Tag: Shinyo Nara

The Ball at the Anjo House (安城家の舞踏会, Kozaburo Yoshimura, 1947)

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“Old things die out so new things can be born,” according to the ruined patriarch of a once noble house in Kozaburo Yoshimura’s Chekhovian drama Ball at the Anjo House (安城家の舞踏会, Anjo-ke no butokai), though he might as well be speaking to the post-war society. The Anjos are like the declining aristocracy of the earlier 20th century mourning the disappearance of their world of privilege and gaiety and reflecting that they too must now, as younger daughter Atsuko (Setsuko Hara) says, learn to serve others.

Atsuko is really the only one who accepts the age of the aristocracy has passed and that it is only right and proper that they should join this newly egalitarian, democratic society. Her sister Akiko (Yumeko Aizome) has recently returned home after 12 years having left her husband because of his adultery, but cannot now face it that she no longer has a place here. Approached by their former chauffeur Toyama (Takashi Kanda) who has long carried a torch for her, Akiko snaps that she will always be a noblewoman in heart, unable to let go of outdated customs of class and propriety. She seems to have feelings for the chauffeur too, but won’t let herself embrace them, calling him “dirty” and resenting herself for her attraction to a man who is not her social equal. 

But times are very different now and the aristocracy has been abolished which has in all other senses dissolved the class barrier between them. The tables have turned and Toyama is now a wealthy man having done well for himself in business through honest hard work. Akiko asks him for help as a kind of symbolic gesture as if she were making recompense by handing the house to its rightful owner in their former servant. He insensitively tells patriarch Tadahiko (Osamu Takizawa) that he can easily spare a few thousand to throw away on the house as a sentimental gesture, but does so largely without malice. Only after Akiko has turned him down at the ball and he begins to drink does he start to crow, if a little sadly, that now this base and ugly servant has bought the master’s house. On his way out, he knocks over the suit of armour that had stood in the hall as if literally bringing down the feudalistic military legacy of this once great family and sending it crashing to the floor. The camera suddenly tilts to emphasise that this world is now out of kilter and has been destabilised beyond repair. It’s only this action that frees Akiko from her self-imposed repression as she skips over the armour and chases Toyama out the door. Tumbling down a sand dune she literally descends to his level leaving her pearls and shoes behind. 

The class barrier has been fully dissolved, and Tadahiko too permits himself to marry his long-term mistress, the geisha Chiyo (Chieko Murata), who declares that she doesn’t care about his loss of status and invites him to live with her if he has to sell his house. But it seems as if Tadahiko can’t let go of his ancestral legacy nor his childhood home. In truth, this Western-style country house by the sea can only have been built after the Meiji Restoration which means it’s under a hundred years old and most likely built by Tadahiko’s father, the gentleman in European-style military dress in the portrait. As such, it was likely constructed to look forward to a new era as the samurai class rebranded itself into a European-style aristocracy. Tadahiko’s older sister, married to a lord who’s faring better in this new world, tells an enraptured collection of younger women of the time she danced with a prince a year after the Russo-Japanese war when she was only 19. But this will be the last ball at the Anjo House, in memory of a “beautiful way of life” that has been now been eclipsed.  

Tadahiko had faith that they would be saved essentially through the good chap system in his relationship with a nouveau riche upstart named Shinkawa (Masao Shimizu). Shinkawa holds the mortgage on the house, and there are all sorts of rumours about his shady business. He made most of his money on the black market. Shinkawa had arranged a marriage between his daughter Yoko (Keiko Tsushima) and Tadahiko’s son Masahiko, which gave him even more confidence. But as Atsuko says, Shinkawa was only friendly with him because of his aristocratic title and now it’s gone he has nothing to offer. In marrying Yoko to Masahiko (Masayuki Mori), Shinkawa would have gained the legitimacy of a connection with nobility while Tadahiko would have gained an injection of cash that would save his social status. But none of that matters any more now that the aristocracy has been abolished under the post-war reforms that have also seen Tadahiko’s lands confiscated and estate broken up. It seems that Tadahiko let Shinkawa use his name for a munitions factory during the war, which might not play so well now, just as Akiko’s decision to part with her adulterous husband may also have been influenced by the fact that he was a general who is presumably little in demand in the wake of defeat. Still, Tadahiko prefers Shinkawa to letting the house go to a former servant like Toyama who must himself be enamoured enough with that old world to want to become master of it rather than tear it down.

For Masahiko’s part, he has little interest in marrying Yoko but on learning the engagement has been unilaterally called off and Shinkawa is little more than crook decides to rape Yoko to get back at him. His cruelty is a symptom of post-war nihilism, and we soon discover he’s been sleeping with a maid, Kiku (Akemi Sora), to whom he made promises of marriage he had no intention of keeping. But Like Akiko it seems as if he does care for her after all, only he won’t let himself feel anything in the numbness of his loss of privilege preferring instead to laugh too loudly with his boorish friends. Only on seeing the class barrier dissolve when his father marries Chiyo and his sister Akiko takes off after Toyama does he allow himself to embrace Kiku and express genuine emotion.

Masahiko is played by a young Masayuki Mori who was the son of the novelist Takeo Arishima. Arishima was also a member of the aristocracy but one who became a socialist and dissolved his estate which was something of a fashion in the 1920s. The situation is however complicated by the fact that the Anjos’ servants remain loyal and don’t want to leave them. After all, this is as much their home too and they don’t have anywhere to go either because a world with no masters has no need for servants. We too are encouraged to mourn this world, but its end is also presented as a kind of liberation in which the family are finally permitted to embrace their own desires only after casting off the shackles of the aristocracy and preparing to forge new futures in a changing world leaving the feudal past behind and waltzing into a new and brighter future.

A Brother and His Younger Sister (兄とその妹, Yasujiro Shimazu, 1939)

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A young man’s love of go ends up getting him into hot water at work in Yasujiro Shimazu’s surprisingly progressive shomingeki, A Brother and his Younger Sister (兄とその妹, Ani to Sono Imoto). It seems office politics might not have changed all that much in the last 80 years even if many other things have, but conversely the film seems to have more to say about the changing nature of gender roles and attitudes towards women in a time in which it was becoming possible for a woman to live a fully independent life. 

This window wouldn’t last very long and the situation largely reversed itself even amid the supposed equality enshrined in the post-war constitution, but Fumiko (Michiko Kuwano) at least has a well paying job as a secretary at a large company and consequently little desire to marry even at the comparatively late age of 24. Her earning capacity is later put forward as a reason that there “aren’t many opportunities” for marriage as men apparently feel threatened and embarrassed especially if their salary is lower than hers. It’s not exactly that she’s against marriage, but as she can support herself and is otherwise happy living with her brother Keisuke (Shin Saburi) and his wife Akiko (Kuniko Miyake). She doesn’t see the need to rush into such an important decision. Though she might change her mind if the right person came along, for the moment she just isn’t interested. Then again, Akiko’s sucking of her finger when she’s ironically cut by a thorn on a bouquet of roses from an unwanted admirer might suggest another reason marriage is not on her radar.

Her suitor, Michio (Ken Uehara), despite his handsomeness is a little creepy in his courtship and cannot seem to take a hint that Fumiko isn’t interested in him. A friend of her boss, he has a habit of dropping into the office for no real reason and attempts to ask her out when the boss isn’t there. She lies and tells him she’s married already (to a penniless painter!) but after the boss reveals the truth it doesn’t seem to occur to Michio that if she made up a story like that it’s because she doesn’t want to go out with him. We’re told that Michio studied at Oxford and is attracted to Fumiko because he’s impressed by her language skills, but he’s also some kind of stockbroker which quickly paints him as no good seeing as the film seems to have a minor message about how dabbling in stocks and shares is little better than gambling and definitely dangerous.

One of Keisuke’s colleagues has been given a warning because there’s a rumour that he’s into shares while another has apparently been demoted because it came to light that he had a fondness for horse racing. More than a moral judgement, it seems the reason is that these sorts of hobbies may eventually lead someone towards embezzling from the company to cover their debts. Keisuke’s supervisor is also worried that his 18-year-old son is refusing to go to university and apparently wants to join some kind of “investment society” which admittedly does not sound like a good idea so he wants Keisuke to talk him out of it. The big boss, meanwhile, who is also Michio’s uncle, turns out to be into shares himself which makes him a very compromised authority figure. 

Keisuke is not into shares, but he is very into the game of go which causes him to stay out until late at night playing with his bosses. He does this because he genuinely likes playing, but Fumiko worries that his colleagues will come to resent him assuming that he does so to curry favour. Apparently, something similar happened at his previous job which is why he ended up quitting abruptly. As he was quite lucky to get this one despite how impressed everyone seems by his capabilities, it would be better if that didn’t happen again. Nevertheless, the perspicacious Fumiko turns out to be right as as his co-worker Yukito (Reikichi Kawamura) becomes increasingly jealous of his success fearing that he will leapfrog him to take the shortly to open up supervisor position which he believes to be his simply because he’s been there longer (which is generally how things work at Japanese companies). Consequently, starts a series of rumours that Keisuke is a snitch who got the horse racing guy demoted and is only in his position thanks to schmoozing with the bosses.

This obviously leaves him with a huge dilemma when his boss asks him to put in a good word for Michio with Fumiko whom he is pretty sure won’t be interested. To his credit, Keisuke maintains that it’s up to her and his career is nowhere near as important as her happiness though he is also aware it’s going to be embarrassing for him when she says no. Fumiko knows this too, and it’s clear that she also feels incredibly awkward when he puts it to her but only asks for a few minutes to think before offering her primary justification for refusing which would be that she fears Keisuke’s colleagues will resent him even more if they come to the conclusion that he sold his own sister in the hope of career advancement. This does in fact turn out to be the case as Yukito has already started a rumour about a dynastic marriage that turns the rest of Keisuke’s colleagues against him especially as he’s given the promotion immediately before he was going to tell the boss Fumiko isn’t interested. 

Confronted by the horse racing guy, Keisuke ends up quitting again after getting into a physical confrontation with a seemingly remorseful Yukito who probably didn’t mean for it to go that far. Keisuke quits because he won’t have people think he was gossiping behind their backs and is offended by this attack on his integrity, but his decision is also a rebuke against this infinitely corrupt employment regime in which hypocritical bosses hand out jobs to their favourites and maybe do expect that Keisuke will persuade his sister to sacrifice herself for his career. She meanwhile is portrayed as an independent woman, but ironically rejects the marriage to save her brother’s reputation though perhaps equally she feared her “no” would not be enough on its own. Then again, she had apparently turned down several suitors already and no one really expected her to say yes this time unless she’d suddenly begun to feel anxious about her age and declining prospects. 

Nevertheless, it’s refreshing that the film does not force Fumiko into accepting marriage as so many others would and in fact legitimises her opposition to it and right to live as an independent woman for as long as she chooses. Keisuke is also in some ways rewarded for quitting his job at the corrupt company in immediately getting another one from a former co-worker who’s since started his own business and wants to expand to Manchuria. But this final scene almost seems tacked on for the censor’s benefit. It is perhaps a little unusual for 1939 that the film has so far made no mention of Japan’s imperial ambitions nor made any kind of patriotic appeal. It’s even been quite pro-internationalist in the talk of people speaking English and engaging in European trade (even if the currency trading Michio’s doing is definitely framed as bad). Fumiko spots a little patch of grass clinging onto the plane as they take off for Manchuria with Keisuke remarking that he hopes this little piece of Japan will take root on the continent. On one level, it suggests that contemporary Japan was too corrupt for an “honest” man like Keisuke to prosper while Manchuria will offer greater freedom for himself and the independent modern girl Fumiko (who declares she won’t marry until Keisuke’s successful), but it’s also of course an unpalatable advocation for the ongoing imperialist expansion which seems so out of keeping with everything that’s gone before. Even so, the message is clear that it’s Keisuke and Fumiko who are in the right and should be allowed to live just as they are in a society free of judgement and hypocrisy.

My Elder Brother (私の兄さん, Yasujiro Shimazu, 1934)

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A wastrel son and runaway daughter get a few lessons in filiality in Yasujiro Shimazu’s genial ‘30s comedy, My Elder Brother (私の兄さん, Watashi no Niisan). Reflecting the changing the times, the film is in many ways about navigating the sometimes fraught relationships among a blended family though like many hahamono, it’s the stepson who is most devoted to his mother while the birth son is consumed by a sense of guilt and inadequacy in his accidentally awkward positioning within the family hierarchy.

The filial piety of eldest son Shige (Reikichi Kawamura) is established early on by the fact he’s not at work because his mother is ill and he’s off visiting her. He does in fact return late at night, though there’s a question mark over his qualities as a boss as the drivers at the taxi firm he runs remark that he’s been ignoring their attempts to negotiate with him for better conditions not least the provision of assistants which has been given additional weight by one driver’s experience with a disturbed fare who attempted to strange him with his belt.

The strange and violent opening sequence in which a cabbie is attacked by a crazed passenger is never referenced again and out of keeping with the otherwise lighthearted tone of the film though does add to a sense of danger later echoed in the appearance of two guys who first seem like yakuza but are actually just two grumpy old men trying to retrieve a young woman who’s run away in defiance of an arranged marriage. In any case, tearaway brother Fumio (Kazuo Hasegawa), who arrives drunk in the back of a cab, has indeed fallen into bad company with yakuza whom he describes as his friends though Shige warns him they’re probably just after his money.

Fumio has returned because he’s learned his mother is ill, though he’s reluctant to see her given his present condition. When he does actually meet her, she says that she hates him and calls him a good-for-nothing, worthless man. It seems her animosity is partly motivated by a sense of guilt and embarrassment that her biological son has brought shame to the family she married into and especially to Shige. For his part, Shige acknowledges that he also felt resentful when Fumio and his mother moved in but explains that he was still a child clinging to the memory of his late birth mother. Fumio explains to the young woman he picks up, Sumako (Kinuyo Tanaka), who is on the run from her uncle and the man her stepmother wants her to marry, that he left home because of his precarious status and sense of inadequacy but liked the sense of freedom his independence gave him even if he is ashamed of the kind of life he’s lived on the fringes of the underworld. 

Sumako is experiencing a similar dilemma as she feels herself unable to bond with her stepmother to the extent that she has not been able to articulate that she objects to the arranged marriage her relatives have set up for her. She laments that if it were her birthmother she should be able to tell her everything, but Fumio counters that Shige had been jealous of him because he could exchange harsh words with his mother because of their closeness in a way he never could because he is not her biological son. Reinforcing a sense of obligation between parents and children might have been an important message in the mid-1930s, but the film is perhaps unexpectedly progressive in its openness and desire to embrace these then considered less usual family arrangements born of second marriages in emphasising the brotherly bond between the two men and Sumako’s successful escape from an unwanted marriage simply by speaking her true feelings to her mother not to mention the suggestion of a cross class romance between rich girl Sumako and the middle-class Fumio.

Meanwhile, the film also has an international bent in the prominent signs for Chevrolet and Hollywood-esque aesthetics, drawing inspiration from American and European crime films for the violent opening sequence and underworld setting. Shimazu hints at the shadiness of Fumio’s backstreets life, but equally of Sumako’s uncle and his moustachioed friend lending an undertone of darkness to the mid-30s society but otherwise keeps things light in the innocent courtship between Fumio and Sumako who can mediate their attraction only by remarking on the beauty of a sunset. 

Home Sweet Home (我が家は樂し, Noboru Nakamura, 1951)

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There must have been a lot of families like the Uemuras in the Japan of 1951. As film’s title implies, their home is a happy one and though they may not have much they make the most what they have and are cheerful and loving towards each other. Still, the world stores up trouble for them perhaps because they are so very defiant of their circumstances. In many ways a classic shomingeki, Home Sweet Home (我が家は樂し, Waga Ya wa Tanoshi) was the film that put Noboru Nakamura on the map and finds Japan at a kind of crossroads edging past post-war privation towards a broadly consumerist society.

We can get a sense of that in the constant needs of four children in the Uemura family, patriarch Kosaku (Chishu Ryu) picking up his young son Kazuo (Katsumasa Okamoto) after baseball on his way home and noticing that his mitt is almost worn through only to get there and spot his daughter’s boots are getting pretty thin too. It’s clear they struggle for money despite Kosaku’s steady job for which he is about to receive a 25-year good service commendation as wife Namiko (Isuzu Yamada) supplements the family income by taking in sewing at home while we later find out that she’s already sold most of her kimono to help make ends meet and is considering selling her wedding ring to pay for middle daughter Nobuko’s (Keiko Kishi) school trip to Kyoto.

But her hard-nosed sister Kayo (Mutsuko Sakura) tells her that secondhand kimono have lost their value with so many new ones now available. In the immediate post-war era, rice and kimono were the only things that had held their value and so selling one could bring in a lot of money quickly. Conversely, after receiving a sizeable bonus along with his commendation, Kosaku and Namiko visit a department store which has a large range of affordable clothing for sale though the kimono fabric Kosaku picks out for Namiko is still fairly expensive so she instinctively puts it back insisting that they buy the presents they promised the children first. 

That was probably a good move, seeing as the rest of the money is stolen from them on their way home to a congratulations party the children are busy setting up. Kosaku asks why someone would rob people like them, honest, hardworking types who don’t have much to begin with but as Namiko sensibly points out pickpockets don’t really think like that and how would they know anyway. The subtext is that times are still hard for a lot of people even if there are now more exciting, definitely non-essential things appearing on shelves for people with disposable income to buy and a new kimono, though out of fashion, is no longer so out of reach for the ordinary housewife. 

The loss of the money might seem as if it should place a wedge between husband and wife, but bar a moment of disappointment cured by the realisation that oldest daughter Tomoko (Hideko Takamine) has been considerate enough to place hot water bottles in their futons, they resolve to muddle through together and in any case they’re no worse off than they were before. Tomoko herself is conflicted, feeling as if as a young woman in her early 20s she should give up her dreams of becoming a painter and get a job to support the family but Namiko always tells her not to. She encourages each of her children to follow their dreams, perhaps a sign of a new post-war liberation, telling her sister that she’d happily sell all her kimono so that Tomoko could go on painting. Later we discover that she also dreamed of becoming an artist and that though Kosaku had encouraged her to keep it up, a housewife’s day is never done and there was simply no time left for herself. Painting is just another thing she sacrificed for her family and Namiko seems to be determined that Tomoko won’t have to do the same not that she particularly regrets her decision.

Tomoko only really comes to understand her mother’s sacrifices on noticing that the cupboards really are bare, she’s sold everything that could be sold and pawned her ring though the colleague that owned the house they were renting has encountered some financial difficulties of his own and going to to sell to the grumpy old man who bought the house across the way. The Uemuras are such obviously good people that it feels so unfair that so much bad luck has come their way all at once though it is their goodness that eventually saves them when the old man is touched by seeing youngest daughter Mitsuko (Kazuko Fukui) playing with his dog. He later comes to admire Tomoko’s painting of his garden though he’d put a fence up to stop her peering in. The scars of the post-war era are visible in the damage to Uemura’s front wall which would have blocked the way but now perhaps enables them to become good neighbours after all. Though the film may lack some of the visual flair present in Nakamura’s later work, it more than makes up for it with genuine sentiment and the implication that in the end the world is basically good and rewards those who are the same even if it sometimes tests their resilience.

The Rose on His Arm (太陽とバラ, Keisuke Kinoshita, 1956)

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In the mid-1950s, a minor moral panic took hold over the so-called “Sun Tribe” movies which, inspired by the novels of Shintaro Ishihara, depicted a world of crazed abandon in which a collection of bored rich kids lost themselves in the hedonistic pursuits of sex and drugs rejecting the stability the wartime generation had striven so hard to create for their children. Shochiku, at that time the home of polite melodrama, nevertheless attempted to get in on the youth movie boom mostly through commissioning a series of young directors such as Kiju Yoshida and Nagisa Oshima in the hope that they could speak directly to their generation. Meanwhile, the by that point well-established Keisuke Kinoshita also made his own, perhaps surprising, take on the genre with The Rose on His Arm (太陽とバラ, Taiyo to Bara), a youth movie melodrama which nevertheless anticipated the questions others were beginning to ask about the Sun Tribe movies in their very particular view of contemporary class dynamics. 

Our hero, Kiyoshi (Katsuo Nakamura), is like the (anti-)heroes of the post-Sun Tribe youth movies, a poor boy turned delinquent out of a sense of frustrated hopelessness. Quitting one job after another solely because the work is boring, he spends most of his days hanging out at the beach with other no good kids robbing unsuspecting bathers. Kiyoshi’s sense of inferiority is compounded by the fact that his mother (Sadako Sawamura) works as a maid for a wealthy family while making ends meet by crafting paper flowers by night. The young master of the house where his mother works, Masahiro (Akira Ishihama), never misses a chance to lord his wealth over him but later co-opts Kiyoshi into his group of wealthy friends as a source of entertainment (and because his delinquent friend, Yamanaka (Tamotsu Tamura), begins supplying them with drugs).

“I screwed up my life because I was poor, what’s your excuse?” Kiyoshi eventually asks an indifferent Masahiro after beginning to see him for what he is. Like the hero of Punishment Room, Kiyoshi’s internalised resentment is partly down to a paternal failure in that he is deeply ashamed of his late father who died, his mother claimed, saving him but also in the course of his activities as a black marketeer in which he’d forced his son to be complicit. The family had apparently tried to make a life for themselves in the new colonies, in this case Palau, but of course had to return to Japan and were then penniless. People did what they had to do, but no one trusts a black marketeer and it seems to be a stain Kiyoshi (whose name means “pure”) cannot wash off. As a poor boy with no education or prospects, he knows all that awaits him is drudgery, so why not make a fast buck stealing purses at the beach rather than slave away at the factory for a week making less than Masahiro gets in pocket money from his factory owner father? 

Convincing himself he’s no good, Kiyoshi consistently sabotages opportunities but resents himself for doing so. He begins to buckle down at the factory but quickly becomes “bored” and starts taking advantage of his supportive floor manager while sucked into Masahiro’s hedonistic lifestyle even after it becomes obvious that he’s keeping him around to be some kind of hired goon, good for punching other pasty rich boys and hooking him up with underworld thrills. Masahiro is a delinquent because his life is too easy, he has no economic imperative to be responsible and will most likely go to college and then either take over the factory or walk into a lucrative salaryman job. Kiyoshi is a delinquent because he’s desperate and has no other means of living. 

Meanwhile he resents his mother’s love, shamed, in more than one sense, by her continuing industry. She often tells him the story of how he fell ill on Palau only to make a miraculous recovery after which she collapsed into a rose a garden. To spite her, Kiyoshi gets the titular rose tattooed on his arm, something which forever marks him out as a ne’er do well in conservative Japanese society, all but guaranteeing he’ll never get an honest job (he even has to cover the tattoo with bandages in public places to avoid causing offence). Eventually he takes drastic action to end his sense of hopelessness, pursuing what is strangely a darker yet more romantic destiny than that of his post-Sun Tribe compatriots in taking a poetic stand, paper rose in hand, defying his despair only through embracing it. 

The Rose on His Arm is currently available to stream in the US via Criterion Channel.

Woman of Tokyo (東京の女, Yasujiro Ozu, 1933)

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Most closely associated with his family dramas, the films of Yasujiro Ozu while often deeply moving are generally safe spaces filled with warmth and love. He was never, however, afraid to explore the darkness of his society as the uncharacteristically bleak silent Woman of Tokyo (東京の女, Tokyo no Onna) makes plain. A tale of disintegrating families, Ozu substitutes a loyal sister for a self sacrificing mother but once again places her at the mercy of a conservative society which refuses to accept the nature of the sacrifice she has chosen to make on its behalf. 

The heroine, Chikako (Yoshiko Okada), is better off than most during these years of depression in that she has a steady full-time job as a typist with which she is able to support her younger brother, Ryoichi (Ureo Egawa), who is a student. Somewhat unusually, Ozu shows us a fairly progressive working environment in which Chikako is one of many women working alongside men in an open plan office which is arranged in a far less stressful manner than the one we later observe in the American film which Ryoichi and his girlfriend Harue (Kinuyo Tanaka) see at the cinema (If I Had a Million, 1932, the segment directed by Ernst Lubitsch, “The Clerk”) in which the desks are laid out in regimented style and staffed entirely by identically dressed men.  

In any case, the job apparently does not quite pay enough to cover Ryoichi’s fees and so Chikako has taken on a part-time gig assisting a professor with translation at his home in the evenings, or so she said. Unbeknownst to her, a policeman turns up at her office and asks to see her attendance records. Again surprisingly, Chikako’s boss is calm and supportive, telling the policeman she’s a model employee of four years’ standing and obviously confused as to how she could be the subject of any criminal investigation. The policeman does not explain, shutting the interview down as soon as the boss motions to ask Chikako about the mysterious professor presumably not wanting her to know she is under investigation. 

Rumours, however, will start and it is those rumours more than the truth of them which will prove the most fatal. Harue’s brother (Shinyo Nara) is a policeman and he’s heard that Chikako has been moonlighting as a bar girl and engaging in sex work. Harue decides to put the matter to her boyfriend, but he is immediately offended, brought to tears by anger, and throws Harue out for slandering his sister. The issue is that, as a woman and most particularly as a sister in place of a mother, Chikako is expected to sacrifice herself on her brother’s behalf. Her career, and implicitly the reason she is not yet married, is not for her personal fulfilment or financial security but only for her brother’s future. She has given up everything for him, and now apparently has also surrendered her body yet he rejects and shames her for it. He does not thank her, nor does he feel guilt for being the cause of her supposed degradation but again foregrounds his own suffering as the brother of a fallen woman. 

Harue, by contrast, is presented as a the soul of properness, not unkind but disapproving. In a difficult conversation with Chikako, she admits it’s not the right thing to say but immediately pities Ryoichi rather than sympathising with another woman who has found herself making difficult choices solely on his behalf. Ryoichi rejects her suffering and sees only the shame. Yet Chikako is not ashamed. She does not seem unhappy with her choices and is defiant in the face of censure. She hoped that Ryoichi would one day understand, but the decision he makes is cruel and selfish, ruining all her hope and rendering her long years of suffering void. She resents his cowardice in being unable to face and accept the truth in the depth of her love for him. 

In this instance, the family fails but only because of an oppressive social structure that is inherently unequal and refuses to accept either female agency or sacrifice. Chikako lives in a world of film noir despair, haunted by ominous shadows – policemen’s swords, gloves against the shoji, nooses in shadows on the walls, a boiling kettle giving way to a pillow shot of smoke pouring from a chimney in funereal foreshadowing that forever traps her in impossibility. Frustrated, Ryoichi tries to reassert his manhood through physical violence but remains impotent, dependent on his sister but resenting her for shaming him in transgressing against an oppressive society. Meanwhile, Chikako is one of many women of Tokyo enduring the same old tragedies, her suffering barely registers. Reporters leave her door giggling after concluding there’s nothing to see here before taking to the streets in search of greater scandal in a readily devolving city filled with only emptiness and despair. 

Currently streaming in the UK via BFI Player as part of Japan 2020. Also available to stream in the US via Criterion Channel.

Street of Violence: The Pen Never Lies (ペン偽らず　暴力の街, Satsuo Yamamoto, 1950)

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vlcsnap-2020-01-16-00h05m26s354The immediate post-war era was one marked by fear and anxiety. The world had turned upside down, food was scarce, and desperation had provoked a widespread moral decline which rendered compassion a luxury many thought they could ill afford. Yet, in hitting rock bottom there was also the opportunity to rebuild the world better than it had been before. Street of Violence: The Pen Never Lies (ペン偽らず　暴力の街, Pen Itsuwarazu Boryoku no Machi), is one of many pro-democracy films arriving in the wake of Japan’s new constitution and makes an unlikely hero of the local newspaperman as the sole means of speaking truth to power in the fierce belief that the people have a right to know.

Tojo, a small town Northwest of Tokyo, was once the centre of the silk trade but as the industry declined, it gradually became home to gangs and a hub for wartime black market shenanigans. The sad truth is that the growing nouveau riche middle-classes profiting from post-war shadiness have more or less got the town sewn up. The corrupt police force is in cahoots with the gangsters who call themselves a “police support organisation” and make a point of wining and dining the local police chief, while also making sure the local paper is firmly in their pocket. The trouble starts when rookie reporter Kita (Yasumi Hara) is invited to a policeman’s ball and figures out the whole thing is sponsored by the silk traders’ union, which he thinks is not quite right. He takes what he’s learned back to his editor and is warned off the story but publishes something anyway, quickly becoming a target for prominent “politician” Onishi (Masao Mishima).

Street of Violence opens with onscreen text taken from the press code which emphasises that mass media has a duty to preserve the truth. Kita’s paper had been in league with the police and the gangsters enabling the atmosphere of casual violence which is gradually consuming the town. Kita, a new recruit, is not yet inured to the way things are and immediately thinks his duty is to blow a whistle, most obviously on the corrupt police force and judiciary. He is only allowed to do so because the previous editor stepped down and a similarly idealistic older gentleman (Takashi Shimura) from out of town has taken over. He decides to fight back, standing up to the crypto-fascist goons by continuing to publish the truth about the links between the police, black market silk traders, gangsters, and the rest of the local press who eventually gain the courage to join him.

Onishi continues to masquerade as a “legitimate businessman” and “respectable politician” claiming that he’s “striving for democracy” to help the “downtrodden”, but is also responsible for directly targeting Kita’s mother and sister in an attempt to intimidate him. The editor assigns another reporter, Kawasaki (Ryo Ikebe), to keep Kita safe and starts trying to find locals who will consent to be interviewed about gang intimidation while Kita’s friends from the Youth Association generate a kind of resistance movement holding protests and handing out flyers condemning the atmosphere of violence which has ordinary citizens turning off their lights and avoiding going out after dark to protect themselves from thuggery.

The silent cause of all this strife is of course post-war privation which has made the blackmarket the only means of survival for those otherwise starving but has also given free rein to selfish immorality. The Onishis of the world, the spineless police chief, and the cynical local press, have all abnegated their human responsibilities in wilfully taking advantage of a bad situation to further their own cause. When the press chooses not to turn a blind eye to entrenched corruption, it raises a flag that ordinary people can follow. Too intimidated to speak out, the townspeople had been living in fear but post-war youth has the courage to say no and demand a better future. A mass rally crying out “democracy” and insisting on an end to the cronyism and the corrupt systems of pre-war feudalism produces a people power revolution that can’t be ignored, forcing Onishi into submission, and a clean out of corrupt law enforcement. But, the earnest voice over reminds us, the victory is only partial – violence still exists and will rise again when it thinks no one’s looking. The press, most of all, cannot afford to look away if “democracy” is to be maintained.

Victory of Women (女性の勝利, Kenji Mizoguchi, 1946)

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Victory of Women cap 1Female suffering in an oppressive society had always been at the forefront of Mizoguchi’s filmmaking even if he, like many of his contemporaries, found his aims frustrated by the increasingly censorious militarist regime. In some senses, the early days of occupation may not have been much better as one form of propaganda was essentially substituted for another if one that most would find more palatable. The first of his “women’s liberation trilogy”, Victory of Women (女性の勝利, Josei no Shori) was released in 1946 and expressly embraced the democratic philosophy espoused by the American authorities which necessarily included a motion towards female emancipation.

Played by Mizoguchi’s muse Kinuyo Tanaka, our heroine is Hiroko – a young woman working as a lawyer defending women against the cold and hard face of the law. Her family situation is, however, complicated. Her father having passed away, Hiroko’s sister Michiko (Michiko Kuwano who sadly passed away during shooting after collapsing on set) married the prosecutor Kono (Kappei Matsumoto) who financially supported Hiroko so that she might become the lawyer she is today. Meanwhile, Kono is also responsible for the arrest and incarceration of Hiroko’s fiancé Yamaoka (Shin Tokudaiji), a liberal intellectual. The political situation having changed, Yamaoka is to be released from prison after five years but is now in extremely poor health. Hiroko intends to return to him, resume their former relationship and marry once his health recovers. This is anathema to Kono who still objects to his liberalist views and views himself as having a hold over Hiroko’s future as the head of her family and in having supported her financially.

Financial support is a cornerstone if not the full foundation of Kono’s position of entitled superiority over Hiroko and her family. Despite the melodramatic underpinning of the case at hand, the real questions are the ones defining the direction of the post-war world in pitting the feudal values of “duty” and “womanliness” against a modernising liberality that prizes freedom and equality above hierarchy and obligation.

Kono, perhaps to his credit, does not appear object to the idea of female lawyers and has indeed facilitated Hiroko’s rise to just such as position but otherwise affirms that “a woman’s duty is easy. All that is required of her is self-sacrifice”. The idea of “self-sacrifice” is one which is brought up in the closing speeches of the trial in which Hiroko makes an impassioned plea in the case of a mother, Moto (Mitsuko Miura), who, mad with grief, held her baby too closely and may have suffocated it. Kono’s argument is that Moto’s transgression is against nature and the social order, that she has “failed” as a woman in rejecting her maternity by murdering her child. He rejects the “extenuating circumstances” of her grief and desperation by painting her “crime” as a selfish one in choosing to save her own life rather than sacrifice herself on her child’s behalf. Insisting that she has “disgraced the morals of women”, Kono requests she be punished severely as an example to the others.

In refuting Kono’s argument, Hiroko not only restates the extenuating circumstances of the intense strain on Moto’s mental health but attacks his entire way of thinking in positioning “motherhood” as the primary female “duty”. She does not deny that there have been many wonderful stories of women who valiantly sacrificed their own lives for their families, but reminds the court that these stories have often been misused as a kind of propaganda in service of female oppression, that under the feudal system which militarists prized so highly women were little more than slaves to men with no rights or agency. Further more, she points to the corruption of the hierarchical society which has left Moto in such a difficult position following her husband’s early death as a result of an accident at the factory for which the factory paid but only until the end of the war at which time he was cruelly cast away like so many of his generation who had perhaps been similarly exploited to serve a similar idea of “duty” only this time to the state. Kono blames Moto, insisting that her “crime” occurred because her character is “weak”. Hiroko does not blame Moto at all but the society which placed her in such an impossible position and has all but broken her spirit.

The argument is between a fair and just society in which the law exists for the protection of the people, and an austere and cruel one in which the law exists to oppress and tyrannise. Kono, an arch and unreconstructed militarist, believes in the primacy of the law. He is rigid and uncompromising, branding Hiroko’s summation as “sentimental” and “romantic”, dismissing an “irrational” woman’s logic from his elevated position on the podium. As others point out to him, his way of thinking is outdated and his tendency towards an entitled assumption that it will eventually prevail through being the proper order of things is extremely misguided yet he clings fiercely to feudalistic values which have ensured power remains in the hands of people like him since time immemorial, uncompromising to the last.

Rather than focus on Moto and her trial, Mizoguchi and his scriptwriters Kogo Noda and Kaneto Shindo, return to the realms of melodrama in shifting into the domestic as Hiroko’s older sister Michiko struggles between the feudal duty to her husband (however much she appears to dislike him) and her love for her sister whose modern liberal way of thinking still strikes her as immoral. Michiko, it seems, was forced to sacrifice herself for her family in marrying Kono for financial support. The sisters’ mother, now committed to Hiroko’s way of thinking, willingly married her daughter off telling her never to return believing it to be the proper way of things. Having suffered so long in service of an ideal no longer current, Michiko gradually comes to the realisation that she now has a choice – she does not have to stay with a husband who she does not love and does not love her, she is free to leave him and live as a full and independent woman if that is her individual will.

Nevertheless, the slightly awkward framing perhaps casts the choices of Hiroko and her sister as being defined by their respective men – Hiroko swept along by Yamaoka’s socialist politics and Michiko by her husband’s conservatism. Both men are in different senses problematic – Yamaoka vindictive and unsympathetic to Michiko’s attempts to make peace, no more forgiving than Kono while also patronising in his last impassioned speech which places such great responsibility in Hiroko’s “tiny hands”. Nevertheless, Hiroko’s clearsighted fight not only for her own freedom but for a fairer, more compassionate society founded on the idea of a literal social justice in which the law exists in service of its people rather than to oppress them is remarkably forward thinking, moving beyond “propaganda” for the new regime to the better world so often envisaged by the post-war humanists.

Eclipse (金環蝕, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1934)

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Shimizu Eclipse 1

Though most often remembered for his contribution to the cinema of children, Hiroshi Shimizu was also a practiced chronicler of his difficult times. 1934’s Eclipse (金環蝕, Kinkanshoku), unlike much of his other work from the period, avoids direct reference to Japan’s increasingly global or imperialist ambitions but paints its rapid shift towards “modernity” as dangerous and potentially tragic for the unlucky few who for one reason or another are unable to secure their passage towards a harmonious and prosperous future. Adopting the form of a classic romantic melodrama, Eclipse is a bittersweet exploration of corrupted social virtues which ends on an ironic note of defeated victory.

Shimizu begins in a traditional rural village which is all abuzz because prodigal son Seiji Kanda (Shiro Kanemitsu) – now a big shot lawyer in the city, is set to return and, rumour has it, is on the look out for a good country wife. Regarding a marriage to a promising young man like Seiji as the highest of prizes, the village women gossip about whom he might choose and correctly conclude Kinue Nishimura (Hiroko Kawasaki) is likely to be the front runner given her comparatively high education level, beauty, poise, and kindness. Kinue, however, has long been in love with her diffident cousin, Shukichi Osaki (Mitsugu Fujii), who now finds himself in a difficult position as Seiji’s best friend and the go-between charged with communicating his intention to marry. Called to a secret meeting by an old watermill, Kinue is shocked and offended when Shukichi proposes on behalf of someone else, strongly refusing the proposal and reminding him of all the times they had spent together during which she believed an attachment had been formed. Shukichi, whose family is impoverished, does not reject her affections but claims not to want to stand in the way of his friend’s romantic dreams.

Kinue, perhaps unwittingly setting up the ongoing drama, asks if she is to sacrifice her heart and marry a man she does not love and believes would ultimately be unhappy with a woman who yearns for someone else, in order that Shuikichi may continue to feel noble. In the end, Shukichi tries to make her decision for her by running away to the city in the hope of making a life for himself in the same way that Seiji has done. Kinue, brokenhearted, rejects the idea of marrying Seiji and runs off after him only to end up working as a bar girl under the bright lights of Tokyo. Meanwhile, Shukichi discovers that the bonds of obligation which carry so much weight the village are all but worthless in the city when his various contacts refuse to see him and he finds it impossible to gain promising employment. His big break comes when he is knocked over by the chauffeur of the man who just offered to pay his train fare back to the country and thereafter is taken into the family home as a tutor for the youngest son on the insistence of the forthright “modern girl” daughter, Tomone (Michiko Kuwano). Needless to say, the romantic drama isn’t over as Tomone also has a “cousin” who is in love with her and is also sought by Seiji who was her tutor while he was in college and she in school.

The values of the old world and the new are in constant conflict with each other though ultimately it is the failure to act decisively on one’s emotions which causes the greatest harm. Shukichi, knowing his family is poor and a marriage to Seiji the “better” social and financial option for Kinue, insists on nobly sacrificing himself in what he sees as her interest but in doing so rejects her own agency or right to choose her future, assuming she will simply passively pass into the arms of Seiji with no resistance. Kinue, however, resists by following him to Tokyo but, unable to find him, is forced into the sex trade to support herself. Meanwhile, Shukichi continues to break hearts in the city – firstly that of Tomone who has apparently fallen in love with him despite their class difference, but also that of Kayo (Yoshiko Tsubouchi) – the sister of the chauffeur who knocked him over. Still in love with Kinue he diffidently (but not categorically) rejects the affections of the two women but also refuses to act on his feelings for Kinue until he tries a last ditch attempt to “rescue” her from a fall into a life of prostitution through a worrying act of frustrated physical violence (something which ultimately fails).   

The final resolution is brought about by Seiji who, unlike Shukichi, has been able to reconcile his essential nobility with the forward moving nature of the times. Seiji, figuring out that he’d come between a loose arrangement between Kinue and her cousin, is full of remorse and steps back without a second thought, desiring only happiness for all rather than victory or conquest. Again, at the end, becoming the second choice match for Tomone, he returns to fix what he half feels he has broken by “rescuing” Kinue himself through an act of gentleman’s diplomacy and then giving his friend a good talking to. The problem becomes less of one of East and West, town and country, past and future, but personal integrity. Tomone laments that her “selfishness” has caused pain to others – something for which she is trying to make amends in becoming a “good wife” to Seiji, but this is a lesson Shukichi has been slow to learn. His failure to integrate his conflicting desires coupled with a feeling of social inferiority due to his family’s reduced circumstances and standing in the village has effectively created this web of broken hearts and ruined futures, all of which might have been avoided if he had been braver and chosen to stay at home with the woman he loved at his side, living a life of simplicity but with emotional integrity.

These twin destinies are reinforced by the final scenes which find Seiji and Tomone boarding a boat to the West to immense fanfare and celebration, while Kinue and Shukichi are perched aboard a baggage train, he standing and she sitting dejectedly, silent and apart as the rails speed away behind them. The city recedes and the chance of future happiness for our reunited lovers seems slim despite the conventionally romantic nature of their togetherness as they return home drenched in defeat. Seduced and betrayed by the bright lights of Tokyo, Kinue and Shukichi seem bound for the life they should have lived if they’d only been brave enough to fight for happiness at home rather than succumbing to the false promises of modernity but it remains to be seen if their time in the city can be “eclipsed” by a new hope for a traditional future or will continue to overshadow their simple and honest lives in the days to come.

Introspection Tower (みかへりの塔, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1941)

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vlcsnap-2016-12-10-01h34m55s187Shimizu, strenuously avoiding comment on the current situation, retreats entirely from urban society for this 1941 effort, Introspection Tower (みかへりの塔, Mikaheri no Tou). Set entirely within the confines of a progressive reformatory for troubled children, the film does, however, praise the virtues popular at the time from self discipline to community mindedness and the ability to put the individual to one side in order for the group to prosper. These qualities are, of course, common to both the extreme left and extreme right and Shimizu is walking a tightrope here, strung up over a great chasm of political thought, but as usual he does so with a broad smile whilst sticking to his humanist values all the way.

Introspection Tower opens with a tour being given to a group of women guided by one of the teachers (Chishu Ryu) in which he outlines the qualities of the school. There are no high walls or barbed wire fences, the front gate remains open at all times for the children to feel free within their new environment so they can learn to want to stay until they can be reintegrated into society. The school is run like mini commune with several houses segregated by sex and headed by a teacher and a female guardian – usually his wife, though the female houses also have a female teacher. The kids spend time in conventional education in the morning followed up with physical activity and vocational training in the afternoons to help them find work later in life. Parents are welcome to visit and also encouraged to write letters (notably, all of these kids seem to be able to read and write, at least to a degree). The kids also take care of the housework amongst themselves so they learn life skills like cooking and cleaning, again meant to help them as they return to regular society.

Rather than a straightforward narrative, Shimizu concentrates on the general life of the school with particular interest in four difficult pupils – new arrival Tamiko (Yuiko Nomura), a naughty upperclass girl who has difficulty learning to muck in with everyone else, Yoshio (Jun Yokoyama, formerly known as Bakudan Kozo) who likes get into fights, Masao (Norio Otsuka) who has his head in the clouds, and Nobu who can’t seem to get on with his stepmother no matter how hard she tries. Several times the kids get fed up with their reform school lives and try to escape, only to be brought back with their tails between their legs and, being children, they are apt to fight, grouse and get upset over nothing.

Perhaps unusual given Shimizu’s reputation the film is not exclusively told from the point of view of the kids but also looks at the often difficult lives of the adults who’ve dedicated their entire existences to caring for them. Each of the teachers and guardians is fully committed to looking after the children and trying to teach them how to be functioning members of society, living with kindness and responsibility. The house leaders are referred to as “mother” and “father” and the kids are intended to think of the other residents as siblings as if they’re all part of one big well functioning family. Discipline is carried out through self reflection, penance, and apology as the offending child is encouraged to realise why the way they’ve behaved is unacceptable and why they should avoid acting in that way in the future. Endlessly patient and giving, the adults’ lives are not easy ones as a female teacher finds herself snapping and hitting a pupil while another couple wonder if they’re really making that much difference when the children continue to misbehave.

About half way through, one naughty boy causes a huge problem by temporarily draining the well which is the school’s only source of water. Faced with a number of serious issues, the teachers decide to try channelling a riverbed from the nearby lake down to the school but they obviously don’t have money to pay for it. You can see where this is going and it’s certainly the most problematic aspect of the film as these young children are suddenly expected to do the strenuous, sometimes dangerous, work of physically carving a channel in the land with shovels and pick axes. Intended to sell the virtues of togetherness and responsibility, the river construction is, in essence, the forced labour of imprisoned minors who are given no rights to refuse, are not compensated for their efforts, and are children who are not equipped to handle this physically taxing work. Shimizu films the sequence like some kind of Soviet propaganda film as the axes rise and fall rhythmically as a hymn to the beauty of physical labour, but this particular celebration of the strength of the group over the individual is very difficult to take at face value.

Whatever Shimizu intended with the river building sequence, several of the pupils earn their freedom through taking part in it, supposedly reformed by hard work and community. Their “graduation” ceremony involves them reading poems and inspirational phrases aloud as a tribute to the school, but Shimizu neatly undercuts the happily ever after image with the presence of an older boy who has returned to visit. Regarding the school as his home, he has nowhere else to go and it quickly transpires he’s lost yet another job. Even when things seem to be going well, people find out he was in a reform school and it all falls apart. No matter how good the efforts of the teachers, the kids will face constant stigma and internalised shame for the rest of their lives making reintegration into society a difficult prospect. Nevertheless, Shimizu does seem to want to believe the school can do some good in looking after these troubled children who often come from difficult family circumstances.

An odd, confused effort from Shimizu, Introspection Tower still does its best to emphasise his humanist philosophy in the broadly progressive approach of the school which truly is dedicated to to teaching these children how to live in the Japan of the day without getting into trouble. The tone is one of good humour mixed with Shimizu’s naturalistic approach to filming children which shows them for all of the complicated young people they really are, deriving both great comedy and heartrending drama from their comic escapades and melancholy backstories. Making fantastic use of location shooting once again with an approach closer to his silent work than his talkies, Shimizu’s return to the world of progressive education is a strange and occasionally problematic one which is at times hard to read but, worryingly enough, seems to have its heart in the right place.