"Japanese Screen Classics: In Honor of Madame Kawakita": Review Round-up

"Japanese Screen Classics: In Honor of Madame Kawakita," a series of 24 classic works of Japanese cinema, screens at the Walter Reade Theater through August 14. The "Madame Kawakita" in question is the late Kashiko Kawakita, the film programmer, distributor, and all-around champion and promoter of Japanese cinema. The series is organized around the eight directors who have won the Kawakita Award, honoring lifetime achievement in Japanese film, including such towering figures as Akira Kurosawa, Nagisa Oshima, Seijun Suzuki, and Shohei Imamura, as well as relatively lesser-known directors as Kaneto Shindo and the documentarian Sumiko Haneda. Yoji Yamada and Kon Ichikawa are also featured in the series; each director is represented by three films apiece. Below are brief reviews of notable films in the series.

Her Brother (Kon Ichikawa, 1960)


Shot expressively in widescreen and muted but incredibly textured color, Ichikawa’s film about the complex and tortured relationship between two siblings, Gen (Keiko Kishi) and Hekiro (Hiroshi Kawaguchi), is one of his greatest films. Anchored by the beautifully nuanced and volcanic performances by Keiko Kishi as the older sister Gen and Kinuyo Tanaka as the ailing, hyper-religious stepmother, Ichikawa makes full use of his wide frame to depict the warring family members in monumental close-ups, alternating with scenes of kinetic and chaotic movement (e.g. Gen being doggedly stalked by a police officer), and wonderfully comic sight gags (e.g. the gaggle of geese that interrupt the policeman’s attempts to seduce Gen). In the film’s latter scenes, as the brother slowly dies of tuberculosis, the camera framings are less claustrophobic, and convey the unbridgeable separation of the family members from each other. Hekiro’s death elicits a numbed response from Gen, finally separated from her true soulmate. The great cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa, that great color artist of postwar Japanese cinema (e.g. Ozu’s Floating Weeds), contributes a burnished look that is perfectly commensurate to the film’s period setting. The nuances of the sibling’s relationship are quite fascinating. Gen’s self-sacrificial actions toward her brother, bailing him out and covering for him, are very much self-serving, since by caring for her brother, she can avoid fully growing up. Hekiro’s pathetic attempts at petty thuggery only very thinly disguise the scared and vulnerable person underneath, which comes fully to the fore as he goes through the stages of dying from TB. In the film’s cruelest irony, the family only exhibits a sense of humanity toward one another when they are gathered around Hekiro’s deathbed. (Aug. 4)



A Last Note (Kaneto Shindo, 1995)


Shindo’s last feature starring his wife, the great Nobuko Otawa, this is a genial, charming film – surprisingly so for a film dealing with aging, suicide, and dementia. The title refers to the suicide of a carpenter who left a terse note – “It’s over” – before hanging himself. He places a large stone next to the note, to be used to pound nails into the coffin that he had made himself before committing suicide. The film features a trio of wonderful veteran actresses, including Haruko Sugimura, who plays Yoko Morimoto, an actress staying at her usual summer retreat. There are several surreally comic set pieces, including a foiled robbery attempt, and the subsequent commendation by the police. The film moves smoothly, maybe a little too smoothly, but is a pleasant enough experience. The story focuses on elderly characters that are very rarely seen on screen. Eighty-three years old at the time he made the film, A Last Note has a freewheeling, digressive air, mixing odd characters and incident, including an erotically charged wedding ritual right out of an Imamura film, frequent allusions to Chekhov, and a celebration of the resilience of older people. Touchingly, the film also serves as a tribute to Otowa, Shindo’s frequent star, who was suffering from terminal cancer during the shoot, and died just days after its completion.

Tora-san’s Sunrise and Sunset (Yoji Yamada, 1976)



Opening with a hilarious parody of Jaws, this installment, the seventeenth, of the beloved series of films about Tora-san, the genial everyman, continually underestimated by his family members and his friends, who turns out to be the wisest and most perceptive of all the other characters, is an enjoyable and touching film, that made me want to go out and see the rest of the series. At the outset, Tora-san takes serious umbrage upon hearing that his nephew was teased at school because Tora-san is his uncle, whereupon he goes out to get drunk. He comes upon a seemingly destitute old man (Jukichi Uno), who attempts to leave the bar without paying for his drinks, angering the proprietress. Tora-san gallantly pays for drinks, and they go out on the town barhopping. They both come home stinking drunk, in the old man’s case quite literally. The man angers Tora-san’s family, ordering everyone around. Eventually Tora-san sits him down, explaining “This isn’t an inn,” which surprises the old man, who thought that was exactly what it was. To make amends, he draws a doodle on a piece of paper, telling Tora-san to sell it at a bookstore. Tora-san is dubious, but does so, and learns that this alleged vagrant is actually the world-famous artist Ikenouchi. Tora-san returns home, displaying the large sum he received from selling the drawing, and his family is ashamed over how quickly they leapt to conclusions about the man based on appearances. Tora-san crosses paths with Ikenouchi again, and they spend time together, where Tora-san gets a taste of a life of riches and luxury. He meets and falls in love with Botan (Kiwako Taichi), a giggling geisha who has a semi-tragic back story, having been swindled out of 2 million yen by an arrogant businessman who refuses to return it. Kiyoshi Atsumi played Tora-san for nearly three decades, until his death in the mid-1990s. The films definitely followed a formula, and these films weren’t especially innovative stylistically, but Yoji Yamada, who directed most of the episodes, found remarkable variations on this scenario, as the series reflected changes in Japanese society over the years, as well as preserving a somewhat idealized and nostalgic sense of the past. Tora-san, the genial and kindhearted, if uneducated and impulsive, itinerant salesman always had a home among his family – his sister Sakura (Cheiko Baisho) and his family’s humble sweets shop. The filmmaking is solid and functional, with little flash, but this works very well in the service of the scenario, and is a very entertaining entry in this popular and long-lasting film series. Keep an eye out for a cameo by Chishu Ryu, the great actor most famous from his numerous roles in Ozu’s films, as a rather eccentric priest. (Aug. 2)

Review: Buichi Saito's "Plains Wanderer"

Plains Wanderer (Daisogen no wataridori). 1960. Directed by Buichi Saito. Written by Gan Yamazaki. Cinematography by Kurataro Takamura. Music by Taichiro Kosugi.

Cast: Akira Kobayashi (Taki), Jo Shishido (Masa), Ruriko Asaoka (Junko), Mari Shiraki (Setna), Yoko Minamida (Kazue), Yuzo Kiura (Kiyosato), Nobuo Kaneko (Kodo), Toshio Egi (Nobuo).

Japan Society’s film series “No Borders, No Limits: 1960s Nikkatsu Action Cinema” continues with Buichi Saito’s 1960 feature Plains Wanderer, screening on March 14 at 7:30. The fifth installment of a popular nine-part series, Plains Wanderer is a sterling example of the “Eastern Western” genre, a popular staple of Nikkatsu action films. These films used the iconography of the American Western, but added unique characteristics of Japanese culture and history, and in the case of Plains Wanderer, crossed it with the gangster film genre. Akira Kobayashi, one of Nikkatsu’s biggest stars, played the wanderer in this series, a lone hero who wanders into various towns, a figure akin to those played by Randolph Scott in Budd Boetticher’s westerns, although Kobayashi was far less taciturn and stoic than Scott.

Taki (Kobayashi), a wandering, singing cowboy, comes upon a village in Hokkaido populated by the Ainu, aboriginal people of Japan. He brings in tow Nobuo (Toshio Egi), a boy abandoned by his mother, whom Taki is searching for. Taki becomes drawn into the conflict the villagers are having with Kodo (Nobuo Kaneko), a rapacious bar owner and developer, who wants to take over their land for tourist construction. Also in the mix is Junko (Ruriko Asaoka), the owner of an arts and crafts shop selling Ainu craftworks, and who is conducting an anthropological study of the Ainu. Her interest is not merely an intellectual one; she loves and wants to protect these people. Her father-in-law Kiyosato (Yuzo Kiura) has mortgaged the Ainu land to Kodo, and he struggles to pay back the loan, but it is soon becomes clear that Kodo is less interested in being repaid than in making profit off the Ainu village land. Junko is engaged to Shigeru, Kiyosato’s dimwitted son. Her doubts about the impending marriage are only exacerbated by the arrival of the dashing Taki. Also complicating matters is Junko’s friend Setna (Mari Shiraki), an Ainu village girl who is in love with Shigeru.

Taki’s main foil is Masa (Jo Shishido), Todo’s wisecracking henchman, who crosses paths with Taki frequently, challenging him to fights. Masa is the sort of wry heavy who would be played in an American Western by Lee Marvin. The Wanderer series, much like other popular Japanese film series such as the Zatoichi series, followed the same template in each film: Kobayashi as the lone figure drifting into town who has a romantic relationship with a local woman played by Asaoka (Kobayashi and Asaoka were in fact a real-life romantic couple for a time), with Shishido as Kobayashi’s antagonist. Kobayashi would also frequently break out into song, making him a pop-music sensation as well as a movie star. In Plains Wanderer, Kurataro Takamura’s widescreen cinematography, featuring Hokkaido’s picturesque landscapes, lends an appropriately iconic Western flavor to the proceedings. What emerges as the film’s main theme is a clash of civilizations: the Ainu, an uncorrupted, pre-modern culture, is threatened by the decadent, Westernized modern world, populated by violent, greedy gangsters. The eclectic mixture of tradition, mythology, and modernism is a recurring feature of the film. Taki in his black leather cowboy outfit and Setna in her Ainu dress both stand out starkly in the modern hostess bar in the city. The American Western influences also contrast with the Ainu rituals depicted in the film, represented by the wizened fortuneteller woman and the bear dance festival, while the film’s conclusion directly evokes the similar ending of George Stevens’ Shane.

English trailer:

Japanese trailer:

Review: "Dawn of Japanese Animation" at Japan Society

(Yoshitaro Kataoka's "Danemon's Monster Hunt at Shojoji." Credit: Matsuda Film Production, Digital Meme.)

The film series “Dawn of Japanese Animation,” screening at Japan Society from February 13-16, is a lively, impressive collection of films that is a fascinating glimpse of Japanese pop culture from the 1920’s through the 1940’s, as well as a needed corrective for those who think of Japanese animation as only the stereotypical fare of science-fiction and fantasy stories populated by characters with saucer eyes, the most well-known names being Akira, Miyazaki, and (worse), Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z and those of its ilk. This series reveals that Japanese animation has a long and storied history, stretching back to the earliest days of the cinema. Each day of this four-day series is devoted to a different genre: “Chambara Action and Adventure,” “Horror and Comedy,” “Propaganda,” and “Music and Dance.” As an added bonus, each program of animated short films will be followed by a live-action film of the same genre. Many of these films are silent, and will be accompanied by live-action narration by Midori Sawato, a modern-day practitioner of the art of benshi narration. Benshi were live narrators who accompanied silent films in Japan’s early cinemas.

(Yasuji Murata's "The Bat." Credit: Matsuda Film Production, Digital Meme.)

Long before such figures as Hayao Miyazaki, Katsuhiro Otomo, Satoshi Kon, and Mamoru Oshii made their names in the field of film animation, Japanese filmmakers of the 1920’s and 1930’s developed styles drawing from both Japanese folktales and legends, as well as Western influences such as Walt Disney and Max Fleischer, experimenting freely with drawing methods and approaches to subject matter and genre. One early pioneer was Yasuji Murata (1896-1966), who began his career creating intertitles for animated and educational films before creating his own, and who has several films featured in the series. Murata is a major discovery of this series, revealed as an innovator with a beautiful sense of composition. Animals were major characters in his animations, which were less overtly anthropomorphized than in Disney’s films. In “The Bat” (1930), the smooth-talking title character maneuvers his way through a war between birds and beasts. In “Over a Drink” (1936), a drunk fantasizes an underwater adventure. “Our Baseball Match” (1931) is a play-by-play of a game between tanuki (raccoon dogs, familiar creatures of Japanese legend) and rabbits. In “Sanko and the Octopus” (1933), a fish merchant pursues buried treasure. In a way that was true of much of the animation of this period, Murata’s films emphasize the decorative uses of the animated image, their flat visual fields privileging composition over perspective, and emphasizing smooth, lateral movement rather than the exaggerated motion of American animation. Murata’s cut-out animations were remarkable in the nearly endless variations he discovered in black-and-white lines and shadings. In Murata’s and other animators’ works, there is the heady feeling of an art form being invented and experimented with before our eyes. It is interesting to compare these more freewheeling works with others featured in the “Propaganda” program. In such works as “Momotaro’s Sky Adventure” (1931) and “Momotaro’s Underwater Adventure” (1932), in which the title character of Japanese folklore is pressed into the service of promoting the virtues of Japan’s military, and “Corporal Norakuro” (1934), the playfulness is still evident, but there is a palpable tension between this fun, anarchic spirit and the scenarios involving the cute animals of earlier films now fighting each other to the death.

(Noburo Ofuji's "The Black Cat." Credit: Matsuda Film Production, Digital Meme.)

Another great animator was Noburo Ofuji (1900-1961), whose music-based films were more overtly experimental and built around pure decorative patterns. Such works as “The National Anthem Kimigayo” (1931), “The Black Cat” (1929), “Harvest Festival” (1930), “Spring Song” (1931), and “The Bear Dodger” (1948) were both visually and aurally musical, their animation styles often built around printed song lyrics, and movement of objects, silhouettes, and masks.

(Torajiro Saito's "Kid Commotion." Credit: Matsuda Film Production, Digital Meme.)

The live-action films chosen to accompany the animations also fit the wildly comic nature of many of these films, making use of cartoon-like humor and sight gags. Takeshi Yashiro’s “Fighting in Asura Town” (1936) combines the genres of adventure and romantic comedy, as two journalists save an engineer and his feisty daughter from a gang’s clutches. Torajiro Saito’s “Kid Commotion” (1934) uses class-based satire to tell the tale of its Chaplinesque protagonist’s struggle to find ever more unusual ways to make money for his large family, and to find a midwife for his wife, about to give birth to their seventh child.

(Buntaro Futugawa's "Orochi." Credit: Matsuda Film Production, Digital Meme.)

Another highlight of the series is a rare screening on February 16 at 7:30 of Buntaro Futagawa’s Orochi (1925), an early chambara (sword-play) samurai film featuring Tsumasaburo Bando, one of the most famous actors of early Japanese cinema, who starred in many jidaigeki (period dramas) of this period. This screening will be accompanied by live English benshi narration by actor Leon Ingulsrud.

Additional reading:

Reviews by Grady Hendrix in the New York Sun and David Wilentz in the Brooklyn Rail.

Jasper Sharp's article "Pioneers of Japanese Animation" on the Japanese film site Midnight Eye provides a valuable overview of early Japanese animation. (Part 1 and Part 2)

Japanese Cinema Classics: Mikio Naruse's "Repast"

Repast (Meshi). 1951. Directed and edited by Mikio Naruse. Written by Toshiro Ide and Sumie Tanaka, based on the novel by Fumiko Hayashi. Scenario supervised by Yasunari Kawabata. Produced by Sanezumi Fujimoto. Cinematography by Masao Tamai. Music by Fumio Hayasaka. Art direction by Satoshi Chuko. Sound by Masao Fujiyoshi.

Cast: Ken Uehara (Hatsunosuke Okamoto), Setsuko Hara (Michiyo Okamoto), Yukiko Shimazaki (Satoko Okamoto), Yoko Sugi (Mitsuko Murata), Akiko Kazami (Seiko Tomiyasu), Haruko Sugimura (Matsu Murata), Ranko Hanai (Koyoshi Dohya), Kan Nihonyanagi (Kazuo Takenaka), Keiju Kobayashi (Shinzo Murata).

Repast, Mikio Naruse’s first adaptation of the work of celebrated Japanese novelist Fumiko Hayashi, is one of his very finest films, a deceptively simple examination of a troubled marriage, told with the penetrating insight and elegant images that made Naruse such an extraordinary artist. It features one of the greatest performances by the luminous Setsuko Hara, who was a master of gesture and glances which reveal her character without any dialogue needing to be spoken. Her line readings and inflections, sighs, and exclamations all draw us in and make us sympathize with this often opaque, mysterious and forbidding character. At the outset, Michiyo (Hara) is growing bored and frustrated with what she sees as her endlessly monotonous existence, cooking, cleaning, and looking after her husband, Hatsunosuke (Ken Uehara). She seems to reserve most of her affection for her cat, Yuri. However, the couple seems to have reached a state of equilibrium in this situation, in which they have managed to submerge their mutual unhappiness beneath banal pleasantries.

This delicate balance is upset by the arrival of Hatsunosuke’s niece Satoko (Yukiko Shimazaki), a flighty young woman who comes to their house for a refuge from her father and her impending marriage. To Michiyo’s dismay and growing anger, Hatsunosuke begins to lavish attention on his pretty and flirtatious niece, going with her on a bus tour of Osaka (which includes one of the film’s loveliest moments, when the cheerful tour guide suddenly breaks out into song), and seeking his own refuge from his unexciting home and office life. These and other events drive Michiyo to the breaking point, until she finally leaves home and stays at her parents’ house in Tokyo and even considers staying there to find a job.

Like most of Naruse’s films, most of the characters are unhappy, and this is their default mode. But as the final sublime moments prove, it is possible to find small moments of grace and greater meaning within this existence. As such, for me personally, this is a great film with which to end the year. Although as meticulous and precise in its own way as that other great master of Japanese cinema, Ozu, Naruse’s style is nearly invisible and quite naked, all the more for us to feel intensely for these characters and their struggles, even though it may on the surface seem quite artless and mundane. And as presented in a beautiful transfer from Masters of Cinema, which includes a nicely written booklet with articles by Audie Bock, Catherine Russell, and Phillip Lopate, and insightful audio commentary by Lopate and Kent Jones, Repast never ceases to amaze with its nearly effortless sublimity, representing the art of cinema at its finest.

Repast is included in a box set which includes two of Naruse’s other 50's films, Sound of the Mountain (1954) and Flowing (1956). Taken together, they are an excellent introduction to one of cinema’s greatest artists.

Masters of Cinema's Naruse box set can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk.

Review: Toshio Masuda's "Like a Shooting Star"

Like a Shooting Star (Kurenai no nagareboshi). 1967. Directed by Toshio Masuda. Written by Kaneo Ikegami and Toshio Masuda. Cinematography by Kurataro Takamura. Music by Hajime Kaburagi. Art direction by Takeo Kimura.

Cast: Tetsuya Watari, Ruriko Asaoka, Kayo Matsuo, Tatsuya Fuji, Ryotaro Sugi, Jo Shishido.

Japan Society’s film series “No Borders, No Limits: 1960’s Nikkatsu Action Cinema” continues with a rare screening of Toshio Masuda’s 1967 film Like a Shooting Star, tonight at 7:30. The title of this film aptly describes its main character, Goro (Tetsuya Watari), a cooler-than-thou gangster, who burns brightly and is gone just as fast. “If I don’t kill you, someone else will,” Goro is told at one point. At the film’s outset, he is sent to maim a rival gang boss and ends up killing the man. He is hidden away by his yakuza family in the port city of Kobe, and told he will be sent for in six months, which stretches to a year. He is bored with the slow pace of Kobe, and listlessly hangs around, occasionally beating up unruly drunken U.S. soldiers on leave from Vietnam at the bar he runs. Goro passively endures a casual romance with his girlfriend Yukari, who constantly begs him to tell her he loves her. He mouths the words, but with little feeling.

Soon enough, however, he gets the excitement he craves. Unbeknownst to Goro, someone is shadowing him. Also, a jewelry trader, Kojima, arrives in town, and soon after disappears. Meanwhile, Usu, a Tokyo detective who has been on Goro’s tail for a long time, waiting for him to slip up so he can throw handcuffs on him, pops up every now and again to taunt him. After Kojima’s disappearance, his fiancé Keiko (Ruriko Asaoka) shows up, and Goro is instantly smitten. He takes her around, knowing full well Kojima has been killed, but pretending to ask around to learn his whereabouts. He bluntly voices to Keiko his desire to sleep with her, and Keiko resists. Nevertheless, they are drawn to each other, and Goro begins to reveal a deeper side that he has heretofore resolutely kept hidden, beneath the veneer of the whistling, icy, detached yakuza. However, he fails to see that his destined end is about to reach him.

Like a Shooting Star is very much a rewrite of Godard’s Breathless, even down to the betrayal at the film’s conclusion. It was a remake of director Toshio Masuda’s 1958 film Red Quay, which itself was inspired by another classic French gangster film, Pépé le Moko. In this film, Keiko extols the virtues of Paris to Goro, who strenuously refutes her romantic notions. Masuda relies less on action scenes than the snappy repartee of its leads, as both the haughty rich girl and the self-consciously cool gangster trade barbs that at first disguise the passion they begin to feel for each other. The film boasts highly stylized cinematography by Kuratoro Takamura, and the production design is just as striking, courtesy of Takeo Kimura, who also designed the distinctive sets of Seijun Suzuki’s films. Lead actor Watari also starred in one of Suzuki’s most famous films, Tokyo Drifter (1966). Like a Shooting Star also features a notable appearance by Jo Shishido, one of Nikkatsu’s biggest stars, as the hitman pursuing Goro.

Sex, Crime, and All That Jazz

The Warped Ones (Kyonetsu no kisetsu). 1960. Directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara. Written by Nobuo Yamada. Cinematography by Yoshio Mamiya. Edited by Akira Suzuki. Music by Toshiro Mayuzumi. Released by Nikkatsu.

Cast: Tamio Kawaji (Akira), Eiji Go (Masaru), Noriko Matsumoto (Fumiko), Yuko Chishiro (Yuki), Hiroyuki Nagato (Kashiwagi), Chico Roland (Gill), Chigusa Takayama (Yuki's mother).

Japan’s Nikkatsu Studios is best known for their wild, kinetic action films, especially those of Seijun Suzuki (Tokyo Drifter, Branded to Kill). However, there were a number of other directors at this studio whose works rival Suzuki’s. These films are featured in Japan Society’s monthly film series, “No Borders, No Limits: 1960s Nikkatsu Action Cinema,” screening through May 2008. The series, consisting of films screening in the U.S. for the first time, is curated by Mark Schilling, film critic for Variety and Japan Times, and based on Schilling’s recent book of the same title. The series began in September with Takashi Nomura’s A Colt is My Passport (1967), starring popular action star Jo Shishido, and continues with Koreyoshi Kurahara’s The Warped Ones (1960), screening November 9 at 7:30.

The Warped Ones definitely lives up to its title (literally "Season of Heat" in Japanese), as it is a jazz-filled portrait of nihilistic youth, playing at petty crime and prostitution with reckless abandon. The camerawork is as restless as these young people who storm through the streets, leaving destruction in their wake. Akira (Tamio Kawachi) is a jazz-obsessed delinquent whose grand ambition in life is to do absolutely nothing. He hangs out with his friends Masaru (Eiji Go) and Yuki (Yuko Chishiro), the hooker Masaru shacks up with. Contrasted with them are artist Fumiko (Noriko Matsumoto) and her reporter fiancé Kashiwagi (Hiroyuki Nagato), who get caught up in the mayhem after Kashiwagi informs on Akira to the police, landing him in juvenile reformatory for a short time. Akira spots Kashiwagi and Fumiko on the street, and immediately sets out to get his revenge, enlisting his friends’ help. They kidnap Fumiko, and take her to the beach, where Akira rapes Fumiko. But the story doesn’t end there. Fumiko returns to find Akira, informing him she is pregnant with his child, demanding that he do something to repair her “defilement.” Akira’s revenge is turned on its head, as he becomes entangled in Fumiko and Kashiwagi’s own twisted relationship.

Even though Seijun Suzuki is considered the director who most bent the conventions of the Nikkatsu house style, on the evidence of The Warped Ones a case could be made for Kurahara as well. The protagonists are analogous to the amoral hero and heroine of Godard’s Breathless, to which this film shares some superficial affinities. However, the amorality shown here goes much further than in the Godard film. In contrast to Jean-Paul Belmondo’s character, still very much a glamorous hero and all cool detachment, in this film the young people depicted are modern savages, living only for animalistic needs and desire, and all glamour is stripped away.

The Warped Ones is a very unusual film, on the surface hewing to genre films of this kind. However, the film focuses more on the corruption of everyone we see, viewing it all with a cold, dispassionate eye. At the film’s conclusion, both the respectable and the irresponsible end up in the same place, at an abortion clinic, to prevent new lives from entering this spiritually dead society.

Review: Shohei Imamura's "Nishi Ginza Station"

Nishi Ginza Station (Nishi Ginza Eki-mae). 1958. Written and directed by Shohei Imamura. Cinematography by Hisanobu Fujioka. Music by Toshiro Mayuzumi. Released by Nikkatsu Corporation.

Cast: Frank Nagai, Shinichi Yanagisawa, Ko Nishimura, Masahiko Shimazu, Hisano Yamaoka, Shoichi Ozawa, Kyoko Hori.

Nishi Ginza Station (1958) was Imamura's second film, a studio assignment made as a vehicle for popular singer Frank Nagai. Imamura was able to use this as a vehicle for himself as well, indulging in a playful formalism that breaks the narrative in a number of ways. Nagai appears right at the beginning, addressing the camera. “What an interesting place!” he says of the train station where much of the film takes place. He will tell us “a good story” about the married couple we will follow for the rest of the film. “But first,” Nagai says, “Let’s listen to my song … Hey! Music!” He pops up throughout the film to comment on the action, a device that amusingly anticipates Jonathan Richman’s musical interludes in the Farrelly Brothers’ There’s Something About Mary, among other films. After the credits sequence, which appears in neon lights, various people in the station break out into song, prompted by Nagai’s jazzy start.

We are then introduced to a woman complaining about the inaccurate station clock. Her kids knock over the ladder of the man working on it, and trailing after is her meek, henpecked husband. These two form the central couple of the film. Jutaro is a Walter Mitty-esque character who daydreams about romancing a native woman on a deserted island. This foreshadows Imamura's later portraits of primitive societies such as Profound Desire of the Gods (1968) and The Ballad of Narayama (1983). Jutaro works in his wife Rinko’s pharmacy, and his life is regulated down to the minute. He has to take regular doses of a “body energizer,” and he is monitored on this by his wife’s employees. When his wife and kids go away on a two-day trip, Jutaro takes this opportunity (egged on by his veterinarian friend) to taste a bit of freedom. They go to bars and get drunk, and Jutaro finds the courage to attempt an extramarital affair with Yuriko, who works in the pen shop across from the pharmacy.

The film alternates between Jutaro's fantasies and his real life, with Nagai as a commentator or a silent observer (or in a couple of cases as the man in the moon, and a cave wall carving). Compared to the films he would make later, Nishi Ginza Station is a minor work. However, many of the elements that would come to the fore later, such as his bawdy humor and his experiments with form, can be seen here in embryo.

Travelling Actors

Stolen Desire (Nusumareta Yokujo). 1958. Directed by Shohei Imamura. Written by Toshiro Suzuki, based on the story "Tent Theatre" by Toko Kon. Produced by Kazu Otsuka. Cinematography by Kurataro Takamura. Edited by Tadashi Nakamura. Music by Toshiro Mayuzumi. Art direction by Kimihiko Nakamura. Released by Nikkatsu Corporation.

Cast: Osamu Takizawa (Taminosuke Yamamura), Shinichi Yanagisawa (Ezaburo Yamamura), Hiroyuki Nagato (Shinichi Kunida), Michie Kita (Chigusa Yamamura), Yoko Minamida (Chidori Yamamura), Kimiko Nanazato (Sayoko), Masako Urushizawa (Midori).

Stolen Desire (1958), Imamura’s first feature film, and the first of three films he released in that year, is his delightful tribute to the “earthy” citizens of the Kawachi district of Osaka. From this film onward, Imamura expressed his interest in what were considered the lower rungs of Japanese society. One of the lowest were actors, especially the traveling kabuki actors we follow in this film, whose troupe is constantly referred to in the film as a “beggar theater.” This colorful lot includes Shinichi (Hiroyuki Nagato), the troupe’s stage director, whose ambitions for elaborate and artistic productions are often frustrated by his less-than-disciplined cast; Chidori (Yoko Minamida), an actress married to Eizaburo (Shinichi Yanagisawa), a star of the troupe whom Shinichi is in love with; Chidori’s sister Chigusa (Michie Kita), another actress who is in love with Shinichi, and is jealous of Shinichi's obvious affection for her sister.

The film begins with a narrator’s voiceover extolling the fact that 13 years after World War II, there is now “no trace” of the war, and that the people there have been pretty much unchanged for hundreds of years. We focus in on the troupe’s last performance of “The Loyal 47 Ronin.” As always, the kabuki performance opens with a striptease show, after which most of the largely male audience exits the theater before the actual play. The narrator amusingly notes that although students almost never attend these shows, there is a sign prominently displaying student discounts. The performance is aborted after an actor onstage refuses to say his lines, complaining that he hasn’t been paid. The fight moves outdoors, with one of the actors trying to grab the cash box from the ticket seller’s hands, culminating in Shinichi going after the fighting actors with a hammer.

The troupe is forced to leave after their stage is taken down by workers in need of timber. The troupe leader says he cannot pay them and they should go their separate ways. However, the actors say that they will stay with him. Shinichi sticks with them also, even though a friend of his has offered him a job directing television. He also remains there because of his longing for Chidori.

They move on to another village, and after raucous negotiations with the local landowner Fujita, the owner of a brush factory in the area, they set up a tent in a paddy field. The actors are an immediate sensation, especially the actresses whom the men chase after and sometimes peep in on when they are dressing for bed. The men especially enjoy the opening strip show, and the troupe plays to packed houses. The conflicts and love triangles continue here also.

Imamura’s love for these passionate, uncouth, and rowdy people comes through beautifully here, and the film is an often hilarious experience, made all the more so by not following a conventional narrative, but instead being a freewheeling and lighthearted portrait of these people. Imamura would continue his examination of the lower classes for the rest of his career, which would include darker portraits of those even lower in society than actors -- prostitutes, pimps, killers, primitive societies -- which were always interspersed with sensualist and bawdy humor. Stolen Desire is a remarkable debut film that contains many hallmarks of the even greater work to come.

Disappearing Acts

A Man Vanishes (Ningen Johatsu). 1967. Produced and directed by Shohei Imamura. Cinematography by Kenji Ishiguro. Edited by Matsuo Tanji. Music by Toshiro Mayuzumi. Production design by Ichiro Takada. Sound recording by Kunio Takeshige. Released by Nikkatsu Corporation.

Cast: Yoshie Hayakawa, Shigeru Tsuyuguchi, Sayo Hayakawa, Shohei Imamura.

A mystery without a solution, A Man Vanishes (1967) is a fascinating study of the eminently collapsible boundary between reality and artifice. More precisely, it suggests that what we think of as “reality,” and how we behave in this framework, is as much a construction as any work of fiction. Initially, the film seems to be an example of the cinema verité documentary style prevalent in the 1960s. A voiceover informs us that even on the “small island” of Japan, hundreds of people a year can easily vanish among the crowds of people, never to be seen again. The film is ostensibly a study of one of these "johatsu," or missing persons. We focus in on the particular case of Tadashi Oshima, a man who disappeared one day on his way to work, and the efforts of his fiancée, Yoshie Hayakawa, to find him. The camerawork is handheld, and fly-on-the-wall observant. There is little music, and all indications point to the idea that this is a document of Yoshie’s search, with an "investigator," actor Shigeru Tsuyuguchi (the rapist from Intentions of Murder), accompanying her to interview people who knew him in order to find out where he is and why he disappeared so suddenly.

However, there are signs that Imamura is up to something different here, beginning with the credits sequence, in which a medium attempts to contact Oshima. This is rather odd, since he is apparently still alive. “The unhappy spirit of a woman haunts him,” the medium says of Oshima, and this explains why he cannot love any woman. The medium reappears at other points in the film, sometimes as brief flashes.

The film delves into the investigation, revealing the many layers of personality and history that exist beneath the surface of this apparently ordinary salesman and the lives of those connected to him. Among other details, we learn that he had embezzled money from his company over a two-year period, and kept a mistress while he was away on business, who he may or may not have gotten pregnant. The animosity between Yoshie and her sister Sayo also surfaces in the course of this search. Yoshie disapproves of her sister’s relationship with a man she is not married to. She also comes to suspect that Sayo may have had an affair with Yoshie.

The verité veneer begins to drop away as we see how Imamura is manipulating certain actions, as he would in a drama. At one point, Yoshie confesses she is beginning to fall in love with Tsuyuguchi; he tells Imamura that this would be “awkward.” We see discussions between Imamura and his crew (in which Yoshie is frequently referred to as “The Rat”) in which they discuss how the film is going and where they want to take it.

The “documentary” aspect of A Man Vanishes, already questionable and extremely flimsy, completely collapses at the end of a long scene in which Yoshie, increasingly agitated, interrogates her sister about the fact that several people have reported seeing Sayo and Oshima together. They argue at either end of a dinner table, with Imamura sitting silently between them. A fishmonger is brought in, who confirms that he did indeed see the two of them together. Despite all this, Sayo strenuously insists that everyone who saw them together is mistaken. It is a lengthy and repetitious scene, with neither side willing to budge. Sayo then turns and asks Imamura, “Director, what is truth?” Imamura answers, “I don’t know what’s the truth. Nobody knows the truth.” At this point, the film’s most audacious and astonishing gambit occurs: Imamura yells to the crew, the walls fall away, and it is revealed that the scene we’ve just witnessed has been occurring on a soundstage. A narrator informs us that everything we have seen up to that point is fiction, although this fiction is indeed based on actual disappearances.

The camera crew moves to the street, and the argument resumes as a growing crowd gathers. Even though the scenario has been revealed to be fictional, the arguments on either side become increasingly passionate, resulting in an irreducible impasse. Both sides insist that their version of reality is the truth, and nothing is resolved. Imamura and Yoshie speak to each other in a voiceover at the film’s conclusion. “The film is finished, but reality is not,” Imamura says. A Man Vanishes is one of Imamura’s most idiosyncratic and unsettling films, in its radical fracturing and questioning of cinema’s representation of what appears in front of the camera.