Tag: Shunji Sakai

Freelance Samurai (桃太郎侍, Kenji Misumi, 1957)

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An abandoned son resolves to wander Japan killing the “demons” of Edo-era society in Kenji Misumi’s adaptation of the popular novel by Kiichiro Yamate, Freelance Samurai (桃太郎侍, Momotaro-Zamurai, AKA The Demon Crusader). Starring a young Raizo Ichikawa in dual roles as twins separated at birth, a familiar jidaigeki plot device, Misumi’s drama is among his most conventional but still finds the demon-hunting hero of the title resolutely rejecting the “silly rules of the samurai” in refusing to serve or be served while resisting the persistent corruptions of the feudal society. 

First spotted returning a paper balloon to some children playing in the street, the hero (Raizo Ichikawa) later gives his name as “Momotaro”, the legendary folklore champion who was born from a peach and then went on to befriend various forest creatures travelling with them to fight the cruel demons who had been oppressing the peasants of the farmland where his adoptive parents lived. The name is a sense ironic in that it reflects his own fatherless existence having discovered that he is actually Shinjiro, the younger brother of the heir to a nearby clan, Shinnosuke (also Raizo Ichikawa). At this particular cultural moment, twins were thought inauspicious with one usually cast out, Momotaro in someways more fortunate than most in that he was sent away and raised by his mother to whom he was apparently devoted. In fact, as he says, he only delayed his demon-killing mission out of consideration for her but that now that she has sadly passed away he is free to pursue justice as a wandering ronin determined to serve no master but himself. 

This insistence on justice and opposition to samurai oppression is made plain in the opening scene in which he rescues pickpocket Kosuzu (Michiyo Kogure) from two samurai she’d robbed who were hassling her. She of course falls in love with him, but is also party to the central conspiracy engineered by high ranking retainer Shuzen (Shosaku Sugiyama) who is plotting to unseat Shinnosuke in favour of the lord’s illegitimate young son Mantaro (Junta Yamamoto) with the help of ambitious underling Iga (Seizaburo Kawazu). Momotaro is swept into the intrigue when he rescues the beautiful daughter of loyal retainer Iori (Gen Shimizu), Yuri (Yoko Uraji), from an attempted kidnapping. Both sides want to recruit him for his bravery and sword skill, but Momotaro is reluctant to help either of them especially on discovering the ironic coincidence that he finds himself caught up in a succession struggle in the very clan which previously cast him out. 

Deciding to help when hearing that Shinnosuke has been poisoned, Momotaro demonstrates his strategic abilities in coming up with a ruse to trick the conspirators but remains somewhat conflicted remembering his mother’s dying words that he should hold no grudges even as a part of him continues to resent his abandonment. That may in part explain his defiant rejection of the hierarchal society, ignoring the “silly” rules of the samurai while insisting on equality in refusing to serve or be served by anyone else. In a nod to the folktale, his greatest friend is a humble peddler, Inosuke “the monkey man” (Shunji Sakai) who gives him a place to stay in the rundown tenement where he lives affectionately known as “ghost apartments”. Even so, Inosuke as much servant as sidekick, and while he is in a sense torn between the earthy pickpocket Kosuzu who is later redeemed through her loyalty to him and the beautiful samurai daughter Yuri it seems fairly clear that he will eventually opt for his class-appropriate match the only surprising thing being that it is she who transgressively breaks with convention in abandoning her samurai home in order to follow Momotaro out on the road as he hunts other “demons” corrupting the social order all over Japan. 

Shot in colour academy ratio, Freelance Samurai features little of Misumi’s trademark natural vistas save for the poignant pillow shots of flowers growing in the compound though it does reflect his preoccupation with absent fathers and perpetual wandering. In the many dualities in play, it is also interesting that Momotaro is depicted as the more capable of the brothers, Ichikawa’s characterisation of the cosseted Shinnosuke as a kind and compassionate, effete young man rather than the strapping warrior the heir to a clan is expected to be hinting perhaps at the perceived weakness that allowed the conspirators to assume they could usurp him. Similarly, it’s Michiyo Kogure’s tragic pickpocket undone by her love for the noble samurai that makes the deeper impression rather than the rather insipid Yuri who makes her mark only in her final decision to follow Momotaro unbidden. Momotaro’s quest may in a sense be ironic in that he outwardly rejects the superiority of the samurai but effectively preserves it even as he determines to clean out the oppressive “demons” intent on corrupting the land just as his folkloric namesake had done, but in its own way has its defiant nobility in his fierce love of justice and equality. 

The Swordsman and the Actress (大江戸千両囃子, Yasushi Sasaki, 1955)

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Working mainly with Toei, singer Hibari Misora was able to carve out for herself a distinctive career as a tentpole movie star in the early post-war period. In contrast to other female stars of the day, Misora’s leading women are generally feisty and rebellious standing up against injustice in period films and contemporary dramas alike while she also made a point of subverting societal gender norms often crossdressing or playing with gender ambiguity. 1955’s The Swordsman and the Actress (大江戸千両囃子, Oedo Senryo Bayashi) meanwhile sees her taking a backseat to the main action but sowing the seeds for her later career as she stops a cruel samurai plot in its tracks and even gets to participate in the final showdown. 

The drama starts when young actress Koharu (Hibari Misora) misplaces her fan and is lent one by another performer which attracts the attention of bad samurai Shuzen Ogaki (Kyu Sazanaka) who recognises it as having once belonged to the Shogun. As it turns out, Koharu’s friend Hanji (Rentaro Kita) was gifted the fan by a childhood friend, a noble woman, Okyo (Keiko Yashioji), for whom he may have had feelings which would could never be returned seeing as he was the son of a maid. Having seen him in a play but feeling it would be inappropriate to meet, Okyo sent the fan in fondness but had not realised it to be valuable and is now in a difficult position as the Shogun will soon be visiting and if he does not see the fan will be offended. Shuzen wants the fan for himself to embarrass Okyo and her husband and advance his own position. Just as Okyo dispatches trusted retainer Gennojo (Chiyonosuke Azuma) to ask Hanji to return the fan, Shuzen sends in his goons killing Hanji but only after he manages to substitute a fake fan for the real one. 

What follows is a complicated game of find the lady as the fake fan and the real are swapped between Gennojo and Shuzen often via a pair of pickpockets, Oryu (Ayuko Saijo) and sidekick, who alternately help and hinder largely because Oryu develops a crush on the extremely disinterested Gennojo. As usual, Koharu is on the side of right trying to fulfil Hanji’s dying wish by returning the fan to Okyo before the Shogun’s New Year visit but is also on a side quest of her own in looking for her long lost sister. It would be tempting in a sense to view the fan as cursed as it indeed provokes nothing but trouble, not only getting Hanji killed and endangering the lives of Okyo and her son, but also provoking discord wherever it’s mentioned sending a pair of married shopkeepers into a blazing row when they realise their young son may have walked off with the priceless object (and later sold it so his mum can buy sake). 

In the quest for the fan, Koharu takes a backseat while Gennojo does most of the leg work played as he is by jidaigeki star Chiyonosuke Azuma with whom Misora would frequently co-star. Though there are hints of a romance it is not the main thrust of the drama considering Misora’s relative youth, though she does get to wistfully sing the title song several times over. Meanwhile the pair are finally joined by a late in the game appearance from veteran Ryutaro Otomo as a typically raucous ronin, Jubei, who steals the screen to such an extent it almost seems as if the film is part of a series revolving around his character who turns out to be another victim of Shuzen’s plot having been exiled from his clan supposedly for having turned down the advances of his now mistress Oren. “I, Fujisaki Jubei, may be unemployed but mine is still the sword of righteousness and it doesn’t like evil doers!” he snarls apparently quite fed up with samurai corruption. 

Sasaki certainly has a lot of fun with his fan swapping shenanigans, even going slightly experimental in an excuse to give Chiyonosuke Azuma a fan dance while throwing in additional comic relief from the bumbling pickpockets and some strangely comic death scenes but does not disappoint as the major heroes and villains reunite in the final showdown taking place as it does on stage and allowing Koharu’s troupe mistress to show off her sword skills while Oryu redeems herself and the evil samurai plot is finally defeated by the forces of righteousness. An anarchic affair, Swordsman and the Actress never takes itself too seriously but nevertheless sows the seeds for many of Misora’s subsequent adventures as she sets the world to rights again with the aid of her two complementary samurai sidekicks. 

Musical clip (no subtitles)

The Phantom Goblin (まぼろし天狗, Nobuo Nakagawa, 1962)

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“Everything is money these days” as a pirate king cheerfully proclaims in Nobuo Nakagawa’s tale of Edo-era corruption, Phantom Goblin (まぼろし天狗, Maboroshi Tengu). Perhaps named to capitalise on Nakagawa’s reputation for spookiness, Phantom Goblin features no real ghosts and only metaphorical goblins in the bright red tengu masks sported by the hero’s mysterious clan while otherwise conforming to the Toei programmer house style and starring jidaigeki superstar Hashizo Okawa in a double role as brothers separated at birth and reunited by their resistance towards the inherently corrupt authority of Edo society. 

Drawing parallels with the present day, the film opens at a bawdy banquet at which corrupt councillor Tanuma (Isao Yamagata) is being entertained by a pair of local social climbers with a floor show of dancing girls. Shortly after the performance begins, however, one of the women collapses writhing in agony and loudly crying out for drugs. Embarrassed, the lords would rather this not get out deciding to finish the woman off and dump her body in a nearby well. Unfortunately for them, the plan is interrupted by local policeman Shuma Moriya (Hashizo Okawa) who arrives in time to hear the woman exclaim the words “drugs” and “mastermind” before she passes away. Determined to figure out the truth, Moriya heads to the not so secret hideout of a local gang but is shot in the arm and has to take refuge in an inn where he encounters a man who looks just like himself, Kyonosuke Asakawa (also Hashizo Okawa) of the Goblin clan, who eventually sends him to his estate to recover and assumes his position as policeman in order to root out the truth. 

A former hatamoto who apparently resigned his position after finding himself unable to support corrupt lords, Kyonosuke declares himself “frustrated with how things are run”, realising that the system is rotten beyond repair on hearing that Moriya has been fired by a corrupt magistrate apparently in league with the conspirators. While comparatively rare in Edo-era dramas, drugs are a controversial subject in any age but in keeping with the sensibilities of the early ‘60s Phantom Goblin eventually slips into the Sinophobia then rampant in contemporary crime dramas as it becomes clear the drugs trade in the feudal economy is being driven by Chinese pirates trafficking it in from overseas while weak willed lords enable their rise to power. 

There is however a touch of conservatism in Kyonosuke’s desire to see justice served in that he fears a world in which “if you can buy power and position with money, then one day we will have a chief counsellor who is a pirate”. While he’s undoubtedly got a point, it’s also true that he is in a sense protecting his own privilege conveyed by birth rather than worth in addition to rejecting the influence of the “foreign” as he raises his sword against a Chinese pirate in order to target the corrupt lords who’ve been collaborating with him in order to bolster their own power and position. Kyonosuke wanted to “clean out evil in Edo”, but eventually succeeds rather ironically in simply becoming a part of the system himself after having supposedly cleaned it out by getting rid of the “obviously” corrupt elites. 

Recovering from his shoulder injury and flirting with the adopted sister of Kyonosuke, Moriya is largely relegated to a secondary role though the secret brotherhood of the two never develops into much of a plot point even as they bond as men too honest for the world in which they live. Nor do the respective romantic dilemmas ever materialise even as the conflicted figure of a female bandit in love with the noble policeman is forced to pay for her crimes with her life, unable to progress into the purified world the brothers are about to create. Working in the Toei house style, Nakagawa abandons his taste for the strange or otherworldly contenting himself only with a few ironic tengu masks and the literal shadows surrounding the shady mastermind while indulging in genre staples such as the comic relief provided by Kyonosuke’s bumbling retainers and the double casting of Hashizo Okawa as two brothers alike in both appearance and sensibility who find themselves unable to accept the increasing corruption of their society and determine to oppose it. 

The Young Boss (花笠若衆, Kiyoshi Saeki, 1958)

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Hibari Misora takes on yet more Edo-era corruption in Kiyoshi Saeki’s musical adventure, The Young Boss (花笠若衆, Hanagasa Wakashu, AKA A Martial Crowd, Twin Princesses). A program picture director at Toei, Saeki mainly worked on jidaigeki and ninkyo eiga launching the Brutal Tales of Chivalry series, though he also became a frequent collaborator with Misora ironically enough mostly working on her contemporary films in which she often starred opposite Ken Takakura, representative actor in the noble gangster genre. Young Boss, however, is a jidaigeki musical adventure very much typical of those Misora was making at Toei at the time and once again finds her playing dual roles as a pair of twins separated at birth because of superstition and social stigma.

Opening and closing at a local Edo festival, the film introduces us to the second generation of Edoya Kichibei, Kichisaburo (Hibari Misora), as he steps in to protect a young woman who has accidentally annoyed a bunch of yakuza fulfilling his sidekick’s introduction that he “helps the weak and crushes the strong”. Kinpachi (Juro Hoshi) also describes him as a “man’s man”, though as we discover Kichisaburo is not a man at all but the niece/adopted daughter of a prominent merchant apparently raised as a boy. Kichisaburo, however, only learns this when a pair of samurai turn up to badger Kichibei about the whereabouts of his younger sister, Sano, who apparently served as a maid to the Ogiyama clan 18 years previously but was cast out with her younger daughter Yuki after giving birth to twin girls fathered by the lord. The other twin, Chiyo (also Hibari Misora), was raised in luxury in the palace and in the absence of a male heir and the lord’s failing health is in line to inherit the clan. As usual, however, courtly intrigue has led some to conclude that Yuki’s is the proper the claim. Kichibei attempts to convince them that Yuki passed away in infancy shortly after her mother and that he burnt her birth certificate, but the resemblance between the effete Kichisaburo and the lady Chiyo has not gone unnoticed both by the visiting samurai and the handsome Matanojo (Hashizo Okawa) who joins in with Kichisaburo’s battle against the yakuza and is in fact the betrothed husband of Chiyo. 

Lady Chiyo appears only briefly but is the soul of courtly kindness, hugely regretting what has befallen her absent sister and affirming that should she return she would instantly surrender her claim to the clan in guilt that she has been raised in such luxury when Yuki was cast out to live with strangers. The dual roles in a sense reflect a perfect whole, Lady Chiyo’s feminine elegance contrasted with the rough Kichisaburo who has not been raised as a samurai but a merchant’s son like his sister set to inherit the family business. He is very attached to his adopted father, but also possesses a strong sense of justice often ignoring his pleas to stop getting into fights. Other than perhaps to disguise her true identity, there is no real explanation for why Kichisaburo has been raised as a boy though it seems that there would have been a time the ruse came to an end, Kichibei sadly lamenting that perhaps he has been jealously attempting to keep the child he loved so much with him against her better interests but explaining that he would have found her a nice husband in time, perhaps like that gallant samurai Matanojo.

Teaming up with him for purposes of revenge and justice, Kichisaburo begins to develop feelings for Matanojo though Kichibei reminds him that a townsperson would be “unfit to be a samurai’s wife”. Most of Misora’s films in which she stars as a feisty young woman see her undergoing a softening, drawing closer to conventional femininity often with marriage or at least a romance with a manly man on the horizon. The Young Boss meanwhile flirts with just this conclusion as Kichisaburo becomes Yuki while out on the road with Matanojo, dressing as an elegant princess and experiencing a vivid dream sequence in which she becomes his wife, but ultimately highlights the class rather than gender barriers between them in allowing to Yuki to return to her previous life as Kichisaburo while Chiyo remains a samurai noblewoman in a seemingly perfect mirroring which also represents a return to order. 

Nevertheless, Misora finds numerous occasions for a cheerful song even in her manly guise finally even beating a taiko drum at the closing festival while joining in with several elaborately choreographed sword fights along the way with her customary gusto. A bittersweet ending, perhaps, but one in which Misora makes division of herself and unusually is allowed to remain feisty, defiant, and independent helping the weak and crushing the strong in an ever duplicitous Edo.

Musical number (no subtitles)

Detective Hibari 1: Case of the Golden Hairpins (ひばり捕物帖　かんざし小判, Tadashi Sawashima, 1958)

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Two years after Mysteries of Edo and a year after its sequel, Hibari Misora returns as Oshichi in a new series of films, still living undercover in Edo solving crimes and living her best life as a singer and performer. Like Mysteries, Detective Hibari 1: Case of the Golden Hairpins (ひばり捕物帖　かんざし小判, Hibari Torimonocho: Kanzashi Koban, AKA Edo Girl Detective / Here Comes the Girl Detective) sees Oshichi investigating murders of women, though this time the crime is far less involved and much more typical of Toei’s period films in its venal samurai and their insatiable appetites for wealth and status. Oshichi is, essentially, an agent of the state but a much less ambiguous one than she’d become in the following pictures, fighting bravely against corruption and standing proudly for justice in the face of implacable samurai arrogance. 

Having escaped the cage of her noble birth, Princess Tae/Oshichi (Hibari Misora) is still living as an “ordinary” woman in Edo and has just won a singing competition to be named as Queen Beauty. The competition is marred however when one of the other contestants is offed on the way home. Still working with her trusty sidekick Gorohachi (Shunji Sakai), Oshichi quickly realises the woman seems to have been murdered with an ornate hairpin and starts an investigation.

What she discovers is that an unscrupulous gang of samurai is attempting to recover a set of three hairpins which were stolen in a robbery some years previously. The lord claims he’s doing it to satisfy his clan’s honour, but more likely has a less honorable goal in in mind. To put the plan in action, he’s mobilised his conflicted daughter, Sumie (Eiko Maruyama), who thinks this is all a bit much for set of shiny hair ornaments, and her boyfriend Tamiya (Kotaro Satomi) whose family originally owned the jewels which is why he sees it as his duty to get them back, even if that means murdering innocent women and sending the entire city into a panic in the process. Of course, Oshichi agrees with Sumie, and as usual immediately sympathises with her romantic dilemma which earns her a few sarcastic comments from sometime love interest Hyoma (Chiyonosuke Azuma) who will recur throughout the rest of the series.

Hyoma, posing as a drunken ronin but in reality shadowing Oshichi as a protector, like Kawashima in Mysteries, expresses consternation with Oshichi’s atypical feminity, echoing Kawashima’s words that “a woman should be feminine” while claiming not to find Oshichi’s manly fortitude very effective. Kawashima’s words may have wounded her, but Hyoma’s only irritate. She fires back that as a talented samurai he’s wasting his potential drowning himself in drink and he should “stop fighting and do something for society”. Meanwhile, she doubles down – dressing as a man and even joining a kendo dojo to spy on the corrupt lords, scrapping with the best of them and holding her own in a fight. 

Swinging the other way, another of her investigative tactics sees her posing as a geisha and then later as a noble lady, even getting dressed up in her formal princess clothes to beg a favour from her extremely understanding brother. Sympathy for Sumie and a few romantic songs may be the sole concessions to conventional femininity, but Oshichi remains proudly defiant and intent on maintaining her freedoms. It may be true that the unusual degree of freedom she has is permitted her because of her progressively minded brother who ignores “advice” from an elderly servant to exercise more control because he can see being of use to society makes his sister happy and that she’ll probably come home when she wants to, but it’s also freedom that she has actively chosen for herself and chooses to maintain. 

Oshichi gets drunk with Hyoma (apparently for the first time), fights bad guys, and gives orders that stop seasoned samurai in their tracks but not so much for herself as to help those like Sumie who have become victims of corrupt samurai ethics. She does this, however, as someone who largely believes in the righteousness of the system, that the Shogunate is kind and forgiving while local lords may be avaricious or cruel. When her brother arrives to save the day, he announces that the hairpins will be sent to the Shogun who will return them to the people, sharing the treasure with everyone rather than keeping it for himself. Oshichi, meanwhile has found something greater – a worthy sparring partner in the dashingly romantic Hyoma, and the confirmation of herself not as Tae the caged princess but Oshichi who owns the very ground she walks upon and allows no other to tell her where she may be permitted to go. 

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Law in Ghost Island (幽霊島の掟, Yasushi Sasaki, 1961)

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The post-war world was one of increasing globalisation which brought with it anxiety as well as hope as Japan readied itself to step back onto the world stage. The populist cinema of the early ‘60s is marked by ambivalent attitudes to international influences, not just towards creeping Americanisation and its perceived costs but perhaps somewhat uncomfortably towards the wider world and Asia in particular with the same old prejudices which had marked the previous 20 years rearing their heads once again. Voice of the post-war era, the films of Hibari Misora are, by contrast, about as forward looking and progressive as it was possible to be but Law in Ghost Island (幽霊島の掟, Yurei-jima no Okite) in which she plays a noticeably smaller part, is a bizarre exception in which a “lawless” melting pot outpost must be “civilised” by Japanese influences else the creeping rule of thuggish Asian gangs finally reach Japan “proper”.

We’re deep in the Bakumatsu. The Black Ships have already arrived and there is considerable political trouble brewing back in Japan. That’s not our immediate concern however because we’re on a creepy boat with slovenly ronin Yagi Hanzo (Hashizo Okawa) and a mysterious woman wearing a cheongsam (Hibari Misora). Fellow petty gangster and slave trafficker Bunji (Chiyonosuke Azuma) is suspicious of Hanzo, but decides he’s probably just an unlucky retainer on the run from something or other and might prove useful. Therefore, on arrival at Dragon Island, Bunji starts on trying to recruit Hanzo for his boss Chou Yang Po (Isao Yamagata), but Hanzo’s his own man and he hasn’t come here looking for a job. Fearing Hanzo is a government official here to bring the law down on all their heads, Chou tries to force him to harm a man they have in custody and believe to be working for the state. Hanzo gets round this by breaking a chair over the man’s back but leaving him otherwise unharmed, keeping his cover (if that’s what it is) firmly intact.

During his stay on Dragon Island, Hanzo will meet several other shady characters, many of them dressed in outfits more usually associated with the Chinese, Indians, nondescript “islanders”, and strange movie pirates, but what must be assumed is that though Japan “owns” this distant island it is unable to police it and as such it has become a den of scum and villainy in which various tribal gangs vie for hegemony and control over the lucrative smuggling hub which has unwittingly formed in direct response to Japan’s unwise policy of internal isolation which is itself at breaking point thanks to Perry’s Black Ships which we later hear are also on their way to Dragon Island.

Our key into this conflict is the crazed child of the leading gangster, Isakichi (Hiroki Matsukata), who dresses like a cowboy and likes to showoff his hard-won saloon credentials as sharpshooting libertine and all round party animal. Hanzo is not as impressed by this as Isakichi was hoping though an awkward sort of camaraderie eventually arises between them. Meanwhile, Isakichi has fallen in innocent love with the sister of his childhood best friend who is deep into a putative resistance movement hoping to end the stranglehold the smugglers have placed over the previously peaceful island.

Misora’s Madame Song, for some reason posing as a Chinese sex worker, hints at the various ways nothing is quite as it seems in her astute observations of the world around her, sensing that Hanzo is hiding something but also assuming that he is on the “right” side. There is conspiracy everywhere – the putative revolution at home is sending its shockwaves all the way out here as our unscrupulous gangsters try to procure guns to send to various sides on the mainland, while Madame Song ironically laments that what Dragon Island needs is to be more like Japan which is to say ruled less by law itself than an internalised acceptance of the proper order of things. Uncomfortably, it also probably means sending the people who aren’t wearing kimono somewhere else and trying to stop them tricking nice women from Kyushu into coming to tropical islands where they discover they’ve been trafficked into sex work and are unable to leave.

Among Toei’s lower budgeted efforts, Law in Ghost Island bills itself as a supernatural tale and does indeed open with a creepy scene of a misty boat but Hanzo doesn’t end up anywhere like the isle of the dead only a fantasy tropical “paradise” filled with zany movie pirates. Somewhere between pirate fantasy and western, Law in Ghost Island is closer to the kind of spy spoofs Toho would start producing in a few years’ time and even ends with a strangely comic scene in which just about everyone reveals themselves as spy for the same side during the climactic final shootout having been too busy playing spy games to figure any of it out before.

The final messages too are uncomfortable and ambivalent as Hanzo affirms that if there were more “good samurai” Japan would not become lawless like it is here while also claiming Dragon Island for the mainland in fear external forces may use it as a base to attack Japan. The smugglers pay heavily for their “treachery” in contributing to internal mainland chaos while the revolutionary islanders declare their intentions to make the island a better place, which mainly seems to mean making it more “Japanese” which is a fairly ambivalent message whichever way you look at it. Misora only sings two songs and is relegated to a minor mystery in the strange goings on of Ghost Island which features absolutely no ghosts or supernatural intrigue. It does however perhaps shine a light on a strange moment of cultural flux however how unflattering that mirror may turn out to be.

Brief clip of some of Hibari’s songs (no subtitles)