Tag: Tadashi Date

Floating Weeds (浮草, Yasujiro Ozu, 1959)

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An oft-repeated criticism of the work of Yasujiro Ozu is that it is all the same. The similarity of the English-language titles with their ubiquitous seasonality doesn’t help, but you have to admit there is some truth in it. On closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that Ozu was not so interested in uniformity or repetition as he was in dialogue with himself. Thus Late Spring becomes Late Autumn and the abandoned father a conflicted mother, the two boys of I Was Born But… who rejected their father’s descent into corporate lackydom become arch consumerists seceding from society until their parents give them a TV set in Good Morning. Ozu refrained from remarking on the repurposing of old plots for new dramas, but did expressly regard his 1959 Floating Weeds as a “remake” of the 1934 A Story of Floating Weeds updated to the present day and filmed in the, by then, classic Ozu style. 

As in the 1934 version, the action centres on the arrival of a theatrical troupe to a small town which they have not visited in some years, in this case 12. This time around, the troupe is a little more exulted, performing kabuki-style narrative theatre rather than rustic entertainment, but is subject to many of the same problems. Kihachi is now Komajuro (Ganjiro Nakamura), a much older man though cheerful and energetic. He has chosen this town because it is home to an old flame, Oyoshi (Haruko Sugimura), who is the mother of his adolescent son, Kiyoshi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi). Kiyoshi thinks that Komajuro is his mother’s brother and that his father is long dead. He recognises Komajuro right away and is pleased to see him, though they evidently have not met in many years. 

The 1934 version had revolved around Kihachi’s corrupted paternity in his shame regarding the stigma of being a travelling player. By 1959 that is simply no longer so much of an issue, but whereas the financial difficulties Kihachi’s troupe faced were partly a symptom of the depression and partly of their misfortunes, those of Komajuro take on a more melancholy quality because it is obvious that this is a way of life which is coming to an end. When Kihachi says he’s going to start over, it seems futile but he is still young enough to have a credible chance. Komajuro is already “old” and it’s clear that he will struggle to support himself as a travelling actor simply because it is no longer a viable occupation. 

Thus Komajuro’s story is less one of frustrated fatherhood than of melancholy resignation to the vagaries of a lifetime. “Life is an unknown course”, he tells Oyoshi, “the only constant is change”. Like Kihachi he doesn’t want his son to see the show, though perhaps more out of embarrassment. Kiyoshi complains that the character in his play is “unrealistic” because he doesn’t relate to the modern world. Komajuro objects but explains that he is “a character from another era”, making it plain that he is talking as much about himself. Komajuro is a man left behind by time and incapable of understanding the world in which he now lives which may be one reason he seems to hang on to an intense desire to save Kiyoshi from being affected by the stigma of being the son of a travelling actor even though that is no longer something he would need saving from. 

This slight disconnect, along with Gajiro Nakamura’s cheekily comical performance, adds to the genial comedy which characterised the majority of Ozu’s colour films though this one is admittedly slightly less colourful owing to being produced by Daiei as one of a handful of films made outside Ozu’s home studio of Shochiku. Komajuro becomes a tragicomic rather than purely tragic figure, a man suddenly realising he has become old and facing the decline of his patriarchal authority. Like Kihachi he turns violence on both his mistress, Sumiko (Machiko Kyo), and the young actress Kayo (Ayako Wakao) who has fallen for his son, but it’s futile and born of desperation. A more sympathetic figure than 1934’s Otaka, Sumiko seems to genuinely like Komajuro and is hurt as well as jealous and threatened by the existence of his “secret” family. Her petty revenge is taken in response to Komajuro’s bitter claim that his son “belongs to a higher race” moments after bringing up her past as a sex worker. Rather than a simple desire for chaos and upset, she intends to pull Kiyoshi down to her level through getting him to sleep with Kayo, but Kayo falls for him for real only to worry she is perhaps ruining his bright future. 

“One can’t suddenly show up out of nowhere and assert one’s parental authority,” Komajuro eventually realises. His hopes are dashed by Kiyoshi’s relationship with Kayo not because of her proximity to the world of the travelling actor, but because he fears it means that Kiyoshi is just like him, an irresponsible womaniser. He wanted to save Kiyoshi as a means of saving himself, pushing his son into a more respectable world he had been unable to enter. Kiyoshi, however, rejects his sacrifice, describing his parents as “selfish” for keeping the secret all this time only to drop a bombshell now. He complains he’s been fine these 20 years and does not want or need a father beyond the one he already thought to be dead. Rather than the nobility Komajuro’s of paternal sacrifice, the focus is pulled back towards the son and his filial responsibility to live up to it by becoming a fine and upstanding young man while Komajuro is once again exiled back to the moribund world of the travelling actor. 

Of course, the world of 1959 was very different to that of 1934. The economy was at last improving and consumerist pleasures were very much on the horizon, meaning that for many life was comfortable at last. Japan was at peace if not completely free of political strife which removes the constant anxiety felt by those trying to survive the mid-1930s. But Ozu himself was also 25 years older and had perhaps reached that sense of resignation with the world that allowed him to sigh and laugh where before he may have trembled with fear or rage. Komajuro is as he always was, a floating weed, a man without a home, but now perhaps one of many rootless wanderers off the post-war landscape.

Lightning (稲妻, Mikio Naruse, 1952)

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In many ways despite its matter of fact bleakness, Lightning (稲妻, Inazuma) is among the more optimistic of Mikio Naruse’s films ending on a note of cheerfulness and hope in which the storm has been broken and the heroine seems to have rediscovered a sense a faith in humanity. Yet the attitudes she displays are often contradictory and firmly at odds with the kind of Shitamachi spirit one might find in the films of a director such as Yoji Yamada in films like The Sunshine Girl released a decade later.

The qualities that most define Kiyoko (Hideko Takamine) are, as her mother Osei (Kumeko Urabe) suggests, an inner strength that eludes her older sister Mitsuko (Mitsuko Miura) and a forthrightness that sees her struggle to pursue the kind of life she wants rather than that she is expected to lead. Yet some might see her as snobbish and judgemental, at times attacking her mother for having married four times and given birth to four children each with different fathers. In this she sees a particular moral failing on the part of Osei, but perhaps also expresses a deeper distrust in her mother’s repeated attempts to find stability only through harnessing herself to a man. 

Echoing Takamine’s role in Hideko the Bus Conductor, Kiyoko has a job as a tour guide showing off the sites of bustling Ginza though explaining that this part of the city only really comes alive at night. The job gives her a sense of independence and self-sufficiency a woman in this era is not really permitted to have. Her oldest sister, Nui (Chieko Murata), asks if she contributes to the household but the meeker Mitsuko replies that she wanted to but they told her to save her money instead. In any case, it’s towards marriage that she’s pushed when Nui attempts to play matchmaker brokering an engagement with a 35-year-old baker, Goto (Eitaro Ozawa), who has aspirations of opening a love hotel into which Nui and her feckless husband Ryuzo (Kenzaburo Uemura) have invested. Of course, it turns out that Nui is herself having an affair with the baker who is oily in the extreme and disliked by most of the family though eventually manages to make his way into the beds of two of the sisters.

Kiyoko has little desire to marry and asks her mother if any of her four marriages made her happy, but her mother only says that happiness is not an important concept hinting the hardship she’s faced in her life and that a woman of her generation may have had to put up with a certain of degree dissatisfaction to keep a roof over her head and food on the table. While working on the bus, Kiyoko spots Mitsuko’s husband talking to another woman in the street but decides to say nothing only for him to suddenly die and the woman turn up with a baby asking for financial support. Kiyoko tells her sister that marriage is hell, but she smiles and says Kiyoko will be the exception in an expression of the various ways in which women enforce these arcane social codes against each other despite their own misery. Mitsuko too wants to escape but admits she doesn’t have Kiyoko’s courage which is how she too eventually falls into the clutches of Goto much to her sister’s disappointment. 

There is something undeniably poignant in Kiyoko’s frustrated defiance, looking longingly at the paintings and books of their lodger, a young woman from a more middle-class family working her way through university. Kiyoko says she wants to study too, but her mother shoots her down. She’s already 23, and it’s a little late to be picky about marriage let alone strike out for a more stereotypically middle-class life with a white collar job and nice house in the suburbs. It’s the suburbs though to which she eventually moves, without even bothering to tell any of her family. When the nice landlady asks if she has any she admits she has but also has nothing to do with them, which earns her a confused frown. She later says something similar to the pair of piano-playing siblings who live next-door in a kind of suburban utopia, quite clearly ashamed of her humble Shitamachi roots and family members she sees as common and immodest.

In any case, her admiration of the siblings and obvious attraction to the brother (Jun Negami) who is so much more sensitive and caring than her own (Osamu Maruyama) who appears to use the wartime bullets lodged inside him as an excuse not to move on with his life, suggest that she is still in the end looking for a conventional family only one she sees as more positive (or just posher). Perhaps it’s not so much marriage she rejects but dependency and subjugation, believing a marriage to a man like this might be one more of love and equality than the dissatisfying relationships experienced by her mother and sisters. The expressionistic bolt of lightning which appears during a difficult conversation with her mother is like the breaking of a storm, a kind of letting go in which her resentment begins to melt away and her mother agrees to retreat realising that unlike Mitsuko she can take care of herself and to that extent at least is an independent post-war woman. Ambivalent, but in its way warm and forgiving the film gives Kiyoko permission to embrace her aspiration, defy the social codes which constrain her and seek her own happiness, but also allows her to shed her cynicism in rediscovering a faith in humanity and re-embracing her admittedly imperfect mother all while leaving her behind. 

The Silent Duel (静かなる決闘, Akira Kurosawa, 1949)

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Amid the labour strikes crippling Toho in the late ‘40s, Akira Kurosawa formed an association with other directors and film professionals and began working with different studios, the first being Daiei on a loose adaptation of a popular play in which an idealistic doctor struggles with his repressed desires while watching others wilfully embrace post-war selfishness and cynicism. Like many of Kurosawa’s films from this period, The Silent Duel (静かなる決闘, Shizukanaru Ketto) is essentially a meditation on post-war moral decline and what’s needed to correct it but also if somewhat accidentally the destructive effects of secret keeping and miscommunication. 

Kurosawa opens the film in 1944 with exhausted field medic Kyoji (Toshiro Mifune) operating on a badly wounded solider, Nakata (Kenjiro Uemura). Distracted by the constant dripping of a leaky roof, the adverse weather conditions outside, and the general stressfulness of the situation, Kyoji makes the fateful decision to remove his gloves to better accomplish the fiddly operation he is performing only to drop a scalpel and cut himself. He continues with the surgery, but realises that Nakata is likely infected with syphilis which he may have contracted through the wound on his finger. Kyoji tells Nakata, otherwise recovering well, that he should make sure to seek treatment but overhears him boasting that his injuries may soon save him from the battlefield. Kyoji continues to serve but is unable to treat the infection effectively with the limited resources available to him as a frontline medic allowing the disease to continue its progression largely unmitigated.

Taking a job at his father’s obstetrics clinic on his return to Japan, Kyoji breaks off his longstanding engagement to pre-war girlfriend Misao (Miki Sanjo) who has been waiting for him the last six years but refuses to explain to her why he cannot go through with their marriage. She assumes it must in some way be related to his war trauma, and in a way it is. The syphilis is an obvious metaphor for the corruptions of militarism. He declines to explain, he claims, because he is certain that Misao would vow to go on waiting for him until the disease is cured which would take at least three to five years assuming it can be cured at all. As she is already 27, he would be taking away Misao’s opportunity to make a happy marriage and have children with another man. In any case, he makes her decision for her which ironically conflicts with his later statement that she should be free to seek happiness on her own, not least because it seems she has been pressured into an arranged marriage by her financially troubled father. The act of childbirth is symbolically relevant though he does not seem to consider the idea of a platonic marriage perhaps uncertain that he could go on repressing his desires as a married man. So morally upright is he, that he also refuses to lie, saying nothing rather than allowing Misao to believe that he has fallen out of love with her, met someone else, or has another war-related issue that prevents his marrying her. Nor does he seem to consider telling her that he has syphilis and allowing her to come to the same conclusion as everyone else, that he contracted it through sleeping with sex workers during his military service which is most likely how Nakata became infected. 

The stigma associated with the disease adds a further dimension to Kyoji’s frustration given that he describes himself as having wilfully sublimated his physical desires in order to be able to return to a “peaceful marriage” with Misao whereas as Nakata who satisfied himself without a second thought returned home symptomless, married, and is soon to be a father. Re-encountering him by chance, Nakata who seems to have become wealthy doing something that is likely immoral if not illegal, tells Kyoji that his sickness is cured but does eventually bring his wife in for a free checkup to discover that he has passed the disease to her and to their unborn child. Yet even confronted with the truth, Nakata lies again and suggests that Kyoji has made all this up as revenge for something that happened in the war keeping the fact that he infected him from his wife. He blames Kyoji for destroying his family rather than accept his own responsibility and sees nothing wrong in his actions until directly confronted with the body of his stillborn child apparently so deformed and monstrous that they wouldn’t let the mother see it. 

The two men have clearly taken different paths, Kyoji certain that he must put others before himself and suppressing his own desires to ensure he cannot pass the disease on while Nakata buries his head in the sand and ignores it. It is a kind of metaphor for the post-war future, those like Kyoji acknowledging that the legacy of wartime trauma is something that must be acknowledged and actively healed before happiness is possible while those like Nakata simply plow on like nothing ever happened with no thought or consideration for those around them. Yet it is also Kyoji who lies by omission even in his selflessness just Nakata lied to his wife while the truth is only discovered by accident, firstly by reluctant nurse Minegishi (Noriko Sengoku) who walks in on him injecting the remedy for syphilis, she in turn then overheard by Kyoji’s father (Takashi Shimura) while Minegishi then overhears the explanation Kyoji gives him. She in a sense completes the cycle when she asks Misao to apologise to Kyoji on her behalf as she is too embarrassed to do so herself after realising that she got him wrong having resolved to turn her life around after learning of the depths of his selflessness. 

Minegishi had been a nightclub dancer who tried to take her own life after becoming pregnant by a man who abandoned her but was saved by Kyoji who gave her a job at the clinic and convinced her to raise the child. It’s this child, at first unwanted but later loved and embraced by all despite the stigma of his being born out of wedlock, that offers the clearest path towards a healthier future suggesting that the solution lies in accepting the past with a willingness to make something new out of it rather than in wilful denial and resentful self-interest. Yet Kyoji is also human and privately resentful. “If I’d known it would happen to me I would’ve done things differently” he sneers petulantly suggesting that his properness may be an affectation rather than deeply felt conviction but equally frustrated in feeling his fate is unjust and that he’s suffering for someone else’s sin. 

“Because of the blood of a shameless guy, my body became dirty without knowing any pleasure” he complains, hinting at a metaphor for his wartime contamination dragged into a conflict by forces outside of his control. The roles he plays are ironic, firstly a healer in a place of death and destruction and then as a deliverer of life at his father’s obstetrics clinic though he fears he will never have children of his own. He is in a sense trapped by his past as shown in the repeated visual metaphor of the closed gates outside the clinic on which the flowers that represent his relationship with Misao and hope for the future gradually wither. Minegishi tells him she’s in love with him and is willing to accept the risk of his disease to alleviate his desire, but he once again chooses to say nothing, immediately returning to business. As his father points out, he has (for the most part) resolved to channel his resentment into helping those less happy than himself but if he had been happy he may have become a snob, indifferent to the suffering of others. In some ways his problem is the familiar giri/ninjo conflict as he fights a silent duel within himself between his natural desires and his better nature but it’s also a battle against the slow poison of the wartime legacy through compassion and selflessness that may, like his inescapable illness, eventually drive him into madness.

The Silent Duel screens at the BFI Southbank, London on 2nd & 11th February 2023 as part of the Kurosawa season.

Wild Geese (雁, AKA The Mistress, Shiro Toyoda, 1953)

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(C) Daiei, 1953In the extreme turbulence of the immediate post-war period, it’s not surprising that Japan looked back to the last time it was confronted with such confusion and upheaval for clues as to how to move forward from its current state of shocked inertia. The heroine of Shiro Toyoda’s adaptation of the Ogai Mori novel, Wild Geese (雁, Gan, AKA The Mistress), finds herself at a similar crossroads to the women of the 1950s, caught between tradition and modernity as they embrace the new freedoms but remain constrained by a conservative society. Toyoda, well known for his adaptations of great literature, makes a few key changes to Mori’s novel in effect placing a Showa era heroine in a recognisably “Meiji” world.

The Japan of the 1880s is one of extreme contrast and rapidly unfolding modernity. Having finally opened its doors to the outside world, the nation is in a big hurry to “catch up” to those it sees as its equals on the world stage. Consequently, Western thoughts and values are flooding into the country, bringing both good and ill. Arranged marriages are still common and Otama (Hideko Takamine) has been married once but the marriage has failed – she was deceived, the man she married already had a wife and child. Still, having lived with a man as his wife, Otama is considered “damaged” goods and will find it difficult to make a good match in the future (especially given the whiff of scandal from being involved in an illegitimate marriage with a bigamist).

When a matchmaker (Choko Iida) arrives with a potential husband it proves hard to turn down but the matchmaker is not quite on the level. Suezo (Eijiro Tono), she says, is a recently widowed man with a young child who is in need of a new wife but cannot marry again immediately for propriety’s sake. Otama will be his mistress and then in due course his wife. However, the matchmaker is an unscrupulous woman who has spun Otama a yarn in the hope of getting her debt written off by getting the shady loanshark she owes money to a pretty young woman to have some fun with.

The position Otama finds herself in is one of impossibility. A woman cannot survive alone in the Meiji era and its lingering concessions to feudalism. For a woman as poor and lowly as Otama whose marriage prospects are slim there are few options available. Otama’s neighbour (Kuniko Miyake) has managed to carve out a life for herself as a single woman through teaching sewing classes but such opportunities are few and far between, as Otama is warned when she considers following her example. The “arrangement” with Suezo may not seem too bad on the surface – he looks after her and her father, has set her up in a house, and treats her well even if his behaviour leans toward the possessive. Despite confessing to her father that she feels trapped and miserable, humiliated on learning she has been ostracised as the mistress of a married loanshark, Otama finds little sympathy as her father declares himself “very happy” and councils her against leaving because he has no desire to return to a life of poverty, remaining selfishly indifferent to his daughter’s suffering.

Resigned to her fate, Otama does her best to adapt to her new life but remains as trapped within Suezo’s house as the caged bird he presents her with “for company”. Jealous and fearing that his wife will find out about the affair, Suezo’s preference is for Otama to stay indoors waiting for him to call. His visits are routine and perfunctory. Handing the maid a few coins to go to the public bath, Suezo signals his intentions in the least romantic of ways, pausing only to lock the garden gate.

Catching sight of an earnest student who passes by everyday at 4, Otama begins to dream of something better. The student, Okada (Hiroshi Akutagawa), is a source of fascination for all the young women in the neighbourhood but he too is instantly captivated when he glimpses the beautiful Otama trapped behind the bar-like slats of Suzeo’s love nest. Adding a touch of biblical intrigue, it is a snake which eventually leads to their meeting but no matter how deep the connection this is a love destined to fail – Otama is the kept woman of a loanshark, and Okada is a medical student with international ambitions. They inhabit different worlds and, as his friend (Jukichi Uno) puts it, this is still the Meiji era, the times will not allow it.

Nevertheless, even if her brief infatuation seems doomed, the mere act of wanting something else provokes a shift in Otama’s way of thinking. This act of fierce individualism which prompts her to defy the dominant male forces in her life whose selfish choices have caused her nothing but misery would normally be severely punished in the name of preserving social harmony but Otama’s epiphany is different. The opening title card reminded us that this was a time wild geese still flew in the skies above Tokyo. It seems to imply that birds no longer fly here, that there is no true freedom or possibility for flight in the modern age of Showa, but Otama is a woman trapped in the cage of Meiji suddenly realising that the doors have been open all along. Her choices amount to a humiliating yet materially comfortable life of subjugation, or the path of individualistic freedom in embracing her true desires. Her dream of true love rescue may have been shattered, but Otama’s heart, at least, is finally free from the twin cages of social and patriarchal oppression.

Screened at BFI as part of the Women in Japanese Melodrama season.

The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch (蛇娘と白髪魔, Noriaki Yuasa, 1968)

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snake girl and the white haired witchLittle Sayuri has had it pretty tough up to now growing up in an orphanage run by Catholic nuns, but her long lost father has finally managed to track her down and she’s going to able to live with her birth family at last! However, on the car ride to her new home her father explains a few things to her to the effect that her mother was involved in some kind of accident and isn’t quite right in the head. Things get weirder when they arrive at the house only to be greated by the guys from the morgue who’ve just arrived to take charge of a maid who’s apparently dropped dead!

If that weren’t enough her “mother” calls her by the wrong name and then dad gets a sudden telegram about needing to go to Africa for “several weeks” to study a new kind of snake! On her tour of the house, Sayuri finds a room full of snakes, reptiles and insects (and also for some reason a large vat of acid?!) as well as a room with a buddhist altar where the food seems to disappear just as if Buddha himself were really eating it. Eventually, Sayuri is introduced to her secret sister, Tamami, who has slight facial disfigurement and a wicked disposition which has seen her locked away from view for quite some time…..

Based on the manga by Kazuo Umezu, Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch (蛇娘と白髪魔, Hebi Musume to Hakuhatsuma) is, apparently, aimed at a younger audience which explains its child’s eye view of events but the film makes no concessions to the supposed softness of little minds. With a host of surreal imagery including dream sequences full of creepy, hypnotic spirals, and moments of shocking violence such as a large frog being suddenly ripped in half right in front of Sayuri’s eyes the film certainly doesn’t stint on blood, horror and general freakiness.

Sayuri herself seems largely unperturbed by these strange goings on outside of her nightmarish serpentine visions. She seems to have been well cared for at the orphanage and is happy to have found her family rather than just to be escaping the institution. On getting “home” she does her best to fit in right away, acting politely and trying to bond with her mother even in her confused state. She even tries to get on well with her mysterious sister despite the ominous warning to keep her very existence a secret from her father. Tamami, however, is a nightmare child with homicidal tendencies who isn’t interested in playing happy families with the girl who’s come to usurp her place in the household.

There’s a little more to the set up than just snake based horror (the clue being the Silver-Haired Witch of the title) but the secondary message seems to be one of remembering that the true beauty of a person lies not in their external appearance but in the goodness of their soul. The previously deformed Tamami is later said to be looking sweeter after having “redeemed” herself and Sayuri pledges to honour Tamami’s sisterly sacrifice by always remembering to hold fast and true to the beautiful things in her own soul without being swayed by worldly charms.

Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch is more of a psychological horror tale than some of the effects laden efforts of the period. However, there are a fair few practical effects on show most notably during the dream sequences – one of which sees Sayuri actually fighting a giant snake with a sword, as well as the creepy spirals and the appearance of weird vampire-like snake women, dancing oni masks and the Silver-Haired Witch herself.

A children’s film that no one in their right mind would actually show to a child, Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch is a freakishly psychological horror show seen through the eyes of a little girl. Part dreamscape and part terrifying reality, the film mixes the real and the imagined with a fiendish intensity and it just goes to show that sometimes you really do need to pay attention to the strange fancies of intrepid young ladies.

This trailer doesn’t have any subtitles but it is actually quite scary…..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLtwDVvTtA8