9/25/21 (Sat), Tokyo
The second feature by 40-something director/writer Harumoto Yujiro. The English title is lame: the “balance” (tenbin) in the Japanese title (literally Yuko’s Tenbin) refers to a set of scales like those held by Lady Justice. Here, documentary filmmaker Yuko is forced to weigh her values when the tables turn on her and the subject becomes the prey.
8/5/21 (Thurs)
Imai Tadashi’s 1959 film about two half-black siblings in a farming community at the foot of Mt. Bandai in Fukushima Prefecture. The film interestingly came out the same year as the highly successful remake of Imitation of Life and Cassavetes’ experimental Shadows, which both deal similarly with mixed-race or light-skinned blacks, as did that year’s Bunraku puppet drama 白いお地蔵さん (The White Buddha). Wonder if it was something in the air.
8/9/21 (Mon)
Ichikawa Kon’s 1960 film. Sentimental schlock based on a novel by Koda Aya. Koda also wrote Flowing (流れる), the source for one of my all-time favorite films. No such luck here. Continue reading
7/16/21 (Fri)
Matsumoto Toshio’s uncategorizable 1969 film about “gay boys”, a phrase used here mainly to refer to transvestites or male-to-female transgenders (the line isn’t clearly drawn). Having just seen John Cassavetes’ fragmented Shadows of ten years earlier, I thought I was ready for anything, but this psychedelic romp steps even further into the Twilight Zone. It’s drawn loosely from Oedipus Rex, which forms a framework of sorts, but that’s hardly the point in this house-of-mirrors experience.
The nominal story, set in contemporary Tokyo, revolves around the young and beautiful bar “hostess” Eddie (i.e., Oedipus – get it?), who is battling the bar’s aging kimono-clad Mama-san for the affections of an older gent. Eddie, whose long-absent father exists in his mind only as an old photo with the face burnt out, is haunted by memories of his mother laughing at his effeminate nature, beating him mercilessly after catching him putting on makeup, and screaming in horror as he stabs her to death when he finds her with a man (whom he also murders). Somehow he has found his way into Tokyo’s underground gay world, where he reigns as the most popular hostess at his bar among businessmen looking for a thrill. He ultimately wins the older gent, unwittingly causing the distraught Mama-san to commit suicide, and takes over the bar. Anyone familiar with Oedipus can see the rest coming, but it follows it more closely than I had imagined (too closely, to be honest) with one real shocker a la Buñuel in an expressionistic ending. Let’s just say that I’m glad the film’s in black-and-white.
7/11/21 (Sun)
Kon Ichikawa’s eye-opening 1959 film is a grim look at the actual lived experience of Japanese soldiers in WWII on the losing end of the battle in Leyte. There’s no glamour, heroism or dignity here as the desperate soldiers, pursued by the advancing Americans, escape through the forests and rough landscape toward a small coastal town on rumors of a possible rescue. Food is scarce and hope is scarcer as they scrounge to survive. They maintain military order on the surface, but their morals gradually break down as fatigue, starvation, injury and fear take their toll both physically and mentally. While the war itself is never shown, death is a constant presence, and the film has no compunction about showing rotten flesh, amputated limbs, filthy bodies covered in dirt and excrement, blood spurting or oozing from wounds, and other delights. It’s all a bit much after a while, and I started to become inured to the horrors, though maybe that was the point.
8/7/21 (Sat), 9:30-11:30p, home
Kawashima Yuzo’s 1957 star-studded farce, headed by comedian Frankie Sakai, was at one point rated by Japanese critics as the fourth greatest Japanese film ever made, right up there with Tokyo Story and The Seven Samurai – how’s that for a recommendation? I was suspicious given the slapstick nature of most Japanese comedy of those years, but curiosity eventually got the better of me. I’m glad it did.
The Japanese title, Bakumatsu Taiyoden, was rendered online as Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate (I’ve switched that for my own title). In fact, “sun” here is a jokey reference to the so-called “Sun Tribe”, groups of nihilistic youth that featured so prominently in books and movies at the time. That was reinforced with the appearance of idol Ishihara Yujiro, who is playing essentially the same disaffected Sun Tribe youth role that propelled him to stardom a year earlier in the sensational Crazed Fruit. (That’s true as well for his tribal cohort, the tall half-Danish hunk Okada Masumi, whose exotic looks stand out in this period piece; a running joke has him repeatedly reassuring doubters that he is a Japanese born in Shinagawa.) Bakumatsu is a word used to describe the final years of the dying shogunate (bakufu), which the characters at the time of course wouldn’t have known was dying despite the evident signs in the air. The inn portrayed here is the actual location where Ishihara’s character plotted the 1863 burning of the British Embassy that is reenacted in the film’s climax. Having Ishihara in this historical role is like dressing James Dean in waistcoat and powdered wig and placing him at Valley Forge in “Yankee Without a Cause”. That suggested that the film would be a topical parody filled with inside jokes whose relevance has long since died out. That it succeeds nevertheless is a testament to the strength of the concept and writing.
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.
6/17/21 (Thurs)
This 1963 yakuza film was evidently the first to define Suzuki Seijun’s surreal style. It’s a fairly straightforward story for him, albeit intricately plotted. Jo (Shishido Jo – he seems to play Jo-named characters a lot), a lone-wolf gangster and former policeman, seeks to avenge the death of a former colleague by playing two gangs off against each other. The colleague had been found dead with a call girl in an apparent double suicide, including a suicide note allegedly written by the woman. Jo, however, suspects that the death was not self-inflicted. His violent search for the truth drives the film.
6/15/21 (Tues)
Shinoda Masahiro’s 1963 nihilistic yakuza noir film is long on atmosphere, short on narrative, aiming mainly to show the emptiness of the hero Muraki’s life, a not-uncommon theme in Japan in those days after the Anpo (US-Japan Security Treaty) protests. Continue reading
(英語の後に日本語が続きます)
(A sample chapter that I wrote for a planned book on the Broadway musical intended for Japanese publication. I hadn’t planned to release this in English, but here it is in slightly revised form.)
History of the Broadway Musical: Fiddler on the Roof (1964)
It is a strange but true fact that the overwhelming number of the great Broadway musical writers have been Jewish or part-Jewish – Gershwin, Rodgers & Hart, Berlin, Kern, Loesser, Lerner & Loewe, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Kander & Ebb, Bernstein, Sondheim, Schwartz, Boublil & Schönberg, and many more. Jewish creators have been responsible for most of the epic works still produced today: in addition to every work in this book, the list encompasses all of the first seven Pulitzer-winning musicals, and extends from the Golden Age classics like The King & I and The Sound of Music to newer hits like A Chorus Line, Chicago, Rent, Les Miserables and Wicked. And that includes not just the songwriters; in fact, a large proportion of the key musical book writers and producers were Jewish as well. This is not true just of musicals, of course – Jews are also overrepresented among major playwrights (e.g. Miller, Ionesco, Stoppard, Pinter) – but their influence on the development of the musical has been decisive. Furthermore, they make up a good part of the theatrical audience. When I produced a Japanese drama off Broadway some years ago, I was told that one iron rule is never to open a show on a Jewish holiday since only Jewish viewers could be relied on to show up, even for an obscure Japanese play. Why this is true is a subject for another book, but the Jewish presence in New York theater is undeniably immense.
Nevertheless, another strange fact is that few of the big musicals have Jewish subject matter. The style and sense of humor in Broadway musicals have always heavily reflected Jewish archetypes, but not the contents; characterizations are Jewish but not the characters. Jewish writers have shown a preference for big, broad, romantic shows aimed for universal appeal; they wrote not for themselves but for the world. The general thinking was that musicals with Jewish themes would have limited appeal. The Jewish population was small relative to the mass public, so even with their strong theatergoing habits, they could only spark a show to success, not ensure it. Thus, despite what would seem a built-in audience, few large-scale musicals until the 1960s had an explicitly Jewish theme, and none had long-running appeal. Until Fiddler. Continue reading
6/7/21 (Mon)
Mizoguchi Kenji’s 1946 work on the famed ukiyoe artist was evidently one of the first movies to be approved after the war by the American occupying forces. Mizoguchi is widely said to have seen himself in the story of the devoted artist, which here involves censorship and female issues, but the same can probably by said for any film about a struggling artist from Lust for Life onwards. Given the director’s usual concern with the difficulties of women in Japanese society, I had assumed the female half of the title would be the film’s centerpiece.
In fact, though the five women dominate the narrative, the thematic focus is Utamaro’s obsession with his art. Continue reading
6/6/21 (Sun)
After Imamura Shohei’s previous work, the madcap Pigs and Battleships, I was ready for anything. This 1963 film – the literal Japanese title is a more clinical Chronicle of Japanese Insects – followed an effective two-year ban of the director by Nikkatsu for his over-the-top and over-the-budget Pigs. Still, Imamura, unbowed, held nothing back in his new piece about a ruthless woman who does whatever she can to survive. The brutal results ironically became the biggest-grossing film in his career, which presumably mollified the studio’s concerns.
sekenbanashi 