The Scent of Pheasant’s Eye (福壽草, 1935)

The Scent of Pheasant’s Eye: An Episode from the Tales of Flowers (1935)

乙女シリーズ その一 花物語 福壽草

Shōjo shiriizu sono hito - hana monogatari fukujusō

For their 10^th anniversary, Camera Japan Festival in Rotterdam presented a benshi performance with piano accompaniment of the rarely seen silent film The Scent of Pheasant’s Eye: An Episode from the Tales of Flowers (乙女シリーズ その一 花物語 福壽草 / Shōjo shiriizu sono hito-hana monogatari fukujusō, 1935).  The revival of this film occurred in 2008/9 with screenings at the National Film Center in Tokyo (2008), who has a 35mm print of the film, and at the Tokyo International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (2009). Screenings of the film have featured benshi performances by either Midori Sawato or Ichiro Kataoka.  The film’s first international screening is believed to have been at the 2013 Pordenone Silent Film Festival.

The Story

The film is based on a story found in Tales of Flowers (花物語/Hana Monogatari, 1916-1924) by Nobuko Yoshiya (吉屋信子, 1896-1973).  The 52 stories of romantic female friendships in this collection were very popular with female students of the day.  Yoshiya was a prolific and commercially successful writer who is considered a pioneer in lesbian literature.  Her same-sex (dosei-ai) romances were considered acceptable because they depicted lesbianism as a phase on the road to a culturally acceptable heterosexual marriage. 

The “pheasant’s eye” of the title English common name of the flower fukujusō (フクジュソウ / Adonis ramosa).  In the original kanji it means luck (福/fuku), long life (寿/ju), and herb(草/sō).  It belongs to the family of flowers named after mythological figure Adonis.  In East Asia, the fukujusō is a rare yellow flower found mainly in central and northern Japan.  In the context of this story, the flower is a metaphor for the rare beauty of the young female protagonists.  This is made clear by the opening quote from Yoshiya herself: “I dedicate this to the lovely young flowers.”

The Scent of Pheasant’s Eye tells the story of a high school girl called Kaoru Sakamoto who falls in love with her sister-in-law Miyoko.  Her crush actually develops before she has even met her brother’s new wife.  It is an arranged marriage and the "sisters" only meet on the wedding day.  A romantic young girl, Kaoru and her friends are the kind of girls who would be likely to read Nobuko Yoshiya’s novels and fantasize about their ideal romantic partner.  As the friendship blossoms between Kaoru and Miyoko, Kaoru grows jealous of any affection Miyoko shows Kaoru’s brother.  Kaoru’s schoolmates and family act as foils for her moody behaviour.  The drama of any romance is kept light with comedic moments such as the slapstick scene where the two young ladies are being photographed together in nature and the photographer falls into the water.   The physical comedy in the film shows the influence of the American silent greats like Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd.   The lesbian love affair is suggested via the female gaze and evocative mise-en-scène, but no direct dialogue.  Miyoko is equally flirtatious with her husband as she is with his sister, causing the latter to indulge in jealous temper tantrums. 

The Cast

Star billing is given to Naomi Egawa in the role of Kaoru Sakamoto.  She gives a melodramatic performance, putting on a hilarious “jealousy face” every time her sister-in-law shows her brother some affection.  The benshi, Kataoka-san, told me that Kaoru’s “jealousy face” had the audience at the 2009 Tokyo International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in stitches.  Egawa’s film career seems to have just been in the 1930s.  In contrast to Egawa’s melodramatics, Matsue Hisamatsu puts in a more subtle performance as Miyoko, the object of Kaoru’s intense affections.  Hisamatsu’s film career was even briefer than that of Egawa.

The best actors in this film are Akira Kichōji (credited under his real name of Mitsuhiko Okazaki) as Kaoru’s brother Mitsuo, and Buman Kahara (also credited under his real name of Keiji Ōizumi) as her father. Both men went on to have long and varied careers as character actors.   Kichōji’s best known films are Seven Samurai (1954), where he played one of the farmers, and Japan’s Longest Day (1967), while appeared in films such as Shōhei Imamura’s My Second Brother (1960) and Pigs and Battleships (1961).  With his expressive face, Kichōji plays Mitsuo as a very charming man.  However, the show-stealing performance of the film is that of Kahara who opens the film with a hilarious slapstick bicycle ride which would have been right at home in a Buster Keaton film. 

The Cinematography

The real star of Scent of Pheasant’s Eye for me is the extremely innovative cinematography.  The film opens with a POV shot of Kaoru’s father, a town councillor, coming home by bicycle.  I am not sure how they shot it, but it does indeed look as though they mounted the camera on an actual bicycle.  At first, the councillor's form of transportation is unclear, we only know that it is a bumpy ride and get to enjoy, from his perspective, the bemused farmers’ greetings of this well-known local figure.  When we do finally get to see a shot of him, it is played for comic effect.  His way has been blocked and he berates whoever is blocking his way.  When the camera finally widens the shot, we see that he has been telling off a cow rather than a person.  Such visual gags are frequent in the film, giving us a welcome respite from Karou’s sometimes over-the-top melodrama. 

The unusual framings of dialogue and action seem fresh and innovative for the time.  By the mid-1930s in the USA, the classical Hollywood style had largely been standardized and this film would have broken all those rules.  It seems surprising that this film has remained hidden from international scholarship for decades.  The cinematographer is Asakazu Nakai (中井朝一, 1901-88), who went on to become a frequent collaborator of Akira Kurosawa.  The film gave me a thirst to see more of his early work, as I have only seen the films for which his cinematography is renowned, like Stray Dog (1949), Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), High and Low (1963) and Ran (1985).  In total, he made over 130 films in his long and successful career, but his pre-war work has been little seen or written about.

The Director

Not a great deal is known about the director Jirō Kawate (川手二郎, b. 1904 – d. unknown).  He was born in Nagano Prefecture and it is said that his admiration for the renowned film and kabuki actor Bando Tsumasaburo (阪東妻三郎, 1901-53) inspired him to get into the film industry himself.  He first worked as an extra, then as an assistant director, before becoming a director in 1932 for Shinkō Kinema.  

In 1936 he moved to what is now Toho Studios, where he made several films of the genre Kulturfilm (文化映画 / Bunka eiga).  He then returned to his hometown to work in real estate, but nothing is known about his life since he retired from the film industry.

Jirō Kawate Complete Filmography:

1932父をたづねて三千里 / Chichi wo tazunete sanzen-ri

1933時雨ひととき/ Shigure Hito-toki

1933花嫁選手 / Hanayome Senshu

1933結婚快走記 / Kekkon Kaisōki

1934 誕生日/ Tanjyōbi

1934細君ネロ 家庭争議の巻 / Saikun Nero Kateisōgi no Kan

1935福寿草 / Fukujusō

1935釣鐘草 / Tsuriganisō

1935恋の浮島 / Koi no Ukishima

1936乙女橋 / Otomebashi

1936残月の歌 / Kingetsu no uta

The Screening with Benshi and Piano Performances

Ichiro Kataoka shortly before his performance of 'The Scent of Pheasant's Eye: An Episode from the Tales of Flowers'. Featuring Kevin Toma on piano.

A photo posted by Cathy Munroe Hotes (@nishikataeiga) on Sep 26, 2015 at 1:52am PDT

Ichiro Kataoka’s benshi performance was, as always, stellar.  He performed together with the Dutch silent film pianist Kevin Toma.  Toma and Kataoka met for the first time on the day.  They had a chance to talk to each other beforehand and did a sound check together, but they did not rehearse together.  One could liken their improvisational performance to jazz music.  Kataoka played off of the script that he wrote for the film in 2008.  Much of the film’s dialogue was preserved, but I noticed that he added his own interpretation to scenes.  I have seen him perform in Germany with projected subtitles of his script, but this film only had the NFC English subtitles of the title cards (done by the amazing husband and wife team Dean Shimauchi), so non-speakers of Japanese missed out on some of the poetic touches Kataoka brought to the film, such as his description of the changing seasons.  One moment that needed no translation was his hilarious interpretation of a scene in which two deaf old men play Go together but only have one ear trumpet to shout at each other through. 

The pianist, Toma, does not play silent movie standards.  He composes his own music, improvises, and often adds themes from some of his favourite composers.  During this performance he apparently used a melody from a piece by Toru Takemitsu.  The film was consisted of three 35mm reels that were on loan from the NFC but the cinema had only one projector, so Toma had to improvise during the long reel changes.  On the whole it was a lively performance much enjoyed by the audience.  

Incidentally after the performance I discovered that Kataoka is from Nerima (a ward in Tokyo).  This was a funny coincidence, I thought to myself, because Nerima is famous for its daikon radishes, and there is a memorable scene in The Scent of Pheasant’s Eye where Mitsuo flirts with Miyoko as she washes a long row of daikon in the river.  When I asked Kataoka about this, he laughed and told me that The Scent of Pheasant’s Eye was actually shot in Nerima and because of this, he would be doing a benshi performance of the film in Nerima next year.  Keep your eyes open for the event next year Tokyoites – it is worth watching!

Director

Jirō KAWATE 川手二郎

Script

Raizo HAGINO萩野頼三

Jirō KAWATE川手二郎

Nobuko YOSHIYA吉屋信子 (novel)

Camera

Asakazu NAKAI  中井朝一

Cast

Kaoru SAKAMOTO 坂本薫：Naomi EGAWA 江川なほみ

Miyoko (Kaoru’s sister-in-law) 薫の嫂美代子：Matsue HISAMATSU 久松美津枝

Kimiko (Kaoru’s classmate) 薫の学友春日公子：Ginko HANABUSA 花房銀子

Tsuyako (Kaoru’s classmate) 薫の学友阿部ツヤ子：Kimie HAYASHI 林喜美枝

Housemistress 舎監先生：Mineko KOMATSU 小松峰子

Governer’s wife 知事夫人：Junko KIMURA 木村潤子

Mitsuo (Kaoru’s Brother) 薫の兄満雄：Akira Kichōji吉頂寺 晃 credited as Mitsuhiko OKAZAKI 岡崎光彦

Kaoru’s father 薫の父村長さん：Bumon KAHARA 加原 武門 credited as Keiji ŌIZUMI 大泉慶治

Photographer 写真屋：Kan UEDA上田寛

Go-playing old man 碁敵のおじさん：Eirō NIIMI  新見映郎

Old man 人のいいおじさん：Joe Ohara  ジョウ・オハラ

Masako KINOSHITA 木下政子：Ruriko HOSHI 星ルリ子

Schoolmaster 校長：Yōyō KOJIMA 小島洋々

2015 Cathy Munroe Hotes

Olympic Games on Dankichi Island (ダン吉島のオリムピック大会, 1932)

 The most popular heroes of the Fifteen Year’s War (1931-1945) in Japan were boy heroes like the comic strip figure Mābō and the folk tale legend Momotarō.  One of the most loved was Daring Dankichi (冒険ダン吉/Bōken Dankichi) from the comic strip series of the same name by Keizō Shimada (島田啓三, 1900-1973).  The comic appeared in the magazine Boy’s Club (Shōnen Kurabu) and the tales were also edited into a children’s picture book as well as adapted into a series of animated shorts.   

It is believed that the adventures of Dankichi were inspired by the real life tales of the exploits of Koben Mori (森小弁, 1869-1945), the colonist who was one of the early Japanese settlers in Micronesia.  The International Institute for Children’s Literature in Osaka, on its web archive One Hundred Japanese Books for Children (1868-1945) summarizes the plot of Shimada’s picture book Bōken Dankichi thusly:  “In this story, a boy protagonist drifts to a southern island in his dream.  He becomes king of the island.  On one hand, this work tells a story about creating a pastoral utopia on an island, however, on the other hand, it can be read as the embodiment of the idea to conquer Southeast Asia at that time.” (See: IICLO for more details and scans of the book).

The animated short Olympic Games on Dankichi Island (ダン吉島のオリムピック大会/ Dankichi-jima no Orimpikku Taikai, 1932) is one of a handful Dankichi animations extant.  The animator and director are currently unknown.  It seems likely that the film was made to coincide with the Games of the X Olympiad which was held in Los Angeles in 1932.  One of the few Asian nations represented at these games, Japan sent almost as many athletes as Germany – although their team was still only a quarter of the American contingent that year.

The animation sets the Olympic games on Dankichi Island, hosted by the king of the island Dankichi himself.  A variety of animals, both wild and domestic, compete against the native peoples of Dankichi Island, who are portrayed using Jim Crow blackface stereotyping.  The “natives” wear grass skirts to denote the Pacific islands – an area of great strategic concern to the Japanese government at this time.  The spectators and athletes are depicted as being segregated, with the animals on one side and the “natives” on the other in any scene in all crowd scenes.  The races are full of gags and pratfalls, with contestants winning more by accident than design.  Dankichi himself even participates in a log-carrying race and wins because of the misery of another.  The “natives” toss him into the air in celebration at the end of the film.   

The animation is quite rudimentary, made with cut-outs and simple designs.  Following the common practice of the silent era, “close-ups” are done using irises.  The relationship between comic strips and animation can be seen in the use of speech bubbles in addition to inter-titles.  Other common motifs of comics – such a as stars and swirls to denote dizziness – abound. 

The propagandistic nature of this film is made clear from the outset with the first shot being of Japanese flag flying from a tropical tree.  Dankichi is clearly delineated as being “other” than the natives of the island with his “whiteness” and round-faced “kawaii” look.  The native peoples are affable fools, who bumble about good-naturedly in contrast to the direct action of Dankichi.  The not-so-subtle message of the film is that the Japanese (Dankichi) are superior to the Pacific Islanders (Jim Crow stereotypes).   Indoctrinating children into the myth of the cultural superiority of Japan was crucial at this time to the colonial aims of the ruling class.

It is fascinating to see that the Japanese adopted racist black stereotyping from the West.  I have not looked into how far back the use of this imagery goes in Japanese culture, nor do I know from whence it came, but my educated guess would be that they were influenced by American popular culture.  American films, cartoons, and comics were readily available in Tokyo at the time that Shimada created Dankichi.  Minstrel themes were very common in American silent films – in fact, Warner Brothers’ had just had a smash “talkie” hit a few years earlier with The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927) starring Al Jolson doing the blackface routines for which he was famous.  The Jazz Singer (ジャズ・シンガー) was first shown in Japan on 21 August 1930 so there is the possibility that it was seen by Shimada and the animators of this film.  Unfortunately, at this time in U.S. history, Jim Crow imagery was the norm.  To learn more about its pervasiveness, I recommend Ferris State University’s Jim Crow Museum.  Examples of Jim Crow imagery in animation from the 30s and 40s include United Artists’ Censored Eleven and MGM’s Mouse Keeping (1948) starring Tom and Jerry.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2014

Notes:

This  film is silent, with a soundtrack composed and performed by Jōichi Yuasa (湯浅ジョウイチ) for the DVD release.

This film appears on disc 4 of Digital Meme’s box set Japanese Anime Classic Collection.

A discussion of Dankichi in comics and animation used to promote imperialism can be found in Chapter 2 of Michael Baskett’s The Attractive Empire: Transnational Film Culture in Imperial Japan, Honolulu: U of Hawai’i P, 2008. 

Related Posts:

Mabo’s Big Race (1936)

Mabo as Tokichiro Kinoshita (1938)

Little Black Sambo and the Twins (1957)

Momotaro’s Sea Eagle (1942)

Ducktators (1998)

The National Anthem: Kimigayo (国歌 君か代, 1931)

In 2010 Kinokuniya released a DVD dedicated to the works of animation pioneer Noburo Ofuji (大藤信郎, 1990-61).  At 161 minutes, this is only a selected works of this early master of chiyogami and silhouette animation.  Many more of Ofuji’s films have been preserved and the animated short The National Anthem: Kimigayo (国歌 君か代/ Kokka Kimigayo, 1931) appears on Digital Meme’s Japanese Anime Classic Collection with subtitles in English, Chinese, and Korean.  This release of the film includes a soundtrack of Kimigayo performed by Joichi Yuasa.

The national anthem, Kimigayo, is believed to be one of the oldest – and lyrically among the shortest – national anthems still in use today.  At the time at which this animated short was made, it was the national anthem of the Empire of Japan (1867-1947).  As such, the film’s key motif is the chrysanthemum.  The emperor’s throne has been known as the Chrysanthemum Throne for centuries with the Imperial Seal of Japan being a yellow chrysanthemum.  One encounters the chrysanthemum regularly in Japan as it appears on everything from 50 yen coins to traditional cloth.

Ofuji depicts the chrysanthemum using his trademark chiyogami cutout animation style.  As he only had black and white film stock to work with in 1931, the result is not nearly as striking as his postwar films such as Whale (1952) and The Phantom Ship (1956), but his techniques are still very impressive in this film. 

The chrysanthemum chiyogami sequence is followed by a mysterious silhouette animation sequence bathed in mist which depicts the famous dripping spear scene from the Japanese creation myth.  The gods Izanagi and Izanami are said to have stood on a floating bridge of heaven and stirred in the sea with a spear.  The brine that dripped from the spear formed into the first island, followed by the other islands which created the Japanese archipelago (Kuniumi). 

The film appears to have been designed to accompany a performance or a recording of the national anthem. This is made clear by a sequence in the middle of the film where the song`s lyrics appear on the screen character by character in traditional Japanese writing order (up→down, right→left).  At this time, Ofuji was making many animated sing-along films for children including the chiyogami record talkies The Village Festival (1930), which employs a follow-the-bouncing ball technique, and Song of Spring (1931).

After the sing-along section, Ofuji returns to symbolic national symbols and stories.  In another beautiful silhouette animation sequence he depicts part of the legend of the sun goddess Amaterasu who, after a deadly attack on her property and attendants by her brother, hides inside the Ama-no-Iawato (heavenly rock cave) which causes the sun to be blocked out.  Ofuji depicts the moment when Amaterasu is persuaded to leave the cave, returning the sun to the world. 

 This is followed by a sequence depicting symbolism associated with Emperor Jimmu – the legendary first emperor of Japan.  Although the imperial house of Japan has traditionally claimed its descent from Jimmu in about 60 BC, most researchers see his tale as being based more in myth than in historical reality.  According to Shinto belief, Jimmu is said to be a direct descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu.  In addition to the continuing to use the sun motif, this sequence adds symbolism associated with Jimmu: his emblematic long bow and the famous three-legged crow yatagarasu which is said to have been sent from heaven to guide Emperor Jimmu. 

I was struck by the similarity of the dark bird with spread wings to the eagle which is the national symbol of Germany.Of course, Japan and Germany were not yet military allies in 1931 – the National Socialists were not yet even in power; however, film was already being used as a medium to further nationalist ideology in both countries.  During the Meiji period, the government proclaimed 11 February 1966 as the foundation day of Japan and in the 1930s Kigensetsu (Era Day) was celebrated annually as the day that Jimmu ascended the throne.   This was halted for a time when Japan lost the war but since 1966, the date continues to be observed as National Foundation Day but with less fanfare than the overt nationalism of the 1930s and 40s.   According to the Japanese Movie Database, Ofuji’s Kimigayo was released on May 1^st, 1931.  Nationalist propaganda was pretty prevalent in Japan at this time because Japan during the run up to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in September 1931.  

In a much more positive connection to Germany, this is the earliest film by Ofuji that I have seen where the influence of Lotte Reiniger (1899-1981) is obvious.  Reiniger started making silhouette animation shorts in the 1910s and her feature film The Adventures of Prince Achmed was released in 1926.  Her films were shown in Japan in the 1920s inspiring both Ofuji and another early animator Wagoro Arai (1907-94), to try their hand at silhouette animation.  The results are simply astonishing, with their films additionally demonstrating the influence of traditional Japanese traditions of kirigami /kiri-e (paper-cutting art) and silhouette/kage-e (影絵/shadow art).

The National Anthem: Kimigayo was made by Ofuji at his independent studio Chiyogami Eigasha. To learn more about Ofuji, check out my reviews of his other films and my ongoing series about the films awarded the prize named in his honour.          

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2013

Other Ofuji reviews:  Whale (1952), Song of Spring (1931), The Village Festival (1930)

Ofuji on DVD (JP only):

NIPPON NO ART ANIMATION OOFUJI NOBUROU

Animation

Nice to See You (ナイス・トゥ・スィ・ユー, 1975)

Taku Furukawa is best known for his doodling style of drawn animation in films like Phenakistiscope (1975) and Tyo Story (1999) and his much loved contributions to the NHK’s Minna no Uta series.  He has also played with other techniques of making animation such as direct animation (painting directly onto the film stock) in Calligraphiti (1982) and Direct Animation (1987) and he was one of the first indie animators to experiment with early computer animation in Mac the Movie (1985) and Play Jazz (1987).

Nice to See You (ナイス・トゥ・スィ・ユー, 1975) is a silent film that Furukawa made early in his career.  At the beginning, it appears to be an abstract animation that plays with black shapes drawn on a colourful background.  Shaky black squares shot on 16mm dance on a green background, their blotchy edges occasionally blurring into one another.  The black squares then transform into green circles on black and then back again as if the two patterns were fighting against each other for control of the screen.  The movement of the shapes is such that it is hard to determine whether or not the shapes are moving across the screen or the camera is moving across the paper on which it has been drawn.  The patterns shift and move with the ease of a kaleidoscope. 

All of a sudden the shapes get smaller and the camera moves back to reveal that the pattern of dots and squares were not random, but together make up the image of an eye.  The message of the film is clear: how we interpret images – and by extension how we see the world – is determined by our perspective.  The closer we are to something does not necessarily mean that we see it more clearly.  Sometimes we need to step back in order to see the bigger picture.

Nice to See You appears on the Anido DVD Takun Films and can be ordered through their website.

Taku Furukawa re-made Nice to See You in collaboration with video game producer and CG animator Noriyuki Boda  and called it TAKU BODA (2009).

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2011

A Mother Should Be Loved (母を恋はずや, 1934)

In support of the BFI, one of the many companies to lose their stock in the Sony warehouse fire in Enfield, I ordered their dual format edition of Late Autumn / A Mother Should Be Loved last week. A Mother Should Be Loved (母を恋はずや, 1934) is one of the few extant Yasujiro Ozu films that I had not yet seen. Although the first and last of 9 reels that make up the film are missing, enough remains of the film to make it enjoyable viewing.

A Mother Should Be Loved is the type of family melodrama that was common at the time. It tells the story of two school-aged brothers from a wealthy home whose father (Yukichi Iwata) dies suddenly. Their mother Chieko Kajiwara (Mitsuko Yoshiwara), with the support of an old friend of their father’s whom they call Uncle Okazaki (Shinyo Nara) and his wife (Shinobu Aoki).

As the Kajiwara brothers grow up, it becomes apparent to them that their mother tends to favour the elder brother Sadao (Seiichi Kato/Den Obinata) over her younger son Kosaku (Shusei Nomura/Koji Mitsui). It is not until Sadao applies for college and sees his birth certificate for the first time that the family secret is revealed: he is the son of his father’s late first wife and Chieko is only his stepmother. Sadao’s bitterness over this well-intentioned family deception leads to a rift between the two brothers that the plot tries to resolve.

Visually, the film is unlike Ozu’s later style apart from a few favourite motifs such as clothes hanging to dry, factory chimneys, and trains. The house that the family lives in until the father’s death has a European furnishings which more resemble the set of an early Carl Dreyer film than an Ozu film. As the family’s financial circumstances become more difficult they move to a more modest Japanese-style home.

The most fascinating element of A Mother Should Be Loved that I would like to learn more about is Ozu’s use of poster art in the film. The mother is strongly associated with Christian imagery in the film in the form of a poster for the Passion Play Tercentenary in Oberammergau. In 1634, the residents of this small town in Bavaria made a pledge to God that if they were spared from the bubonic plague they would produce a play every ten years depicting the life and death of Jesus. With a few exceptions, the play has been performed every 10 years since. The event advertised in the poster in A Mother Should Be Loved was exploited by the Nazis as part of their greater anti-Semitic agenda and Hitler himself even attended one of the performances. It would be interesting to find out how much Ozu understood about the context of the event itself.  He certainly would not have know about Hitler visiting.  The film was released in May 1934 and Hitler saw the Passion Play in August 1934.  Without all the historical baggage, the cross on the poster merely functions metaphorically to suggest that the mother is adhering to the Christian principle of self-sacrifice.

In contrast, the brothel that Sadao moves into when he runs away from the family home has its walls papered with Hollywood and European movie posters.  The most striking of these is a stylized poster of Joan Crawford in Lewis Milestone's Rain (1932). Here is a screencap from the film alongside the original full colour poster:

This is quite appropriate for a brothel as Joan Crawford plays a prostitute on a path to redemption and a life on the straight and narrow.  Many critics complain that A Mother Should Be Loved is "marred by melodrama" (Donald Richie, Ozu, p. 219), but it is really quite tame in comparison to the over-the-top melodrama of Rain (a film which I coincidentally saw for the first time in Japan - I picked it up in a 500 yen bargain bin several years ago).

Another poster in the brothel is for the G.W. Pabst epic Don Quichotte (The Adventures of Don Quixote, 1933) starring the wildly popular Russian operatic bass Feodor Chaliapin (spellings vary in different European countries).  It was the first sound film adapation of Miguel de Cervantes's novel and three versions were shot - French, English,and German - with Chaliapin singing in all three versions.  I couldn't find the poster used in the film but to get an idea of how it looked in colour I have found a different poster for the film as well as a poster for a theatrical version that uses a similar graphic design:

Alexander Jacoby, who wrote the introductory essay in the BFI booklet, remarks upon the thematic similarities between a A Mother Should Be Loved and the Julien Duvivier classic Poil de carotte (The Read Head, 1932) about a boy who is unloved by his parents.  Like the Passion Play poster, the poster for Poil de carotte is made all the more poignant from the perspective of today because the child star Robert Lynen, in the title role of François Lepic was executed by the Gestapo for his role in the French Resistance in 1944.

The final movie poster that I recognized in A Mother Should Be Loved is for the film Die Tochter des Regiments (The Daughter of the Regiment, 1933).  The film was directed by Carl Lamac and stars his wife (or ex-wife - they divorced sometime in 1933) Anny Ondra (most famous for her role in Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail) and Werner Fuetterer.  This is the most rare of the films referred to in A Mother Should Be Loved.  I do not know if a copy of it is extant, but it most certainly has never been released on DVD.  I would presume that the film is an adaptation of the Donizetti comic opera La fille du régiment (The Daughter of the Regiment, 1840)

A Mother Should Be Loved sparked my interest in learning more about the kinds of films Ozu was watching in the 1920s and 1930s and what he thought about them.  Such a shame that so many of his early films were lost as I am sure they would shed even more light onto craft of this endlessly fascinating film director.  

The Water Magician (滝の白糸, 1933)

Last Friday night at Shinsedai, I had the great pleasure of watching Kenji Mizoguchi’s The Water Magician (aka Cascading White Threads, Taki no Shiraito, 1933) with live accompaniment by the experimental pop band Vowls.

The Water Magician is one of a handful of Mizoguchi’s surviving silent feature films. It is a significant film historically, for it was at a screening of the film in 1972 that Midori Sawato (澤登 翠) first heard the benshi Shunsui Matsuda (松田春翠, 1925-1987) perform. Sawato became his pupil and has worked diligently ever since to keep the benshi (silent film narrator) tradition alive in Japan. The film that was projected at Shinsedai is one that Matsuda Films helped preserve and is available through Digital Meme. 

The Digital Meme DVD includes the choice of two benshi performances with English subtitles. For this performance, there was no benshi, only the subtitles and the emotion and narrative tension were supplied by the musical performance.

The video transfer of The Water Magician runs quite quickly as it was not shot in 24 fps. Silent films were shot at variable speeds of between 16-23 seconds and it is likely that The Water Magician screened at 2 hours originally instead of its current 90 minutes. The Japanese title cards flashed by at a speed too fast to read, but a Japanese audience would rely more heavily on the benshi narration than the title cards for plot information.

The Water Magician tells the story of a 24 year old woman who makes a living performing a water act as part of a travelling ensemble which includes a knife thrower and other amusements. Her age is significant for in Japan it was a commonly held belief that if a woman were not married by the age of 25 she would be considered an old maid or, as it is known colloquially, “Christmas Cake”. Taki no Shiraito is considered the most beautiful woman in the region, but she dreams of one day marrying and having a family.

Fate throws into Shiraito’s path a young coachman by the name of Kinya Murakoshi. Kin-san is only a year older than Shiraito, and has endured much tragedy in his life. When Shiraito hears his story of losing both of his parents and having to quit school in order to earn a meager living, she offers to pay for his education. In return, he promises her that when he has become a great man, of who his samurai family would be proud he will return to make her dream come true.  Fate again intervenes, this time with tragic consequences.

Even at this early stage of his career, Mizoguchi already demonstrates a keen eye for poetic framing. The scenes of Shiraito on the bridge in the moonlight, the key metaphor of the film, are so beautifully rendered that one could image each still framed on the wall of a gallery. The emotion of the film is carried on the faces of Shiraito and Kin-san. For a silent film, it does rely quite heavily on the benshi perfomance, which meant a lot of reading at this screening.

Before the performance, I asked Naomi Hocura of Vowls (limited edition 7" available via website) about how they prepared the accompanying music. Brandon Hocura had composed some themes specifically for the film, and they had cues marked for certain moments when sound effects or particular emotions needed to be brought to the fore. Apart from this skeletal framework, their performance was mainly improvisational. The group played a wide variety of instruments including electric guitar, keyboards, harmonium, drum and a wide variety of other percussive instruments. One of the more innovative effects, used to emphasize the water theme, was a PET bottle half-filled with water with a mic taped to it. During some of the more lyrical passages, Naomi Hocura also sang in a wordless, haunting way that reminded me of Loreena McKennitt.

The music complemented the film and for me emphasized the sensuality of the film --- Takako Irie's performance as Taki no Shiraito in particular. The entire audience seemed mesmerized by the performance which I hope becomes a regular feature at Shinsedai Cinema Festival – the music truly made the silent film very relevant for a young generation of spectators. One sign that the music was effective was the amount of weeping in the audience during the final scenes of the film.

Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi

Written by Kyōka Izumi

Cinematography by Minoru Miki

Starring

Takako Irie as Taki no Shiraito (aka Tomo Mizushima)

Tokihiko Okada as Kinya Murakoshi

Bontarō Miake as Shinzo

Suzuko Taki as Nadeshiko

Ichirō Sugai as Gozo Iwabuchi

3-DVD "Saikaku Ichidai Onna," "Gion Zoshi," 

"Ugetsu Monogatari (Tales of Moonlight and Rain)"

Japanese Movie

3-DVD "Yuki Fujin Ezu (Portrait of Madame Yuki)," 

"Musashino Fujin (The Lady of Musashino)," "Oyusama"

Japanese Movie

Akasen Chitai

Japanese Movie

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2010

Tyo Story (上京物語/Jyōkyō Monogatari , 1999)

Japan-Woche Mainz 2010 gave me the opportunity to watch Taku Furukawa’s Tyo Story (Jyōkyō Monogatari, 1999) for the second time. I first saw it at Nippon Connection in 2008, but as it does not appear on Takun Films, Anido’s DVD of Furukawa’s collected works (1968-1990), one has to rely on festival screenings to see it again.

‘Jyōkyō’ means ‘to go to Tokyo’ and Jyōkyō Monogatari is an animated adaptation of Yasujiro Ozu’s famous Tōkyō Monogatari (Tokyo Story, 1953).   I suspect the English title "Tyo Story" is a play on Toy Story (1995).  John Lasseter was a guest at Hiroshima 1987, and is known to be a huge fan of Japanese animation - and Taku Furukawa is famous for his playful attitude towards animation.

Furukawa employs his familiar doodling style drawn animation, which is influenced by the style of his mentor in the 1960s Yōji Kuri and the New Yorker caricaturist Saul Steinberg, to depict an older couple on the train to Tokyo to visit their children. In addition to being a humorous take on an Ozu story, Furukawa also gives a nod to silent film comedies, but using a rollicking score similar to that played during silent movies and using bilingual (Japanese / English) title cards to impart story information.

During the train ride, Furukawa gives us the back story of the family through the techniques of flashback and montage. The father looks at the wedding photo of his daughter, which triggers a photo montage of her life from birth through to the present. The same is repeated with the couple’s son. The memories are bitter sweet, and Furukawa employs visual gags to elicit laughter from the audience.

Once in Tokyo, the story follows its expected path with the parents finding, as they did in Tokyo Story, that their children’s lives are too busy to fit any quality time in with their parents. The modern distraction is of course the keitai denwa (cell phone). There is an amusing sequence in which every time a keitai goes off, the character whose phone it is buzzes just like their phone. Other modern touches include the grandsons playing violent computer games and ignoring their grandparents, and instead of making a home cooked meal their daughter-in-law orders in pizza. 

Tokyo is shown to be a much noisier place than the seaside town where the couple live. The noise culprits include traffic, people, crows, and even a noisy jidouhanbaiki (vending machine) that calls out ‘arigatou gozaimasu’ after every transaction. For a laugh, Furukawa even has the Roadrunner call out ‘meep meep’ before being chased along the overpass by Wile E. Coyote.  Just as in Tokyo Story, the grandparents eventually are left to fend for themselves going on a tour of Tokyo. But then being modern grandparents they also go bowling, rock it out at a Rolling Stones concert (Furukawa’s exaggerated caricatures of Keith Richards and Mick Jagger are particularly amusing), and go to Tokyo Disneyland.

On the surface, Furukawa’s film appears to be a tongue-in-cheek critique of the superficiality of modern urban lifestyles. Yet, unlike Tokyo Story, the story has a surprise twist at the end which is very amusing.

Japan-Woche Mainz 2010 is also screening Furukawa's recent work Paper Film (image above) on Wednesday evening, but unfortunately  I will not be able to attend due to scheduling conflicts. 

Taku Furukawa (古川タク, b. 1941) is one of the best known independent animators in Japan and has worked as an experimental animator, teacher, and mentor for over 40 years. His films range from an intricate tribute to the 19th century animation device the Phenakistiscope to early computer animations on the Mac, to humorous narrative shorts like his contribution to Tokyo Loop in 2006. Over the years he has contributed numerous animated shorts to the NHK’s Minna no Uta series. He won the Special Grand Jury Prize at Annecy in 1975 for Odorokiban and his manga The Takun Humor won the Bungeishunjū Manga Award for 1978. He lectures regularly at universities and art schools.

Filmography

1964 Zuraw (16mm, time)
1966 Red Dragonfly (Aka tombo, 35mm, time)
1968 Oxed-Man (Gozu, 16mm, 4‘)
1970 New York Trip (16mm, 5‘)
1972 Head Spoon (16mm, 5’)
1975 Nice To See You (silent, 3’)
1975 Beautiful Planet (Utsukushii Hoshi, 35mm, 5’)
1875 Phenakistiscope (Odorokiban, 35mm, 5’)
1977 Coffee Break (35mm, 3’)
1978 Motion Lumine (Mōshon Rumine, 16mm, 3‘)
1979 Comics (Komikkusu, 16mm, 3’)
1980 Speed (35mm, 5’)
1980 Sleepy (35mm, 6’)
1982 Calligraphiti (Karigurafitii, 35mm, 5‘)
1983 Portrait (16mm, 5‘)
1985 The Bird (Tori, 16mm, 3’)
1985 Mac the Movie (16mm, 3’)
1987 Play Jazz (16mm, 5’)
1987 Direct Animation (35mm, 1’)
1990 TarZAN (35mm, 6’)
1992 From Heart to Heart (Ishidenshin, B-cam SP, 5’)
1999 Tyo Story (Jyōkyō Monogatari, 35mm, 13 min.)
2003 Winter Days, part 31 (Fuyo no hi, collaboration, 40’)
2006 Hashimoto (contribution to Tokyo Loop, 2’57”)
2009 Takuboda (video, 3’, Noriyuki Boda adaptation of a Furukawa film)
2010 Paper Work

Tokyo Loop

Animation

"Tokyo Loop" Soundtrack

Animation Soundtrack

© Catherine Munroe Hotes 2010