• 己が罪作兵衛 (My Sin: Sakubei’s Story)

6/19/21 (Sun), 内子座 (愛媛)

This affecting silent 20-minute drama of 1930 by Sasaki Tsunejiro is apparently all that is left of a much longer piece. It is a remake of a popular story but shifts the focus from the woman to the old fisherman after a hugely successful stage portrayal by Inoue Masao, who repeats his performance here. The story’s original title Onoga Tsumi (“My Sin”) was simply combined here with the fisherman’s name, Sakubei, which doesn’t make much sense given that he was blameless in the story. I guess they didn’t want to mess with a famous title. 

A wealthy female student who has been impregnated and dumped by her boyfriend tries to drown herself, but is saved by a kind fisherman. When she gives birth, he agrees to raise the boy as his own, and she leaves him with no intention of meeting again. Some years later, the boy (Sugawara Hideo) expresses curiosity about his mother. The naïve father says he has a surprise and will take the boy to Tokyo, planning secretly to introduce him to the mother. Reality rudely interrupts when the mother, now the wife of a viscount and the mother of another son, refuses to see him or acknowledge her abandoned child in embarrassment over her past. The crestfallen fisherman is unable to tell the waiting boy what happened. The following summer, the mother and child go to a beach that happens to be near the fisherman’s village, where, unbeknownst to her, her abandoned child is also playing on the shore. The spoiled child is caught in dangerous waves, and the abandoned kid jumps in to save him, neither realizing that they are half-brothers.

I figured at this point that the abandoned kid would save his endangered half-brother, emerge as a hero and win recognition from his mom as her child, turning his fortunes around. But that’s not the way Japanese films work. By the time adults have retrieved them, both the kids have drowned. As the fisherman mourns his adopted child, the mother comes in to see her dead son. At a glance, they immediately become aware of what has happened. Moreover, the doctor who has been called from town turns out to be the man who left the woman some years back and realizes, without being able to admit it, that this is his child as well. The film ends with tears all around.

The story is skillfully filmed, avoiding excess sentimentality for the most part despite the melodramatic storyline. The climactic drowning scene was exceptionally powerful despite (because of?) the lack of sound. The fisherman’s relatively understated performance is especially moving; the scene where he is rejected by the woman whose life he saved is heartbreaking, as is the scene where he arrives at the beach only to learn of his child’s death. While the ending seems cruel, it reflects the apparent preference of Japanese audiences for darker fare. (A friend, who was in tears when the lights went up, insisted that the boys had to die in the story so that the woman would suffer just punishment for her actions. So much for redemption, not to mention the suffering of the kids themselves and other innocents.) Putting the kindly fisherman front and center rather than the woman makes the movie more tragic. His undeserved fate was extraordinarily touching, particularly as performed by Inoue. Sugawara, who also starred as a child in Ozu’s wonderful I Was Born, But…, was terrific as well as the older boy.

I imagine the full film must have shown more of the children’s separate lives, but this condensed version tells the story succinctly and beautifully. A rare but lovely film.