Category Archives: Japan

Monster (怪物)

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  • 怪物 (Monster)

6/11/23 (Sun)

Director Koreeda Hirokazu’s films are always an event, and the latest opens on the heels of its win at Cannes for best screenplay by television writer Sakamoto Yuji – the first time Koreeda has directed someone else’s work in nearly three decades. It is also noted for its music by Sakamoto Ryuichi, who was dying of the cancer that would kill him earlier this year before the film premiered. He was only able to complete two new numbers, the remainder of the score being chosen from his extensive back catalogue. Less publicized here was its Queer Palm Award, a prize given for selected works entered at Cannes, which hints at one of the underlying plot points.

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Vendetta for a Samurai (荒木又右衛門 決闘鍵屋の辻)

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  • 荒木又右衛門 決闘鍵屋の辻 (Vendetta for a Samurai)

6/10/23 (Sat)

Mori Kazuo’s 1952 film is based on the Igagoe vendetta, one of Japan’s three great vendettas alongside the Soga brothers (referenced in the film) and the 47 Ronin. The story has been memorialized on many occasions, most notably in one of the great plays of Bunraku and Kabuki theater (which lasts a miniseries-sized 7-8 hours if done in full) as well as dozens of films and television dramas. Mori, however, digs behind the legend to tell his distinctive version. Much credit goes to the script by no less than Kurosawa Akira, who must have had his hands full in the director’s chair after the global fame of the previous year’s Rashomon and that year’s Ikiru. The Japanese title is literally Showdown at Kagiya Crossing, which I actually prefer. (That would also avoid confusion with Mori’s later Samurai Vendetta, which has the much more evocative Japanese title Hakuoki (Chronicle of the Pale Pink Cherry Blossoms). English titlists need a better imagination.)

An overwrought opening chambara scene of intrepid derring-do turns out to be an amusing spoof of a legend in which Mataemon is said to have killed 36 men alongside his brave troupe. The narration reveals that the truth was quite different, and the film thereafter examines the real story as drawn from the historical records, at least as interpreted by Mori and Kurosawa. Heroes and villains are not as clear cut as their Kabuki counterparts, and the showdown is nowhere near the photogenic epic that we are expecting.

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Kill! (斬る)

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  • 斬る (Kill!)

6/7/23 (Wed)

Okamoto Kihachi made this film in the same year (1968) as his batty The Human Bullet, and it bears much the same sensibility. The Japanese title Kiru means to slash to death, so the similarly sounding English Kill! must have been too tempting to resist. The added exclamation mark is in line with the spirit of this chambara comedy, not a crowded field. The film comes from the same source material as Sanjuro but takes it in an entirely new direction. While it’s nowhere near the level of that classic, it makes for an interesting comparison.

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Sword of the Beast (獣の剣)

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  • 獣の剣 (Sword of the Beast)

6/6/23 (Tues)

Gosha Hideo’s 1965 Sword of the Beast is his second feature film and first original piece, working with the same writer as Three Outlaw Samurai. He sticks with the beast image as in the previous title. As per the times, this is again a critique of the shogunate with its unfeeling ethos that requires a suppression of one’s humanity to survive.

The story opens in 1857, when the arrival of the Black Ship four years earlier (referred to in the film) has set in motion events that are about to wreak a momentous transformation in Japan. But the characters don’t know that yet, sensing only vague change in the air. When we meet the low-ranking samurai Gennosuke, he is a fugitive, having killed a clan official who rejected his proposal for democratic reform. He is being pursued by the official’s daughter, who is determined to avenge her father’s death.

All is not as it seems, however. Continue reading →

Three Outlaw Samurai (三匹の侍)

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  • 三匹の侍 (Three Outlaw Samurai)

6/4/23 (Sun)

Gosha Hideo’s 1964 Three Outlaw Samurai, his first feature-length film, was a prequel to his hugely popular television series of the same name with the same three leads. The series had already been running a year at that point and continued for around 26 episodes annually through March 1969, gathering ratings as high as 42%. (They tried a sequel with new stars the following year, but that only lasted 13 episodes.) The Japanese title, Sanbiki no Samurai, is a play on words: the usual phrase sannin (three [people] – Shichinin no Samurai is the title for Kurosawa’s Seven ~), is replaced here by sanbiki, using the counter for animals, as in Sanbiki no Kobuta (the Three Little Pigs). It’s pretty much untranslatable – a herd of samurai, maybe? – but I guess they did the best they could.

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Samurai Rebellion (上意討ち 拝領妻始末)

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  • 上意討ち 拝領妻始末 (Samurai Rebellion)

5/28/23 (Sun)

Kobayashi Masaki’s superb 1967 film is oddly titled Samurai Rebellion in English, veering significantly from the Japanese title Jo-i Uchi: Hairyo Tsuma Shimatsu (roughly Decree of Execution: Account of a Wife Bestowed [to a vassal or such by the lord]). In the film, the officials present the command with “jo-i” (official decree) clearly written on the envelope. The subtitle has been creatively translated by some, including film critic Donald Richie (who should know better), as “Receive the Wife”, with speculation that this was added by the studio as a way to attract women to a samurai drama. That seems dubious given that it was in fact the title of the source novel; it was the jo-i uchi that was added later. I imagine that the studio was simply seeking to capitalize on the novel’s success. The English title is misleading since the events are better characterized as resolute resistance to authority than outright rebellion, which implies something more active and larger scale; the samurai are not seeking to overturn the system but to resist the unjust pressure on their family. That is, the English emphasizes the courage of the samurai, while the Japanese refers to the unfairness of the rulers.

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Goyokin (御用金)

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  • 御用金 (Goyokin)

5/26/23 (Thurs)

Gosha Hideo’s 1959 film finds the young Oriha returning to her seaside village after five years of indentured service to discover a town devoid of all life other than Hitchcockian groups of greedy crows. Everyone has vanished without a trace. We learn that Rokugo (Tamba Tetsuro), the chief samurai of the fictional Sabai clan (presumably modeled on the real-life Sabae clan in present-day Fukui Prefecture), had waylaid a ship carrying the shogun’s gold from nearby Sado Island, recruited the villagers to steal the treasure, and allowed the ship to sink, thus making it appear an accident. He then had his men slaughter the villagers to prevent word getting back to the shogunate, and spread the word that their disappearance was the work of magical forces known by the superstitious as kami-kakushi, literally “hidden by the gods”. (The phrase is interestingly left untranslated in the subtitles. It was deftly rendered in the title of a later animated film as “Spirited Away”.)

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A Last Note (午後の遺言状)

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  • 午後の遺言状 (A Last Note)

5/20/23 (Sat)

Shindo Kaneto’s 1995 work proved the final film for two of Japan’s greatest actresses, his wife Otowa Nobuko (who died of liver cancer before the film was even released) and Sugimoto Haruko, who passed away two years later. He was already 82 – he would live to over 100 – so it’s no surprise that he took on the subject of old age and dying. I just wish it had lived up to its co-stars.

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There Was a Father (父ありき)

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  • 父ありき (There Was a Father)

3/7/23 (Tues)

I had déjà vu watching Ozu’s 1942 film, one of only two that he directed during the war, and learned that it was initially planned as a companion piece to his similarly themed The Only Son a few years earlier. He had apparently abandoned the follow-up due to unreasonable demands from censors but must have later overcome his qualms; ironically the film was reportedly censored again by US Occupation authorities after the war, so the version today may lack more militaristic parts from the original (which was probably fine with Ozu). It is not a propaganda piece in its current form, with no talk of war other than a brief mention of a physical for the draft, and the “Japanese” values that it promotes are not unique to the war. Like its earlier companion piece, There Was a Father centers on a single parent who makes significant sacrifices for his only son’s sake that result in a painful separation for both when the son is sent away for education and a better life. It is also similar in boasting a strong central performance, here by Ozu stalwart Ryu Chishu.

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Woman of Tokyo (東京の女)

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  • 東京の女 (Woman of Tokyo)

3/6/23 (Mon)

Ozu’s superior 1933 mini-silent movie was supposedly filmed in just over a week when the director suddenly had time in his schedule; he was apparently filming while the script was still being completed. It sure doesn’t feel like it: though the sets are limited and confined, the characters are fully rounded, and the story says all it needs to say in 45 minutes – padded out, actually, by the odd inclusion of two minutes of an entirely different film by Ernst Lubitsch. (Even weirder, Ozu’s film was initially said to be based on a European novel, which Ozu revealed later to be a total invention. This is an original work written partly by him.)

The film is driven by a tremendous performance by Okada Yoshiko as Chikako, who works as a typist to support her younger brother Ryoichi (Egawa Ureo) in his studies. Continue reading →

Lady Snowblood (修羅雪姫)

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  • 修羅雪姫 (Lady Snowblood)

3/5/23 (Sun)

Fujita Toshiya’s 1973 manga-based exploitation flick is translated as Lady Snowblood, an interesting translation of the original Shura Yukihime or Demigod Lady Snow. (The Japanese title is a takeoff on the fairy tale Shira Yukihime or Snow White. Snow Blood is a pretty lame attempt at preserving the pun.)

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Stakeout (張込み)

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  • 張込み (Stakeout)

3/9/23 (Thurs)

Nomura Yoshitaro’s 1958 film opens with a long and sweaty train trip as two detectives travel from Tokyo to Saga to stake out a certain woman’s home in hopes that her lover, a murder suspect on the run, will visit her at some point. The trip, which takes around ten minutes of screen time, is peripheral to the story, but sets us up for the tedium of their work: they sit on the floor in the crowded train, buy bento and sake in brief station stops along the way, strip to their undershirts, and sweat profusely in the stifling heat. Precisely nothing happens, and that’s the way the director intended it.

That continues when they arrive in Saga, where they find the perfect spying point just across from her house. Continue reading →