Tag: Toshie Takada

That Guy and I (あいつと私, Ko Nakahira, 1961)

Posted on by

Likely intended as a slightly silly student rom-com, Ko Nakahira’s That Guy and I (あいつと私, Aitsu to Watashi) captures a sense of the changing gender roles and sexual mores of the early 1960s, if through a very male and at times even middle-aged lens. Adapted from a serialised novel by Yojiro Ishizaka and set amid the ANPO protests of 1960, the film is narrated by its heroine, a very ordinary young woman from a typical, moderately wealthy middle-class family, as she struggles with her attraction to a fabulously wealthy young man who pretends to be a boor but is actually a nice guy and unexpected feminist.

One of a new generation of women attending university with a prospect of independence, Keiko’s (Izumi Ashikawa) horizons seem to be broadening. She’s not exactly conservative and openly jokes about sex and dating with her friends, but is quite settled with her life, not particularly wanting anything more than she already has. Her psychology tutor highlights the problem of social inequality in their school that she had already raised in her opening voiceover in remarking that the rich kids all have cars and can drive themselves to school, while others are having to work to support themselves while they study. When he asks how much pocket money they all get, some are outraged and keen to stress they don’t get any help at all, but Keiko reveals that her parents actually give her a healthy allowance. It’s just that she has no real urge to spend it, so it’s been mounting up quietly in a desk drawer in her childhood bedroom while she still lives at home close to the university.

Saburo (Yujiro Ishihara), by contrast, boasts that he gets more than some people’s monthly wage as an allowance from his mother and blows it on drink, gambling, strip clubs and sex workers. It’s this last point that scandalises the female students who are all shocked and disapproving, even going so far as to ask the teacher to throw Saburo out because they don’t feel comfortable sharing a space with a man like that. The teacher also says he’s disappointed and wishes Saburo hadn’t added the last bit, only for Saburo to call him a hypocrite because sex work was legal in his day and he simply doesn’t believe that he’s never paid for sex. Most of the other boys join in on Saburo’s side, insisting that no man sees any problem with visiting sex workers which they regard as a natural right because the male sex drive is driven by “uncontrollable forces”.

But then there’s something unexpected that occurs among the female students in that some of them are obviously attracted by this very rough form of masculinity. “I’d rather have a wild beast than a meek sheep,” one intones, but nevertheless goes to join the group of girls confronting Saburo at the pool in the hope of gaining an apology for the offence he caused them. They’ve since found out that he probably made it up anyway, which is ironic because he claimed he’d only spoken the truth when they asked him to leave, but that’s somehow even worse because it means he said it deliberately to upset them. The upshot of it all is that Saburo ends up in the pool and is then forced to borrow some of the girls’ clothes while his dry off, signalling his awkward positioning between traditional masculinity and femininity in that he’s otherwise surprisingly sympathetic of women and makes sure to look out for them but in a way that encourages their independence and is never patronising. 

That might, in one way, be because of his unusual upbringing which is far more modern and bohemian than Keiko’s and in the beginning, at least, quite confusing for her. Saburo’s mother Motoko (Yukiko Todoroki) is a famous entrepreneur with a beauty shop empire. She writes her name in Western order and uses katakana for her first name which makes look foreign and therefore exciting and sophisticated even though it obviously isn’t. It was Saburo’s mild-mannered father who gave up his career in insurance to raise him, while his mother apparently blows off steam through numerous affairs. His father occasionally gets upset about this and the pair go through a charade of him leaving her while she professes her love for him, which seems to have a sexual dimension in itself. Perhaps this has given Saburo an alternative view of romantic relationships, though we also later discover that he was subject to what we’d now see as a form of sexual abuse as a teenager when his mother got a young but still adult woman, Michiko (Misako Watanabe), to essentially give him practical lessons in sex and satisfy his teenage urges, only he thought it was an organic romantic relationship and feels more than anything else emotionally betrayed. 

But then again, the film has a very of its time and defiantly male view of rape which is dealt with in a fairly flippant manner. Keiko rings her mother to tell her she’s realised that the reason she didn’t like the idea of her being at the ANPO protests was because she feared she’d be raped, which is at any rate an odd conversation to be having. Her mother asks her what her virginity has to do with ANPO, which is a fair question, but also implies that it’s not so much the physical and psychological harm of sexual assault that bothers her mother but the shame of premarital sex. One of the girls who goes to the protest, Ayako (Shigako Shimegi), is actually raped by the two boys she went with who deliberately plied her with alcohol and took her to a hotel knowing that she trusted them, but her roommate, who had a crush on one of the boys, immediately turns against her. Sadako (Kazuko Yoshiyuki), the most political of the students, calls her a slut who parades herself in front of men and says Ayako must have led them on. Only Keiko takes her side, walking her to the bath and waiting outside for her while admitting that she has conflicted thoughts about Saburo. She throws things at him to shoo him away, feeling that his presence as a man is inappropriate and not wanting him to see Ayako in this moment of vulnerability, but also she admits to herself because she’d be jealous and doesn’t want him to see a naked woman that isn’t her.

Something similar happens when she finds out about Saburo’s past and is jealous and resentful of Michiko, irrationally angry with Saburo, and on another level protective of him knowing that happened when he was a teenager was wrong. After she runs out into the rain and the pair argue about it, Saburo forces a kiss on her which, again, Keiko seems like in a show of robust manliness. Saburo is though also protective and sympathetic towards Ayako, insisting that that the way for her to move past her rape is to ensure she becomes financially independent and successful so that she can see it as just something unpleasant that happened to her rather than something that ruined her life or makes her unworthy of another man’s love. He even helps her to do that by getting her a job at his mother’s company. 

Saburo’s mother Motoko, meanwhile, gives Keiko some frank advice in disclosing the secrets of her life and Saburo’s birth. Even when Saburo suddenly announces their engagement without actually asking her, Keiko does not merely swoon but reflects that she’s got to have a proper think before actually agreeing which she is still free to do or not. Nevertheless, the film seems to have hit on a contradiction in redefining masculinity as both tough and soft. Keiko is despite herself attracted to Saburo’s forcefulness, but also his chivalrous nature and awkward kindness, his fair-mindedness and care, and recognition of women as actual human beings with interior lives and a right to independence. Nakahira may be a little less surreal than usual, but leans heavily into absurdity, on the one hand acknowledging the somewhat superficial quality of these privileged students’ lives in having them confront a band of angry rural workers and half-heartedly take part in the ANPO demonstrations without much thought to what they’re for or what they mean, but, in the end, characterises them as merely ordinary, slightly lost amid the rapid changes of the post-war society but otherwise cheerful and looking ahead to a bright future stretching out in front of them.

Trailer (no subtitles)

The Hunter’s Diary (猟人日記, Ko Nakahira, 1964)

Posted on by

Ko Nakahira is most closely associated with the seminal Nikkatsu Sun Tribe film Crazed Fruit which sent Yujiro Ishihara to stardom though he began his career at Shochiku in 1948 alongside Seijun Suzuki who like Nakahira would transfer to the newly re-established Nikkatsu when it resumed production in 1954. Suzuki was rather famously let go in 1968 due to creative differences with Nakahira also leaving the studio that year in similar circumstances having decamped to Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong in 1967 where he remade some of his previous hits including 1964’s Hunter’s Diary (猟人日記, Ryojin Nikki). 

Based on a mystery novel by Masako Togawa who in fact stars in her only film role as the hero’s little seen wife, Hunter’s Diary is one of a string of films in the mid-1960s critical of the functioning of the legal system in the post-war society. Nakahira opens with a lengthy sequence introducing new forensic technologies which anticipate the use of DNA as an investigative tool in the use of blood type analysis to place a suspect at a crime scene. This science will however be undercut by the sympathetic lawyer Hatanaka (Kazuo Kitamura) who reminds us that the presence of such evidence is not proof in and of itself in much the same way that DNA has since become the new smoking gun and is as susceptible to misuse as any other kind of forensic technique. 

It’s a problem for the hero, Honda (Noboru Nakaya), because his blood type is incredibly rare. In fact he was once in the paper for saving a baby by coming to the rescue with a donation just in time which as we later discover is ironic because much of his behaviour is shaped by the loss of his own child who was born with osteogenesis imperfecta and did not survive. The traumatic circumstances of the birth left his wife, Taneko, with a fear of pregnancy that eventually destroyed their marriage. The couple now live largely apart, she in her family’s country mansion painting disturbing pictures and he in the city “hunting” women for one night stands adopting the persona of a man who is foreign or part-Japanese. There is something of the fear of foreignness seen in other similarly themed films of the era in the fact that Honda’s child is born in Mexico while the couple had met and married in the US, Taneko convinced that had they returned to Japan earlier her baby may have survived while Honda claims that “intellectual” women are drawn to foreign men as he assumes his rather creepy “Monsieur Soubra” alter-ego complete with a funny accent and slightly broken Japanese. 

He positions his “hunting” as a way of dealing with the collapse of his marriage and his guilt over the death of his child overcoming his sense of impotence through transgressive sexuality though many of the women Hatanaka later interviews describe him as disappointingly vanilla and as we discover his games might have begun long before. Meanwhile the women are themselves judged for their sexuality, the discovery of a male muscle magazine in the home of a mousy spinster somewhat amusing to Honda while the unintended darkness of his sport is brought home by the film’s opening sequence in which a 19-year-old woman who became pregnant after he seduced and abandoned her takes her own life in shame and desperation only to be branded an “idiot” by her grieving sister for having slept with a man she had only just met. When a previous conquest of his is murdered in her apartment, Honda is momentarily worried but assumes it’s a grim coincidence. When her death is followed by that of a woman who could have provided him with an alibi he comes to the conclusion that someone is trying to frame him. 

Hatanaka’s conviction is that “the law is everything in court” and that Honda should not be judged on his moral character for his sleazy philandering only on the basis of the evidence presented which he believes may have been deliberately planted to incriminate him. His investigations take him to unlikely places discovering the potentially unethical practices of blood donation programs along with the illegal sale of blood and other bodily fluids such as semen while seeing the tables turned on visiting a gay bar where a male sex worker reports a weird encounter with a suspicious client, and salesman continues to frequent a Turkish bath hoping to run into a woman who seduced him but may only have been interested in his blood type. Honda soon forgets the name of the woman who took her own life, but is haunted by the visions of the women he has harmed while simultaneously rejecting the labels placed on him as a pervert or a predator and believing that his child’s death is punishment for his “abnormal sexuality” as some may brand it. 

This sense of guilt is also reflected in his worry that he is a “spreader of death”, as if though he did not kill them directly he were the carrier of a disease or else some kind of grim reaper beckoning these women towards their demise though he evidently thinks little of them outside of their status as trophies and does not stop to consider the consequences of his actions on others. Above his bed in his city hideout (officially he lives in a hotel) there is a picture of a fox hunt making plain that his satisfaction lies in the chase rather than its conclusion yet otherwise his motives are rather banal. He cannot leave his wife because he married into her prominent family and his social standing depends on his connection to them, likewise he decides against alerting the police or the building’s caretaker on discovering one of the women’s bodies because his reputation would be ruined if were to become involved in a murder and his secret life exposed. Ironically his salvation comes precisely because of this social standing when his wealthy father-in-law hires Hatanaka to handle his appeal and save him from the death penalty. 

Hatanaka had resigned from a previous position in opposition to the system, disappointed on meeting the lawyer who defended Honda at trial and realising they did not attempt to mount a defence nor investigate his case simply try to mitigate it in the hope of working it down to a custodial sentence. He instructs his naive young assistant who wonders if Honda is the sort of man they should be saving that she should approach every case on its merits as if the defendant is innocent without bringing in external moral judgements on his character. As he tells him, Honda may be legally vindicated but his moral judgement would depend on how he lives his life from then on later offering him a kind of absolution in telling him that one of his conquests, who does not want to be identified, gave birth to a son who is healthy and happy signalling that his is not an original sin and he does not bear that kind of responsibility for the death of his child. Veering towards the avant-garde Nakahira makes frequent use of superimposition and dissolves to reflect Honda’s fracturing mental state along with the persistence of his guilt while shifting into the purely documentarian in his lengthy explanation of forensic techniques and the science behind blood types but always returns to the Hitchcockian interplay of sex, death, and remorse which is true source of Honda’s trial. 

DVD remaster trailer (no subtitles)

The Letter (手紙, Jiro Shono, 2006)

Posted on by Leave a comment

The Letter PosterWhen it comes to cinematic adaptations of popular novelists, Keigo Higashino seems to have received more attention than most. Perhaps this is because he works in so many different genres from detective fiction (including his all powerful Galileo franchise) to family melodrama but it has to be said that his work manages to home in on the kind of films which have the potential to become a box office smash. The Letter (手紙, Tegami) finds him in the familiar territory of sentimental drama as its put upon protagonist battles unfairness and discrimination based on a set of rigid social codes.

Nao (Takayuki Yamada) is a bright young man who had the chance to go to university and progress into a normal middle class life but is now slumming it as a blue collar worker at a factory. It transpires that his dismal circumstances began when he and his brother were orphaned meaning that his older brother Takashi (Tetsuji Tamayama) left school to get the money for Nao’s education. Working himself to the bone, Takashi was injured in a workplace accident and subsequently laid off. Desperate to provide for his brother, he turned to crime and unfortunately ended up killing an elderly woman during a burglary gone wrong and will spend the rest of his life in prison. The once close brothers now communicate through letters alone. With his university dreams shattered, Nao moves from place to place, forced out of employment and friendship groups each time someone finds out about his brother. Increasingly he comes to resent Takashi for the shadow his foolish actions continue cast over his life.

It is sadly true that this kind of social stigma towards the relatives of criminals is more prevalent in a society like Japan’s which prizes the overall harmony of the group (though I wouldn’t say it’s entirely absent here either). Every time Nao thinks he’s about to get somewhere, a background check throws up his imprisoned brother and it’s all over. Especially considering that his brother’s crime is a violent one perpetrated against an elderly lady, nobody is prepared to extend an understanding hand to Nao even though the crime itself has nothing to do with him (save being committed in his name) and its price should not be hanging on his shoulders.

It’s unsurprising then that Nao tries to conceal his brother’s existence, often claiming to be an only child with no living family. Though originally communicating warmly with Takashi in the letters, his growing resentment leads to a decline in their frequency and he rarely visits in person. The desire to hide his problematic past becomes a trigger in itself which leads to his having to give up on a dream of becoming a TV comedian just when it looked like his career was about to take off, and failure to tell a fiancée that he lied about being an only child also presents a serious crack in the couple’s relationship. Had he been more upfront and faced out the resulting reaction, he might have been able to work through it but once you’ve tried to lie sympathy dissipates entirely.

At the end of the day Nao is a young man with no one to guide him. He’s angry and he’s ambitious so he’s filled with resentment that he can’t have everything he thinks he deserves simply because of a series of things which happened to him none of which were his fault. Because of this, he makes a series of poor choices failing to see the things that are right in front of him. The dowdy girl next-door type from the factory is clearly in love with Nao but he isn’t interested – she doesn’t fit his slightly arrogant view of himself with her plainness and straightforward goodness. On the other hand, he’s immediately captivated by a beautiful and wealthy socialite who’s way out of his league. Of course, this is likely to end in tears – even if Nao didn’t already have skeletons in the closet the girl’s father has other plans for her which don’t include a marriage to a jumped up poor boy comedian.

The Letter suffers slightly in its focus on Nao and his troubles rather than being evenly split between the brothers. Takashi has paid a heavy price for his crime – he’ll be in prison for the rest of his life and the bright future he tried to buy for his brother has been ruined forever precisely because of the actions he was taking to ensure it. His only lifeline is the letters and the news he gets of Nao’s prospering in the outside world. Nao’s final decision to stop writing and not even tell his brother his new address so that the letters will no longer reach him is therefore a doubly cruel and selfish one. However, Takashi is only presented in relationship to his brother and his own pain and struggle becomes an undeveloped facet of the film.

As in all of Keigo Higashino’s work, secrets are the great enemy. The film only partially addresses the extreme unfairness of Nao’s plight as he’s continually persecuted for something that’s nothing to do with him. Guilty by association only, he is also in prison with no parole board to consider his case. The film even states that this kind of stigma is a perfectly natural thing which just has to be accepted – accept the truth, it says, and the world will open up to you. On balance this is a good message, but the idea that prejudice and social discrimination are things which just have to be endured is an uncomfortable one which sits at odds with the film’s otherwise positive messages of personal redemption and the importance of familial bonds. Uneven and occasionally tipping over into sentimentality, The Letter is something of a missed opportunity but nevertheless offers a thought provoking and emotionally satisfying melodrama in the best traditions of the genre.

Reviewed as part of the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2016.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ibsv_ZJ0d4