entertaining example of Misora’s talent for playing ambiguous gender roles.

Hibari Ohako: Benten Kozo (ひばり十八番　弁天小僧, Yasushi Sasaki, 1960)

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Benten Kozo dvd coverStarting out as a child actress, Hibari Misora was one of the biggest singing and acting stars of the post-war period whose songs are often pointed to as embodiments of the era’s melancholy yet determined spirit. Though it’s her singing career which has perhaps had the most historical impact, Misora made an immense number of films most of them in ’50s and ‘60s, many typical star vehicles of the time – silly comedies and softer musicals, usually finding an opportunity or two for a song even in straight drama. Hibari Ohako: Benten Kozo (ひばり十八番　弁天小僧), released in 1960 for Toei, is very much of this mould and showcases another somewhat interesting facet of Misora’s career in her readiness to play ambiguous gender roles.

Based on the well known kabuki play, Benten Kozo, which had also been adapted two years previously in a version starring male actor Raizo Ichikawa, Sasaki’s film stars Hibari Misora in the title role – a 13 year old boy who was given up at birth to be raised in a temple which specialises in performing Noh theatre. Kikunosuke (Hibari Misora) is their star, but there’s a dark side to temple performing companies in that they’re dependent on donations and it’s accepted practice to allow wealthy patrons to do whatever they like with the talent, no matter their age or gender. Kikunosuke knows this and isn’t having any of it. Pushed into a room with a lecherous, overly made-up older woman, Kikunosuke balks at the old monk’s attempts to pimp him out and tries to leave, much to the monk’s disappointment.

Unfortunately, just as Kikunosuke is leaving, a thief arrives to steal the money meant for the monk and kills the old woman in the process. Kikunosuke kills the thief but is accused of killing the old woman too and is forced on the run. Tracking down his birth mother, Ofuji (Mitsuko Miura), Kiku thinks he’s found a home but is betrayed, at which point he adopts the name “Benten Kozo” (lit. “Benten Kid” where Benten is the name of the goddess at the temple where he was raised) and joins a gang of Robin Hood-style outlaw thieves.

Like many period films of the time, Benten Kozo revolves around exposing the corruption of the samurai order. In this case, it’s a salt scam – the samurai elders have been stockpiling salt to push the price up, endangering the lives of ordinary people for their own financial gain and thinking nothing of it. The thieves, led by later Lone Wolf and Cub star Tomisaburo Wakayama, are dedicated to robbing the rich to feed the poor but they also aim to expose those in power for the reckless bullies they really are. Benten Kozo joins the “Shiranami Five Alliance” both out of self preservation and out of genuine sympathy with their cause, eventually encountering the same corrupt monk who turned a blind eye to his attempted molestation when he intervenes to save a woman forced into prostitution to pay her father’s debt whom the monk was attempting to rape.

Benten Kozo listens to the woman’s story and decides to give her his savings (which he no longer wants after being betrayed by his mother for whom he’d been saving the money) to pay off her family debt. In fact the pair met earlier when Benten Kozo was on the run and she helped him hide from the authorities. The woman, like several in the film, falls for Benten Kozo’s androgynous charms though he remains resolutely noble and indifferent. Benten Kozo would originally have been played by a male actor on the kabuki stage which did not allow female performers. The “onnagata” or actors who specialised in playing women were often effeminate younger men or boys much like Benten Kozo himself who plays these skills to the max throughout the film.

Hibari Misora, with her low, husky voice, effortlessly switches between the elegant upperclass women Benten Kozo impersonates on stage and in service of the gang’s scams, and the rough and ready dialect of a street ruffian. In a shocking display of bravado, Benten Kozo drops the top of his kimono to show his off his tattoos proving once and for all that he’s no lady but still his appeal lingers perhaps precisely because of his gender ambiguity.

Benten Kozo is not a musical but finds two occasions for Misora to sing – once as Benten Kozo takes off on the road, and the other at the end as he paddles a boat away back to his new found friends. The film ends with a giant mass brawl and also provides ample scope for Misora to escape across roof tops and fight off the unjust but it’s otherwise fairly straightforward fare and not exactly among the singer’s most memorable outings. It is however generally entertaining and interesting enough in its central theme of woman playing man playing woman to warrant attention from more than just diehard Misora fans.

Hibari Misora singing Benten Kozo in concert some years later.