Tag: Yoichi Funaki

Shinobi no mono 8: The Three Enemies (新書・忍びの者, Kazuo Ikehiro, 1966)

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The abiding constant of the Shinobi Mono series had been its continual forward motion, at least up until instalment seven which had backtracked to the death of Ieyasu. This eighth and final film (save for a further sequel released in 1970 starring Hiroki Matsukata replacing Raizo Ichikawa who had sadly passed away a couple of years earlier at the young age of 37) however reaches even further back into the mists of time setting itself a few years before the original trilogy had begun.

This time around, we follow young Kojiro (Raizo Ichikawa) on what is a more stereotypical tale of personal revenge albeit that one that eventually becomes embroiled in politics as he joins a ninja band that’s working for Takeda Shingen (Kenjiro Ishiyama). In slightly surprising turn of events, Ieyasu (Taketoshi Naito) turns out to be what passes for a good guy at least in contrast to Shingen’s duplicity though Ieyasu himself is still young and at the very beginning of his military career which is why unlike his older self he’s a little more proactive and willing to start a fight as well as finish one. In any case, Shingen thinks he’s an easy target largely because he simply hasn’t been in post long enough to have begun making connections with local lords, bribing them with gifts to secure their loyalty. 

In any case, Kojiro’s journey begins as something more like a martial arts film as he surpasses his current teacher and is told to find a man called Sadayu (Yunosuke Ito) in the mountains if wants to be up to gaining his revenge against the three men who killed his father while trying to steal his gunpowder. Perhaps there’s something a little ironic in the fact that Kojiro’s father was killed in a fight over what amounts to the substance of the future engineering a wholesale change in samurai warfare and edging towards the oppressive peace of the Tokugawa shogunate. But to get she revenge, Kojiro commits himself to learning true ninjutsu as the film demonstrates in a lengthy training montage. Unlike previous instalments, however, there is left emphasis place on the prohibition of emotion with the reason Kojiro cannot romance Sandayu’s adopted daughter down to her father’s whim forbidding her from marrying a ninja.

Apparently not the Sandayu of the earlier films despite the similarity of the name, this one has decided to side with Shingen because he’s mistakenly concluded that he is a “fair person who understands us ninja” when in reality he just using them and is no better than Nobunaga or Ieyasu. Shingen hires them to tunnel into a castle through the well, but is entirely indifferent to their complaints about safety leaving a Sandayu voiwing vengeance. The ninja, he says, generally serve themselves and are bound to no master but he seems to have thought Shingen was different only to be proved wrong once again.

Of course, Kojiro continues looking for the men who killed his father though they obviously guide him back towards conflict anyway. When he tracks some of them down, one remarks that all he did was finish him off which was an act of kindness to end his suffering not that he necessary approved of what his fallow gang members had done. Kojiro finds a surrogate father in Sadayu much as Goemon had though this time a slightly better one even if Sandayu is also a man with a lot on his conscience. Even more so than the other films, this one takes place in a largely lawless land too consumed with perpetual warfare to notice the starving and the desperate let alone the inherent corruption of the feudal era. The bad of ninjas has a rather scrappy quality, not quite as sleek as the Iga of previous films while also a little naive. Shooting more like a standard jidaigeki, Ikehiro uses relatively few ninja tricks generally sticking to smoke and blow tarts with a few shrunken battles. Nevertheless, the violence itself is surprisingly visceral beginning with unexpected severing of an arm and leading to a man getting stabbed in both eyes. Then again, the film ends in the characteristically upbeat way which has become somewhat familiar only this time Kojiro runs back towards romantic destiny now freed of his mission of vengeance and the oppressive ninja code. 

Shinobi No Mono 5: Return of Mist Saizo (忍びの者 続・霧隠才蔵, Kazuo Ikehiro, 1964)

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At the end of the previous instalment, Saizo (Raizo Ichikawa) had escaped from the fall of Osaka Castle spiriting away Sanada Yukimura (Tomisaburo Wakayama) who, in contrast to what the history books say, did not die. The pair make their way towards Shimazu, where they are also not well disposed to Ieyasu (Eitaro Ozawa), but as Saizo is informed the Tokugawa clan will never die. Knocking off Nobunaga put an end to the Oda clan, getting rid of Hideyori took the Toyotomi out of the running, but killing Ieyasu will make little difference because another retainer will swiftly take his place.

As a reminder, that’s bad for Saizo because what he wanted was the chaos of the Warring States era back to restore the ninja to their previous status. Nevertheless, at the end of the previous film he claimed to have rediscovered a human heart in his devotion to Yukimura though it may of course be simply another ruse to meet an end. In any case, Ieyasu seems to be putting his ninjas to good use and is once again waiting it out apparently aware that Yukimura is alive and well in Shimazu.

Meanwhile, times are changing. Yukimura is convinced the future of warfare lies in firearms and whoever controls Tanegashima where the weapons are made will prove victorious. They think they can gain it by figuring out how they get access to high-quality iron when trading with anyone outside of Portugal is illegal and the Portuguese don’t have any. It’s access to foreign trade which is becoming a crunch issue as Ieyasu tries to solidify his power, later giving a deathbed order to ban Christianity to stop European merchants taking over the country. Saizo travels to Tanegashima to investigate and figures out that the secret is they’re trading with China, which is pretty good blackmail material, but also encounters two sisters who turn out to be the orphaned daughters of a Tokugawa ninja with vengeance on their mind.

In a surprising turn of events, it turns out that his main adversary is Hanzo Hattori (Saburo Date) but the fact he keeps outsmarting him eventually convinces Ieyasu that the ninja have outlived their usefulness. Hanzo becomes determined to kill Saizo to restore his honour, filling the palace with various ninja traps though unlike Goemon Saizo seems to be one step ahead of them. This lengthy final sequence is played in near total silence, and ironically finds Goemon just waiting, after dispatching several of Hanzo’s men, to see if his poison dart has taken effect and Ieyasu is on his way out. Only in the end Ieyasu just laughs at him. He’s 75. Saizo’s gone to too much effort when he could have just waited it out. Ieyasu has already achieved everything he wanted to. His control over Japan is secured given he’s just been appointed chancellor. He can quite literally die happy because nothing matters to him anymore. A title card informs us that when Ieyasu did in fact die, no one really cared. The Tokugawa peace continued. 

Here, once again, the Ninja too are powerless victims of fate despite their constant machinations. Yukimura tells Saizo to live and be human, advice he gives to the sisters in Tanegashima but does not take for himself staking everything on his revenge against Ieyasu which is, as he points out, pointless for Ieyasu was at death’s door anyway and his demise changed nothing. In his first of two entries in the series, Kazuo Ikehiro crafts some impressive set pieces beginning with a mist-bound underwater battle as Saizo and Yukimura make their escape by water to an epic flaming shuriken battle, though this time around the deaths are noticeably visceral. Men are drowned, stabbed, or caught on wooden spikes. Those who do not obey the ninja code are stabbed and pushed off cliffs while once again emotion is a weakness that brings about nothing more than death. Ikehiro’s frequent use of slow dissolves adds to the dreamlike feel of Saizo’s shadow existence even as the ninja themselves seem to be on the point of eclipse for what lies ahead for them in a world of peace in which there is no longer any need for stealth?

Shinobi no Mono 3: Resurrection (新・忍びの者, Kazuo Mori, 1963)

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At the end of the second film in the Shinobi no Mono series, Goemon (Raizo Ichikawa) was led away to be boiled alive in oil after failing to assassinate Hideyoshi Toyotomi. Obviously, Goemon did not actually die, but exchanged places with a condemned prisoner thanks to the machinations of Hanzo Hattori (Saburo Date) which is a clear diversion from the accepted historical narrative to which the film otherwise remains more or less faithful. However, in this instalment more than all the others, Goemon is very much a shadow figure, pale and gaunt, who appears much less frequently on screen and mainly relies on stoking the fires of an already simmering succession conflict in the Toyotomi camp.

At this point, Hideyoshi has already made himself de facto leader of a unified Japan having been made the “kampaku”, advisor to the emperor, only to cede that position in favour of his adopted heir, Hidetsugu (Junichiro Narita) taking the title of “Taiko.” Hideyoshi has been childless for many years which is why he adopted his nephew, but the birth of his son by blood has dangerously unbalanced the palace order with Hidetsugu increasingly certain he’s become surplus to requirements. Meanwhile, in an effort to secure his position Hideyoshi has also embarked on an ambitious plan to conquer Korea as a means of getting to Ming China and circumventing the tributary requirements necessary for trading with it. 

This plan necessarily means that they need more money with Hideyoshi calling an end to all building and renovation projects including that of a Buddhist temple playing into the series’ themes about hubris in the face of Buddha though by this point Goemon too has lost faith in Buddhism in the clear absence of karmic retribution. As Ieyasu (Masao Mishima) points out, this works out well for him as it will stir discord among local lords who will be forced to squeeze their already exploited subjects even more earning nothing more than their resentment which will then blow back on oblivious Hideyoshi.  

Thus Goemon’s role mostly involves sneaking in and telling various people that others are plotting against them and they’d be better to get ahead of it. A secondary theme throughout the series has been a sense of powerlessness which is perhaps inevitable in a historical narrative in which we already know all of the outcomes. Ieyasu scoffs at Goemon, remarking that he thinks he’s walking his own path but is really being manipulated into walking that which Ieyasu has set down for him, though Goemon effectively rejects this stating at the conclusion that as Ieyasu believed he was using him he was also using Ieyasu to achieve his revenge on Hideyoshi for the death of his wife and son. In the historical narrative, Hideyoshi dies of a sudden illness as he does here with Goemon lamenting that his revenge is frustrated by the fact that Hideyoshi is now old and frail though he achieves it through symbolically cutting off his bloodline but explaining to him that Hideyoshi will not become the heir to anything because Ieyasu will be taking the role he has so patiently waited for. Hideyoshi has in any case perhaps disqualified himself as the father of a nation by wilfully sacrificing his adopted son, Hidetsugu, who was ordered to commit suicide to avoid any challenge to Hideyori after becoming desperate and debauched in the knowledge that his days were likely numbered anyway.

In any case, Goemon perhaps declares himself free in asking why he should care who’s in charge after Hanzo once again tries to recruit him to work for a now triumphant Ieyasu whose long years of simply waiting for everyone else to die have paid off. This is what passes for a happy ending in that he has thrown off the corrupt authority of the feudal era and discovered a way to live outside of it as a “free” man though as others point out the system hasn’t changed. Poor peasants continue to be exploited by lords who are greedy but also themselves oppressed by an equally ruler playing petty games of personal power. Fittingly, ninja tricks mainly revolve around smoke bombs and the covert use of noxious fumes to weaken the opposition as they creep in to spread their poison. Never shedding the series’ nihilistic tone, the film ends on a moment of ambivalent positivity albeit one of exile as Goemon declines the invitation to the fold instead wandering off for a life of hidden freedom in the shadows of a still corrupt society. 

Ninja, A Band of Assassins (忍びの者, Satsuo Yamamoto, 1962)

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Ninja in Japanese cinema had largely been relegated to the realms of childish fantasy prior to Satsuo Yamamoto’s Ninja, A Band of Assassins (忍びの者, Shinobi no Mono) which cast a distinctly less heroic light on the famed mercenary spies of the feudal era. Indeed, there’s something reminiscent of the cult of militarism in the repressive nature of the ninja code and the hero Goemon’s (Raizo Ichikawa) original allegiance to it despite his father’s wariness and attempt to warn him that human happiness has no place in the life of a ninja. 

As the leader of Goemon’s clan, Sandayu (Yunosuke Ito), explains the ninja are obliged to serve whichever lords require their service, but he refuses to work with Oda Nobunaga (Tomisaburo Wakayama, billed as Kenzaburo Jo) owing to his famous animosity towards them. He even goes so far as to call Nobunaga a greater threat to the ninja than demons or devils. Opening in 1573, the film takes place at a tumultuous moment as Nobunaga continues to solidify his plan to unite the whole of the land under his banner by absorbing or defeating rival clans. The pre-credits sequence finds Goemon playing dead on a battlefield surrounded by ominous crows and encountering another ninja from a rival clan, Kizaru (Ko Nishimura), who has become a more literal kind of vulture in stealing from the dead.

Stealing is against the ninja code and something of which the young and idealistic Goemon fiercely disapproves. Nevertheless, in a cruel irony he’s forced to become a burglar in an effort to raise funds for more weapons to combat Nobunaga whom he has also been ordered to assassinate in return for his life after having been caught having an affair with Sandayu’s wife, Inone (Kyoko Kishida). Goemon is inspired by the legendary figure dubbed the Japanese Robin Hood for his mission stealing money from the rich to give to the poor, but here is far from heroic. When his affair with Inone is discovered by a servant, Goemon kills him to maintain the silence. He then believes that Inone has also been killed after falling into a well and attempts to flee the scene only to be confronted by Sandayu. 

Only too late does to he begin to understand what his father tried to warn him about, that the code of the ninja is cruel and unforgiving. It cannot grant him pride or happiness despite the self-satisfied glow he feels on having been singled out by Sandayu as a protege. A ninja must be ready to sever all ties to those he loves and endure intense torture without speaking. If caught in an impossible situation he must scar his face and take his own life as one of Goemon’s acquaintances eventually does after being captured by Nobunaga. Goemon assumes he has no reason to be afraid because he is the most skilled ninja in the garrison and a single ninja can take down a fortress all on his own, but in reality he is powerless, merely a puppet manipulated by Sandayu for his own ends. After falling in love with a sex worker, Maki (Shiho Fujimura), he grows tired of his missions, gives up on burglary, and makes no move to assassinate Nobunaga but is pursued by Sandayu’s minions, the irony being that not even a ninja can escape from the confined space of ninjadom.

This world is so steeped in secrecy that nothing is as it seems and Goemon discovers the rug pulled out from under him in more ways than one before beginning to realise that Sandayu has deliberately engineered his downfall and was most likely behind his father’s murder in an attempt to get his hands on his recipe for gunpowder which is, as Nobunaga says, the future of warfare. Nevertheless, even within its commitment to realism the film contains plenty of ninja tricks from sudden appearances to superhuman leaps and expert shuriken throwing and grappling hooks.  The sense of melancholy futility implied by the presence of the crows in the opening scenes never recedes, Yamamoto frequently descending into mists as Goemon sinks into his confusion and eventual disillusionment with the tenets of ninjadom. Rival ninja clans more obsessed with their reputation and status vie for the head of Nobunga while all Goemon wants is the right to live a quiet life with Maki though that’s something that largely cannot be found amid the constant chaos of the feudal era. 

Undercurrent (夜の河, Kozaburo Yoshimura, 1956)

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Is it possible to be both married and personally and artistically fulfilled? Marriage hangs over Kiwa (Fujiko Yamamoto) like a looming cage in Kozaburo Yoshimura’s sensuous melodrama Undercurrent (夜の河, Yoru no Kawa, AKA Night River). Scripted not by his regular writer Kaneto Shindo but frequent Mikio Naruse collaborator Sumie Tanaka adapting a novel by Hisao Sawano, the film finds its heroine caught between tradition and modernity while struggling to maintain her position as an independent woman and rightful heir to her father’s kimono dyeing business.

Everyone also keeps telling her that kimono itself is dying out, a relic of a bygone past now that everyone wears Western dress. Even Kiwa’s younger sister Miyoko (Michiko Ono) dresses exclusively in Western fashions and moves to Tokyo on her marriage. An ancient capital, Kyoto is the centre of historical elegance and the last bastion of these “outdated ideals”, yet several shops in their area have closed recently and people do things differently now. A wealthy woman comes to the shop with some fabric directly, cutting out the middlemen and haggling for a discount while cheerfully asking for her cab fare to be covered when Kiwa refuses the job. The young man they’ve taken in as an apprentice, Toshio, leaves to work in an electric factory complaining that “master” and “apprentice” are outdated concepts and that it’s against the Labour Law to force him to work overtime. Kiwa’s father Yujiro (Eijiro Tono), meanwhile, thinks this is just an expression of Toshio’s lack of commitment and that it’s only right that an apprentice should be applying himself to learning his craft every waking moment of the day. 

He was after all once an apprentice himself, but is both proud that his daughter has surpassed him in skill and guilty, fearful that Kiwa has sacrificed her own life and happiness to devote herself to kimono dyeing which is why she has never married. On one level, he’s happy if she’s happy and willing to leave marriage up to her, but also wary of the social censure of the neighbours including his kimono dyeing mentor who gives him a telling-off for his failure as a father to find a match for his daughter. When rumours arise that Kiwa has entered an affair with a married professor, the lady who helped Yujiro get started in business more or less tells him he should get her married to keep her in line. If hadn’t been for the war, she says, Kiwa would have been safely married off long ago and would probably have a gaggle of children to look after which would obviously prevent her from pursuing her art as a kimono dyer though the lady herself has obviously gone on working. 

Kiwa is drawn Takemura (Ken Uehara ) firstly because he’s wearing a tie that features one of her signature dyes which implies some kind of affinity between them. That the fact that he was touring a Nara temple alone with his daughter may have suggested he was a widower, though in truth Kiwa always knew he was married and that may have been a key part of what attracted her to him. She is after all, as Yujiro’s mentor said, a woman and experiences romantic desire even if the mentor is wrong to say that Kiwa sublimates her loneliness through art when in reality the reverse is true. After meeting Takemura even Yujiro remarks that she seems more like a woman, implying that her industry and forthrightness lend her a masculine quality as does her determination to get on in business. She first strikes up a business relationship with the sleazy Omiya (Eitaro Ozawa) whose wife is always watching him like a hawk though she manages to rebuff his attentions while establishing herself as business woman and in demand kimono designer. In pursuit of Takemura she is the one bringing him gifts and inviting him out for walks while Takemura remains somewhat conflicted and pulled along her wake.

Yet for all that, none of her family members really question the fact that she’s been carrying on with a married man and rather seem slightly relieved that she’s discovered an interest in romance or perhaps just anything outside of kimono dyeing. Even Takemura’s daughter suspects they’re romantically involved and doesn’t seem to mind. Yujiro remarks on Kiwa suddenly using the colour red which she never previously liked and it does seem to echo her reawakening passion. Takemura is also researching red fruit flies, which is less romantic, but also hints his barely suppressed longing. The film seems to align him with yellow flowers and Kiwa with pink. When they’re caught in a rainstorm and refuge in an inn owned by Kiwa’s childhood friend, the entire room in bathed in the glow of the Daimonji fire festival as their passions finally, and perhaps unwisely, overtake them as Takemura announces he’s thinking of moving far away perhaps to avoid this forbidden romance or otherwise for the health of his ailing wife who has been a Kyoto hospital for the last two years.

It’s finding out about Mrs Takemura’s likely terminal illness that seems to implode Kiwa’s romantic fantasy. After they’d made love for the first time, she had told Takemura that if she became pregnant she’d raise the child alone without intruding on his family life, which is to say she wasn’t really envisaging one with him. Her horror is on one level framed as guilt, that she now sees she’s committed an act of betrayal and resents Takemura when he tells her “it won’t be much longer” as if he were counting down the days until his wife passed away. Or worse, that he or others suspected that Kiwa willed her dead. But in reality the reverse is true. Mrs Takemura’s death is an existential threat to Kiwa’s independence. She doesn’t want to get married, even if loves Takemura, because if she did she wouldn’t be able to maintain her independence or career as a kimono dyer. She really does mean it when she says that likes it best when it’s just she and her father in their “cramped” old-fashioned dyeing shop without even an apprentice. 

A tortured art student who seems to pine for her tells her as much, disappointed in her for her relationship with Takemura not out of moral censure but because he fears she’s betraying her art. Okamoto is much younger than her and she’s not interested in him romantically even if he’s painting slightly lewd interpretations of his mental image of her. At one point he appears with a bandage around his neck that implies he may have tried to take his own life and eventually announces he’s leaving Kyoto because he can’t secure his identity there. Ironically he’s happy that Kiwa and Takemura are now free to love each other when the opposite is now true. Now that he’s no longer a married man, Kiwa can no longer love him and is denied the possibility of having both romantic and artistic fulfilment. She is perhaps free in another way, backed by a deep red cloth hanging up to dry as she watches the May Day parade pass by with all of its waving red flags having embarked on a life that is defiantly of her choosing and fulfilled by the passion of art.

Trailer (no subtitles)

The Wife of Seishu Hanaoka (華岡青洲の妻, Yasuzo Masumura, 1967)

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The close relationship between two women is disrupted by the reintroduction of a man in Yasuzo Masumura’s fictionalised account of the rivalry between the wife and mother of pioneering Japanese doctor Seishu Hanaoka. Scripted by Kaneto Shindo and adapted from the novel by Sawako Ariyoshi, the refocusing of the narrative is apparent in its title, not the life of but The Wife of Seishu Hanaoka (華岡青洲の妻, Hanaoka Seishu no Tsuma) less a tale of scientific endeavour than of domestic rivalry born of the inherently patriarchal social codes of the feudal society which cannot but help pit one woman against another while forcing each of them to play a role they may not wish to fulfil in order to secure their status and therefore their survival. 

Samurai’s daughter Kae (Ayako Wakao) first catches sight of the beautiful Otsugi (Hideko Takamine) at only eight years old and is instantly captivated by her, a fascination which persists well into adulthood when she is approached to marry into the Hanaoka household as wife to oldest son Seishu (Raizo Ichikawa) away studying to become a doctor like his father. Kae’s father originally objects to the match because of the class difference between the two families, Seishu’s father Naomichi (Yunosuke Ito) being only a humble country doctor of peasant stock whereas they had envisaged a grander station for their only daughter. Yet Kae is already old not to be married and continues to decline prospective suitors and so her mother and nanny (Chieko Naniwa) are minded to put it directly to her discovering that she is in fact more than willing to become a Hanaoka though mostly it seems in order to get close to Otsugi whom she has continued to idolise. 

The strange thing is that the wedding is conducted in Seishu’s absence, a medical text standing in for him while Kae in effect marries her mother-in-law Otsugi. These early days are spent in blissful tranquility as Kae does her best to be the ideal daughter-in-law, Otsugi even remarking that she’s come to love her more than a daughter. The two women share a room, Kae often staring longingly at the back of Otsugi’s head, their relationship one of mutual respect and affection that allows them to forget their respective stations but when three years later Seishu finally returns, it forces them apart in reverting to the roles of wife and mother their statuses conferred only by proximity to a man. 

Pregnant with her first child and about to become a mother herself, Kae’s resentment towards Otsugi begins to boil over. In an ironic premonition of the way the relationship between Masumura and his muse would eventually break down, she claims to have seen through Otsugi’s beauty and concluded that she is cold and calculating believing that she only brought her into the household as an unpaid servant forcing her to work a loom to raise money for Seishu’s medical training. Alternately jealous and condescending, Otsugi’s resentment is mediated through attempts to undermine her daughter-in-law’s authority finally leading to an ironic and absurdist battle between the two as they attempt to outdo each other volunteering to become test subjects for Seishu’s ongoing experiments to discover a safe anaesthetic in order save patients who require surgery but cannot endure the trauma. 

The marriage itself perhaps represents a moment of change in the feudal society, it becoming clear that the samurai are on their way down while skill and knowledge will define success in this new age of enlightenment. While Seishu works on his anaesthetic, the superstitious local community begins to view the Hanaokas with suspicion, believing that the misfortune that befalls them is the result of a curse owing to the large number of cats and dogs which have become casualties of Seishu’s failed experiments while a pedlar brings news of a mysterious disease attributed to the rain which is in fact due to mass malnutrition following a famine caused by the bad weather. When news of Seishu’s prowess as a doctor spreads they are soon overwhelmed with patients, many of whom cannot pay but are seemingly treated anyway. 

Seishu’s eventual victory is one of science over superstition, but it also requires faith which is the battleground contested between wife and mother. Having found a successful solution in cats, Seishu needs human test subjects with both instantly volunteering only to become locked into an absurd, internecine contest to prove who is the most self-sacrificing. The competition goes so far that it effectively becomes a game of dare with each determined to be the one to die for Seishu’s discovery but later realising that the stakes are even higher than first assumed because the winner will be dead but the loser saddled with guilt and possible ostracisation as someone who allowed their mother/daughter-in-law to die to in their place. 

Even so, the pair of them are described as “wonderful examples of womanhood” in their willingness to risk their lives for their “master’s success”. Kae is reminded that a woman’s job is to give birth to a healthy baby, later weaponising her ability to do so as currency in realising that Otsugi has all the control but the one thing she can’t do is bear Seishu’s child. Ironically enough, the cases Seishu is trying to treat are of aggressive breast cancer, the oft repeated maxim being that a woman’s breasts are her life and to remove them is as good as killing her contributing to the sense that maternity is the only thing that gives a woman’s life meaning. It’s not without irony that the first successful surgery under anaesthesia directly juxtaposes a massive tumour removed from a woman’s breast with a baby being removed from a pregnant Kae who, at this point having lost her sight as a consequence of Seishu’s experiments, must bear the pain with no relief. 

Brought together by tragedy, Kae comes to a better understanding of her relationship with her mother-in-law only after she dies learning to see her once again as the kind and beautiful woman she met at eight years old while her unmarried sister-in-law having witnessed their painful war of attrition prays that she won’t be reborn as a woman glad that she was never forced to become a bride nor a mother-in-law. “The struggles of the women in this house were in the end just to bring up one man” she laments, suggesting that Seishu most likely noticed the conflict between the two and used it to his advantage in getting them to participate in his experiments as they desperately tried to prove themselves the better through dying for his love. 

Going one step further, it seems that being a woman is an exercise in futility the only source of success lying paradoxically in birth or death alone, the natural affection between Otsugi and Kae neutered by the presence of Seishu who inserts himself as the pole around which they must dance for their survival. Kae becomes a local legend, a woman who sacrificed her sight in service of her husband but now rejects this mischaracterisation of her life along with the implication that it’s somehow a wife’s duty to deplete herself for her husband’s gain retreating entirely from the society of others while Seishu’s practice continues to prosper. Even so Masumura ends on a note of irony in the literal transformation of Kae into the figure of Otsugi recreating the opening scene as she walks among the bright flowers she can no longer see.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Enjo (炎上, Kon Ichikawa, 1958)

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a0212807_23483150Kon Ichikawa turns his unflinching eyes to the hypocrisy of the post-war world and its tormented youth in adapting one of Yukio Mishima’s most acclaimed works, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Inspired by the real life burning of the Kinkaku-ji temple in 1950 by a “disturbed” monk, Enjo (炎上, AKA Conflagration / Flame of Torment) examines the spiritual and moral disintegration of a young man obsessed with beauty but shunned by society because of a disability.

The film begins near its ending as a young boy with a monk’s haircut sits in a police interrogation room. He was found passed out in the woods behind a burning temple with two knife wounds on his chest plus the knife and a packet of matches lying next to him. The police would quite like to know why he, obviously, set fire to one of Japan’s most popular historical monuments, but the boy refuses to speak.

At this point we enter a series of extended flashbacks as the boy, Goichi (Raizo Ichikawa), enters the Soen Temple after his father’s death as an apprentice to the head monk there, Tayama, who was a friend of his father’s. The assistant chief monk is unhappy about this as he’s long wanted his own son to be accepted as a novice with an eye to one day inheriting the temple as the current head monk is not married and has no son of his own. When the other monks find out that the reason Goichi rarely speaks is his stammer, they begin to doubt his suitability to become a representative of their organisation.

Having grown up in a temple, Goichi idolised his father and wants nothing other than to become a monk himself. His father also loved the golden temple, “Shukaku-ji” more than anything else in the world and so it has come to symbolise a shining pillar of purity for the young Goichi who will stop at nothing to protect it. Simply being allowed to be near it is enough for him. That the temple survived the wartime air raids and subsequent chaos is nothing short of a miracle, if not proof of the gods’ love for it.

Yet, Goichi burns it down. He destroys this thing that he loved above all else, so why did he do it? The temple is too good for the world, too pure to be permitted to exist. Simply put, we don’t deserve it. One of Goichi’s earliest attempts to protect the sacred environs of the monument sees him physically push a woman away from its doors. The woman, dressed in a very modern style, had been having an argument with a GI and though it originally looks as if Goichi may come to her rescue it’s the temple he runs for. After the woman lands flat on her back, the GI thanks him for saving them “a lot of trouble with the baby”.

After having committed an unintended sin in defending his beloved temple from being defiled by an impure woman, Goichi has the urge to confess but never quite brings himself to do it. This begins to create a rift between himself and his mentor the head priest. Though the priest had been his champion, Goichi always doubted that he really saw him as a possible successor because of his stammer and only now realises that the priest has lost faith in him because of his cowardliness in not informing him of the incident with woman outside Shukaku-ji. After this slight the priest goes on supporting Goichi but not with the same warmth as before and Goichi eventually comes to resent him.

The priest has feet of clay – though it’s not unusual for priests to marry and have families, Tayama has nominally dedicated himself to the temple only, leaving himself with a problem as to its succession. However, Goichi discovers that the priest has a mistress in one of the most popular geisha houses in Kyoto. The monks are some of the wealthiest people around thanks to pimping out Shukaku-ji as a major tourist attraction and Tayama has already forgotten himself, becoming lost in the “worldliness” necessary to manage a religious establishment which is actually a lucrative business enterprise. The temple is itself defiled, prostituted, by the very people who are supposed to be protecting it and the proceeds fed back into funding an “immoral” lifestyle for its “CEO”.

This hypocrisy adds to the injustice dealt Goichi by the uncharitable nature of the monks who also, like just about everyone else, shun him because of his stammer. Though he never stammers reading the sutras and can even speak English plainly, his lifelong stutter has left him reluctant to speak and he finds only one friend at the temple. Later he meets another bad tempered man with a lame leg and the two develop an odd bond based on their shared “deformities”. Kashiwagi (Tatsuya Nakadai) is at odds with the world and encourages Goichi further onto the course of mistaken anger born of insecurity. He urges Goichi to test Tayama’s true virtue by constantly provoking him which only leads to a further fall in Goichi’s fortunes. However, Kashiwagi is also shown up for a hypocrite who exploits other people’s reactions to his disability for his own advantage.

All of Goichi’s idols fall. His parents – his mother an adulteress and his father a sickly heartbroken monk, his mentor a lecherous hypocrite and his friend a self hating coward. The world he saw in Shukaku-ji can never exist, humans are fallible and always will be including Goichi himself who is tormented by dark thoughts. An idealistic absolutist, the existence of Shukaku-ji in this imperfect world becomes to much for him to bear.

Ichikawa tells his story in a fractured, dreamlike way full of gentle dissolves as one period segues into another without warning. Goichi’s memories become more disparate and keenly focussed at the same time as his spiritual health deteriorates. Ichikawa tries to capture some of Goichi’s inner claustrophobia through the oppressive architecture of the temple environment but can’t get close to the pervading sense of dread in Mishima’s novel. Enjo is the dissection of one man’s self immolation in the fire of his own spiritual disintegration but is also a condemnation of the corrupting modern world which enables such pollution to take place and its tale of the doomed innocence of the idealist is one which is retold throughout history.

I can’t seem to find any video clips of this film, but as a side note 炎上 is current Japanese netslang for a flamewar so I did find a bunch of other “interesting” stuff.

Here’s a short video featuring clips from several of Ichikawa’s films including Enjo which you’ll be able to spot what with the temple on fire and everything…