Tag: Tohoscope

The Big Boss (暗黒街の顔役, Kihachi Okamoto, 1959)

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By 1959, Japan was well on the way towards economic recovery but this transitionary period brought with it its own dilemmas and particularly for those whose main line of business had in a sense depended on instability and desperation. The first of Kihachi Okamoto’s early crime capers, The Big Boss (暗黒街の顔役, Ankokugai no kaoyaku) finds the yakuza at just this moment of crisis, prescient in a sense in perhaps prematurely implying that post-war gangsterdom was already on its way out. 

The film opens, however, with a piece of yakuza thuggery as a mysterious man guns down an industrialist before barreling down the stairs and into a waiting car occupied by getaway driver Mineo (Akira Takarada) who is inconveniently spotted by a passerby, 16-year-old ramen restaurant waitress Kana (Rumiko Sasa). As we discover, Mineo is the younger brother of veteran gangster Ryuta (Koji Tsuruta), a middle-ranking member of the newly rebranded, rapidly corporatising yakuza outfit Yokomitsu Trading who seem to specialise in legal debt collection and running the entertainment district. Torn between their desire for a degree of legitimacy and their thuggish instincts, Yokomitsu have evidently knocked off a rival using an external hitman but now have a problem on their hands especially as Mineo has apparently embarked on a career as a singer in a teen jazz bar located in the same area as Kana’s restaurant which is at the very least unwise. 

Mineo is in many ways the “innocent” seen in many other similarly themed yakuza dramas, still too young to have been corrupted by the underworld and only an accomplice in the crime for which he is being asked to pay. He wants to get out of the yakuza life and sees singing as his escape route, adopting the persona of “Eddie Mineo” and styling himself as a teen idol in the vein of the rock ’n roll American pop culture which seems to be dominiating the late ‘50s youth scene. Yet Okamoto is also clearly evoking the world of Hollywood crime cinema, the environment open and dusty while everyone seems to drive massive Cadillacs and his gangsters behave much more like those in American movies than traditional yakuza even as the traditional yakuza is also changing. 

“I can’t stand it anymore” Ryuta finally exclaims, “There’s neither righteousness nor rules among mobsters”, tipped over the edge by the gang’s plan to kill the teenage witness. He wants out too, but considers himself already too far gone while pulled in two directions in his desire to save both his brother and his young son who has a lame leg and is being cared for in a hospital. Ryuta wears his wedding ring throughout though there’s no mention of what happened to his wife, while he’s also pulled between two potential love interests in the sympathetic doctor who cares for his son, Sumiko (Yumi Shirakawa), and the brassy cabaret girl, Rie (Mitsuko Kusabue), who does her best to save him, but in the end is never very much interested in either of them. He’s constantly haunted by his crimes, knowing what happens to yakuza who fall from grace in his murder of a man who limped and walked with a crutch just like his son. 

The clan are also planning to off a former foot soldier, Ishiyama, who in fact commits suicide immediately after his release from prison realising the futility of his position. Ishiyama’s suicide note directly references that of notorious post-war gangster Rikio Ishikawa whose life inspired Kinji Fukasaku’s Graveyard of Honor 15 years later “I took too big a gamble. lt’s a big laugh. It’s been a thirty year long spree.“ Ryuta realises there’s no way out of his life of crime, but finds himself conflicted even in his desire to ensure his brother and son remain free of it. His sense of futility is however wider, witnessing the death and decline of the traditional yakuza in itself the film climaxing in a moment of yakuza apocalypse as those apparently sick and tired of violence and intimidation finally fight back making it clear that organised crime is no longer welcome in the increasingly prosperous society. 

Skewing darker in tone than Okamoto’s subsequent entries into the “ankokugai” or “underworld” series, The Big Boss is lighter on his characteristically absurdist sense of humour but does feature a little of the exaggerated, cartoonish violence otherwise his hallmark while adding a note of irony as in his use of a sign outlining the numbers for police and ambulance or the sight of a bunch of children playing with guns while a hitman has a go on the swings. There is perhaps a sense of resistance to the conventionality of the material or that his relative inexperience, this being only his third film (the first two both romantic comedy vehicles for Izumi Yukimura) prevented him from fully embracing his anarchic spirit but The Big Boss nevertheless sows the seeds of his later career in its insistence on the absurdity of violence. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Woman of Design (その場所に女ありて, Hideo Suzuki, 1962)

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“This job poisons you and deprives you of your youth” according to conflicted ad-exec Ritsuko (Yoko Tsukasa) trying her best to make it in the still very male world of adverting. A snapshot of the city in the early ‘60s, Hideo Suzuki’s workplace melodrama Woman of Design (その場所に女ありて, Sono Basho ni Onna Arite) considers the changing position of women through the eyes of four friends working at the same company, each facing challenges mainly at the hands of useless men while trying to claim a space for themselves as individuals but discovering that they are still subject to a binary choice when it comes to deciding their romantic futures. 

A woman of around 30, Ritsuko has worked her way up to a fairly senior position at Nishigin Advertising which at least appears to be a fairly progressive company run by a compassionate boss who treats his employees equally with respect for all. Nevertheless, Nishigin is very interested in its bottom line especially as the company is apparently not doing so well to the extent that they’ve unfortunately had to cut back on their “entertainment” budget which is apparently how they win and keep clients. A new opportunity has presented itself in the chance to win a contract with a pharmaceuticals company to market their brand new drug aimed at “revitalising” the lives of the over 40s. Unfortunately, they have a rival in the form of Daitsu and suave adman Sakai (Akira Takarada) who appears to have pipped Ritsuko to the post in “seducing” their sleazy PR guy.

Though focussed on her career and somewhat resistant to romance, Ritsuko finds herself attracted to Sakai if eventually wondering if he’s only using her for inside info on Nishigin which she doesn’t directly give him but their relationship does perhaps soften her attitude. Sakai’s minor betrayal in poaching the head of their art department will eventually destroy any genuine feelings they may have had for each other while leaving Ritusko painfully aware of her vulnerabilities as a female employee and of the costs of her momentary decision to break with her long-held determination to keep her professional and private lives entirely separate, admitting that her relationship with Sakai may have been a mistake but refusing to resign because of it. Meanwhile, the boss of the pharmaceuticals company with whom she seems to be on good terms tries to blackmail her into attending an omiai meeting implying he’ll be much more likely to give them the contract if she goes. Not that they necessarily mean she should give up her career, but even Ritsuko’s colleagues seem to be keen that she get married, shocked that she might determine to remain single for the rest of her life. 

That’s exactly the decision her friend Yuko (Akemi Kita) has made, dedicating herself to her career but also moody and embittered. In fact though it is no way explicit, Yuko is strongly coded as a lesbian with a possible crush on friend and colleague Mitsuko (Kumi Mizuno), herself in a difficult position apparently pushed into debt because of an attachment to a no good man whose hospitals bill she has been paying. Ritsuko’s deskmate Hisae (Chisako Hara), meanwhile, is a divorcee wondering what she’s going to do when her ex, whom she’s still hung up on, stops paying alimony, and her sister is forever badgering her for money because her brother-in-law is an irresponsible layabout who can’t hold down a steady job and has no real intention of doing so. “Men who live off women are the worst” Yuko exasperatedly exclaims thoroughly fed up with the bunch of two bit louses who seem to have ruined the lives of all her friends. 

It’s not difficult to understand why Ritsuko may be ambivalent about marriage, but even at work she’s not free of selfish, entitled men who routinely take credit for her work. Sleazy college Kura (Tsutomu Yamazaki) from the art department is forever sucking up to her only to attempt rape while discussing work at her apartment, later brushing the affair off while talking to a female colleague by affirming that older women aren’t his thing anyway. He also undercuts her by visiting the client himself to discuss ideas and changes. Kura later wins a big design prize in part thanks to the slogan Ritsuko came up with only to annoy his colleagues by implying he handled the whole campaign single-handedly. Meanwhile, though in some ways progressive her bosses are conservative when it comes to the business, shutting down the art director’s suggestion of running with an out of the box campaign (the sexier ad featuring a muscular man in his briefs which he later sells to Sakai is the one which ends up winning). Tsuboichi (Jun Hamamura) and Kura perhaps too feel constrained by a top down hierarchal structure which frustrates innovation and in their own ways rebel, but as Ritsuko later makes plain in her speech to the boss if she wants to keep her position she has to play by the rules. “Life’s short. Especially for a woman. We have no room for mistakes” as Yuko cheerfully agrees.

Yet even within that, Ritsuko manages to redefine her boundaries, making it clear that she won’t be doing the omiai. She does not, however, reject marriage entirely only state that “I will get married only when I feel the time is right”, for the moment at least entirely focused on her career. Though the future may have looked gloomy, the crisis passes and the mood brightens significantly with the news that another company is about to officially announce the launch of a long-rumoured anti-ageing cream which provides another potentially lucrative campaign opportunity for Nishigin and of course for Ritsuko should she win it. Having opened with a series of still frames followed by hazy footage of a sea of workers wandering towards their offices on an overcast morning, Suzuki closes in the twilight with the three ladies leaving the office, their friendship solidified as they head off to celebrate renewed hope for the future bolstered by a sense of female solidarity.

The Last Gunfight (暗黒街の対決, Kihachi Okamoto, 1960)

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“Times may change but there’s always a bunch of greed-blinded old men to rip you off” according to the sidelined noble yakuza pushed into the shadows of Kihachi Okamoto’s anarchic gangster romp The Last Gunfight (暗黒街の対決, Ankokugai no Taiketsu). Another of Okamoto’s early crime movies, Last Gunfight, adapted from the novel by hardboiled king Haruhiko Oyabu, as its name implies finds a stranger in town arriving at the tail end of a gang war in which the wrong side seems to have won hoping to offer a course correction for the post-war future. 

Branded a “dirty cop” and demoted to small-town Kojin, Fujioka (Toshiro Mifune) is a maverick officer exploring the local landscape by getting into fights with foot solders from differing outfits, quickly finding out that the Ooka gang are currently in the ascendent while old school Kozuka flounders. Improbably enough, the local flashpoint is over control of the gravel dredging business currently operated by Kozuka but contested by Ooka. Fujioka meanwhile is caught in a complex web at the nexus of which is Tetsu (Koji Tsuruta), a former Kozuka man who now runs a bar while he plots revenge for the death of his wife in a traffic accident he suspects may have been foul play possibly at the hands of Ooka man Niki, brother of brassy bar girl Sally (Yoko Tsukasa). 

Arriving on the same train as dodgy lawyer Tendo (Akihiko Hirata) and an exotic dancer destined for the club, Fujioka keeps his cards close to his chest leaving his loyalties all but clear. The station are less than thrilled to have him, especially as he spends his first night in town in one of their cells after starting a bar fight, waking up right under a sign which reads “stop violent crime”, while another earnest young officer reminds him that “policemen should never be involved in violence”. Fujioka continues to play both sides, cosying up to both Ooka and Tetsu, walking the line between cop and thug while seemingly scoping out the terrain on either side of the tracks. 

Meanwhile, the town is mired in a battle for its soul as the amoral Ooka gang slowly take over. As Kozuka foot soldier Yata (Makoto Sato) puts it, his boss is the sort who won’t have anything to do with yakuza who don’t obey the code which is why he won’t simply cut a deal with Ooka. According to Kozuka (Jun Tazaki), others might lump him in with “fools and trash” but he’s the old school kind of yakuza providing a genuine service to the community. He dredged the river to stop it flooding and was given the gravel business as a thank you so he resents having it stolen out from under him by the likes of Ooka who makes his money primarily through the drugs trade trafficking “China White” and has seemingly corrupted the entire city council. 

Then again, as Kozuka points out ties based on greed are the most fragile of all and it appears Ooka has secrets he’d rather weren’t exposed. Living in a Western-style mansion complete with open fireplaces and hunting trophies on the walls Ooka is laying claim to a fiefdom as the new inheritor of the feudal legacy. Tetsu’s bar, meanwhile, seems to have a Wild West theme which perhaps speaks of his love of freedom and independence as opposed to Ooka’s elitist authoritarianism. As a representative of legitimate authority Fujioka walks a tightrope between the two but eventually shuns a potential love interest in bargirl Sally, currently Ooka’s squeeze but playing her own game hoping to find out what happened to her brother, in favour of a bromance with the wounded Tetsu.  

Like Okamoto’s other gangster movies from this era however and in contrast to the heaviness of the title, Last Gunfight is imbued with a strong sense of irony and the director’s characteristically cartoonish sense of humour with its ridiculous fight scenes, elaborate production design, and playful subversion of gangster movie tropes right down to the frequent musical numbers starring a trio of minions clad in black suits and lip-syncing to songs about killing the moon. Ending as it began, Okamoto’s elliptical narrative sees the strangers leaving town, job done, but laying themselves bare as they go now shorn of their cover identities and headed back into the heart of corruption in search of new destinations.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Blueprint of Murder (暗黒街の弾痕, Kihachi Okamoto, 1961)

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Alongside its trademark tokusatsu Toho also had a sideline in genre-hopping B-movie comedy of which Kichachi Okamoto’s Blueprint of Murder (暗黒街の弾痕, Ankokugai no Dankon) is a prime example. Playing into a zeitgeisty anxiety about corporate corruption which led to several series of films revolving around industrial espionage such as Yasuzo Masumura’s Giants & Toys and the later Black Test Car, Okamoto’s ironic take on noir and globalisation anticipates the spy spoofs Toho would produce in the wake of Bond fever while quietly also perhaps poking fun at Nikkatsu’s crime melodramas.

The film opens with a young man, Kusaka (Ko Mishima), and his boss Komatsu (Ichiro Nakatani) testing an experimental car engine that would be ultra efficient and cheap to produce. The test goes well, but Kusaka is run off the road on the journey home, caught between a truck and a mysterious man on a motorcycle. Meanwhile, Kusaka’s brother Jiro (Yuzo Kayama), a whale hunter, is busy working on a new kind of harpoon when he gets a telegram from an old friend telling him to come home right away because his brother is dead. On meeting with Komatsu, Jiro starts to think perhaps his brother’s death wasn’t an accident. It seems there are a lot of people interested in this technology, some of whom would rather it not see the light because cheap, efficient engines are not good news for the oil industry. 

Hearing that Kusaka was recieving threatening letters, Jiro wonders why he wouldn’t go to the police, but Komatsu points out that it would have made no difference. Firstly, the police rarely get involved with cases of corporate espionage, and secondly if they did the blackmailers would win anyway because if there were a court case they would have to make full disclosure of their plans. Jiro tries going to the police himself and showing them that he has evidence, as well as the “instinct of a whale hunter”, which suggests that his brother was murdered, but nonchalant policeman Azuma (Tatsuya Mihashi) doesn’t seem very interested. Teaming up with an old uni friend, Sudo (Makoto Sato), who now runs some kind of scandal rag newspaper and is well connected around town, Jiro tries to investigate but soon becomes entangled in a complicated web of corporate intrigue.

Sudo, whose paper seems to be on the verge of bankruptcy, has some sort of game going with corrupt businessman Otori (Seizaburo Kawazu) who runs Goei Economic Reporting Agency which was one of three companies bidding for Komatsu’s engine. Later, Sudo’s main squeeze Tomiko (Kumi Mizuno) also tries to blackmail Otori by posing as the daughter of a man he drove to suicide after poaching technology from his company. Played at his own game, Otori is extremely disturbed to have this traumatic incident thrust in his face, and it quickly becomes clear that although he was onboard with various kinds of corporate duplicity, he had his lines and is worried to think someone might have crossed them on his behalf. 

Otori is right to worry, they are coming for him too. Eventually unmasked, it will come as no surprise to know that the big boss is from Hong Kong making this another quiet instance of Sinophobia betraying an essential anxiety about a newly global Japan. Meanwhile, Jiro’s problems are closer to home. He starts to doubt Sudo, warned off him as man only interested in money, and witnessing him play every angle to his own advantage. Sudo may be playing his own game but has his friend’s interest at heart and is simply trying to protect him from endangering himself in a world he does not understand. 

Rather than the fulfilment of a dangled romance, what we’re left with is the restoration of the friendship between the two men in which they ultimately re-inhabit their innocent student selves complete with a surreal game of air baseball while Tomiko and Komatsu’s sister Kyoko (Mie Hama) cheer excitedly from the sidelines. Okamoto throws in a killer punchline to an early whale hunting gag while piling on the absurdist humour in characteristic style with one unexpected pay off after another even as the guys find themselves in an increasingly murky world of corporate double cross, femme fatale nightclub singers with their own identical minions/backing bands, and rowdy gangsters while trying to ensure the little guy is still free to innovate outside of consumerist concerns.  

Original trailer (no subtitles)

On Wings of Love (大当り三色娘, Toshio Sugie, 1957)

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vlcsnap-2016-06-01-01h48m32s675The Sannin Musume girls are growing up by the time we reach 1957’s On Wings of Love (大当り三色娘, Ooatari Sanshoku Musume). In fact, they each turned 20 this year (which is the age you legally become an adult in Japan), so it’s out with the school girl stuff and in with more grown up concerns, or more specifically marriage. Wings of Love is the third film to star the three Japanese singing stars Hibari Misora, Chiemi Eri, and Izumi Yukimura who come together to form the early idol combo supergroup Sannin Musume. Once again modelled on the classic Hollywood musical, On Wings of Love is the very first Tohoscope film giving the girls even more screen to fill with their by now familiar cute and colourful antics.

On Wings of Love does not have very much going for it in terms of plot (even compared to previous So Young, So Bright and Romantic Daughters). This time the three girls each work as maids in swanky households and have their eyes on the same guy who they think looks like James Dean (again played by Godzilla heartthrob Akira Takarada). Luckily, another two guys pop-up from somewhere so no one gets left on the shelf at the end when the completely non serious romantic difficulties work themselves out in time for the color coded waterskiing finale.

Like the other films in the series, On Wings of Love is not an integrated musical but one which is punctuated by musical numbers either given a real world context or portrayed as a fantasy sequence. In the previous two films the girls all went to the theatre and ended up watching themselves perform in one way or another, but this time the production number excuse is either a nap or a daydream whilst out on the river on a sunny day. Awkwardly, they each fantasise about Akira Takarada. Hibari goes all Madame Butterfly in an elegant sailor themed number, whereas Chiemi’s is all forlorn love with a melancholic, gothic ballad inspired by On London Bridge, but Izumi breaks all protocol here with a riotous cover of Bee-Bop-a-Lula which is sung entirely in English and becomes a high octane dance number (including the less successful involvement of Takarada).

There are fewer musical numbers included in On Wings of Love than in either of the other two movies though there are two trio sequences including the longer opening which sees the girls again color coded and drying dishes together as well as the finale which features the girls waterskiing while their boyfriends drive the boats. Each of the girls gets two numbers each, one solo and one production plus the trio stuff though interestingly there is a more “integrated” love song towards the end and Chiemi’s early song as she walks into town isn’t quite a fantasy sequence either.

Somehow, On Wings of Love isn’t quite as charming as either of the other movies in the series despite the kitch appeal of the opening number. The girls don’t actually spend much time together and the tone is a little rougher than the cutesy approach that had previously dominated with fewer humorous episodes to boot. That isn’t to say the film isn’t successful, but it doesn’t have the same kind of comforting fluffiness that dominated the previous instalments. The switch to Tohoscope gives series director Sugie a different canvas to play with though the most obvious change he makes is a split screen sequence to cover a telephone call. This time the colours appear a little muted too (though this may be down to the quality of the DVD which doesn’t seem as high as the transfers of either So Young, So Bright or Romantic Daughters which are both excellent) limiting the effect of the full on sugar rush the film seems to be aiming for. Nevertheless ,even if it doesn’t live up to the promise of either So Young, So Bright or Romantic Daughters, On Wings of Love is another suitably entertaining outing for the Sannin Musume girls only one a little less filled with laughter and song.

Hibari Misora’s Madame Butterfly inspired routine featuring her song Nagasaki no Cho Cho-san:

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

Also Izumi Yukimura’s quite wonderful Bee-Bop-A-Lula in its release version:

The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman (江分利満氏の優雅な生活, Kihachi Okamoto, 1963)

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81zKsQWUtKL._SL1442_Kihachi Okamoto might be most often remembered for his samurai pictures including the landmark Sword of Doom but he had a long and extremely varied career which saw him tackle just about every conceivable genre and each from his own characteristically off-centre vantage point. The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman (江分利満氏の優雅な生活, Eburi Man-shi no Yugana Seikatsu) sees him step into the world of the salaryman comedy as his hapless office worker reaches a dull middle age filled with drinking and regret imbued with good humour.

The film opens with an exciting, strangely edited setup of young people having fun singing, dancing and playing sports on a rooftop while a middle aged man sits apart from them looking gloomy with his head in his hands. Eburi is a depressed ad exec who laments that nothing really interests him anymore. It’s all so crushingly dull that he’s taken to drink, only he’s not very good at it so no one wants to join him. When Eburi drinks, he tends to go off on long and often non sensical rants which is probably quite funny for the first half hour but perhaps less so at 3am. One day he runs into some people from a magazine and gets so roaring drunk that he accidentally promises to write them the best magazine serial they’ve ever seen. Only problem being Eburi’s a copywriter, not a novelist, so he’s no idea what he’s doing. Going with “write what you know” he turns his everyday life into a humorous exposé of modern society and ends up becoming one of the most popular writers around.

The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman is based on the prize winning magazine serial by Hitomi Yamaguchi which was also inspired by the author’s own life. Yamaguchi and Eburi are both of the generation who came of age around the end of the war, spared the front lines but not the post-war chaos. Somehow, they were the ones who were supposed to rebuild their nation whilst trying to make a life for themselves in the difficult post-war economic environment. Eburi spins a humorous yarn about how he ended up marrying his wife for reasons of financial necessity and the pair didn’t even get a proper honeymoon because they hadn’t bothered to book ahead so all of the inns in the resort town they ended up at were full. Eburi also lost his job twice when the companies he worked for went under and seems a little mystified that he has this pretty good position in the ad agency (even if he doesn’t like it much and no one seems to think he’s very good at it).

There’s an awful lot of social comedy here as the Eburis try to lead their “elegant” lifestyle on his relatively modest salary. The family – Eburi, his wife, son, and father, all live in “company accommodation” which is a complex of small homes where all the employees live close to each other. Eburi’s neighbour works in his office and is a much younger man who’s been married for six months and, in contrast to Eburi, comes straight home at 6pm to have dinner with his wife whom he adores. Eburi is wearing army surplus suits, cheap underwear from the thrift store and a vest which is full of holes in contrast to his neighbour who is wearing swanky sports underwear and fashionable outfits including unshined shoes – unthinkable to Eburi (though his own footwear is in such a state that the shoeshine boys send him packing). Eburi’s wife is also quite excited when she realises their garden might just be a little bigger than next door’s, something which also gives Eburi a lot of pleasure.

In keeping with the source material, Okamoto opts for a first person narrative style with Eburi narrating his life in the manner of his book only employing a fair few other devices in addition to the wild and radical editing. When Eburi goes further back into the past to tell the story of how his no good father became a rich man by exploiting the populace during the years of militarism, the film suddenly becomes a chaplin-esque silent comedy complete with over emphasised acting and pantomime-like painted sets before turning into a full on cartoon. He mixes montage with onscreen graphics which appear way ahead of their time considering this is a film from 1963 and a fairly mainstream comedy at that.

The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman is also extremely funny. Obviously owing a lot to its source material, the script is one of the wittiest ever written and even if it’s talking about early 1960s social mores, the humour has barely dated at all. Much of the success of this is owed to the committed performance of the leading man, Keiju Kobayashi, who is able to give Eburi a sort of soulful weariness as his cynical rants take on an odd quality of warmth, appearing both strangely energetic and endlessly tired.

Whatever else he says and does, Eburi loves and has a duty to his family that proves extremely stressful for him as he feels the pressure to provide though he only wants the best for them (even at one point lamenting that he’s had to give up thinking about suicide because of the responsibilities he now has). These simple things must have struck a cord with the men of Eburi’s age who found themselves in a similar position of feeling eclipsed by the younger generation coupled with resentment towards their parents who had lead Japan into the folly of war and left the mess for their kids to clean up. Keenly observed, hilariously recounted and brilliantly brought to the screen, The Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman might just be one of the funniest films ever made and an unjustly neglected masterpiece of early 1960s Japanese cinema.

Reviewed at the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2016 at London’s ICA 10th February 2016.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20SCQYPoJ6Y