• 血槍富士 (Bloody Spear at Mt. Fuji)

6/3/25 (Tues)

Uchida Tomu’s 1955 film was his comeback after a 13-year absence from Japanese film. He had reportedly raised suspicions in the movie world for his long stay in China and reported enthusiasm for the Mao regime (despite his active support for the Japanese military during the war – his convictions don’t seem very deep). But he had some big hitters behind him, including explicit support in the opening credits from superstar directors Ozu Yasujiro, Shimizu Hiroshi, and Ito Daisuke (the poster also throws in Mizoguchi Kenji). He supposedly promised to behave in crafting this film, and the content is largely innocuous on the surface. It is based on a popular silent film, Dochu Hiki (now lost), by his mentor Inoue Kintaro. The two leads in that film were happily given roles in the remake: Tsukigata Ryunosuke in a great turn as the suspected thief and Watanabe Atsushi as an official in the comic tea party scene.

Genpachi (Kataoka Chiezo) is a spear carrier for low-ranking samurai Sakawa Kojuro (Shimada Teruo, better known by his later name Kataoka Eijiro). They are traveling along the Tokaido along with the servant Genta (Kato Daisuke) to bring a prized tea cup to Kojuro’s mother in Edo. In addition to accompanying their master, the servants are charged with keeping him from alcohol, which turns him into a brute. (Sakawa is written 酒匂 or alcohol stench.) Others traveling the same path include a traveling entertainer and her daughter; a morose poverty-stricken father and his daughter, who he has agreed to sell to an Edo brothel; a pilgrim; a nervous man with a suspiciously large amount of money; an inspector seeking a thief on the loose; and a young admirer of Genpachi. who tells him he wants to be a spear carrier himself when he grows up.

This has been characterized as a road movie and compared credibly to Stagecoach. The various stories, though unfailingly engaging, dilute the proceedings, diverting the focus from the main threesome. Still, the characterizations are realistic and offer good variety. The most moving part was the father’s tearful sale of his daughter, followed by the other man’s discovery that his daughter, who he had sold into prostitution some years earlier, had died after he had slaved in the silver mines for years to earn the money to buy her back. Devastated, he gives the money to the other father to prevent the brothel owners from taking her away. Very well done.

Nice humorous bits leaven the proceedings. Genpachi’s ego gets a lift from the kid, prompting him to puff up and give an exaggerated show of his role – only to fizzle when he sees the traveling songstress watching as well and laughing. (She later gives a show where her dancer child imitates the spear carrier’s pomp, much to Genpachi’s embarrassment.) In a later scene, the kid poops near the tea ceremony, prompting the officials to suspect each other of farting.

The action hinted at in the title doesn’t come until the end, when Kojuro’s insistence that he drink with his servant rubs other status-obsessed samurai the wrong way. The ensuing battle leads to the death of Kojuro’s servant and ultimately the outnumbered Kojuro himself. Genpachi rushes in only to see his master and colleague both dead. Overcome with grief and fury, he is first laughed at by the samurai, who insult him for challenging them. That leads him to attack them with his spear, which proves unexpectedly effective. Chiezo had plenty of experience in chambara in his younger days, and the scene here was awesome.

I had expected the usual happy ending in which he gets together with the female entertainer at the end and form a family with the two children (played by two of his real-life kids – another one, incidentally, ended up as president of Japan Airlines). But after his master’s murder and his revenge on the killers, he becomes disillusioned with the entire system. He decides to leave everyone behind and go alone to Edo, carrying the tea cup and his masters ashes. When the kid insists that he wants to join him and become a spear carrier, Genpachi berates him, telling him that he should never aspire to that. As Genpachi disappears alone over the horizon, the kid calls after him. I anticipated something like, “Come back, Shane!” (that film, an enormous hit in Japan, was released two years earlier), but the boy instead cries, “You old bastard!”, lightening the ending considerably.

Kojuro’s egalitarian stance (“We’re all human”) does not seem entirely realistic based on Kabuki plays from the era, and the film implausibly has him rooming with a commoner at the shared lodging. It’s a romantic view of the era’s strict social divide. His speeches can also be a bit preachy. This questioning of the samurai system is fine, but Uchida seems to be trying too hard, maybe an attempt to erase the ultra-nationalistic image he had during the war and his seemingly pro-Mao stance from his time in China.

A more subtle touch was the all-important spear. Kojuro discovers when he tries to sell it (in a noble bid to help the traumatized father/daughter) that it is a fake. It does play a part, however, in subduing a thief, earning him a reward from the authorities – which also turns out to be fake (presumably stolen by the officials). The contradictions in the system were also nicely expressed when the officials declare in all seriousness after the final battle that the men couldn’t have been real samurai in the first place since they were beaten by a peasant, thus letting Genpachi off the hook for the mass killing. The criticism of the Edo hierarchy (already present in the seminal Humanity and Paper Balloons), became a common theme in the postwar years, but Uchida has gotten there quickly in the initial post-Occupation flush of jidaigeki.

The acting was superb all around. The best are Chiezo, who handles the pathos, humor and oversized emotion all with great skill; Kato, who deservedly won a Supporting Actor award, great especially when faced with the impossibility of trying to keep his master from drinking without defying his orders; Yokoyama Unpei and Tashiro Yuriko as the tragic father and daughter; and Tsukigata, wonderful as the presumed thief. There were a few too many characters to keep track of, and some inevitably get lost along the way. But it’s a very enjoyable journey. Recommended.