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