Tag: Tomoko Saito

Seven Weeks (野のなななのか, Nobuhiko Obayashi, 2014)

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“A death is a history” runs an opening title card in Nobuhiko Obayashi’s poignant existential drama, Seven Weeks (野のなななのか, No no Nanananoka). Returning to some of the director’s key themes, Obayashi’s adaptation of the novel by Koji Hasegawa takes its name from the traditional Buddhist period of mourning reminding us that life and death is a continuous cycle in which all lives are necessarily tied to one another. Some may later ask if those connections are also constraints, thinking perhaps of the sometimes onerous burdens of family, but even they later reflect on the necessity of human ties while contemplating the confluence of the eternal and the transient. 

The death we’re being asked to witness is that of 92-year-old Mitsuo Suzuki (Toru Shinagawa), a former doctor and owner of what some view as a junk shop, who is discovered collapsed by his granddaughter Kanna (Saki Terashima) only to die a few days later at the time shown on his permanently broken wristwatch which also happens to be the time the Great East Japan Earthquake struck in 2011. Soon his extended family begin to arrive beginning with long widowed sister Eiko (Tokie Hidari), grandson Fuyuki (Takehiro Murata) and his daughter Kasane (Hirona Yamazaki), and Kanna’s brother Akito (Shunsuke Kubozuka) while Fuyuki’s brother Haruhiko (Yutaka Matsushige) and his wife Setsuko (Tomoka Shibayama) will make it only in time for the wake. Throwing all into confusion is the unexpected arrival of a mysterious young woman, Nobuko (Takako Tokiwa), later revealed to be a nurse who once lived with the family and fulfilled the role of mother for Kanna and Akito whose parents were killed in a car accident while they were still young. 

Nobuko is in many ways the key to a mystery yet also a cypher, more than one woman at the same time as if in a sense resurrected from Mitsuo’s traumatic memories of love and war in the time of his youth. At his wake, men of a similar age spin their own war stories, Eiko reminding the young that their youth was war and perhaps they’ve a right to romanticise it for all of its terrible cruelty. Mitsuo didn’t go to the front but found himself a victim of shifting borders, ironically a descendent of settler colonisers as a native of Hokkaido travelling to the disputed island of Sakhalin in search of a friend and in the company of the young woman who was engaged to him but with whom he was himself in love believing the war was over only to discover no one had told the Russians and that wars do not end at the same time for everyone, or for some at all. 

In an ironic touch, great-granddaughter Kasane participates in an excavation of an old mine once staffed largely by forced Korean labour, an elderly woman plaintively singing Arirang over the dig site, only to later visit a similar location which has become the “Canada World” tourist attraction including a replica of the house from Anne of Green Gables. As she, Eiko, and Kanna reflect on the changes in the town there’s a minor sadness that the mine has closed which seems somewhat incongruous, even as the wholesomeness of coal from the ground is favourably compared with the dangerously intangible qualities of nuclear energy. Nevertheless, conflicted nuclear engineer Haruhiko later stakes his future on renewable energy, neatly echoing the sense of circularity in a continuous cycle of death and rebirth in which one life is necessarily tied to another and therefore to all lives. 

“We got along with the Russians in Sakhalin before the war” Mitsuo’s friend Ono (Takao Ito) laments, musing on the senselessness of conflict in its propensity to draw lines between people which divide rather than connect. Mitsuo’s death is indeed “a history tying the past and future”, a minor allegory for that of his nation as he contemplates lost love and the end to wandering that is death which leads in turn to new beginnings. “You want to look away. You want to forget about it”, Mitsuo confesses, “but you can’t. You have to remember so that it’s never repeated”. Through their 49-day odyssey, the family members begin to edge their way towards a less anxious if still uncertain future. “We might lose people but not hope” Kanna expounds, recommitting herself to the hometown spirit while opening up to the possibility of romance, while her brother does something much the same, as does her uncle Fuyuki even as his daughter conversely gives up on a possibly inappropriate crush to shift into a more mature adulthood. “We will go on peacefully” runs the final title card, a mission statement for the foundation of a better world. 

Seven Weeks streams in the US July 9 – Aug. 6 as part of Japan Society New York’s Tragedies of Youth: Nobuhiko Obayashi’s War Trilogy season in collaboration with KimStim.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Our Marriage (私たちの結婚, Masahiro Shinoda, 1962)

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Like many directors of his age, Masahiro Shinoda had to serve his apprenticeship at Shochiku contributing to the studio’s particular brand of light and cheerful melodramas though 1962’s Our Marriage (私たちの結婚, Watashitachi no Kekkon) did perhaps allow him to explore some of his persistent themes in its ultimately empathetic exploration of the romantic and existential dilemmas of two sisters who ultimately find themselves taking different paths in the complicated post-war society. Co-scripted by Zenzo Matsuyama, Our Marriage is essentially a chronicle of changing times and the crises of modernity, but it’s also surprisingly even-handed in its refusal to judge or indeed to sugarcoat the “romance” of a working class life. 

Keiko (Noriko Maki) and her younger sister Saeko (Chieko Baisho) both have jobs in the local factory with Keiko working in the accounts department which is where she first meets the brooding and self-righteous Komakura (Shinichiro Mikami) when he marches straight into the office to complain that he’s been shorted on his pay-packet to the tune of 10 yen. The ladies are non-plussed, it’s only 10 yen after all so perhaps there’s no need to be so unpleasant about it, but Komakura insists on having it looked into even after they give him the single coin in an effort to make him go away. Getting so upset about 10 yen is perhaps disproportionate, but then it is Komakura’s 10 yen and he has a point that if a mistake has been made it needs to be acknowledged and corrected especially when you’re dealing with people’s livelihoods to ensure that everyone is being paid fairly. On the other hand, marching in and shouting at people is unlikely to help the situation. 

It just so happens that Komakura is a good friend of Saeko’s who perhaps reads more into the mild embarrassment he and her sister each experience on meeting in another context to assume that they are romantically involved, immediately swinging into action to get them together. Meanwhile, another potential suitor has turned up at home in the form of Matsumoto (Isao Kimura), apparently an old friend dropping in on their parents out of courtesy. Matsumoto is very good looking and apparently now has a well paying job in the textiles trade, but despite their politeness to him the parents later have their doubts because it turns out that he was their blackmarket dealer during the dark days of the immediate post-war era. 

The Hibino family make their living as seaweed farmers and live in a small two-story home in a fishing village. Times are hard because the sea is dying. Increased industrial pollution, land reclamation, and the new airport have reduced the harvest to almost nothing and the girls’ father (Eijiro Tono) can no longer make ends meet. The union hasn’t paid him and he can’t ask about it because he’s still in debt from a previous loan, which is why Keiko’s mother (Sadako Sawamura) is always asking her for extra money to help with household expenses. Keiko intensely resents this, especially as her father’s irresponsible drinking habits continue to adversely affect the family’s finances. They haven’t really been thinking about her marriage perhaps partly because they need her salary but are now forced to because of all the sudden and unexpected interest. On top of Matsumoto and Komakura, it seems that the union leader’s widowed son is also interested which would, admittedly, be quite beneficial to the family. 

Keiko, however, is insistent that her husband must have a decent salary and that her married home must have a refrigerator and a washing machine. Quite the consumerist, Keiko has had enough of poverty and of feckless men like her authoritarian father who waste all their money on drink while relying on female labour to keep them out of trouble. When Matsumoto writes a formal letter proposing marriage, the parents decide to push the union leader’s son instead hoping to avoid embarrassment all round. Keiko immediately assumes the worst, that her father is trying to sell her to the union leader in exchange for the cancelation of his debts. She insists that she will decide her own future, leading Saeko to make a disastrous intervention revealing Keiko’s relationship with Komakura which only has the effect of enraging her father who brands her an ungrateful “whore” while shouting that a mere workman is not good enough for his daughter despite having previously stated that the union leader’s son was really “too good” and they were only in the running because it’s a second marriage. 

Both women still implicitly feel that marriage will define their futures, they do not have an expectation of living independently. Nevertheless, marriage itself may not be an answer. Everyone keeps talking about how happy Miyoko (Fumiko Hirayama) is with her new husband and she herself is forever extolling the joys of married life even in poverty, insisting to Saeko that “a woman’s happiness lies in marrying and having babies”. It’s a cruel irony then that we later see her arguing with her husband who is trying to force her to have an abortion against her will because they cannot afford to raise a child. Keiko has had enough of poverty, she wants to be more than comfortable, enjoying the new consumerist age. Re-encountering an old schoolfriend who has become a glamorous social butterfly she is mildly scandalised when she tells her that she obtained all her treasures through a complex network of compensated dating arrangements with foreigners, but later decides to check it out for herself when directly faced with the hopelessness of her situation. 

The fact remains, however, that no matter the initial attraction and her sister’s earnest attempts to make it work, Keiko and Komakura are fundamentally unsuited. They have entirely different ways of thinking about the world and want completely different things. Komakura is an angry young man but committed to his working class roots. He isn’t trying to get on, he’s happy with working in the factory for the rest of his life and just wants a quiet, honest existence. Keiko wants more, she thinks that people who say they’re poor but happy have merely given up on life. Revealing himself, Matsumoto says that he was struck by Keiko’s harsh words to him when she was a child, her calling him a blackmarketeer to his face apparently showing him what he was. He claims to have reformed and now fears the various ways that poverty can corrupt, something Keiko feels herself after her brief brush with the shady world of compensated dating. They are very much on the same page, both intent on seizing the benefits of the consumerist age but hoping they won’t have to stoop too low to get them. 

Saeko meanwhile is a little younger, still naive, and unlike her sister completely resistant to the corruptions of consumerism. Part of that might be because Keiko has shielded her from some of the harsh consequences of the way their family lives such as the financial burden of her father’s drinking, leaving her with a rosier view of poor but honest life which has her taking notes from Miyoko on how it’s easy to be happy even when you don’t have enough to eat. She and Komakura are in fact perfectly suited and perhaps she is already in love with him but either afraid of her feelings or unable to recognise them, pushing him towards her “prettier” sister instead. Then again, is there anything to say that Komakura will not turn into another man like her father, embittered and old, trying to drown his disappointment in sake? There’s no guarantee Keiko will be happy with Matsumoto, or perhaps with anyone, but they are at least moving forward in the same direction, as are Saeko and Komakura even as they blend back in with a hundred other cheerful youngsters making their way towards the factory. Our Marriage offers no judgment on its heroines’ choices, merely stating that people make their own paths in life pursuing their particular ideal of happiness and it happens that those paths might necessarily diverge but the people are still the same ones they always were and perhaps you don’t need to reject them for choosing differently than you might have done. Isn’t that what post-war freedom is all about after all?

A Legend or Was It? (死闘の伝説, Keisuke Kinoshita, 1963)

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A Legend or Was it posterIn 1951’s Boyhood, Kinoshita had painted a less than idealised portrait of village life during wartime. With pressure mounting ranks were closing, “outsiders” were not welcome. The family at the centre of Boyhood had more reasons to worry in that they had, by necessity, removed themselves from a commonality in their ideological opposition to imperialism but newcomers are always vulnerable when they find themselves undefended and without friends. 1963’s A Legend or Was It? (死闘の伝説, Shito no Densetsu, AKA Legend of a Duel to the Death) tells a similar story, but darker as a family of evacuees fall foul not only of lingering feudal mores but a growing resentment in which they find themselves held responsible for all the evils of war.

Beginning with a brief colour framing sequence, Kinoshita shows us a contemporary Hokkaido village filled with cheerful rural folk who mourn each other’s losses and share each other’s joys while shouldering communal burdens. A voice over, however, reminds us that something ugly happened in this beautiful place twenty years previously. Something of which all are too ashamed to speak. Switching back to black and white and the same village in the summer of 1945, he introduces us to Hideyuki Sonobe (Go Kato) who has just come home from the war to convalesce from a battlefield injury. Hideyuki’s engineer father went off to serve his country and hasn’t been heard from since, and neither has his brother who joined the air corp. His mother (Kinuyo Tanaka), sister Kieko (Shima Iwashita), and younger brother Norio (Tsutomu Matsukawa) have evacuated from Tokyo to this small Hokkaido village where they live in a disused cottage some distance from the main settlement.

The family had been getting by in the village thanks to the support of its mayor, Takamori, but relations have soured of late following an unexpected marriage proposal. Takamori’s son Goichi (Bunta Sugawara), a war veteran with a ruined hand and young master complex, wants to marry Kieko. She doesn’t want to marry him, but the family worry about possible repercussions if they turn him down. It just so happens that Hideyuki recognises Goichi and doesn’t like what he sees – he once witnessed him committing an atrocity in China and knows he is not the sort of man he would want his sister to marry, let alone marry out of fear and practicality. Hideyuki, as the head of the family, turns the proposal down and it turns out they were right to worry. The family’s field is soon vandalised and the police won’t help. When other fields meet the same fate, a rumour spreads that the Sonobes are behind it – taking revenge on the village on as a whole. The villagers swing behind Goichi, using the feud as a cover to ease their own petty grievances.

City dwellers by nature, the Sonobes have wandered into a land little understood in which feudal bonds still matter and mob mentality is only few misplaced words away. The village serves a microcosm of Japanese society at war in which Takamori becomes the unassailable authority and his cruel son the embodiment of militarism. Goichi embraces his role as a young master with relish, riding around the town on horse back and occasionally barking orders at his obedient peasants, stopping only to issue a beating to anyone he feels has slighted him – even taking offence at an innocuous folksong about a man who was rejected in love and subsequently incurred a disability. Despite all of that, however, few can find the strength to resist the pull of the old masters and the majority resolutely fall behind Goichi, willing to die for him if necessary.

As the desperation intensifies and it appears the war, far off as it is, is all but lost, a kind of creeping madness takes hold in which the Sonobes become somehow responsible for the greater madness that has stolen so many sons and husbands from this tiny village otherwise untouched by violence or famine. An embodiment of city civilisation the Sonobes come to represent everything the village feels threatened by, branded as “bandits” and blamed for everything from murder to vegetable theft. The central issue, one of a weak and violent man who felt himself entitled to any woman he wanted and refused to accept the legitimacy of her right to refuse, falls by the wayside as just another facet of the spiralling madness born of corrupted male pride and misplaced loyalties.

Kinoshita returns to the idyllic countryside to close his framing sequence, reminding us that these events may have been unthought to the level of myth but such things did happen even if those who remember are too ashamed to recall them. Tense and inevitable, A Legend or Was It? reframes an age of fear and madness as a timeless village story in which the corrupted bonds of feudalism fuel the fires of resentment and impotence until all that remains is the irrationality of violence.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

One-Way Ticket to Love (恋の片道切符, Masahiro Shinoda, 1960)

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vlcsnap-2017-04-14-00h33m57s991Although Masahiro Shinoda has long been admitted into the pantheon of Japanese New Wave masters, he is mostly remembered only for his 1969 adaptation of a Chikamatsu play, Double Suicide. Less overtly political than many of his contemporaries during the heady years of protest and rebellion, Shinoda was a consummate stylist whose films aimed to dazzle with visual flair or often to deliberately disorientate with their worlds of constant uncertainty. Like so many of the directors who would go on to form what would retrospectively become known as the Japanese New Wave, Shinoda also started out as a junior AD, in this case at Shochiku where he felt himself stifled by the studio’s famously safe, inoffensive approach to filmmaking.

By the late ‘60s that approach was itself failing and so the studio began to take a few chances on new young directors including Shinoda who was afforded the opportunity to script and direct his first feature – One-way Ticket to Love (恋の片道切符, Koi no katamichi kippu). Studio mandated programme picture as it was, Shinoda still had to play by some of the rules – notably that the title song which is a Japanese cover of the 1959 Neil Sedaka hit needed to feature prominently. Shinoda does indeed showcase the song throughout the film though he also paints a dark and unforgiving picture of the burgeoning talent management industry whilst sympathising with those trapped in the underworld to which the effects of growing economic prosperity have yet to trickle down.

Down on his luck 20 year old alto-sax player Kenji Shirai (Kazuya Kosaka) has resorted to hanging around stations in Tokyo alongside a host of other unemployed artists trying to get picked up for a job and having little success. His luck changes when a young female talent fixer, Miss Yoshinaga (Yachiyo Otori), finds herself in need of an alto sax player with immediate effect. Kenji is elated to find work but somewhat troubled when the club is abruptly raided, giving him a taste of the precariousness of the underground club scene. Nevertheless, Yoshinaga hands him a card and tells him to come to her office tomorrow in case she has any more work for him.

On his way home, Kenji comes across a distressed woman crying her heart out dangerously near a high bridge. Fearing she is about to commit suicide, Kenji comforts her and then takes her home for the night before introducing her to Yoshinaga the next day in the hope that she may also have work for a young woman – she does, but as a nudie dancer. Mitsuko (Noriko Maki) reluctantly takes the job leaving Kenji conflicted but there’s more drama in both of their lives to come in the form of “The Japanese Elvis” Ueno (Masaaki Hirao), Mitsuko’s married ex-boyfriend Tajima, and an errant pistol belonging to Kenji’s petty yakuza roommate.

Although Shinoda was less noticeably political than many of the other directors of the time, his sympathy remains with those who feels themselves to be oppressed or have in someway been cast aside by an unforgiving world. Kenji in particular feels himself to be just such a person, remarking that the world is a cruel place in which people look after their own interests and are prepared to use and discard those less fortunate in order to get what they want. Describing himself and Mitsuko as nothing more than offerings fit for burning on the altar that is the post-war economy, Kenji’s sense of hopelessness is palpable. Despite having acted to rescue Mitsuko from her suicidal contemplation, he feels powerless to help her in any other way and honestly tells her so each time she comes to him for comfort or assistance. Though his earnestness has an honest quality in its determination not to deceive, it also has an air of cowardice as he refuses to even discourage the woman he loves from doing something he knows she will regret because he has already decided that resistance is futile.

Mitsuko, by contrast, finds herself entirely without agency. Betrayed by the man she loved on discovering that he was already married and had been stringing her along, she finds it difficult to adjust to living life alone. Consequently she finds herself wooed by the big idol star of the day, Ueno, and then swept into a studio scam in which the pair are tricked into a sexual relationship with dire consequences for both. Ueno, who sings the all important title song at several points throughout the film, might be in a more comfortable position than Kenji but he is no more free. The studio’s prime cash cow, Ueno is pimped out to his hoards of screaming teenage girls and denied anything like a private life outside of studio control. As the latest dancer at the club, Mitsuko is assured that she’s going out there a rookie and coming back a star but her fate, along with Ueno’s, is entirely in the hands of the managers who can make or break a career at will.

If the interpersonal drama fails to convince, Shinoda makes up for it with unusually dynamic and interesting cinematography much more like the youth movies Nikkatsu were making at the time than the usual Shochiku stateliness. Looking much more like the European New Wave, Shinoda makes fantastic use of tracking shots and unusual framing to draw attention to the isolation of his protagonists. The club set finale featuring the title song is a masterclass in tension as Kenji roams around the audience, caught among the crowd of screaming girls before pausing for an up close contemplation of Ueno which leads him to his final decision. A programme picture, but one in which Shinoda declared his stylistic intentions if not his scripting prowess. One-way Ticket to Love dazzles with visual flair but never captivates on anything other than a superficial level as its story of love frustrated by social inequality and controlling authority fails to deliver on the melancholy promise of the title.

Final sequence featuring the title song by Masaaki Hirao (English subtitles)