Wakao Ayako: Elegant Trickster

Wakao Ayako

Wakao Ayako was born in Tokyo in 1933. Trained at Daiei, she got her first role in 1952 at the age of eighteen. Noted for her beauty, she went on to play for Mizoguchi in A Geisha and his last film, Street of Shame. By the late 1950s, the breadth of her talent was already apparent, from the youth film Girl Under Blue Sky by Masumura Yasuzo to Floating Weeds by Ozu Yasujiro. In the 1960s, she became the favorite actress of director Masumura Yasuzo, appearing in 20 of his films. In addition to her many collaborations with Masumura, she also played in films by Ichikawa Kon and Kawashima Yuzo.

A lighter movie in which Wakao Ayako acted is A Wife's Testament (1960), a triptych made by three directors, Masumura Yasuzo (with Wakao Ayako), Ichikawa Kon (with Kyo Machiko) and Yoshimura Kozaburo (with Yamamoto Fujiko). Wakao Ayako plays a clever young woman who has affairs with several men to get money from them to invest in the stock market, but her real goal is to marry the son of a company owner.

Two well-known genre films in which Wakao Ayako played are Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo, the 20th entry in a series of films featuring the blind swordsman Zatoichi, directed by Okamoto Kihachi, and Tora-san's Shattered Romance the sixth entry in the popular, long-running Otoko wa Tsurai yo series by Yamada Yoji.

[Wakao Ayako]

Wakao married the architect Kurokawa Kisho in 1983. They had no children. In 2007, both ran unsuccessful campaigns for seats in the upper house of the Japanese Diet before Kurokawa died in October of that year.

Wakao Ayako appeared in nearly 160 films between 1952 and 19871.

1. A Wife Confesses, with Masumura Yasuzo (1961)

A film noir and psychological thriller with a wondrously ambiguous female protagonist, played by Wakao Ayako, who is both a sympathetic victim and a sophisticated femme fatale. Takigawa Ayako, a young widow, is on trial for the murder of her husband in a mountaineering accident. If she is acquitted, she will receive five million yen from his life insurance. Her version of the facts: the fall that killed her abusive husband nearly killed her and his student Koda; Ayako had no choice but to cut the rope while they were dangling from the rock face. Did the widow kill her husband (who was often abusive) so that she and young Koda (whom she hopes to make her lover) could enjoy the money from the insurance policy? The courtroom drama is interspersed with flashbacks and scenes from outside the courtroom, making for a very lively movie - with a sad ending.

2. Elegant Beast, with Kawashima Yuzo (1962) 

Shitoyakana kedamono ("Elegant Beast") is a dark satire that turns Ozu on his head. A greedy, materialistic family of four (parents, grown son and daughter) lives together in a small two-room apartment, but they are completely supported by the dubious activities of the children. Instead of getting a job himself, Maeda Tokizo had his daughter Tomoko seduce the famous novelist Yoshizawa Shuntaro, from whom the family immediately began borrowing money, with no intention of ever paying it back. Their apartment was actually bought by the famous writer as a love nest for his trysts with the daughter, but she moved in with the family, and now the writer has to take her to hotels, and no matter how he tries, he can't get the family out. Thanks to Yoshizawa's recommendation, son Minoru gets a job with talent agent Katori Ichiro, from whom he immediately starts embezzling. His boss wants the money back to hide his own dubious financial adventures from his clients and the tax collector - but his books are so irregular that there is no chance of him going to the authorities. As Katori climbs the stairs to the apartment at the beginning of the film, the family hastily hides all their valuable possessions out of sight, because it doesn't hurt to look poor - a poverty they knew in the past and still fear so much that they have become con artists. But even among swindlers, there is always someone who will outwit you. This is the "Beautiful Beast", Mitani Yukie, the chic but also selfish and calculating bookkeeper of the talent agency, played in a great role by Wakao Ayako. Minoru is in love with her and has given her at least half of the money he embezzled. But Minoru is not the only one who has put money in her pocket. Katori, his accountant and even the tax collector have fallen for Yukie's charms. Yukie now quits her bookkeeping job (and says sayonara to all her lovers) because she has saved enough money to buy a love hotel - an investment in her future, as she has a young son and knows that it would be difficult to get married as a single mother (and she is not really interested in getting married either). She is the perfect femme fatale because she doesn't look like one! The Maedas are truly a viper's nest, a symbol of the materialistic society of the early 1960s. Shot entirely in the family's apartment, with many interesting camera angles (like Rear Window). The script was written by Shindo Kaneto. A masterpiece.

3. Diary of a Mad Old Man, with Kimura Keigo (1962)

The Diary of a Mad Old Man is one of Tanizaki Junichiro's most delicious books - and it has been faithfully adapted for the screen by Kimura Keigo. It is the fictional diary of Tokusuke, a 77-year-old man whose health is rapidly failing. Tokusuke suffers from high blood pressure (like Tanizaki himself did), and seems to be the author's alter ego in other ways as well. His main motivation for clinging to life is his secret erotic obsession with Satsuko, his young daughter-in-law, a former chorus girl with beautiful legs (played by Wakao Ayako). She is frivolous, greedy and plays with the old man like a cat with a mouse. But he enjoys their spicy games and favors her with expensive gifts over his wife and daughters - who are the only ones who really care about his health.

4. Manji, with Masumura Yasuzo (1963)

Manji by Masumura Yasuzo is based on the novel of the same name by Tanizaki Junichiro (translated into English as "Quicksand"). It is an erotic melodrama starring Kishida Kyoko as a bored middle-aged housewife who falls obsessively in love with a young fashion model (Wakao Ayako). It is a story of uncontrolled passion and desire, but also of cunning manipulation. Things finally get out of hand, especially when the women's two partners (a fiancé and a husband) join the foursome and the love affair culminates in a suicide pact. Excellent screenplay by Shindo Kaneto. Remade several times (also as a "pink movie"), but this is by far the best version, true to the great novel. 

5. Seisaku's Wife, with Masumura Yasuzo (1965)

A story set on the eve of and during the Russo-Japanese War, when narrow-minded nationalism is boiling over. People are even happy if their sons can sacrifice themselves for the country. To support her ailing father and her poor family, Okane, a beautiful young woman (Wakao Ayako), is forced to become the mistress of a much older, wealthy man. After the sudden death of her husband and shortly after that, also her father, she returns with her mother to their ancestral village in the mountains. The locals despise them because of Okane's past and treat them as outcasts, and Okane meets the villagers with arrogance and haughty behavior. But one day, after her mother's death, Okane meets Seisaku, the "model young man" of the village, returning from his army service. While she, as a disreputable beauty, is the shame of the village, he, as an honorable patriot, is the pride of his community. Strangely enough, they begin a tumultuous love affair (their passionate sexual relationship is emphasized throughout the film). They marry against the opposition of the entire village, but then Seisaku has to go to war against the Russians in Manchuria - a "meat grinder" in which at least 80,000 young men were killed on the Japanese side. When he is wounded, he is allowed to return briefly to his village and his wife, but soon has to leave again. Desperate to keep her husband with her, Okane takes a shocking, violent measure... A story of how love can drive people to extremes to hold on to their loved ones and keep them safe, and a condemnation of militarism and small-town bigotry. Masumura's favorite actress Wakao Ayako gives one of her best performances ever: she won the Blue Ribbon Award for Best Actress for this role.

6. Irezumi ("Tattoo"), by Masumura Yasuzo (1966)

Otsuya, the daughter of a wealthy pawnbroker, tricks her weak-willed lover into eloping with her. But things go wrong and she is kidnapped and sold to a geisha house. There she catches the eye of a tattoo master who uses her body as a living canvas for his art: he engraves a monstrous spider tattoo on her back. As if under the unseen influence of a strange force, Otsuya becomes increasingly evil as she excels at the trade she has been forced into, eventually consuming the lives of the men she holds in her thrall. Did the tattoo artist turn her into the creature she has become, or did he actually unleash the beast within? Adapted by Kaneto Shindo from the acclaimed 1910 short story by Tanizaki.

7. Red Angel, with Masumura Yasuzo (1966)

The Red Angel by Masumura Yasuzo is a brutal portrayal of individuals who cling to their humanity while enduring the horrors of war. Set in 1939, the film tells the story of Nishi Sakura (Wakao Ayako), a young angelic nurse working in a field hospital during Japan's war with China. The hospital is inundated with wounded men, although conditions are so primitive that amputation is the only treatment available. It is like a gruesome version of MASH. Nishi is raped by her patients and when she complains, she is sent to the front lines. Amidst the carnage, she falls in love with a morphine-addicted surgeon (Ashida Shinsuke), who in turn becomes dependent on her despite  his impotence. She also provides sexual comfort to a soldier whose arms have both been amputated - but he eventually commits suicide, demonstrating the futility of it all. Despite the insanity of the war raging around her, Nishi does her best to heal both the physical and emotional wounds of those she encounters. Wakao Ayako gives a performance of extraordinary focus and intensity.

8. The Doctor's Wife, with Masumura Yasuzo (1967)

The Doctor's Wife is based on the novel of the same name by Ariyoshi Sawako about Hanaoka Seishu, the first doctor in the world to operate on a patient under general anesthesia in 1804 (played by Ichikawa Raizo), using techniques based on both Dutch and Chinese medicine. The setting is the Kinokawa River in Wakayama Prefecture. The main characters are the doctor's wife Kae (Wakao Ayako) and his mother Otsugi (Takamine Hideko). Kae wants to marry into the doctor's family because she was impressed by her mother-in-law's beauty when she saw her as a child. During the wedding ceremony Seishu is still studying in Kyoto, so Otsugi takes his place - there is even a hint of lesbianism. But this changes after Seishu's return. Soon both women are competing for the doctor's attention - each wants to be the most important woman for Seishu. The climax comes when they both offer themselves as guinea pigs for the anesthetic Seishu is developing based on a poisonous plant. It is a risky formula, and Seishu kills many cats while trying to adjust the powder to the correct proportions. Masumura shows how difficult it is to be a woman in a system that revolves around men. Takamine Hideko is restrained as the mother-in-law, and conducts herself masterfully. Wakao Ayako shows a gradual character development, which is the best thing in the movie. In A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors, Alexander Jacoby considers The Doctor's Wife to be Masumura's best film, approaching a level of genuine tragedy and achieving a depth rare in this director's work (p. 164). It is also fascinating to see those two great actresses in the same film. This film completes a remarkable quintet that Masumura Yasuzo made with Wakao Ayako: Manji, Seisaku's Wife, Irezumi, Red Angel and The Doctor's Wife. All of these movies except Red Angel were written by Shindo Kaneto. A Wife Confesses is emotionally similar to these, but was made several years earlier.

 

 

Kyo Machiko - Sensual Beauty

Kyo Machiko

Born in Osaka, Kyo Machiko (real name Yano Motoko, 1924-2019) was raised by her mother and grandmother. She adopted Kyo Machiko as her stage name when she entered the Osaka Shochiku Kagekidan in 1936 at the age of 12. She wanted to become a dancer and made her first movie appearance in 1944. Her meeting with producer Nagata Masaichi was decisive: when he became president of Daiei in 1947, he took her away from Shochiku and made her his protégé. Nagata's efforts to make Kyo Machiko a star at Daiei were considerable, and the young woman took part in all the company's major projects, but as her films show, she had real talent first and foremost.

[Kyo Machiko]

In the 1950s, she collaborated with some of the most important directors in the history of Japanese cinema, appearing in films that helped introduce Japanese cinema to the West, most notably Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950) and Mizoguchi's Ugetsu (1953). In this film, the female ghost portrayed by Kyo Machiko, a typical Noh theater character, wears an authentic costume and is accompanied by the musical instruments typical of this theater genre. But according to film critic Sato Tadao, the actress, a former revue dancer, brings a movement and sensuality to the dance not associated with traditional theater.

Other Daiei productions in which Kyo Machiko starred were Kinugasa's Gate of Hell (1953), Ichikawa's Odd Obsession (1959), and Ozu's Floating Weeds (1959). Many famous Japanese actresses are associated with a particular director (such as Hara Setsuko with Ozu, Tanaka Kinuyo with Mizoguchi, and Takamine Hideko with Naruse): Kyo Machiko often collaborated with Yoshimura Kozaburo, in films such as Clothes of Deception (1951), The Tale of Genji (1951), Night Butterflies (1957), The Naked Face of Night (1958), and Design for Dying (Onna no Kunsho, 1961). Unfortunately, these films were not as artistic as those made by the other three actresses with their favorite directors and have been largely forgotten.

Kyo Machiko's only role in a non-Japanese film was as Lotus Blossom, the young geisha in The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956), opposite Marlon Brando and Glenn Ford, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination. Although the film was well received in its day, it is one in a long list of stereotypes of Asian women as "geisha girls" or "china dolls," depicting them as "passive and sexually compliant" or as outright prostitutes. Brando's casting as an Okinawan villager has been cited as an example of yellowface casting.

In 1966 she appeared in "The Face of Another" by Teshigahara Hiroshi, as the wife of the protagonist, Nakadai Tatsuya, an engineer whose face is severely burnt in a work-related accident and who is fitted with a lifelike mask (but different from his original face). The scientist who has developed the mask cautions him that it may change his behavior and personality and even make him loose his sense of morality. To test the mask, the man proceeds to seduce his estranged wife, which is surprisingly easy - and indeed, she confesses she knew all along who he was.

Kyo's last cinema appearance was in the 1984 film Kesho, directed by Kazuo Ikehiro. Her penultimate performance had been in 1976 in the 18th entry in the popular, long-running Otoko wa Tsurai yo series, Tora's Pure Love as Tora-san's "madonna."

In 2017, her entire career was recognized with an award at the 40th edition of the Japan Academy Prize. After retiring from film, she moved back to Osaka, where she lived until her death.

Between 1944 and 1984, Kyo Machiko appeared in over 100 films. Kyo Machiko never married.

1. Rashomon, with Kurosawa Akira (1950)

When traveling through a forest near Kyoto, a noblewomen (Kyo Machiko) was raped, her samurai husband (Mori Masayuki) killed, and a robber named Tajomaru (Mifune Toshiro) arrested for the crime. Rashomon relates through flashbacks four versions of the crime, as told at the inquest by Tajomaru, the woman, the dead samurai (a medium is used to let his spirit speak) and a woodcutter (Shimura Takashi), who discovered the crime. It is impossible to reconcile the four narratives and the film leaves the viewer with the ambiguity of the situation. There simply is no way of knowing who is telling the truth. At the basis of this problem is human pride, or in Japanese cultural terms, "Face," which also encompasses a person's identity. As Kurosawa remarked: "Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing."

In his autobiography Something Like an Autobiography, Kurosawa writes how impressed he was by Kyo Machiko's dedication during the rehearsals. "She came in to where I was still sleeping in the morning and sat down with the script in her hand. 'Please teach me what to do,' she requested, and I lay amazed." (Vintage Books 1983, p. 183).

And in Waiting on the Weather, Kurosawa's script assistant Nogami Teruyo writes about the scene in which the bandit grabs Kyo Machiko and kisses her against her will. The bandit, Mifune, appeared quite tense when the time came to plant his lips on hers, and he first said "Please forgive me" with an air of embarrassment. When it was time to record the reaction of Kyo Machiko, the camera had to capture her facial expressions from above, and Kurosawa kept saying, "Kyo-chan, open your eyes, keep them open wide!" As the pair embraced, the camera also registered the sweaty shoulders of Mifune, but that was not from anxiety, but because the make-up crew had splashed him with water to make his clothes look sweaty. (Stone Bridge Press 2006, p. 80).

See my detailed discussion of Rashomon.

2. Older Brother, Younger Sister, with Naruse Mikio (1953)

The second movie Toho director Naruse made for Daiei, and the only one in which he worked with Daiei star actress Kyo Machiko. It is a family drama set in a poor village outside Tokyo, along the Tama River. The father is unemployed and an alcoholic, the mother supports the family by running a small snack shop. The oldest brother Inokichi (Mori Masayuki) is a rough construction worker, prone to violence. The two sisters, Mon (Kyo Machiko) and San (Kuga Yoshiko), live in Tokyo - the movie consists of three visits to their family in the village. The decent and dutiful San is a student nurse (Mon finances her studies), Mon is something like a bar hostess and later possibly even a prostitute. At the beginning of the movie, Mon comes home pregnant, which leads to anger from her brother and ostracism in the village - San loses her fiancé because of it. Mon is soon chased back to Tokyo by her older brother. Inokichi's violence is partly caused by his incestuous feelings towards Mon. It is said that they have "always been closer than brother and sister". Mon's baby is stillborn, but later her boyfriend - a shy student from Tokyo - visits her in the village to apologize and even offer some money. But the rowdy Inokichi beats him almost to death. In the end, we see the sisters returning to Tokyo together, the only good people in a rotten family. This is an uncharacteristically brutal movie for Naruse, in which emotional tensions explode into physical violence.  This is not a perfect movie - not only because of its violence, but especially because of the bad overacting of Mori Masayuki as the brother and Yamamoto Reizaburo as the father. Moreover, Mori is much too old for his role as Mon's brother. But Kyo Machiko gives a great performance and dominates the movie despite her limited screen time. She radiates a great sensuality without doing anything explicitly "sexy".

3. Gate of Hell, with Kinugasa Teinosuke (1953)

Daiei produced Kinugasa Teinosuke's Gate of Hell, the first color film from Japan to be shown abroad, which won both an honorary Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Costume Design, as well as the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Shot in Eastmancolor, which was thought to have fresher colors than Japanese color film, the film does indeed revel in color. Daiei president Nagata hit the jackpot with this lavish production, borrowing several elements from Rashomon: the period setting (12th century), the "gate" in the film's title, an original story by Akutagawa Ryunosuke, and Kyo Machiko as the female lead. A samurai called Morito (Hasegawa Kazuo) has fallen in love with a lady of the palace, Kesa (Kyo Machiko),  and, although she is already married, continues to pursue her. Eventually, she pretends to agree to the plan of her stalker: he will sneak into her house at night to kill her husband - but she changes places with her husband and quietly sacrifices herself for his life. This is a better movie than I remembered - but I don't like the acting of Hasegawa Kazuo as Morito (although he was a famous period actor - his campy acting fit the movie style in An Actor's Revenge by Ichikawa Kon) - it's overdone and when he expresses emotion, he just has a mean baby face. Kyo Machiko is tormented by his attentions, but remains dignified - unfortunately, the thick make-up she wears in this historical role sometimes makes it difficult to read her facial expressions.

4. Princess Yang Kwei Fei, with Mizoguchi Kenji (1955)

Yokihi ("The Princess Yang Kwei-fei") is Mizoguchi's first color film, the famous story about the concubine of an 8th century Chinese emperor (see my article about the Chinese play Rain on the Wutong Tree). In Mizoguchi's version, Yang Kwei-fei sacrifices her own life to save the emperor. She loves him so much that she lives on after her execution, speaking to him with her loving ghostly voice. Shot on location in Hong Kong as Nagata of Daiei was targeting the Southeast Asian market. Beautiful cinematography by Sugiyama Kohei, who also shot Gate of Hell. There is not a single outburst of passion from Kyo Machiko during the whole movie, yet her portrayal of the princess is full of feeling (what also helps is that her make-up is less heavy than in Gate of Hell) - and she carries the whole movie. Unfortunately most other characters remain one-dimensional and the whole movie is too static, and not really worthy of Mizoguchi. A good example of the film's flatness is the way Mizoguchi casts Mori Masayuki as the Tang Emperor, making him a total and despicable weakling. This is certainly not historically correct, but also rather boring to watch.

5. Street of Shame with Mizoguchi Kenji (1956)

Akasen Chitai ("The Red Light District" aka "Street of Shame") by Mizoguchi Kenji is a sober tale of a brothel called "Dreamland" in Tokyo's Yoshiwara red-light district, full of women whose dreams are constantly shattered by the socio-economic realities surrounding them in a male-dominated world. The film became Mizoguchi's swan song (he died of leukemia this year at the age of 58); It contains excellent character portrayals, and there are fine performances by amongst others Wakao Ayako (who, as in her earlier films for Daiei, uses her charms to fleece her men) and Kogure Michiko (a middle-aged woman suffering from tuberculosis whose unemployed husband is a spineless, weak-willed man), but Kyo Machiko's Mickey steals the show - in tight sweaters and tight pants, she fits the image of a brash and flashy hooker. When her father comes to see her, she says, "Try holding me - I am a very sensual woman" - shocking him out of his mind! She is the most cynical about her work and detests marriage, which she says is just selling yourself by the month rather than by the hour. She also has no intention of leaving the business, even if the house is closed. This film was made while the Japanese National Diet was debating an anti-prostitution law (which was finally passed shortly after the film's release - Japan wanted to look "clean" because of the upcoming Olympics). Akasen Chitai takes an ambiguous position: in the society of the time, there is no work for many of these women outside of prostitution. The film becomes too preachy in the scenes where this law is explicitly criticized and this is not topnotch Mizoguchi. Awarded a special mention at the 17th Venice Film Festival. By the way, the electronic sounds that composer Mayuzumi Toshiro passes off as film music are like the yowling of cats - a blot on this movie.

6. Odd Obsession, with Ichikawa Kon (1959)

Kagi ("Odd Obsession aka The Key") by Ichikawa Kon is based on the novel of the same name by Tanizaki Junichiro. Ichikawa rather changes Tanizaki's plot (including the finale), but also the characters, making them more vicious. An elderly professor and art connoisseur (Nakamura Ganjiro), who suffers from high blood pressure, decides to spice up his ailing marriage to his much younger wife (Kyo Machiko) with a series of voyeuristic intrigues, hoping to cure his impotence. He invites his doctor, who is also his daughter's fiancé, to dinner and gets his wife drunk - when she falls asleep in the bathtub, the fiancé has to help carry her to bed. While his wife sleeps, the professor secretly takes photos of her naked body, which he asks the fiancé to develop for him. While the daughter is rather cool to her fiancé, the wife falls in love with him and plays along with her voyeuristic husband, giving him a taste of his own medicine. In the end, she kills him by overexciting him. But a shocking fate awaits these three ugly and selfish people in the form of the old maid who has been watching everything in this decadent household. Luminous photography by Miyagawa Kazuo in deep, soothing browns and greens and great performances by Nakamura and Kyo as the perverse couple (Kyo's kimono and traditional make-up with painted eyebrows indicate her conservatism). Also interesting is a young Nakadai Tatsuya as the daughter's fiancé (and the wife's lover at the same time). Won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1960. I am rather surprised at the low ratings this film receives by various critics at IMDB. One even writes "never fully aroused me," without apparently understanding that this is a film about sexual obsession as a theme, not a porno movie (those were in a great bunch made afterward by other directors). The professor may suffer from erotic obsessions (about his own wife, who was very conservative and never showed her body to her husband, not some strange woman), but the wife is indeed looking for a younger man, and the doctor/daughter's fiance is motivated by financial greed - his wish to marry either the daughter or the mother disappears as snow for the sun when he realizes after the professor's death that there is not a yen left - all the art treasures which decorated the house were given on loan by dealers who wanted the expert opinion of the professor. This film is a delicious and morbid black comedy, one of the finest films based on a novel by Tanizaki - a true masterwork.

Read more about Ichikawa Kon in my blog article.

7. Floating Weeds, with Ozu Yasujiro (1959)

In Ozu Yasujiro's Ukigusa ("Floating Weeds"), a traveling Kabuki troupe visits a seaside village for a performance. A remake of Ozu's 1934 film A Story of Floating Weeds, it is beautifully photographed in color by Daiei cinematographer Miyagawa. Komajuro (Nakamura Ganjiro), the troupe's leading man, sneaks away to visit Oyoshi (Sugimura Haruko), a former lover who runs a sake bar. She has an adult son, Kiyoshi (Kawaguchi Hiroshi), fathered many years ago by Komajuro, who has hidden his identity from the boy. When Sumiko, the leading actress of the troupe and Komajiro's lover (Kyo Machiko), finds out about this relationship, she becomes very jealous and urges the young actress of the troupe, Kayo (Wakao Ayako), to seduce Kiyoshi. This succeeds so well that both young people fall in love with each other. This makes Komajuro very angry - the patriarch, who seemed so relaxed at first, even starts to use violence against Sumiko and Kayo -, but he can't exercise parental authority over Kiyoshi since he never told his son that he is his father - it is now too late to be accepted. Moreover, the troupe breaks up because Kumajiro has stayed too long in the village for sentimental reasons, where only a handful of very old and very young people also come to see their kabuki. Despite the jealous nature of her character in this movie, Kyo Machiko manages to radiate beauty and sensuality - she is the most interesting character and gets the best scenes. Made in the same year as Odd Obsession, this movie brought Kyo Machiko and Nakamura Ganjiro together again - but I have to say that I didn't like this Ozu movie very much - it is too melodramatic - and much prefer a movie like Odd Obsession (Ichikawa is an underrated director).


 

Takamine Hideko - A Strong-willed Woman

Takamine Hideko

Hakodate-born Takamine Hideko (born Hirayama Hideko; 1924-2010) had a film career that spanned five decades. She was one of the most popular Japanese film stars, along with her contemporaries Tanaka Kinuyo and Hara Setsuko. While Tanaka was especially associated with director Mizoguchi and Hara with Ozu, Takamine Hideko is most associated with Mikio Naruse, who cast her in seventeen films.

[Takamine Hideko]

Takamine first appeared in front of the camera at the age of five, thanks to her aunt, who was the wife of a benshi, and who raised her after the early death of her mother. The film's success led to a long-term engagement, and over the next few years Takamine Hideko appeared in over a hundred films, becoming the most popular child actress - the Japanese equivalent of Shirley Temple (most of these early films have been lost).

After leaving school in 1937, she was signed up by the Toho film studio. Her collaboration with director Yamamoto Kajiro brought her first critical successes: both her role as a poor girl fighting for a better life in Tsuzurikata kyoshitsu and her portrayal of a farmer's daughter who lovingly raises a horse and eventually has to sell it to the army in Uma (Horse) earned her praise. Her popularity with the public is also reflected in the comedy Hideko no shasho-san (Hideko, the Bus Conductor), which bears her name in its title. This was her first collaboration with Naruse.

During World War II she was a pin-up girl for Japanese soldiers and performed as a singer in nightclubs. A strike at Toho caused her to leave the studio in 1946 and sign with Shintoho. In 1949 she sang the theme song for the movie Tokyo Folies, which sold several hundred thousand copies. In 1950, she played the youngest of the four Makioka sisters in Yutaka Abe's Sasameyuki, based on Tanizaki's novel of the same name; through this, she met Tanizaki and his wife and remained a friend of the couple until the author's death.

In 1950 she also starred with Tanaka Kinuyo in Ozu's The Munekata Sisters, but for various reasons this was not a typical Ozu film - I also don't like the role she has to play, where she sometimes has to speak with a fat voice like "the infamous North Korean news reader." Ozu's usual stylistic quirks, like the repetition of dialog fragments, simply don't work here, but become one of the elements that make the whole movie look strangely artificial.

Takamine's tenure with Shintoho ended in 1950. From then on, she was no longer tied to a studio, but pursued acting as a freelancer. The following twenty years represent the most artistically significant phase of her career. Among the films she made during this period, those with Naruse and Kinoshita stand out.

Among the important works she made with Kinoshita were the first Japanese color film Carmen Returns Home, in which she demonstrated her comedic talent as a stripper, its sequel Carmen's Pure Love, and the anti-militarist drama Twenty-Four Eyes, in which she plays a dedicated teacher who follows the lives of her twelve students from the early Showa period to the postwar era. She also starred in Immortal Love (1961), in which she played the lead role of a raped woman who marries her assailant in order to take revenge despite her boyfriend's objections. Finally, we should mention The River Fuefuki (1960), a period film that presents a pessimistic version of the samurai myth. Takamine appeared in a total of 9 films by Kinoshita.

She appeared in seventeen films for Naruse Mikio, mostly portraying the type of strong-willed, hard-working woman who finds herself at the bottom of society or is subjugated by the family system. The first of these was Lightning (1952), in which she plays one of the daughters of a poor, pathetic mother who has four children, three daughters and a son, by four different men - not surprisingly, it is a movie full of tensions, though like in Ozu they remain under the surface. In this early film, Naruse is still learning how to use Takamine's remarkable skills, just as she is learning how to play complex adults, but there are already many signs of the greatness to come.

That greatness was achieved in Drifting Clouds (1955), which was showered with awards, including the Kinema Junpo Award for Best Actress (Takamine), Best Actor (Mori Masayuki), Best Director (Naruse), and Best Picture! Takamine Hideko plays a sensitive woman in the turmoil of post-war Japan who clings hopelessly to a married, unfaithful man she met during the war in Indochina and destroys herself in the process. She is humiliated by the way the men in her life who treat her solely as a sexual object. In his journals, Ozu called this movie "a true masterpiece."

Another of Takamine's greatest films with Naruse followed in 1960, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, which chronicles a period in the life of a Tokyo bar hostess who ekes out a living and dreams of opening her own business despite the constant challenges of money and men. The film is an exquisite character study of a woman caught in the trap of financial obligations, forced to take a job she dislikes in order to stay afloat. It is both a portrait of one woman's courage and perseverance and a commentary on the limited opportunities available to women with little education or family ties in Japan. Takamine Hideko is unforgettable as the beleaguered hostess.

In 1961, Takamine starred in Naruse's As a Wife, As a Woman, a film about Miho, the mistress of married professor Keijiro, who has been managing the Ginza bar owned by him and his wife Ayako for years, hoping that one day she will be made the owner in recognition of her efforts. When the bar is mortgaged for a new acquisition and taken away from her, she decides to fight for custody of Keijiro's children, Hiroko and Susumu, who are her biological children and were raised as their own by Keijiro and the infertile Ayako. When the children learn that Miho, who had always been introduced to them as their aunt, is their real mother, the daughter leaves the family and the Ayako finally asks for a divorce. However, Miho only gets a paltry sum as compensation, so she decides to open a street food stand. Takamine is once again great in the role of the suffering lover who has always remained faithful. But of course the wife, Ayako, was just as much a victim of her husband.

Takamine Hideko also played in the 1962 film A Wanderer's Notebook, about the life of Hayashi Fumiko, of whose novels she had made three other adaptations with Naruse. The film was not so much based on the autobiographical novel of the same title by writer Hayashi Fumiko as on its stage adaptation. It is a conventional rags to riches narrative, although Takamine gives a stellar performance as usual. 

Of course, Takamine also worked with directors other than Naruse and Kinoshita. In
1958, she appeared in Rickshaw Man, directed by Hiroshi Inagaki, a remake of the director's own 1943 film. Set in Japan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it tells the story of Matsugoro, a rickshaw-puller played by Mifune Toshiro, who becomes a surrogate father to the child of a recently widowed woman played by Takamine Hideko. The film won the Golden Lion at the 1958 Venice Film Festival.

Takamine also appeared in 2 films by Toyoda Shiro, a director known for his tasteful literary adaptations. The most notable of these is The Wild Geese (1953), based on the novel by Ogai Mori, in which she plays the lead role of Otama, a young woman who becomes the mistress of a married man in order to support her aging father. She falls in love with a student who saves her caged bird from a snake, but nothing comes of it as he soon has to leave for Germany to study.

And with Masumura Yasuzo she starred in The Doctor's Wife (1967), based on the novel of the same name by Ariyoshi Sawako, about the first doctor in the world to operate on a patient under general anesthesia in 1804 (played by Ichikawa Raizo), using techniques derived from both Dutch and Chinese medicine. The main characters are the doctor's mother (Takamine Hideko) and his wife (Wakao Ayako), who are in fierce competition with each other to help with the experiment to test the powder to be used as an anesthetic.

In 1955 Takamine married Kinoshita's assistant director Matsuyama Zenzo, who later became a director and screenwriter. Contrary to convention, she did not retire to family life, but continued to work as an actress. According to her own statements, she wanted to create a new type of working woman. Takamine's husband also made some movies with her in the following period, such as Burabura Monogatari, a comedy in which Takamine played a confidence trickster.

From the 1950s Takamine also appeared as a writer. She wrote essays and travel books. In 1976 she published her two-part autobiography Watashi no Tosei Nikki ("My Professional Diary").

As the above shows, Takamine's roles were extremely varied, to the point where it's hard to believe that one and the same woman played so many roles, and each time with remarkable success. She is one of the few actresses in the history of Japanese cinema who seems to have never stopped transforming herself for her roles, and who was able to truly capture the essence of each of her many characters.
 

[The Wild Geese (1953)]

1. Horse, with Yamamoto Kajiro & Kurosawa Akira (1941)

Filmed over the course of 3 years in the Tohoku region (specifically Iwate, Japan's horse-breeding prefecture), this film is a beautifully poetic depiction of rural life. The unsentimental story concerns Ine (Takamine Hideko), the eldest daughter of a Japanese peasant family living on the edge of poverty, who persuades her parents to let her take care of a pregnant horse from another farmer during the winter in exchange for keeping the foal. Ine raises the colt from birth and grows to love the horse. As Kurosawa wrote in his Something Like an Autobiography, and as Takamine also stated, Kurosawa was the assistant director, but since Yamamoto had other movies to shoot in Tokyo, he was left in Tohoku to shoot all the scenes there, and he was also in charge of editing the movie, so it is not too much to say that this was actually his directing debut. Teenager Takamine Hideko plays a stubborn "otenba" character, but also gives a very sensitive performance. When the horse gets sick, she walks miles through the snow to a hot spring where grass grows all year round to save the horse's life. But when the colt grows up, unpaid bills force the family to sell him at auction. The film was made at a time when the Japanese military was in power, but it is remarkably unconcerned with the political situation - one could say that the only concession it makes to Japan's war effort is that Ine's colt is eventually sold to the army.

2. Hideko the Bus Conductor, with Naruse Mikio (1941)

Hideko works as a conductor for a small bus company in the countryside (Yamanashi), where the number of passengers is dwindling. To help the company survive, she asks a visiting writer to write commentaries on local sights, which she recites to the passengers as they travel through the countryside. It is a pity that the company owner has other ideas... Not only a wonderfully peaceful and pleasant movie made during the war years, but also a remarkable story about a young woman coming out as a professional. And, as in some 1930s movies like Arigato-san, great location shots through the windows of the bus. Based on a short story by Ibuse Masuji. This was the first movie Naruse made with Takamine, with sixteen more to follow between 1945 and 1966.

3. Carmen Comes Home, with Kinoshita Keisuke (1951)

Japan's first feature-length color film, shot on Japanese Fuji color film. Musical comedy in which a self-made woman, a singer and dancer named Lily Carmen (Takamine Hideko), visits the village of her childhood in Nagano Prefecture, at the foot of Mt. Asama, together with her friend Maya. Carmen's father, who never approved of her leaving the family, is not very happy about her return, but most of the villagers are curious to see the big city star. This includes the school principal, who is honored by the presence of such a "celebrated artist." As it turns out, Carmen's "art" is a popular strip-dancing act that she is about to perform in a show put on by a local magnate. While some of the conservative townspeople see morality at stake, others excuse Carmen's eccentric behavior by saying that "Okin (=Carmen) has been funny in the head since she was kicked by a cow as a child." After the show, Carmen and Maya, who has fallen in love with the young school teacher, return to the big city. The profits from the show are donated to the school director, who promises to use them to give the children an artistic education. Carmen and Maya leave the village as heroines. Due to the cost of printing the color film, a black-and-white version was also made, requiring the actors and actresses to re-enact scenes. Because of the time it took to make a color print, most theaters showed the black-and-white version. A sequel, Carmen's Pure Love, was made in 1952, but that was shot entirely in black and white. Carmen Comes Home seems to have been one of Kurosawa's favorite films, but I find it too long and empty - many scenes are just filled with singing schoolchildren, nature shots, or farmers doing indeterminate things in their fields. The movie only gets going when Takamine Hideko appears about half an hour into the movie.

4. Lightning (Inazuma) with Naruse Mikio (1952)

Based on a novel by Hayashi Fumiko, this is the story of a weak-willed mother with four children by different fathers (all absent). One brother is war-ravaged and unemployed; one sister is selfish and manipulative; and another sister has lost her husband and is drawn into the world of the water trade. The youngest, unmarried daughter, Kiyoko (Takamine), finds them all disgusting and tries to break away from the misery around her. A drunken brawl eventually drives Kiyoko out of the house and into her own apartment in the suburbs, but she eventually reconciles with her wretched mother. Takamine's character displays a maturity that sets her apart from the rest of the dysfucntional family. In Naruse's films, the inner conflicts of the characters are subtly indicated by the absence of prolonged eye contact or by glances filled with a hidden flash of disgust - something in which Takamine is an expert.

5. Twenty-Four Eyes, with Kinoshita Keisuke (1954)

A pacifist film, a chronicle of a teacher's devotion to her students, her profession, and the values she tries to uphold in the face of an increasingly aggressive militaristic government. Filmed on location on the island of Shodoshima in the Inland Sea. Like the films of Ozu, Naruse and Gosho, this is a movie free of tight plot and contrived story, reflecting life with great fidelity - something typical of the best Japanese films of the period. In the course of life, we see how ideals are inevitably shattered and compromised. Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film of the Year.

6. Floating Clouds, with Naruse Mikio (1955)

Naruse and Takamine's most popular movie, but also a rather melodramatic one. Set in a devastated post-war Tokyo and a society in disarray, it shows the tenacity of an unhappy woman (Takamine Hideko) in love with a worthless married man (Mori Masayuki) she met in Southeast Asia during the war. She endures all kinds of humiliation at his hands - even when he takes up with another mistress, or simply leaves her behind without saying anything when he is transferred to a new job. It is an utter mystery what she sees in him. To survive, she has to turn to prostitution - at all stages of her life, she is manipulated by men. She follows her lover all the way to the remote island of Yakushima (the edge of postwar Japan), where she finally dies. In the chilling final scene, he carefully applies lipstick to her dead lips. Based on the novel by Hayashi Fumiko. Kinema Junpo Award for best film of the year.

7. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, with Naruse Mikio (1960)

Set in the Ginza bar world. Takamine Hideko plays a strong and dignified widow who runs a bar and encounters nothing but exploitation by men and her greedy family. She struggles to maintain her independence in a male-dominated society and every evening again ascends the stairs to her second floor bar, trying hard to put on a happy face for the customers. Shows the impossibility of escape. A most beautiful film, in which Takamine Hideko gives an magnificent performance - with great depth, nuance and delicacy - as a woman much superior to her surroundings. Has Nakadai Tatsuya as a comical bar tender.

8. Immortal Love, with Kinoshita Keisuke (1961)

The son of a landowner (Nakadai Tatsuya) returns from the war a semi-cripple and falls in love with the daughter of a tenant-farmer (Takamine Hideko). He lies that her fiance has died in the war and forces himself on her. Pregnant, she has no choice but to marry him. But then her fiance returns. The marriage based on a lie becomes hell for both partners and their children. So this is not a love story! Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

9. Yearning, with Naruse Mikio (1964)

In the early 1960s in the town of Shimizu, Reiko runs a small grocery store on behalf of her mother-in-law, which she has built up through hard work. She lost her husband in the war shortly after their marriage and must also support her young brother-in-law Koji (Kayama Yuzo), who leads a dissolute life. Her two married sisters-in-law urge Reiko to remarry while she's still young. The arrival of a low-price supermarket in the neighborhood threatens all the small shops. This leads to a family dispute about the future of the shop, while at the same time Koji makes Reiko uncomfortable by confessing his love for her. Finally, Reiko flees to an onsen in the countrysife, but Koji stalks her. Reiko turns him down again at a hotel stop, and Koji wanders off. In the early hours of the morning, his lifeless body is found. The last shot is of Reiko's blank face as she realizes what happened. Silver Sail Award for Best Actress at the 1964 Locarno International Film Festival. Takamine gives another of her complex, almost silent performances in which she seems to reveal intense and complicated emotions through her eyes alone.

 

 

Tanaka Kinuyo - Japan's Greatest 20th Century Actress

Tanaka Kinuyo

Born in Shimonoseki, Japan, Tanaka Kinuyo (1909-1977) devoted her entire life to the cinema, appearing in over 250 films and working with the most important directors - but she is best known for her 15 films with director Mizoguchi Kenji. In addition, Tanaka became one of the first Japanese women to direct a film with her 1953 directorial debut, Love Letter. Between 1953 and 1962, Tanaka directed six feature films within the mainstream Japanese studio system. Her distinguished career in front of and behind the camera traces the history and technical transformations of cinema in Japan from the silent era to the late 1970s.

[Tanaka Kinuyo in The Dancer of Izu]

Tanaka's first credited film appearance was in 1924 at the age of 14, which also marked the beginning of her association with the Shochiku studios. She briefly lived with director Shimizu Hiroshi after appearing in several of his films, but they soon separated. Tanaka remained unmarried for the rest of her life. In 1931 she appeared in Japan's first sound film, The Neighbor's Wife and Mine, directed by Gosho Heinosuke. Gosho also directed her in his adaptation of the famous Kawabata story, The Dancing Girl of Izu (1933). In 1935, Tanaka featured in Shimazu Yasujiro's rendering of Tanizaki Junichiro's famous novella Shunkinsho in the style of a shoshimin-eiga, set in down-town Osaka, and filmed under the title Okoto and Sasuke. At the same time it is one of the earliest and most successful bungei-eiga, also thanks to the solid acting of the two stars Tanaka Kinuyo and Takada Kokichi. Despite the addition of some funny elements, the film works very well, and is in fact a surprisingly good version of the difficult to adapt Tanizaki story. In 1938, she co-starred with Uehara Ken in Nomura Hiromasa's Aizen katsura, which was the highest grossing film of the pre-war period. In 1941, she appeared in Ornamental Hairpin, directed by Shimizu, which is now considered one of the director's most mature works, thanks in part to Tanaka's performance.

Another wartime film was Army (1944) by Kinoshita Keisuke, the story of three generations of a Japanese family and their relationship with the army from the Meiji era to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. It is a superficially conformist movie, forgettable except for the wordless final scene: as the son marches off with the army for the invasion of Manchuria, his mother - Tanaka's character - runs beside him in tears, expressing her concern for his well-being (instead of being proud or jubilant like the other mothers). For several minutes, we follow her worried face until she loses sight of him as she clasps her hands together in Buddhist prayer. The censors were not amused (this scene slipped through because there was no text), but fortunately for Kinoshita, the war was almost over. It is a stunning performance by Tanaka Kinuyo.

After the war, Tanaka worked on films with Naruse, Ozu, Kinoshita, Gosho and others. Although Tanaka Kinuyo gave excellent performances in her early postwar films, the films themselves were not top tier. Her first film was Utamaro and His Five Women, a period film under Mizoguchi Kenji. Jidaigeki were forbidden under the Occupation because they usually contained feudalistic ideology, but Mizoguchi argued with the censors that Utamaro was "a popular democratic painter" and agreed to emphasize the topic of female emancipation. In reality, the film is more a meditation on the role of the artist in society. Tanaka plays the role of Okita, Utamaro's main source of inspiration, but all the same only one of the five women, so her screen-time is limited.

In 1947 followed The Love of Sumako the Actress, also with Mizoguchi, a portrayal of the life of actress Matsui Sumako, one of Japan's first emancipated women, who committed suicide in 1918 because of social pressure. In 1948, the same director made Women of the Night, a Neo-realist depiction of prostitutes working for the occupiers in the rubble of Osaka, the so-called "pan-pan" girls. Tanaka played the role of a streetwalker forced into prostitution by poverty. In 1948 Tanaka also acted in A Hen in the Wind by Yasujiro Ozu, one of this director's most atypical films, in which a soldier returning from war throws his wife down the stairs because she has confessed that she was forced to prostitute herself to pay the medical bills of their sick son. And in 1949 followed Flame of My Love, one of Mizoguchi's most outspoken films, based on the life of feminist Fukuda Hideko (again played by Tanaka).

Beginning in October 1949, Tanaka made a three-month trip to the United States as one of Japan's first postwar cultural ambassadors. Upon her return, she was criticized for becoming "too American," but it is easy to imagine what a great time she must have had as one of the first Japanese allowed to travel after the war - fresh from Japan's poverty and ruined cities to a then-flourishing America. After her return, Tanaka resigned from Shochiku and announced her intention to go freelance, which would give her more freedom to choose the directors she wanted to work with. One more change was that from now on Tanaka gradually moved from ingénue to more gerontic roles - stead of a young woman she now started playing the roles of the mother of such a young woman.

In 1950, however, she worked again with Shochiku director Ozu (but for Shintoho), this time on The Munekata Sisters, about the cultural conflict between tradition and modernity, embodied by two sisters, the older, married one conservative and wearing a kimono (Tanaka), the younger, unmarried one liberal and wearing Western clothes (Takamine Hideko). Unfortunately, it is a rather schematic and overtly melodramatic story, with an alcoholic husband who suddenly drops dead - causing the only scream of a woman in all of Ozu.

In 1951, she made her first major feature film with director Naruse Mikio: Ginza Cosmetics, about the life and tribulations of a bar hostess and single mother of a young boy in Tokyo's lively Ginza district. She also appeared in two films by Mizoguchi, Miss Oyu and The Lady of Musashino, both rather mediocre because these films were too melodramatic and also because not all the other actors were on the same level as Tanaka (who again gave great performances). To my regret, Miss Oyu, which is partly based on Tanizaki's novella Ashikari, goes completely off the track in melodrama in the second half (the first half was not bad, especially as Tanaka gives a great performance of the elegant Oyu-san).

Finally, in 1952, came one of the greatest and most iconic films she ever made with Mizoguchi: The Life of Oharu. This exceptional movie was made when Tanaka was 43, the age at which Hara Setsuko retired from film. She also starred in Mizoguchi's other masterpieces, Ugetsu (1953) and Sansho the Bailiff (1954), although in these films she was not the central character as in The Life of Oharu, and therefore received less screen time. A recurring theme in these films was the fate of women mistreated by family, lovers, and society.

Another important film from 1952 was Okasan ("Mother") with Naruse Mikio, one of the most successful of postwar shoshimin-eiga. A daughter witnesses her widowed mother (with three children), a tenacious, aging woman, struggling to keep the dry-cleaning business left by her husband going and avoid poverty. Melodramas about maternal love and sacrifice, so-called "haha-mono," were popular since the early fifties; Tanaka plays the role of the mother.

In 1953 she appeared in Entotsu no Mieru Basho ("Where Chimneys Are Seen") by Gosho Heinosuke, a humorous film which was entered into the 3rd Berlin International Film festival. The lives of four ordinary people living in an industrial-residential area of Tokyo, centering around the anecdote of an unwelcome baby. Finding a baby on her doorstep leads to problems between Tanaka and her husband, but luckily there are more couples living in the same building. The chimneys of the tile look different depending on the viewpoint of the observer, and so it is also with life - it is as each person happens to see it.

These were busy years. In 1954 she also played in Mizoguchi's The Woman in the Rumor. Hatsuko (Tanaka) runs a geisha house in Kyoto, she is a widow. His daughter Yukiko returns from Tokyo after a suicide attempt, when her lover abandoned her because her mother is a geisha. Hatsuko is the mistress of the young doctor Matoba, who takes care of the geishas of the house. The doctor becomes attracted to Yukiko, who at first despises him, like everything about the house of high-ranking courtesans and geisha. But Yukiko changes her attitude and mother and daughter begin loving the same man...

Another geisha film was Nagareru ("Flowing") from 1956 by Naruse Mikio. In this film Tanaka is not the woman who runs the geisha house (that is Yamada Isuzu), but a maid who observes the decline of the geisha world from her special position. She has recently lost her husband and is trying to reestablish her own life. She is hired although she is older than the usual candidate, but she brings sweetness and humanity to the job. Yamada Isuzu plays a proud middle-aged geisha who fights to uphold professional values against the pressure to decline into prostitution. Her daughter Katsuyo (Talameni Hideko) doesn't see any future in her mothers' trade. Shows the increasing modern uncertainty threatening a centuries-old way of life.

Higanbana ("Equinox Flower") by Ozu Yasujiro is this director's first color film, made in 1958. A daughter (Arima Taeko) wants to make her own choice of marriage partner; the despotic father (Saburi Shin) opposes, but the mother (Tanaka Kinuyo) sympathizes and the father is finally won over. Shows how later in his career Ozu became increasingly sympathetic with the younger generation. Also, with its satire, pure comedy and deep irony a much lighter work than Ozu's previous films. With one of the best later roles by Tanaka, while also typical Japanese kimono beauty Yamamoto Fujiko makes an appearance.

From the same year is "The Ballad of Narayama" by Kinoshita Keisuke. In the remote mountains, certain poor villages have the custom to abandon the elderly on a mountaintop in order to ensure that the younger generation has enough to eat. Orin (Tanaka Kinuyo) arranges a marriage for her son and is then stoically resigned to her fate, although other old folks put up a struggle against their exile. Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film of the Year.

One of Tanaka's last films was Kei Kumai's 1975 Sandakan N° 8, in which she played an aged ex-prostitute, a role for which she won the Best Actress Award at the 25th Berlin International Film Festival.

[Tanaka Kinuyo in The Neigbor's Wife and Mine]

1. The Neighbor's Wife and Mine (Madame to Nyobo) with Gosho Heinosuke (1931).

Japan's first sound film (1931) is a domestic comedy (shoshimin-eiga) made at Shochiku about a playwright suffering from writer's block who is distracted by various noises, such as a crying baby, mice and a cat, but most of all by a jazz band practicing at the home of the modern woman next door (a good excuse to go there and join the party). Sound is used sparingly and inventively - this is a movie that needs sound for the many off-screen noises and could never have worked with a benshi. Tanaka Kinuyo plays the writer's wife, who is constantly trying to wake him up from his lethargy and get him writing a play he has to finish in a few days. "My Blue Heaven" is used for the finale, in which the husband and wife almost forget their baby while walking in the fields.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pijDMuktxCY

2. The Dancing Girl of Izu (Izu no Odoriko) with Gosho Heinosuke (1933)

Although the original story is primarily about the acceptance of the lonely student by a troupe of itinerant actors (the lowest of the low, often forbidden to enter the villages) and his happiness at being connected to humanity, Gosho sets the tone for a whole series of Odoriko films in which the (platonic) love between the student and the underage dancing girl is emphasized, ending in a moving scene of parting. Tanaka Kinuyo played the dancing girl, and since she was a real actress (as opposed to the singers and teenage "talents" who would follow), she is by far the best. She was already 24 at the time, so a bit old to play a young teenager, but she very well manages to play her girlish character. The movie as a whole is not so good, as Gosho unfortunately added a subplot about a gold mine, which is not in Kawabata, but the film was shot outdoors on the Izu peninsula, and there are beautiful landscapes. This movie was also the beginning of the so-called jun-bungaku or "pure literature" movement in film (also called bungei eiga), the adaptation of literary masterpieces for the screen.

3. Ornamental Hairpin with Shimizu Hiroshi (1941)

During the war, a diverse group of people are staying at a remote onsen, thrown together by chance. There is a grumpy professor who longs for peace and quiet to study, and who regularly scolds a young husband for being too soft on his wife; an elderly man with his two grandsons, Taro and Jiro; and a soldier, Nanmura (a young Ryu Chishu in one of his first roles), who is recovering from the war. A group of pilgrims also joins them for the night, including Emi (Tanaka Kinuyo), a geisha from Tokyo who has run away from her patron, and her geisha friend Okiku. Nanmura is forced to extend his stay when he steps on a kanzashi, a woman's ornamental hairpin, lost in the bathtub. After the owner of the pin, Emi, is located through an exchange of letters, she returns to the onsen to apologize. A romance develops between Nanmura and the young woman, who is determined not to return to Tokyo and to end her life as a geisha. With the help of Emi and the two boys, Jiro and Taro, Nanmura makes progress in his daily exercises to regain his health. But at the end of the season, one by one, the residents return to Tokyo, including Nanmura, who must rejoin the military, leaving Emi alone in the abandoned spa, facing an uncertain future. The poetic movie seems like a vacation from the war and is more about characterization than plot. It is a bittersweet story with great performances by Tanaka Kinuyo and Ryu Chishu, who sensitively suggest unspoken emotions. Although it is a movie about a group of people, Emi/Tanaka is given a privileged status in the narrative, as we mainly follow her thoughts and her decision to start a new life - whatever that may bring.

4. Ginza Cosmetics with Naruse Mikio (1951)

A showcase for Tanaka Kinuyo. Set in Tokyo’s Ginza district, this is an account of a few days in the life of a luckless middle-aged bar hostess as she struggles to make a living for herself and her young son (as a single-mom). Her hum-drum life is closely observed - events serve mainly to display the difficulties of her life and her strength of character in face of the hardships facing a bar hostess. Tanaka's character is partly a reprise of streetwalking characters she had recently played in films by other directors, as Mizoguchi's Women of the Night. Her young son manages on his own when she is working, but when he gets lost one day, she runs off to find him - she is obliged to leave the nice and intelligent young man she is with, with her sister, who wastes no time falling in love and marrying him. Another chance is lost, but she doesn't begrudge her sister making a successful match. Naruse uses his own personal impressions of the Ginza where he apparently regularly went bar-hopping, so that the setting becomes a constituent element in the film.
 

5. Mother with Naruse Mikio (1952)

One of the most successful post-war Shoshimin-eiga. A daughter (Kagawa Kyoko) witnesses her widowed mother (with three children), a tenacious, aging woman struggling to keep the dry-cleaning business left by her husband going and to avoid poverty. The title role is played by Kinuyo Tanaka, whose every gesture is imbued with a truthfulness that counteracts even the most melodramatic situations. Despite its high level of sentimentality, this is a rare Naruse movie with a positive ending.
 

6. The Life of Oharu with Mizoguchi Kenji (1952)

Loosely based on a classical novel by 17th c. author Iharu Saikaku. The atypical period film chronicles the inexorable decline of a court lady (Tanaka Kinuyo) who falls in love with a man below her station (the man is dutifully executed for his trespass) and finally ends up as a cheap harlot, via being the concubine of a lord (solely to produce a baby), a geisha, and the wife of a fan maker. Finally, Oharu becomes a Buddhist nun. Imbued with a sad beauty. Mizoguchi received international renown for his cinematic techniques. Venice Film Festival International prize.

7. Where Chimneys are Seen with Gosho Heinosuke (1953)

The lives of a group of ordinary - but very poor - people living in an industrial area of Tokyo. But just as the smokestacks of the title look different depending on the viewer's point of view, so does life - it is as each person happens to see it. Ogata Ryukichi (Uehara Ken) is the main narrator, who introduces the viewer to his modest circumstances and, for the moment, happy home. He has married a cheerful and kind woman, Hiroko (Tanaka), who was widowed during the war, and the couple rents out their upstairs to other lodgers to make ends meet. They are so poor that they take complicated measures to avoid having children, a luxury they cannot afford. One day, the Ogatas find a baby in the doorway of the house with a note signed by the wife's first husband stating that it is Tanaka's daughter (meaning that she still has a secret relationship with her first husband). The marriage is in crisis, but things are resolved when the first husband is found by Ryukichi. Tanaka is the emotional core of the movie, around which the story develops.
 

8. The Woman of Rumor with Mizoguchi Kenji (1954)

Hatsuko is a widow who runs a prosperous geisha house in Kyoto. But we are in a time when the business of geisha houses is turning into prostitution, and Hatsuko's house is actually a brothel. Business is good, though - there's a large group of regular customers, and new businessmen continue to stream through the doors - and Hatsuko has been able to live well, provide a full university education for her daughter Yukiko, and provide a reasonable living for the 15 girls she supervises. Yukiko (Kuga Yoshiko) returns from Tokyo to recover from a failed suicide attempt after her lover found out about her mother's profession and left her. Yukiko is very uncomfortable with the situation, as she despises everything associated with the house of high-ranking courtesans (taiyu) and geisha. Hatsuko has a discreet love affair with the young Dr. Matoba, who takes care of the geisha in the house. But then the doctor becomes attracted to Yukiko, who is closer in age, and mother and daughter begin to love the same man. When the doctor and Yukiko make plans to move to Tokyo and Hatsuko overhears them, the stage is set for high drama.

 

9. Nagareru ("Flowing") with Naruse Mikio (1956)

The decline of the geisha world as seen through the eyes of a maid. In the 1950s, geisha found their way of life overshadowed and nearly extinguished by the growing popularity of prostitution. The story follows Rika (Tanaka Kinuyo), a widow whose dire financial circumstances force her to take a job as a housemaid in a failing Tokyo geisha house. Through Rika's eyes, Naruse reveals the proud middle-aged mistress's (Yamada Isuzu) valiant struggle to uphold professional values against the pressure to descend into prostitution. He also introduces us to the individual geishas, who bicker with each other, drink copious amounts of alcohol, and struggle with the growing certainty that their centuries-old way of life will soon become extinct.

10. Equinox Flower with Ozu Yasujiro (1958)

Higanbana ("Equinox Flower") by Yasujiro Ozu is the director's first color film. A daughter (Arima Taeko) wants to choose her own husband; her despotic father (Saburi Shin) is opposed - he himself had a prosaic arranged marriage - but the mother (Tanaka Kinuyo) sympathizes, and the father is eventually won over. Ozu has the mother and other women in the movie massage the father's opinions in the right direction, in a quiet rebellion that is more powerful than any blunt force. It is also very Japanese: there is no direct confrontation, on the surface the father is always respected, but he is still brought around to his wife's opinion. It shows how Ozu became more and more sympathetic to the younger generation later in his career. Also, with its satire, pure comedy and deep irony, a much lighter work than Ozu's previous films. With one of the best later roles of Tanaka Kinuyo.

11. The Ballad of Narayama with Kinoshita Keisuke (1958)

"Ubasute" is a mythical practice of senicide in which an infirm or elderly relative was taken to a mountain or other remote, desolate place and left there to die. This gruesome custom was never really practiced, it is just a folk tale, but it became a topic through the movie "The Ballad of Narayama" by Kinoshita. To soften the cruelty and show the unreality, Kinoshita used kabuki and bunraku stage techniques to distance the story; he also filmed everything on a very unrealistic set. The result is very artificial (as are some other films in which this director used special techniques, such as coloring or framing), and this is not a film I like a great deal, but I include it for the impressive performance by Tanaka Kinuyo as the 70-year-old matriarch Orin, who is taken to the mountains by her son and left to die. Orin arranges a marriage for her son that will add another mouth to the dirt-poor village, and then stoically resigns herself to her fate. Kinoshita constantly contrasts Orin's goodness and sacrificial attitude with the darker side of human nature (not the son, who is kind enough, but the grandson and some other villagers). Shamed by her good health and appetite, in one scene Orin even knocks out her teeth to eat less. Tanaka was only 49 when she played this role, so she seems to have padded her back to look old enough.


The Tanaka Kinuyo Bunkakan museum in Shimonoseki is a tribute to the actress at her birthplace.

A study about the actress is Tanaka Kinuyo: Nation, Stardom and Female Subjectivity (EUP, 2017).

Hara Setsuko - Actress Against Her Own Inclination

Hara Setsuko

Born in Yokohama, Hara Setsuko (1920-2015) made about 100 films between 1935 and 1962. Her real name was Aida Masae. Her older sister was married to film director Kumagai Hisatora, which gave her access to the world of cinema: he encouraged her to drop out of school when the large family to which she belonged was in dire financial staits, after which she went to work for Nikkatsu Studios in Tamagawa, outside Tokyo, in 1935. One of her most interesting early movies was Yamanaka Sadao's Kochiyama Soshun, a modern adaptation of a Kabuki play by Kawatake Mokuami. The very complex story revolves around the owner of a small amazake shop, driven into prostitution by debts incurred by her brother's misdeeds, played by Hara Setsuko when she was only 15 years old.

She became famous as an actress by the 1937 Nazi-German-Japanese co-production The Daughter of the Samurai, known in Japan as Atarashiki Tsuchi (The New Earth), directed by Arnold Fanck and Mansaku Itami. In the movie, Hara plays a young woman who tries in vain to throw herself into a volcano when her fiancé returns from Berlin and falls in love with a German journalist. The movie was poorly received in Japan. It was seen as a condescending treatment of Japan as an exotic Oriental nation that needed German political ideas as if it had none of its own, and the racist ideology of blood and soil was considered disturbing (Fanck was a Nazi sympathizer).

Hara traveled to Europe and the United States to promote this German-Japanese co-production. Accompanied by her brother-in-law Kumagai Hisatora, the four-month trip took her from Japanese-occupied Manchuria (China) to Berlin and several German cities, then on to Paris, New York, Los Angeles and Hollywood. In Germany, she was received as an official guest by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda (a rather nerve-wracking experience for the young girl). But she also had the opportunity to meet eminent film personalities wherever she went, such as Jean Renoir in Paris, and Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich, with whom she dined in Hollywood. Her return, just before the outbreak of war, was triumphant, and the young actress was described by a women's magazine as "a world star" and "the first hope of Japanese cinema.

[Hara Setsuko in Late Spring]

 

Hara Setsuko continued to portray tragic heroines in a dozen militaristic propaganda films until the end of World War II, such as The Suicide Troops of the Watchtower and Toward the Decisive Battle in the Sky. During WWII, Hara became the most popular actress in Japan. Hara was only 25 years old when the war ended. Although she had become the icon of a Japanese cinema that had glorified nationalism and imperialism, from the moment of the surrender, she embodied the suffering of a people victimized by the warmongering policies of their leaders. In other words, she turned from extreme nationalism to "democracy" just as quickly as the rest of the population.
 
She starred in Kurosawa's first postwar film, No Regrets for Our Youth (1946), in one of her best roles ever. She also worked with director Yoshimura in A Ball at the Anjo House (1947). In these films she was portrayed as the "new" Japanese woman, looking forward to a bright democratic future.

Hara's first of six films with Yasujiro Ozu was Late Spring (1949), and their collaboration would last for the next twelve years. In Late Spring, she plays Noriko, a devoted daughter who prefers to stay at home and care for her father rather than marry, despite the urging of her family members. In Early Summer (1951) she played an unrelated character, also named Noriko, who wants to marry and finds the courage to do so without her family's approval. This was followed by Tokyo Story (1953), perhaps her and Ozu's best-known film, in which she played a widow, also named Noriko, whose husband was killed in the war. Her devotion to her late husband worries her in-laws, who insist that she move on and remarry. Her last films with Yasujiro Ozu were Late Autumn, where she plays a mother who repeats the role of Ryu Chishu in Late Spring, and The End of Summer, Ozu's penultimate film before his death in 1963, where she doesn't have the main role either, as she is one of a group of sisters. She was now 43 and, as is unfortunately the case for actresses, it became increasingly difficult to get interesting, leading roles (although Tanaka Kinuyo didn't do too bad with her three late films with Mizoguchi!).

Setsuko Hara became one of the icons of the Golden Age of Japanese cinema in the 1950s. Her nickname was "The Eternal Virgin" (she remained unmarried in real life), and she was considered the epitome of the traditional "Yamato nadeshiko" type of woman (the epitome of pure, demure feminine beauty).

Hara Setsuko retired from acting in 1963 and subsequently lived a reclusive life in Kamakura, refusing to be interviewed or photographed. There has been much speculation about the reasons for Hara Setsuko's sudden and complete retirement, such as her possible romantic involvement with the seven years older Ozu, who had just died. There is even speculation that she retired to Kamakura to be near his grave in that city. This seems nonsense to me: Kamakura is a nice and quiet bed town, so suitable for retirees, but also close to Yokohama, where Hara Setsuko was born.

Hara herself confessed at her last press conference that she never really enjoyed acting and only became an actress to support her family before the war. This is part of the truth: based on an article in Nippon.com by nonfiction writer Ishii Taeko who wrote a biography of Hara Setsuko, the actress was not satisfied with the roles she had to play, especially in films by Ozu. Instead of the quiet, demure woman who bows to convention, she wanted to play a strong woman who takes her life in her own hands, as she did in the two films she made with Kurosawa. But the public had come to expect "Yamato nadeshiko" roles from her, and it must have been difficult to change.

Another reason may be found in her family's unhappy relationship with the Japanese film world. After her visit to Germany in 1937, she herself had criticized the Japanese film world for its bad manners, especially toward women, while in Germany filmmakers (and actresses) were honored as true artists. But more than that, she was strongly influenced by her brother-in-law, Kumagai Hisatora, who first introduced her to the film world and later made the months-long trip to Germany, France and the U.S. with the 17-year-old actress. Kumagai made only a few films, but the most famous is 1938's The Abe Clan, based on a story by Mori Ogai, a period film sanctifying Bushido about the mass suicide of an entire clan in the 17th century. With Japan's entry into the war in 1937, Kumagai began a series of films glorifying militarism, but more than that, he left the cinema in 1941 and fell into a fanatical and rabid ultra-nationalism, which led him to found a nationalist group, the Divine School. After Japan surrendered, Kumagai was considered a war criminal and banned from the film industry for many years. He returned to the cinema as a producer and director only in 1953 (after the end of the occupation), but made only a handful of films before retiring.

Hara Setsuko had always been close to her brother-in-law and couldn't forgive the movie industry for punishing only her brother-in-law (though I suppose he wasn't really punished for the pro-war movies he made, as that was nothing special, but for his extreme nationalism, which led him to found an ultra-rightist group and devote several years to that activity). But Hara Setsuko wanted to rehabilitate Kumagai and even turned down other opportunities to appear in his movies. These were, for example, Shirauo (in which her brother, who was the cameraman, was tragically killed in an accident on the set) and Chiekosho, a story about the wife of the poet Takamura Kotaro (see my translation of two poems about her), as well as a children's movie.

Conclusion: I think it was her dislike of the Japanese film world (and public) for not letting her play the roles she really wanted, and for what she saw as the unfair treatment of her brother-in-law, that led to her decision to quit and - fed up with the publicity - to become a virtual hermit in her house in Kamakura for the remaining 53 years of her life. It seems she mainly stayed at home and didn't even travel. Her maid did all the shopping. In other words, she had become a real hikikomori...

Note: The anime film Millennium Actress (2001), directed by Satoshi Kon, is partly based on Hara Setsuko's reclusive life.

[Hara Setsuko in Tokyo Monogatari]

Hara Setsuko's major films are:

1. "No Regrets for Our Youth" with Kurosawa Akira (1946)

A strong feminist statement (like the films of Mizoguchi and Kinugasa from the same year) and the only film "macho director" Kurosawa made with a woman in the leading role. Hara played a strong woman who makes her own decisions, even if it means being criticized by society. Her portrayal of a rebellious heroine who fights against her fate was unprecedented in Japanese cinema, and the U.S. occupation government was delighted. Hara was inspired by Ingrid Bergman, and this was the kind of role she liked best.

2. "A Ball at the Anjo House" with Yoshimura Kozaburo (1947)

Here, Hara played a more subdued role than in Kurosawa's film, but it was still a positive and active one. In a story that owes a lot to Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, the father, who has to sell the family mansion, is on the verge of suicide, but his optimistic daughter shows him how to start again. At the end of the movie, they dance the tango together. Yoshimura, who worked at Shochiku, has been compared to Mizoguchi for his sympathetic portrayal of female characters.

3. "Late Spring" with Ozu Yasujiro (1949)

In Ozu's early films with Hara Setsuko, her character flips to obedient traditionalism, in sharp contrast to the earlier postwar films she made. She plays Noriko, a daughter who lives with her widowed father (Ryu Chishu). He wants her to get married and have a life of her own, she wants to stay at home and look after her father. She is not particularly interested in marrying and setting up a family. In the end, the father pushes her into marriage by pretending he himself is getting married again. Interesting is that the wedding ceremony, which in a Hollywood film would have formed the grand finale, is entirely left out, we do not even get to see the face of the groom - for Noriko this obviously was not a highlight in her life. The outrageous thing is the old-fashioned view that Noriko must marry since she is getting in her "late spring." Against her own inclination, Hara Setsuko had to play the obedient daughter who bows to convention.
 

4. "The Idiot" with Kurosawa Akira (1951)

Kurosawa was a great Dostoyevsky fan and based his movie on the author's classic masterpiece. He transposed the story to Hokkaido and post-war Japan - the "idiot" here is a former soldier suffering from epileptic seizures caused by wartime experiences. Hara Setsuko has an interesting part. She plays Taeko, a stunning femme fatale, and another rebellious role she enjoyed. This melodrama of jealousy and resentment, in which "the idiot" tries to help a young man ruined by the war and a woman pursued by a wealthy but cruel suitor, failed at the box office, also because Toho made too many cuts in the long and complex movie, making it sometimes difficult to understand. Also in the West it is almost unknown, but it contains one of the most interesting performances by Hara Setsuko, and a very sexy one at that.

 

5. "Early Summer" with Ozu Yasujiro (1951)

The second "Noriko film" with Hara Setsuko. Chronicles three generations of the Kamakura-based Mamiya family, which is seeking a promising match for the eldest daughter, Noriko. But Noriko has firm ideas who she will select as a husband and surprises her family - when the compulsion to finally get married becomes too strong -, by abruptly opting for a childhood friend, who is a poor doctor going to be posted in far-off northern Japan. In other words, Noriko fulfills her family's wishes, but also tears the family apart by making her own choice so that she can leave the family (it is almost a sort of revenge!). In fact, after she moves away, the family lacks her important contribution to the household income and has to split up.

 

 

6. "Repast" with Naruse Mikio (1951) 

If you ever wondered what might happen to Hara Setsuko after bowing to tradition and marrying against her will and inclinations, watch the films of Naruse Mikio starring this actress. In "Repast" she plays the wife of a low-salaried clerk (Uehara Ken) living in Osaka. There are no children. She begins to realize that all those years with the same man have given her no feeling of self-realization and she starts weighing her options - which are however rather meager. She takes a time-out by returning to her family in Tokyo, seeking a job, but in the end resigns herself to going back to her husband - so she capitulates to tradition after all. She is too weak to rebel. This is the first of six films that Naruse in the coming decade will base on the novels of Hayashi Fumiko.

7. "Tokyo Story" with Ozu Yasujiro (1953)

The story of this classic movie is all too famous. An elderly couple (Ryu Chishu, Higashiyama Chieko) from Onomichi visit their preoccupied children in Tokyo, but they are obviously a burden and are packed off to Atami. Back home, the mother dies, and now it is the children's turn to visit the city of their birth. The only truly loving child is the widowed daughter-in-law (Hara Setsuko), who is also the only one who understands the feelings of the widowed father. She offers to stay with him now that he is alone, but he refuses - she should remarry. Hara Setsuko appears late in the movie and she doesn't have the only leading role. She plays the perfect Yamato Nadeshiko daughter-in-law until she breaks down and starts crying at the very end of the movie while talking to her father-in-law. Apparently, things are not as peaceful and stable under the surface as they seem.

8. "Sound of the Mountain" with Naruse Mikio (1954)

Based on the novel of the same name by Kawabata Yasunari, this is another movie about Hara Setsuko's difficult life as a young bride in a loveless marriage. When her husband shuns her for another woman, she finds some relief in her friendship with her father-in-law (Yamamura So) - who is also in a loveless marriage, but he and his wife have learned to suppress their mutual resentment and act only as business partners. Ken Uehara plays the husband from hell, an archetypal slob who is completely indifferent to his wife, often comes home drunk, leaves his clothes on the floor for his wife to pick up, and on top of that he has a mistress and does not even try to hide it. Hara's distinguished father-in-law is one of those rare specimens in Naruse: the sympathetic male character. His feelings for his daughter-in-law are purely platonic. At some point in the movie, his daughter, Hara's sister-in-law, arrives at their house: she has left her husband, but is so bitter about her situation that she neglects the little daughter she has brought with her. Her predicament offers a glimpse into the future of Hara, who happens to be pregnant at the time. She therefore decides to have an abortion, hating her husband so much that she refuses to bear his child. The difficulty of her situation inspires Hara to perhaps her best performance to date. She expresses complex, conflicting emotions with a subtlety that surprises even longtime admirers. The movie ends with the famous walk in the park, a lyrical sequence with Hara and her father-in-law. The freedom of the open spaces of the park contrasts with the powerlessness of the couple. The irony, of course, is that Hara and her father-in-law would have made the perfect couple, sharing a rare sense of harmony and respect for each other.

9. Daughters, Wives, and a Mother, with Naruse Mikio (1960)

A complex story about the disintegration of the family system (and the end of the Shoshimin Eiga). There are so many family members (eleven, plus five or six other main characters) that it takes some time to figure out who is who. Mimasu Aiko plays Sakanishi Aki, a widowed mother of five. She lives with her oldest son Yuichiro (Mori Masayuki) and his wife Kazuko (Takamine Hideko) and their little boy, the only grandchild. The very modern youngest daughter Haruko (Dan Reiko) also lives with them, and eldest daughter Sanae (Hara Setsuko) is forced to move into the large suburban house after her husband dies in an accident at the beginning of the movie. Another daughter, kindergarten teacher Kaoru (Kusabue Mitsuko), lives with her husband (Koizumi Hiroshi) and his manipulative mother (Sugimura Haruko) in a small house - the young couple has no privacy, so they often dine out or go to the movies to escape the scourge of harassment. The youngest son (Takarada Akira) lives in an apartment with his wife (Awaji Keiko). In addition, Nakadai Tatsuya and Uehara Ken appear as potential suitors for Sanae. The themes of the movie are money and what to do with Sanae, and after the family cannot stay together anymore, what to do with the old mother. When Sanae is stupid enough to mention that she has a lot of money thanks to her late husband's life insurance, everyone is interested, and Yuichiro manages to pocket half of it for his business ventures. However, he is a bad businessman and his dangerous deals not only cost Sanae half of her money, but also cause the loss of the family home, which was mortgaged by Yuichiro for one of his failed deals. The second theme is the remarriage of Sanae, who is only 34 years old and is pressured by other family members. There are some romantic scenes with Nakadai Tatsuya as Kuroki, a wine maker, but nothing comes of it (even a kiss remains very vague), maybe because Hara Setsuko's image as an "eternal virgin" was too strong to allow real romaance. Eventually she marries a tea master in Kyoto through a miai (so no romance at all), just to give her mother a home. But Aki still hesitates what to do when the movie ends. This is the only movie in which Hara Setsuko and Takamine Hideko acted together, but Hara is clearly the star here - she is courted by two suitors and smiles a lot, something she didn't do in Ozu's films, while Takamine plays a rather faded and subdued housewife. Hara Setsuko projects a kind of resigned luminosity that tramples almost everything and everyone in its path.