Category Archives: Japan

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 →

Egoist (エゴイスト)

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  • エゴイスト (Egoist)

5/4/23 (Thurs)

The handsome, buff and gay Kosuke has left a poor and closeted life in the countryside and become a successful fashion consultant in Tokyo, complete with fabulous wardrobe, a gorgeous condo and a close gay circle where he plays the sophisticate. We come to realize that he’s also terribly lonely; having lost his mother at a young age, he yearns for the human touch.

**Spoilers ahead**

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Kochiyama Soshun (河内山宗俊)

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  • 河内山宗俊 (Kochiyama Soshun), 2/14/23 (Tues)

The 1936 jidaimono Kochiyama Soshun, given the inexplicable English title of Priest of Darkness, is the second of only three surviving films (out of around two dozen) by the prewar director Yamanaka Sadao. While generally considered the weakest of the three, that’s still a pretty high bar; it’s interestingly one of animator Miyazaki Hayao’s all-time favorites.

The film draws loosely from both the Kochiyama and Naojiro plot strands of the Meiji Era (1881) Kabuki play Kumo ni Magou Ueno no Hatsuhana (The First Flowers of Ueno), one of the all-day extravaganzas by the prolific Kawatake Mokuami. Those stories are usually performed these days as separate plays, but Yamanaka brings them together in an ingenious restructuring of the original. (He did a similar impressive overhaul of another Mokuami work in his next and final film, the supreme Humanity and Paper Balloons.)

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Pacific Overtures (太平洋序曲, UK-Japan co-production)

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  • 太平洋序曲 (Pacific Overtures), 3/12/23 (Sun), Tokyo

Pacific Overtures

British director Matthew White doesn’t let the script get in the way of his vision in his Japanese-language version of Pacific Overtures, a co-production between London’s Menier Chocolate Factory and Osaka’s Umeda Arts Theater that debuted in Tokyo a few days ago. He makes his ideas clear in his statement on the show’s website: “At a time when my own country, through Brexit, has opted to isolate itself from its European neighbors, I find it both fascinating and enlightening to investigate a period in recent history when Japan came to the opposite conclusion – that the only sensible option was to engage with the rest of the world to embrace new technologies and to demonstrate that anything the West could do, Japan could do better.”

He doesn’t note that Japan’s decision was forced upon it by the overt threat of military force from the Western powers, resulting in civil war, a wholesale upheaval of society, and the rise of a military regime that led the nation ultimately to disaster. The show’s original ending features a touching twinge of regret for a lost innocence, questioning whether the nation’s choices have been all for the good. The only other Tokyo production of this show some two decades ago, helmed by a Japanese director, enhanced that with a scene alluding to the nation’s unhappy experience in WWII to highlight the high price it has paid for its actions. That’s without mentioning that Japan has managed to engage with the world even with its Westernized ways without compromising its independence. The show seems a strange place to preach the evils of Brexit.

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