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.

Yasujiro Shimazu - Our Neighbor, Miss Yae (1934)

As we all know, history is written by the winners. When we think of early Japanese cinema, we rightfully think of Ozu, Mizoguchi, and, to a lesser extent, Kurosawa. While a lot of Ozu’s and Mizoguchi’s early films are lost, they produced an impressive body of work after the war which enabled them to profit from the industry’s postwar growth and its discovery by westeners. This is not the case for Yasujiro Shimazu who died in 1945. Considered the first real master of the shomin-geki genre, Shimazu directed well over 100 silent films, which are lost for the most part. And of the films that survived, only a tiny fraction is available with English subtitles.

One can’t help but wonder what this “loser” of history has in fact contributed to Japan’s early cinematic landscape as we perceive it today. Shimazu’s films have a reputation to have been starting blocks for many Japanese film stars and it seems like the director was mainly interested in “slice-of-life” narration and outsider characters (his debut First Steps Ashore involves seamen and prostitutes - no pun intended). Stylistically, it seems like he was a major player in implementing the use of the long lens and, it might be argued, the seamless tracking shot. But one can’t know for sure as our sampling size is simply too small to tell.

Which is frustrating. Just as I am terribly curious what an Ozu period film might look like (the lost The Sword of Penitence), delving deeper into Shimazu’s filmography would surely prove to be fascinating and maybe shed a new light on pre-war Japanese cinema and beyond. I was able to source and see two Shimazu films and am very impressed. History might be written by winners, but exploring the niches is very rewarding.

Our Neighbor, Miss Yae opens with a masterful lateral tracking shot establishing the suburban lower middle-class setting of the film. The shot ends on a pair of brothers playing catch in the back yard. We get a meticulously mounted and edited sequence in which the brothers throw around the baseball, which culminates in the ball flying over to the neighbor's property and smashing one of their windows. I was struck by the amount of coverage Shimazu gets. The editing is less rigorous than Ozu's, but more systematic than Shimizu's. The shots follow each other very deliberately. There are, however, a lot of shots that are never repeated and simply stand as stylistic flourishes. There are also quite a few cut-aways that Ozu would later use systematically but are employed more casually, it seems, by Shimazu.

This opening sequence not only immediately establishes Shimazu as a very considered filmmaker but it also introduces one of the major themes of the movie: characters interactions depend on damage, spoilage, harm. Shortly after the baseball sequence, one of the brothers responsible for the breakage, Keitaro, goes over to the neighbor's house because he locked himself out.  He is given something to eat and spills it on the pillow he is sitting on. At that moment, the neighbor's girl Yea-chan comes home with a friend, and Keitaro tries to hide his mischief. When she wants to offer the pillow to her friend, Keitaro has to admit to his clumsiness and the two girls make fun of him. Next, Yea-chan notices that Keitaro's socks have holes in them. She offers to mend them, but the student is clearly embarrassed. When he finally agrees and takes off his socks, Yea-chan comments on how dirty his feet are. Also, his socks stinks. That's why he didn't want to give them to Yea-chan in the first place.

The effect of this focus on imperfections is that the film feels very lived in. The relations between the characters are instantly believable because Shimazu shows them interacting in everyday situations that root the narrative in a very distinct sense of veracity. Everything in this movie rings true. This is especially valid for Keitaro and Yea-chan's timid courtship. Shimazu doesn't make a big fuss out of it and the two never really get to take their relationship to the next level but it is a delight to observe the two flirting gleefully and having a good time. There is an emotional honesty on display here that is rarely found when it comes to love and relationships in films.

Drama arises when Yea-chan's sister Kyouko comes home because she wants to divorce her husband who has been unfaithful. She and Keitaro are attracted to each other which, in turn, attracts Yea-chan's jealousy. But even here, where Shimazu would have had more than enough material to cook up simple minded melodrama, the director mostly exhibits restraint in the tear-jerker department and contents himself with showing how the character's actions change subtly from the point of Kyouko's appearance.

Yea-chan's father, for example, drinking buddy with Keitaro's father, grows increasingly frustrated and unhappy. In the end, the family moves to Korea. There is also a wonderful sequence in which Yea-chan and Kyouko go out on a double date with Keitaro and his brother, which, you guessed it, entails quite some instances of breakage, skin burns and other missteps that fuel the character interactions. Strictly speaking the night out sequence doesn't add a lot to the already meager plot, but it brings emotional heft to the table and what the actors do with simple looks, and what Shimazu accomplishes with shot composition to underline the characters' standing in relation to each other is remarkable.

A lot more could be said about Our Neighbor, Miss Yae. For instance, I haven't even delved into the film's thematic richness. But I found myself so thoroughly absorbed by the film's deliberate pacing and emotional honesty that I don't even want to get any more academic in discussing it. Our Neighbor, Miss Yae is a delightful and very entertaining film that proves that history's losers have plenty to say and that we would fare well to listen to them more often.