Hiroshi Inagaki – Ambush: Incident At Blood Pass (1970)

As the legend goes, Toshiro Mifune and Shintaro Katsu swore at some point to appear together in a film. Both were gigantic film stars, Mifune thanks to his iconic roles in Kurosawa's Seven Samurai and Yojimbo, Katsu thanks to his Zatoichi films, and a concerted appearance in a movie would almost certainly result in a giant box office success.

That was undoubtedly the reasoning behind Inagaki's casting of the two superstars in Incident At Blood Pass, together with the female lead Ruriko Asaoka who was a major film star at the time as well (she appeared in a staggering 121 films between 1955 and 1967). Inagaki's career was already flailing, securing financing for his jidaigeki movies was tuff, and the Japanese film industry in general was feeling the box office competition from imported Hollywood fare. Shochiku, Toho and Nikkatsu had to deal with increasing financial woes. In the mid-1970's, the share of ticket sales for domestic movies fell under 50%. The once glorious Japanese film industry was in a deep crisis.

Assembling a star ensemble and getting Mifune to reprise his role as Yojimbo for one last time, then, seemed like a good strategy to get Incident At Blood Pass greenlit by the studio. The resulting film has somewhat of a bad rep because it is billed as a swordplay film and has next to no sword play to offer. Fans of Yojimbo and Zatoichi hoping for a sort of super sword fighting adventure may not find a lot to like here, but Incident At Blood Pass is a very interesting film in which Inagaki varied some tropes of his former work and constructs a carefully balanced script that should be studied by everyone interested in the craft.

Where Inagaki built his characters with a lot of intricacy in Samurai Trilogy and The Rickshaw Man, the characters in Incident At Blood Pass are nothing more than basic types, simple caricatures. Yojimbo doesn't get any new coloring, we have the archetype of the husband who beats his wife, the woman who submits herself to the hero, the old man who owns an inn, the rogue who tries to stay in the shadows, the hysterical police officer, the good-hearted crook, and the asshole villain. We get a little bit of backstory for some of the characters, most importantly Gentetsu the villain played by Katsu, but it is ultimately of no real importance to the movie.

What Inagaki does do with great precision, however, is to construct the situation in which all of the characters find themselves in. Just what is the titular "incident at blood pass"? We don't know until late in the film. And by that time the fate of every single character depends on the actions of someone else so that no one is in full control of their own life anymore. The movie is divided into two uneven sections: a longer one in which we don't know what is going to happen and in which the characters only make allusions to their past or what their intentions are, and a shorter more action packed section in which we finally learn what is going on and in which the focus shifts from the character's past to the immediate future.

In the first part, Inagaki leaves the audience in the dark about almost everything that's happening. Yojimbo gets an order to travel to Sanshun pass where something will happen at some point. His employer never reveals the nature of that "something". Along the way, Yojimbo picks up a woman who is beaten by her husband. Here, we don't know why or how long it has been going on. At an inn not far from Sanshun pass, where most of the film's action takes place, we meet the old owner and his daughter, as well Gentetsu who claims to be a doctor. We don't know what his relationship is with the owner and why he is living there in a shed behind the inn. Later, an officer appears with a crook he just apprehended. But we never know what the arrestee did. There is also Yataro, a gambler who teams up with Yojimbo at several occasions, but his motivations are kept in the dark for most of the time as well.

It is this first section of the movie that is most commonly criticized, as not much happens. Inagaki patiently moves the pieces on the chessboard until he has everyone where he needs them to be. The director is not known to be a superior visual auteur, but his compositions here complement beautifully the fractured nature of the character's interactions. In wide shots expertly employing depth of field, he arranges the characters on two or more different planes, thus slicing up the screen horizontally. When two characters have a hushed conversation or have a more intimate exchange, he captures it in a prolonged medium shot. Cuts on action are prevalent but not always used, as Inagaki delicately stages his shots. In one instance, the officer squats down next to the crook and tries to get a confession out of him. The camera films them both in profile, then slowly travels around them on a half circle. At the 90 degree mark, the officer stands up and squats down on the other side of the crook, so that, when the camera completes its 180 degree traveling, the characters remain in the same position as they were in the beginning of the shot, now simply mirrored. This is not an innovative technique, of course, but it shows that Inagaki is a commanding director and employs visual language that enhances or complements the plot.

Once we know what the "incident" is, the uncertainty shifts from the character's past to the future. As it turns out, Gentetsu has a plan to rob gold from a convoy posing as simple travelers. And Yojimbo was sent there to work with Gentetsu. Having formed some bonds with the people at the inn who are now held captive by Gentetsu, he is asked to work with the enemy and kill everyone at the inn. There is a certain element of unpredictability in the air because Mifune's character is so ill-defined that there was a part of me who thought that he really could kill the individuals he just spend half of the film protecting. But in the end, the denouement is both more confusing and more bland than the film lets on. But by that point, it was just a joy to observe how Inagaki's story chess moves finally paid off, even if the climax isn't very convincing.

Hiroshi Inagaki - The Rickshaw Man (1958)

With The Rickshaw Man, Hiroshi Inagaki and Toshiro Mifune turn in a surprisingly nuanced film. Both men are championed for and excelled in broad strokes cinema, for lack of a better term, but this tale of a poor rickshaw man who sees himself confronted with social boundaries, the advent of the industrial age and his own image as a masculine swank is an exercise in sensitive observation. Inagaki uses cinemascope to its full extent (both in scenes with large crowds and in scenes in which he showcases his superior understanding of negative space and deep focus), and Mifune turns in what is probably one of his most memorable performances. Commanding, vulnerable, crass, funny, smart, charming and touching, Matsugoro the Rickshaw Man, as performed by Mifune, is undoubtly one of the more memorable characters of 1950’s Japanese cinema.

Inagaki, who co-wrote the script with Mansaku Itami based on a novel by Shunsaku Iwashita, takes great care in crafting a well-rounded main character. Which also means being honest with the audience about Matsugoro’s weaknesses and failings. We first meet the titular rickshaw man as he is sought out by law enforcement because he got into a fight with a swordsman. Later, he tells the story of that fight to a group of people at an inn and we realize that his performance in the “fight” was pitiable at best, that he acted a big shot but was defeated after only one blow on the head. Matsugoro first appears to be hot-headed, oblivious but also weirdly endearing.

Later, he fights a bunch of people at a theater after he threw garlic on an open fire which greatly offended his fellow theater enthusiasts (most of which are of higher social standing) because of the stench. Instead of getting the garlic out of the fire and enjoy the show, Matsugoro stubbornly decides to challenge some of the men to a fight. Here, he somehow keeps the upper-hand, defeats his opponents and is stopped only by a mediator who finally gets an apology out of him and screws his head back onto his shoulders. These two scenes alone make for fascinating character development. Matsugoro might be a bully at times and can act obnoxiously, but he can also see where he went wrong and learn from his mistakes. In addition, we never know which version of the rickshaw man we’ll get. It’s put to great use in a scene where he goes to an athletics competition. He decides to participate in a race that’s open for the public. At first, it seems like he will be left behind very quickly by his competitors who seem more athletic and don’t goof around as much as he does. But by the end, Matsugoro outlasts them all because he kept a steady pace and didn’t overdo it in the first few rounds. He wins the race.

That particular scene is also a great showcase for the actor Mifune. The way he carries himself physically in the scene is remarkable. Matsugoro has a physicality unlike any other Mifune character that I have seen so far. His lanky running style is hilarious at first but turns out to be a competent way of winning a race. While Mifune carries his body the same way throughout the scene, he subtly transforms before our very eyes from good-natured goof to competitive candidate for the win. All throughout the film he appears physically intimidating when needed, vulnerable when confronted with an impossible love he has for a woman he can't have and goofy when his temperament gets him into a predicament. It's a remarkable performance from Mifune who's histrionics could sometimes get the best of him and who's iconic performances in Seven Samurai and Yojimbo are excellent but broad.

Yet, his nuanced performance in The Rickshaw Man doesn't mean that he loses his trademark intensity. However, he channels it differently. The film's story kicks in when Matsugoro is hired by a couple to transport their boy Toshio to and from doctor's appointments. Both Matsugoro and the family grow close. When Toshio's father dies, the rickshaw man becomes a sort of surrogate father figure and develops feelings for Yoshioko, the boy's mother. It is here that Mifune does truly exceptional work full of tenderness and emotion. Being a man's man, Mifune has no problems playing the scenes in which Matsugoro tries to teach Toshio what it means to be a worthy male. But he is equally heart breaking in scenes in which he tries to be close to Yoshioko but knows he will never be able to be with her because she belongs to a higher class.

The Rickshaw Man, then, is not only a finely observed character study of a simple worker who takes the boy of a wealthier man under his wing, but also a subtle critique of debilitating social conventions and a study of what it means to be a man in different social milieus. For Matsugoro has a different approach to masculinity than the boy's parents. When Yoshioko is worried that Toshio might get into a fight, Matsugoro simply retorts that fights are a normal rite of passage for young men. Where intellectual ability and academic achievement might be of fundamental importance to Toshio's parents, Matsugoro values physical prowess and a certain subdued macho attitude. Both worldviews clash in Toshio's education but the script doesn't raise a fuss about it. We are simply presented with some observations and are left to make up our own mind.

The Rickshaw Man is a deep text that warrants many more viewings before I could make a final assessment but there is no doubt that while The Samurai Trilogy is an excellent and very entertaining spectacle, Rickshaw Man is a superior film that shows that when Inagaki paints in shades of grey the result is sublime. From the intimate story over the superb compositions and bravura camera movements to the performances, Inagaki and company get everything right. It is unfortunate, then, that the film is not available on DVD in the United States as of yet.

Hiroshi Inagaki - Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto (1954), Samurai II: Duel At Ichijoji Temple (1955) and Samurai III: Duel At Ganryu Island (1956)

It is always difficult to find an appropriate entry point into the work of such an iconic cinematic figure as Hiroshi Inagaki (1905 - 1980). Consider this: he started out as a child actor during the 1920's, the very inception of Japanese cinema, was promoted to director at the young age of 22, helped revive the jidaigeki films during the 1930's as a member of the Narutaki group alongside Sadao Yamanaka for whom he wrote several scripts, helped re-revive the jidaigeki genre after the war by directing historical films of epic proportions, found international claim an won an Academy Award, but, like his peer Akira Kurosawa, had an increasingly difficult time securing financing beginning in the 1970's despite his pedigree as master director, became bitter, took on alcohol and died a lonely death.

The Samurai Trilogy, much like Kurosawa's Rashomon, is certainly his most well-known work in the West (Inagaki won the Academy Award for best foreign film for Samurai I) and presents a good way to start to inspect his oeuvre. The trilogy was also produced at an interesting historical time when discourse in jidaigeki films shifted from the nationalistic overtones of the 1930's to the nihilistic violence of the 1960's films. Certainly, The Samurai Trilogy exhibits a rather conservative ideology but also stands as a definite manifesto of a certain breed of ronin genre fare that would become increasingly rare in the following decades.

Samurai tells the sweeping story of Musashi Miyamoto (Toshiro Mifune) who traverses a 17th century torn apart by civil war, as he tries to attain the wisdom of a true samurai. We first meet him as a hot-headed whippersnapper and see him change until he finally finds the enlightenment and the mental tools of a true swordsman. In between, we witness several obstacles and tests he has to endure in order to learn life lessons, as well as his various romantic liaisons that define his masculinity. Oftentimes referred to as Japan's Gone With The Wind, the film is based on Eiji Yoshikawa's epic novel Musashi Miyamoto and was already adapted once before by Inagaki during the war as a three-part film. Unfortunately, that version is now lost. When the director tackled the material again in 1954 for Toho, a rival production was on the way, called Musashi Miyamoto and directed by Yasuo Kohata, not based on the identically titled book but covering the same events, for Tohei studios. A few years later, in 1960, Tomu Uchida adapted the same material again, as a six-part film called Zen and Sword. All of these productions were immense popular successes in Japan, but only Inagaki's 1954 version was similarly applauded by Western audiences. Like with Kurosawa's Rashomon, the Academy Award for Samurai I paved the way for the anglophone West's discovery of Japan's cinematic treasures.

Since the film’s reason of existence is to trace our main character’s journey from rogue to sage, the plot concentrates almost exclusively on Musashi and his development as a character. The focus is on process.  We ruffly know at all times where Musashi’s journey is leading him mentally and emotionally, the question is how we get there. The three different parts, then, correspond to three very specific stages in his development. Ruffly speaking, the first part follows Musashi’s growth from thug to warrior, the second part traces his evolution from samurai student to real swordsman and part three finds him accepting the duties of a samurai. At the beginning of every of the three installments, a clear objective is formulated for Musashi. His objective for the first film is to obtain fame on the battlefield. In the second film he seeks wisdom and a way to refine his skills. In the last film he has to do the last steps to finally become a real samurai.

Having announced these objectives, Musashi is immediately faced with failure. In Samurai I, Musashi, at first, is kept from participating in the Sekigahara battle,  and when he finally does, realizes that the Ashikaga forces he is part of, were already defeated. In Samurai II, he wins a fight against a samurai armed with a chain and sickle and kills him, but, as a priest tells him, “lost as a samurai”. Samurai III nicely inverses this dynamic as Musashi is challenged to a duel even though he doesn't want to fight out of spiritual reasons. His attempt to withdraw himself from the battle fails and he is attacked and has to defend himself. Every film then traces Musashi’s trajectory from failure to finally achieving his goal. This structure unifies the trilogy while maintaining a certain independence for each part. Even though each one of the parts is one piece to the larger puzzle, the Samurai trilogy is more than a sum of its parts. Every film can be enjoyed as a single story and cinematic achievement.

There is a lot of emphasis on building Musashi’s character in very definable traits. In Part I he is a loner without parents, who’s distant relatives call him “lawless”, obsessed with fame and glory, courageous but hot-headed and immature, loyal, demonized by others and, at times of solitude or intimacy, torn by guilt. The first installment of the trilogy is about him overcoming his worst first impulses and learning a lot of hard lessons. “You ignored wisdom and reason, you thought you could defeat the world”, tells him the priest who takes him under his wing. Musashi has to learn that he can’t defeat the world by himself and certainly can’t ignore wisdom and reason.

The scene where the priest hangs Musashi from a tree and leaves him for several days, even through a snow storm, is pivotal. That’s when he turns a mental page. Kicking and screaming and cursing at first, he decides against running off with his lover Otsuo when she secretly frees him after seeing him hanging there for days. There is, of course, an almost insane amount of pathos in this scenes but from the standpoint of plot these are all very important stepping stones for Musashi and for the audience’s understanding of the character.

Samurai II shows us Musashi as a much more accomplished man but also much more humble. When he goes to a sword maker and asks him to repolish his sword, the artisan tells him “I polish the souls of samurai. Not murderous weapons.” Musashi’s reply: “would you kindly repolish my crude soul?” This is in tune with the first scene of the movie where Musashi wins the battle against the chain and sickle warrior and a priest tells him “You’re not yet a real samurai!” This informs the entire film. Where fame and glory were his main combustibles in the first part, here he tries to acquire a higher mental state, a wisdom that will enable him to live the real life of a samurai. But that comes at the price of female suffering. Otsuo and Akemi are not only rivals in their courtship of Musashi but they can’t compete with his calling: “I love my sword more than I love you”, he tells Otsuo at one point.

The second film of the series, with a main character more interested in his intellect than in battling competitors, is, consequently, much less erratic than the first one, although it ultimately boasts a much higher body count. There is always a lot of tension in the air because Musashi literally has to face life and death stakes constantly, but Samurai II is much quieter and introspective where Samurai I was a wild rollercoaster ride filled with action and battle sequences. Musashi moved around a lot, traveled, had to flee, he led the life of a vagabond and thus had no real points of orientation in his life. In Part II, he travels to one location and stays there for most of the time, sharpening his intellectual tools and anticipating the final climax that forces him again to leave.

Said final climax, epic in its scope as he affronts 80 men out to kill him, also underlines just how much Toshiro Mifune represented the masculine ideal of the time. Brave, fearless, passionate, thoughtful and aware of his physicality, not only the samurai Mifune but the man Mifune was made into a symbol of what Japanese manliness was all about. And certainly, portraying such a torn and heroic character contributed to that image. In the end, when he is dueling with Kojiro, Masushi is about to strike the last blow but his conscience prevents him from doing so. He is not a rogue anymore, a mental page was turned again. Which also adds to the archetype of the manly man with a twisted past that taught him important life lessons.

In the third and final Samurai, Masushi announces: “I want to fight without regrets”. And it is the film that sees him struggling the most with his chosen profession of samurai. For a while, he even abandons the idea altogether and lives as a farmer. An antagonist is introduced very early on in his eternal rival Kojiro and we anticipate a confrontation for nearly one hour and a half. There is no doubt that Masushi, no matter how competent and powerful Kojiro is made out to be during the film, is going to defeat him. The film becomes about what lessons he will learn that help him complete his skill set to do so.

We open the film with yet another duel that simultaneously showcases his extraordinary faculties as a swordsman and charts his mental state. In Samurai III the situation is exceptional. He is the best warrior in Japan, or approaching that, yet he doesn’t want to fight. There are several confrontations during the film in which Masushi doesn’t draw his sword to defeat his opponent but hints at his capabilities otherwise. In one memorable instance he uses his chopsticks to pick flies out of the air. A man that precise, focused and quick? Better not get testy with him.

Masushi’s character arc in Samurai III is, I think, the most interesting of the trilogy because his refusal to use his skills is nicely pitted against Kojiro’s desire to showcase that he is the best swordsman of the country by defeating Masushi. Though Kojiro is clearly driven by fame it is not a vane ego-driven undertaking as Masushi attempted himself in the first film. Nonetheless, making a name for himself is important to him. Meanwhile, Masushi is on the quest for the exact opposite: self-realization and bliss. He doesn’t need Kojiro to attain glory, battling “without regrets” is what Masushi is after. But he needs time on his own, far away from any swordsmanship, before he can do that. Kojiro is anxious to finally confront him. It is a simple and compelling way to chart just how far Masushi has come as a character. Where he would have charged Kojiro in Samurai I without any second thought, he actually goes to live with peasants and works the fields for a while in Samurai III and lets Kojiro stew in his own grease.

As Isolde Standish remarks in her excellent book A New History of Japanese Cinema, the Samurai Trilogy is rather conservative in its depiction of samurai values and masculinity. Jidaigeki movies were revived during the 1950's after the occupation authorities had banned them immediately following the war. In later decades, the genre would become increasingly violent and cruel. While Miyamoto Musashi can be seen as a positive role model and valiant warrior, a figure like Tsukue Ryunosuke in The Great Bhodisatta Pass is a much more ambiguous and morally corrupt character, although both Pass and Samurai treat similar themes. Standish: "While Miyamoto Musashi travels the land seeking knowledge and enlightenment, Tsukue Ryunosuke traverses the land indiscriminately killing. Located within violent periods of civil strife, both characters are symbolic of the clash of the postmodern and modern civil order. Ryunosuke is a relic from an age (…) that will soon cease to exist while Miyamoto Musashi (…) undergoes a lengthy period of training that allows him to maintain a legitimate position in the new order." (280)

Musashi is an outsider and social misfit who seeks knowledge in order to attain a certain social standing of his own choosing. Again Standish: "Within the more conservative discourse of [Samurai], Buddhism tempers the violence of judo/bushido through compassion and self-abnegation through transience (mujo)." (281). But such a discourse was rejected by later generations of filmmakers who also took Akira Kurosawa, among others, to task for having an outdated and ultimately romantic view of humanity. Both Kurosawa and Inagaki, who both won an Academy Award during the 1950's and were hyped by Western critics, had increasingly difficulties securing financing for their films in the later years of their careers, prompting Kurosawa to attempt suicide and Inagaki to revert to alcohol. Certainly, the fact that their filmic discourse seemed out of date had to account for a lot of their troubles. Movie giants they were both. But they didn't seem fit to say something substantial about contemporary issues. And while the Samurai trilogy is sweeping filmmaking at its best, one can see how a younger, wilder and overambitious generation could have perceived it as stale, square and, for lack of a better word, Biedermeier.

Sadao Yamanaka – Humanity and Paper Balloons (1937)

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.

Sadao Yamanaka – Kochiyama Soshun (1936)

Sadao Yamanaka once said, "I do the reverse of what Pudovkin taught." Regular readers of this blog, if such exist, will recall that I discussed Pudovkin's editing technique a few weeks back. The soviet director regarded editing as "the foundation of film art." In this context, content is defined by how the shots are arranged in relation to each other. For Yamanaka, as was the case for a lot of Japanese directors in the 1930's, the shots themselves created meaning. Editing equated assembling the final product. Little esthetic work was done in the editing room. This was one of the reasons why Japanese directors were able to churn out staggering amounts of films. Post-production time was cut down by carefully planning out shots and sequences beforehand. There was a specific reason for each new shot. But mostly, careful blocking and shot compositions enabled the directors to let scenes play out in a small number of takes.

In Kochiyama Soshun, Yamanaka's second surviving film, there is one scene in which two characters bid on a small knife at an auction. They are both filmed in a medium shot showing only the two. We don't see or hear anyone else attending the auction. Yamanaka's confidence as a visual artist and the performances of both actors enable the director to hold the shot until the scene's resolution.

Kochiyama Soshun, even more than The Pot Worth A Million Ryo, is an extraordinary stylistic achievement. We miss all the flamboyance of a Mizoguchi or Kurosawa, but it's in his restraint, much like his colleague and friend Yasujiro Ozu, that Yamanaka shines bright. He predominantly uses wide angle shots employing all the depth of field. The narrow alleyways and claustrophobic interiors where the action takes place provide the perfect setting for this. Yamanaka activates the space on a vertical line. Characters frequently enter a scene from the background and make their way to the center of the frame where the action takes place and is captured in long shots. There are no reverse-angle shots in conversation that I could recall.

There is a tranquil rhythm that carries us along, a smoothness of the plot that is enhanced by the seamless succession of shots. Yamanaka also uses a lot of repetition to underline how the characters change and how they are trapped at the same time. When the plot calls for it, Yamanaka ups the ante without losing his clarity of vision. The climax of the movie involves an escape from ruthless henchmen. Characters chase each other through narrow streets and back alleys, and Yamanaka increases the suspense by accelerating the pace of the editing. The last shot of a monk trying to hold back a horde of sword swinging badasses while a stream of water erupts in the foreground of the frame is among the most poetic and most violent of the film.

Based on a famous Kabuki play by Kawatake Mokuami, Kochiyama Soshun is a genre film unlike you have ever seen one. Naojiro, a young knucklehead, steals a small but invaluable knife from a samurai and with that offsets a chain of events that eventually leads to his sister having to sell herself into prostitution, the samurai almost having to commit harakiri, his girlfriend jumping to her death and a lot of people getting killed in the climatic battle. Like in The Pot Worth A Million Ryo, an object is at the center of the narrative and structures the multiple plotlines that intertwine and add to a narrative web that gains in complexity with each new scene.

And again, the fabric of reality is put into question. Reality, which is pieced together through knowledge, is constantly negotiated between the characters as they exchange knowledge and broaden or narrow down their intellectual spectrum. When the samurai contemplates the possibility of committing harakiri if his master ever finds out that the small knife was stolen from him, the two men who bought that knife at the auction quarrel over its worth: "who could pay 10 ryos for such a trivial small knife?" asks one. "It's such a waste of money!" By showing us these two extremes, Yamanaka emphasizes once more the complexity of life. One man's trash is another man's treasure.

Yamanaka also seems interested in the malleability of reality. Time and time again, characters speak about the same things without realizing it and misunderstand each other or getting to the wrong conclusions. If the same thing can have different meanings for different persons, how can one perspective be superior to another? At one point, the samurai, contemplating his supposed harakiri, reveals that he is 53 years old. His counterpart nonchalantly tells him: "with 50, a man has already lived his life." Such is the beauty of Yamanaka's work. In one amusing one-liner he expresses several complex ideas.

Whoever said that thoughtful films can't be entertaining?

Sadao Yamanaka – The Pot Worth A Million Ryo (1935)

As mentioned in my last post, the tragedy of Sadao Yamanaka’s fate has often been deplored by cinephiles interested in early Japanese cinema. Drafted to the front in 1938 at the age of 28 as punishment for his political activism, the director, hailed as one of the most promising cinematic talents by his contemporaries, died from a disease contracted on the battle field, leaving behind 12 finished films of which only three have survived today. All three films, The Pot Worth A Million Ryo, Koshiyama Soshun and Humanity And Paper Balloons are generally hailed as masterpieces, and rumors float around that his other films, which we will most likely never see, were even better.

No one can really say if there is any veracity to this claim, but we can appreciate the fact that Yamanaka, along with a small group of other directors and screenwriters such as Hiroshi Inagaki, revitalized the Japanese period film in the 1930’s by updating it in terms of dialogue and themes, but also by ablating some of its gravitas and imbuing it with a healthy dose of humor and adding romantic subplots, which was often criticized as "too American". For our contemporary tastes, however, Yamanaka’s films stand as oddities as well as strokes of genius, a singular and peculiar auteur vision that leaves us wanting for more.

The Pot Worth A Million Ryo, the earliest of Yamanaka’s surviving films, is part caper movie, part comedy, part drama, part jidaigeki. The story concerns, as you might have guessed, a pot that ostensibly is worth a million ryo, although its value is never explained or questioned. Believing it to be worthless, a powerful Lord offered it to his brother Genzaburo as a wedding present. Genzaburo, insulted by the present (the pot does not look particularly valuable), sells it to ragpickers who themselves give it to a little boy who uses it as a container for his goldfish. When the boy's father, a rice merchant, is murdered, Tangekazen, the one-eyed ronin, takes him under his wing, much to his lover Okami's chagrin. One by one, the characters discover the pot’s worth and set out to find it. Genzaburo seems to be the most intent on locating the pot, but he only uses it as an excuse to spend his time outside of the house and far away from his wife, flirting and hanging around a tea house which is run by Okami. When he finally realizes that Tangekazen and the boy have the pot, he doesn’t hand it over to his wife but let’s them keep it so that he can still spend his time at the tea house, pretending to be on the hunt for it.

Such a set-up leaves a lot of room for interpretation and analysis, of course. We can find themes of class distinction, male-female relationships, fate, the deep irony of life – the list goes on. One idea central to the film is that what we want most is oftentimes right in front us, but we ignore it. Obviously, the invaluable pot is the prime example of this leitmotiv. Another one is Tangekazen’s inability to tell the boy that his father was murdered. Not only is the truth right in front of the boy without him being able to grasp it, but the ronin tries to establish an honest relationship with the boy, an undertaking tainted by the heavy secret.

In fact, most if not all characters have something to hide: the vassal of the Emperor who tries to get back the pot from Genzaburo first for free and then for a small amount of money; the rice vendor who tells everyone he has a big shop when in reality he lives in poverty; Genzaburo who pretends to search for the pot when in reality he spends his days flirting with Okami’s assistant. There is a clear divide between what the characters make reality out to be, and what reality really is. Stylistically, Yamanaka expresses this with the transition-by-negation. When Tangekazen first brings the boy home, Okami refuses to feed him. The next shot shows the boy eating. Later, she refuses to buy him bamboo sticks. The next shot shows the boy walking on bamboo sticks. Instances like that can be found throughout the movie.

More than humorous transitions, these vignettes form meaning.  The characters are constantly struggling to come to terms with the reality around them. Genzaburo makes himself out to be a better archer than he really is. Tangekazen exhibits a tuff shell but has a soft heart. The boy has to accept the sudden change of his living environment, and then runs away when Okami and the ronin fight about him. Consequently, the characters discover most truths by proxy. Everyone is told about the pot's worth. They don't discover it themselves. Genzaburo's wife discovers his mischief only after one of her employees point out where he is. Genzaburo shoots an exaggerated amount of arrows at a target but it is Okami's employee who has to reveal to him how many hit the spot: a single one.

In my mind, The Pot Worth A Million Ryo is more concerned with the way we try to make sense of our environment than an oblique meditation on class relations or the irony of life. As humans, we can only grasp but one tiny portion of what life entails. We have to rely on third parties, institutions and art to make sense of it all. One joke, told by the boy, expresses this perfectly: "why do humans have two eyes? Because otherwise the second eyeglass lens would be a waste." We all make sense of our world differently. And sometimes, the most obvious is right in front us without us realizing it.

Yasujiro Shimazu – The Trio's Engagement (1937)

In my last post I lamented the fact that so few of Shimazu's films have survived the trials of time and that even fewer are available to the English speaking public. Not only is our possible fandom squelched from the get go, but for people interested in studying the director's work in-depth it is very frustrating to have only such a small sample size at their disposal.

It is especially frustrating in this instance because The Trio's Engagement is so fundamentally different from Our Neighbor, Miss Yae and my reaction to it was so dissimilar from my first Shimazu experience that I am aching to see more in order to better assess his body of work. But as it is, I am stuck with two very different viewing experiences. Not to say that The Trio's Engagement is horrible. On the contrary, the plot is quite amusing. Three young men find work at a textile company at the same time. One is from the suburbs, one from the countryside, one from the city. All three fall for their boss' daughter and court her. In the end, their supervisor hands them an invitation to the boss' daughter's wedding to a baron.

This admittedly contrived story gives Shimazu the possibility to explore how the men's different social origins define their work ethic and, more importantly, their flirting prowess. The film is light-hearted at it's core and at times outright farcical. For it to be such an obvious construct to explore social differences, The Trio's Engagement is utterly uninterested in going deep into the issue, preferring to be straight up entertaining without indulging in some darker beats, as we have grown accustomed from the Japanese social realist dramas of the time.

This is not a complaint. My complaint lies in the fact that Our Neighbor, Miss Yae impressed me so much more upon my first viewing. I totally got what Shimazu was going for in The Trio's Engagement, but I found myself a lot less engaged in the proceedings than with the other film. Not only was I less interested in the story, but stylistically, Miss Yae wowed me more. The seamless storytelling paired with impeccable directing and editing were the clear imprint of a master filmmaker. But The Trio's Engagement has a lot less to offer visually, rendering it almost interchangeable with any other fare from that period.

And herein lies the problem. By all accounts, Shimazu was indeed a master of the medium. But in viewing only two of his films, I couldn't confirm or deny it. One film is a masterpiece, the other one more average if still enjoyable. Which level of quality is the norm here? Where is Shimazu's handwriting? It's impossible for me to say. It is even more frustrating than in, say, Sadao Yamanaka's case who was considered the best Japanese director of the 1930's. Only three of his films have survived and they are all incredible masterpieces. We know that we miss out on a lot of quality and it's a tragedy that Yamanaka's body of work has mostly vanished. But with Shimazu, I can't even assess what the threshold is. And, to me, that's even worse.