Judging solely on our three-film sample of Sadao Yamanaka’s work, Humanity and Paper Balloons, the last film he directed before passing away, is undoubtedly his masterpiece. Simple in its presentation at first but with an intricate and complex narration, the film shows Yamanaka as a true master of his craft, an irreverent storyteller who was not afraid to take an unpopular political stance. A lot of the actors cast in the movie hailed from the far-left theater group Zenshin-za and we know now that Yamanaka’s flirtations with communist groups and left-wing thinking ultimately caused his draft to the front that resulted in his premature death. The portrayal of samurais in Humanity and Paper Balloons is unglamorous and free from any self-aggrandizing nationalistic revisionism. Political authorities are represented as corrupt and insensitive towards the needs of the poorer population, whereas community and empathy are presented as keys to happiness – a viewpoint not necessarily shared by the militaristic Showa government at the time of the film’s release.
The film is bookended by two suicides. We open with the suicide of an impoverished ronin who had to sell his sword and swap it for a bamboo sword. There is quite an uproar over his death in the small community we are introduced to over the course of the film but the hara-kiri is not subject to a grand remembrance in honor of the respected samurai. Rather, it is an opportunity to pocket five bottles of sake from the landlord and come together to dance and drink. The other ronin significant to the story is Matajuro Unno who’s father recently died and who relies on his wife to provide for the family by selling paper balloons. He approaches Mori, a local political figure and “urban” samurai with ties to the yakuza who knew his father, in the hopes that he would point him towards gainful employment. But Mori doesn’t want to be reminded of his ties to Matajuro’s father.
As payback, the ronin helps hiding Okoma, a young woman who is to be married to the higher samurai class and who is abducted by Shinya, a barber and gambler who organizes unauthorized gambling games in his own home, attracting the wrath of the yakuza. Shinya and Matajuro’s kidnapping scheme finally backfires and the ronin’s wife kills him in his sleep and subsequently commits suicide. End of film.
Far from heartwarming Heimatfilm tropes and a vision of the ronin as an honorable and wise warrior, Yamanaka presents feudal Japan as an unjust class society, weighed down by punishing social conventions and unfair social conditions. Class relations are the main motive here, as we jump back and forth between the poor community of peasants, merchants and down-on-their-luck samurais, and the removed class of arrogant gangsters, political rascals and merciless upper-echelon samurais. There is a heartfelt black-and-white representation of both stratums of society and Yamanaka is never ambiguous about which side he’s on. The poor, as carefree and optimistic as some of them might be, never catch a break, while the rich always maintain the upper-hand.
There is a subtle gender commentary to be found as well. All of our main protagonists are male. Women are either pawns in a larger game played by the men, like Okoma, or wives who look upon their husband’s actions with disdain but with little power to change them. After it is revealed that Matajuro was involved in Shinya’s kidnapping scheme we get a brief scene in which various women chat with each other about how all men are scoundrels since even the samurai, who should be a respectable role model, participated in such an ill-conceived venture. Matajuro’s wife overhears them talking like that – and ultimately chooses death as her and her husband’s only way out. The message here is twofold: not only are the men’s actions irresponsible and oftentimes plain dumb, but women, just like the poor on the larger scale of society, have to suffer the consequences of actions they are not responsible for. More than an advocate for the “lower” classes of society, Yamanaka, it seems, was a feminist.
The story, though virtually void of plot, is fascinatingly constructed. A little confusing at the beginning because we are introduces to a wide array of characters and conflicts, the script builds and builds by mostly just observing the characters and their day-to-day transactions and sponging details. Relationships are forged slowly until the characters abruptly, it seems, face compelling moral conundrums that finally grab us emotionally. By the end of Humanity and Paper Balloons, we are totally immersed in this world Yamanaka delineated very clearly and aggregated with intricate detail. The film never keeps us at arm’s length rather inviting us to visit it again and again, as one single viewing doesn’t do the film justice, doesn’t allow us to fully register all the themes, character details and visual motives.
Humanity and Paper Balloons was certainly a singular viewing experience for me personally. I have read elsewhere that the film is bleak and pessimistic and there is certainly something to that. But I was struck by the poetic nature of the movie, by the deliberate pace that allows us to reflect as we are presented with an array of ideas and themes, by its intimacy and the almost introspective atmosphere. Where The Pot Worth a Million Ryo and Koshiyama Soshun where carried along mostly by plot intricacies, Humanity and Paper Balloons sets out to portray exactly that: humanity. In his excellent essay on Sadao Yamanaka, Chris Fujiwara explains: “In the title of Yamanaka’s final film, the word that is translated as “humanity,” ninjo, means not the human race (for which the language has another word, jinrui) but human feeling. In the title of the film, it indicates no precise direction for the plot but opens up the chaotic and unpredictable space of impulses.” It is this more observational narrative method that elevates Yamanaka's work from superior genre fare to full-blown cinema mastery for me.
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