Category: post-war

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drama, melodrama gendai-geki post-war shomin-geki

The Geisha: Symbols of Japanese Beauty or Victimized Groups?

Gion Bayashi (English title: A Geisha or Gion Festival Music), one of  Mizoguchi Kenji’s major film works, focusing on geisha’s roles and daily lives in the post-war Gion district of Kyoto, was released in 1953. Since this film was based on Kawaguchi Matsutarô’s novel, Gion Bayashi, Kawaguchi wrote the film’s screenplay. The leading actresses are Kogure Michiyo as Miyoharu and Wakao Ayako as Eiko. The first half of the film mainly focuses on geisha’s daily lives, while the second half deals with geisha’s roles and social position. The film reveals that even though the geisha are often considered as symbols of Japanese beauty based on a foreigner’s perspective, in reality, the geisha are victimized groups.

The story begins with Eiko looking for the geisha Miyoharu, a colleague of Eiko’s mother, in the Gion district of Kyoto. Since Eiko has nowhere else to go after losing her mother, she wants to become a geisha like her mother with Miyoharu’s help. When Miyoharu decides to support Eiko and to become her guardian, Eiko seems to escape from her sad life. Over a year, Eiko takes a variety of training lessons to become a Kyoto geisha, seen as a symbol of Japanese beauty. Even though training is hard, from Eiko’s perspective, every step of becoming a geisha is full of joy because now she has Miyoharu who supports her both financially and emotionally.

On the day of Eiko’s debut, with the fancy kimono that Miyoharu prepares for her, Eiko and

Miyoharu meet Mr. Kusuada, the manager of Kusuda auto, and Mr. Kanzaki, Kusuda’s important client who Kusuda tries to make a large business deal with, at the tea house run by Okimi, Miyoharu’s okaasan who holds a lot of power in the Gion district. From this banquet, Eiko not only gains her coworkers’ trust, but also gets Mr. Kusuda’s attention. After her successful debut, Kusuda invites both Eiko and Miyoharu to Tokyo. Since Kusuda is a loyal customer, both Eiko and Miyoharu have no choice but to accept his invitation. Until the day they go to Tokyo, no one notices that this trip will change everything. Even though both Eiko and Miyoharu simply expect to have fun with Kusuda in Tokyo, Kusuda invites them for other reasons. In fact, Kusuda needs Miyoharu’s help to make a business deal with Mr. Kanzaki who has had a crush on Miyoharu since the banquet in Kyoto. However, things do not always go as planned. Since Miyoharu is not interested in Mr. Kanzaki, Miyoharu rejects Kusuda’s request to seduce Mr. Kanzaki. With Miyoharu’s rejection, another incident happens with Eiko. After these incidents in Tokyo, both Eiko and Miyoharu realize that they are in big trouble.

In Gion Bayashi, it is interesting to observe how Eiko’s attitude toward the geisha has changed. In the first half of the film, Eiko is a girl who knows nothing about being a geisha. In fact, when she takes a variety of training lessons, she learns only good things about the geisha from her teacher, such as “the geisha are the symbols of Japanese beauty”, “the geisha are living Japanese works of art and cultural treasures”, and so on. Without knowing the fact that a geisha has to sell herself to live, Eiko even has a dream that she can find her own patron who she really

loves. However, after the trip to Tokyo, Eiko starts to notice things that differ from what she learns from her lessons, such as customers’ treatment of geisha. The main incident that completely changes Eiko’s perspective toward geisha is Miyoharu’s spending the night with her customer for money. When Miyoharu returns to the house, Eiko claims that it is all lies that “the geisha are the symbol of Japanese beauty.”At the end of the film, Eiko finally realizes the truth about geisha. One thing is that in reality, the geisha do not have any social freedom, and the other fact is that the successful geisha are only “those who know how to sell themselves well.”

Throughout the film, Okimi, Miyoharu’s okaasan, plays an important role to contribute to the story and to reveal the system of the geisha district. Okaasan literally means “mother”, but in the geisha society, an okaasan is more than just a mother. In fact, the okaasan is the person who arranges the meeting between customers and geisha, and also the one who solves any conflict between them. For example, when Kusuda wants to meet Miyoharu and Eiko at the tea house, or to invite them to Tokyo, he asks permission from Okimi, not from Miyohara. Also, when Miyoharu and Eiko cause problems in Tokyo, Okimi is the one who settles things down with customers. Since okaasan has a power to control geisha, if a geisha does not obey okaasan’s orders, the geisha will be in trouble. For example, after the incidents in Tokyo, Okimi scolds Miyoharu for not following Kusuda’s request, and when Miyoharu is still reluctant to follow Okimi’s order to reconsider Kusuda’s request, Okimi decides to cancel all of Miyoharu’s and Eiko’s appointments with customers until Miyoharu obeys her order.

Mizoguchi’s Gion Bayashi is very entertaining and reveals the reality of the geisha society extremely well. In the film, there is a popular saying that foreigners are crazy about geisha because for them, “the geisha are the symbols of Japanese beauty”, but throughout the movie, Mizoguchi criticizes this idea with claiming that in reality, geisha are just a victimized group who suffer from the poverty and society’s rules without having any freedom to make their own decisions. Even though there are some heavy issues in the movie, including geisha’s social rights, this film will surely take audiences, especially foreigners to the real geisha world.

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gendai-geki literary adaptations post-war shomin-geki

Finding the Light: A Post-War Ethical Dilemma

Ichikawa Kon’s 1956 The Burmese Harp (Biruma no tategoto/Harp of Burma) is a visceral  and aesthetic powerhouse. Based on the children’s novel penned by Takeyama Michio, the film presents a unique Japanese perspective on the post-World War II reparations and the subsequent trauma faced by the soldiers caught between honour, justice, and a personal sense of conviction. It is a work representative of “his acerbic account of tradition, modernization and alienation in twentieth century Japan” (Jacoby, 3). Mizushima Yasuhiko (Yasui Shoji) propels this anti-war gendai-geki, as he and his platoon, comprised in part by Captain Inouye (Mikuni Rentarō), Ito (Hamamura Jun), Kobayashi (Neito Taketoshi), and Baba (Nishimura Ko), deal with the ramifications of the Japanese surrender to the Allied Powers. Mizushima is commissioned with the task of bringing news of the surrender to the last-standing platoon, still embroiled in gunfire with the British troops. His words are met by a fierce nationalistic sentiment, and the very troops he came to save in Triangle Mountains are shot down by enemy fire in the uproar.

In a harrowing sequence, Mizushima is confronted with the senselessness and despair of war, as he journeys to rejoin his team who are awaiting repatriation. Ichikawa’s protagonist is faced with the moral dilemma of whether to adopt the ways of the Buddhist monks and ensure the honourable burial of each of his fallen comrades, or to let the fallen lie as collateral in both the aftermath of the war, and the survivors’ opportunity to return home to Japan.

Ichikawa navigates the divides between each ideology, oppositionary forces and disparate languages, through the universal conduit of music. It is used not only to communicate what characters are unable to articulate, but is also employed as a vehicle to convey emotional states of being. This mastery is woven throughout key vantage points in the narrative, such as the choral exchange between the Allied Powers and the Japanese through the song popular with Western audiences as “Home Sweet Home,” and “Hanyu no yado” to Japanese viewers of the film. In other examples embedded in the film, the platoon attempts to utilize song to entice Mizushima back to the POW camp, who in turn uses his traditional harp to return his own salutations, sentiments, and sorrows.

Another distinct aspect of Ichikawa’s work is his characteristic use of light and highly aesthetic camerawork. His prior aspirations to pursue a career a painting are clearly evident in his deft use of contrast between light and dark against a black-and-white film stock. The director exploits light to both delineate the protagonist and opposing forces, as well as to characterize and personify internal states of emotion for each party. This can be seen in the emotion conveyed as Mizushima awakes entombed by the corpses of the Triangle Mountain troops, in a scene indicative of the chiaroscuro seen in Renaissance artworks depicting hills of fallen souls. The subtext of scenes where Captain Inouye and his men are imprisoned is in the POW, is also masterfully conveyed through the use of slanted light, that beams through the panels of the bamboo outhouse, casting reflections of prison bars onto the faces of the platoon.

Charged emotion is also depicted through the vast empty spaces of the striking Burmese landscape, captured by Ichikawa’s telephoto lens and long shots. The landscape ‘speaks’ of the despair and emptiness that weighs on Mizushima, and provides voice to both the ghosts of the fallen soldiers that he faces, as well as the struggle he fights internally.  Evidence of this struggle can be seen in the wide angle close-ups such as the rack focus between the anguish of Mizushima, and the parrot that sits on his shoulder: the embodiment of his friend’s wishes for him to come home.

Though some violent imagery may be unsuitable for younger audiences, Ichikawa Kon has taken the storytelling devices of light, camerawork, subtext and mise-en-scéne, and transformed a child’s fantasy about the ethics of war, into an honest and emotional depiction of survival against post-traumatic stress. His work provides his audience a vehicle through Mizushima, to find meaning and reason in the deafening silence after the last gunshot is fired. “To have the courage, to face suffering, senselessness and irrationality without fear, to find strength to create peace by one’s own example” (Ichikawa).

Works Cited

Jacoby, Alexander. “Kon Ichikawa.” Senses of Cinema March 2004

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gendai-geki literary adaptations post-war shomin-geki taiyozoku

“Crazed Fruit” (狂った果実 Kurutta kajitsu) : The Rise of the Sun Tribe Film

Crazed Fruit (1956), directed by Nakahira Kō, falls within a little-known genre called taiyōzoku or sun tribe. This film is adapted from a novella by Ishihara Shintarō, whose work focuses on contemporary youth, sex and violence. Crazed Fruit was one of five taiyōzoku films to be released in the 1950s. Cruel Story, Season of the Sun, Summer in Eclipse and Punishment Room make up the other films in the series (Phillips & Stringer, 2007). The character playing the role of Natsuhisa, the elder brother of Hiraju in the film, is Ishihara Yujirō, who, in real-life, is the brother of Ishihara Shintarō. Ishihara Yujirō is the Japanese equivalent of Elvis Presley, Marlon Brando, and James Dean (Casey, 2001). The character playing the younger brother is Tsugawa Masahiko, at the time another rising star in Japan. He would later appear in Godzilla and soon emerge as Itami Jūzō’s favorite actor (Casey, 2001). Crazed Fruit is cruel, passionate, thrilling and dirty all at once. The film presents the erotic drama of post-war youth, who are contemptuous of their elders and traditional values and pass their time in idle pursuits like laying about on beaches, gambling and chasing women. The action centres on two brothers who spend their time partying and nightclubbing only to invite tragedy by competing for the same woman.

Hiraju is a young and naive teenage boy. In contrast, his brother Natsuhisa is an inveterate party animal, denizen of nightclubs and seducer of girls. One day when the two brothers got off the train station to go to the beach for a day of waterskiing, Hiraju spies a girl named Eri and falls in love at first sight. After dating occasionally, Hiraju and Eri become close. Natsuhisa, who is not interested in Eri, at least not initially, later observes her at a nightclub with an elderly American man, who he later discovers is her husband. Finding himself increasingly attracted to her, Natsuhisa blackmails Eri into sleeping with him, threatening to reveal all to Hiraju if she refuses. At this point, Eri finds herself in a ménage a trois, though the affair with Hiraju remains strictly platonic. And though her relationship with Natsuhisa is passionate, at least on a physical level, her heart yearns for Hiraju. Unaware of all this, Hiraju proposes that she accompany him on a camping trip. Eri posts him a letter saying that she is unavailable to leave on the day proposed and asks whether they might leave a day earlier. However, this letter never reaches Hiraju; instead, it finds its way into the hands of Natsuhisa. Wishing to have Eri all to himself, Natsuhisa takes Eri on a sailing trip. Hiraju later discovers that Eri and his brother are having an affair. Determined to confront them, he drives all through the night, eventually locating the dock where the boat is moored.

In the mid-1950s, the Japanese film industry was in crisis owing to overproduction and ruinous competition on the part of studios to sign major stars (Phillips & Stringer, 2007). In order to compete, some studios began exploiting sex and violence, two staples of the taiyōzoku genre. A different image of youth had begun to emerge at this time, i.e., the mid 1950s, attracting the attention of both the media and critics. For contemporary Japanese audiences, the overt sexuality of Crazed Fruit was shocking. Also new and refreshing, and in notable contrast to other Japanese films of the time, Crazed Fruit made no effort to play down the novella’s anti-Americanism. Foreigners populate the background in many of Nakahira’s shots and Danish-Japanese actor Okada Masumi, who plays Frank, has a prominent role. In one scene where the waiter at the Blue Sky nightclub asks Frank what kind of drink he would like in English, Frank replies, “Got any shochu?”, thus identifying himself as Japanese.

Many visual and thematic motifs of the taiyōzoku genre are evident in Crazed Fruit, a film that powerfully portrays the disillusioned youth of postwar Japan. Four are of special interest here. First, beaches constitute the setting for many of the film’s scenes. The beaches serves as a private space for rebellious youth, a setting where they are free to hang out, water-ski, chase girls and make love. Second, the motorboat serves as a symbol of the speed, power, and freedom that youth prize and pursue. Moreover, aloha shirts and sunglasses are iconic to the genre (Phillips & Stringer, 2007), suggesting exciting and romantic places far removed from the grim reality of post war Japan, places that offer escape from monotony and hardship. In sharp contrast to the bright sun and expansive beaches, alcohol, cigarettes, violence, jazz, and nightclubs serve to evoke a sense of frenzied nightlife and youthful rebellion. This is evident in a scene set in a carnival where a group of youths are involved in a fight, ostensibly to protect their friend Frank. The joy the youths so obviously derive from beating up others reveals their violent, rebellious natures and lack of moral values. Moreover, the film’s opening scene in which the brothers jump over a turnstile to catch a train that is about to leave the station suggests that youth lack respect for authority, yet another taiyōzoku motif.

Crazed Fruit focuses on young, beautiful people living at a frenetic pace. The cinematography is outstanding; the fast cuts produce a sense of excitement. The ending is not overly clichéd, which saves this film from becoming banal. In my view the riveting plot conveys a real sense of the predicament confronting post-war Japanese youth. The taiyōzoku films were a short-lived phenomenon owing to both social pressures to conform and over-exposure in the mass media. Nonetheless, their representation of post-war youth is as compelling today as it was in the 1950s.

References

C             Casey, C. (2001). Ishihara Yujiro. Retrieved from http://shishido0.tripod.com/

riteriona, K. (Director). (1956tripod.com/ishihara.htmalMizunoe, T. (Producer), & Nakahira, K. (Director). (2005). Crazed Fruit [DVD].

Japan: criterion

Phillips, Alastair. & Stringer, Julian,  2007  Japanese cinema : texts and contexts / edited by Alastair Phillips and Julian Stringer Routledge, London

Categories
drama, melodrama gendai-geki post-war shomin-geki

The Shattered Women In a Torn-down City: A Film Review of Mizoguchi Kenji’s “Women of the Night”

Mizoguchi Kenji, as one of the most well-known Japanese directors in the 20th century, is famous for his intense focus on lower-class women in his films. Women of the Night (Yoru No Onnatachi, 1948) is collected as one of Mizoguchi’s “Four Masterpieces of the Fallen Women”, in which Street of Shame, Sisters of the Gion, and Osaka Elegy are also included. The leading “fallen woman” in this film is played by Tanaka Kinuyo, a Best Actress Award winner at the Berlin International Film Festival. She played leading roles in many of Mizoguchi’s films, and is considered one of the most influential actresses in Japan in the 20th century.  With a focus on postwar traumas, the story of Women of the Night is a literary adaptation based on a novel written by Hisaita Eijirô, and was set in postwar Osaka under occupation by the American government.

The opening scene starts with a desperate-looking woman, Owada Fusako, walking across a long street to sell her summer clothes at a pawnshop. Her desperation mainly comes from her missing husband and the heavy economic burden of her husband’s family. Later, she is informed that her husband was found dead in the war. The death of her child later on furthers her misfortune. However, on the other day, Fusako seems indifferent about her misfortune when she walks down the street with her sister-in-law Kumiko and surprisingly encounters her sister, Natsuko. Fusako proudly tells her sister that she has already got rid of the family burden by working as a secretary for her husband’s previous boss Kuriyama, while Natsuko announces her job as a dance hostess. Kumiko shows her admiration for both while listening to their conversations. The story reaches a turning point when Fusako finds out that her sister Natsuko is having an affair with her beloved boss Kuriyama. Stunned and desperate again, Fusako leaves their shared apartment and disappears. At the same time, the young sister-in-law Kumiko suddenly decides to leave home and start a new life on her own. Unfortunately, she is used and raped by a gangster she encountered on the street. With all her money and clothes taken away, she then has no choice but to follow a bad girl gang to become a prostitute. A small climax of the story arises when Natsuko gets sent to a hospital by mistake when she tries to look for Fusako in the prostitution area. She then meets Fusako in the hospital, who looks completely different in her dressings and manners as a skilled prostitute. After Fusako manages to escape from the hospital, she continues her life as a prostitute, who wishes to spread sexual transmitted diseases to men, until she meets Kumiko in an unexpected circumstance. Their reunion then pushes the story to its final climax.

The camerawork in Women of the Night adopts Mizoguchi’s favourite long shots, in which the camera is fixed at a certain point to follow the movement of characters and to exhibit a pan of actions. With this style of camerawork, the stage settings in which the characters interact are clearly revealed to the audience. In this particular film, an actual postwar ruin is starkly exposed. At the beginning of the film, when Fusako walks down a long street from the pawnshop to her house, the city’s scars left by the war become immediately visible as she passes by piles of shattered bricks and destroyed houses. It is significant to notice that two of the most violent scenes in the film are also shot in the observable postwar shambles. One of these scenes establishes right after Kumiko gets raped and dumped by the gangster. The violence starts as a gang of bad girls brutally tear off Kumiko’s clothes in front a field filled with shattered slabs and bricks. The other violent scene occurs towards the end of the film, when Fusako receives whips and kicks from her prostitute gang just because she wants to quit her job as a prostitute. This scene takes place in front of a torn-down church, and Fusako gets hit among piles of broken slabs as well. These parallel violent scenes taken place in war ruins resemble war scenes, as if the women’s wars start right after the end of men’s wars. The women’s wars reflect a reality that society remains unrest even if the wars are over. The broken hearts of women and shattered constructions are just another war-like disaster that further depresses the city.

Women of the Night also brings forth a struggle between traditional values and the new values of women. Influenced by the western ideas of individuality and independence brought by the occupation government, the women in this film seem to be less subordinate to men than the women in Mizoguchi’s previous films. Without her husband’s support, Fusako moves out to a single apartment and works as a secretary to support her life. She also believes in romantic true love between herself and Kuriyama, instead of adhering to arranged marriage. The single lady Natsuko, on the other hand, works as a dance hostess. The young Kumiko’s admiration for the sisters clearly reveals women’s appreciation and yearnings for the new lifestyles adopted by independent working women. The yearning for a more westernized, individualistic lifestyle is also what pushes Kumiko to leave home. However, the new appreciated value of women doesn’t seem to change their subordinate social status, as their income, still, is fully dependent on the men around them. Both Fusako and Natsuko lose hope and support after they leave Kuriyama, and Kumiko’s misery begins right after she gives up the support from her family. Even the prostitutes’ survivals are entirely dependent on their male customers, or the supporting charity organizations run by men. Trapped between ideals and a discouraging reality, women like Fusako turn their yearnings for independence into revenge towards men by becoming prostitutes and spreading diseases to men.

Mizoguchi’s long shots, together with the bleak atmosphere pervaded throughout the film, made me feel as if I was actually inside the shattered city. The violent actions between the female characters made me strongly feel for the physical and psychological hardship that the women in the film have to go through. The struggles amongst the women as well as the struggle between women and men in the film remain unresolved even towards the end of the film. The everlasting struggles indicate endless tragedies of the lower-class women during the postwar era. The film is particularly worth seeing during a relatively peaceful era, as it makes us question about wars again. After the war, not only the women of the night have fallen, but also the entire city has fallen. The kinds of destructions and distortions that wars can bring are immeasurable.

Categories
anti-war literary adaptations post-war

“Fires on the Plain”

Fires on the Plain was released in 1959, directed by Ichikawa Kon, and based on Ōka Shohei’s novel Nobi. The leading male actor is Funakoshi Eiji and there is no leading female actor in this movie because it is a Second World War II story through the eye of the leading male actor. The original movie is 106 minutes long in black and white yet there is no remade version of it.

The movie is about the personal experience of a Japanese soldier, Tamura, who is expelled from his squad because there is not enough food for everyone and his leader tells him to stay in the hospital for a longer period. On the way to the hospital, he sees smokes for a few times and he runs away instantly because he is afraid it is a signal for the American army to attack the place. When he arrives at the hospital, the commander asks him to leave since he only took people who were about to die. The Japanese soldiers can go nowhere except Palompon where they will be evacuated. At the same time, the American army keeps firing at them. Everyone is hungry and tired so they eat whatever they could find and sleep anywhere on the way to Palompon. They keep walking and a lot of them either fall down or are dead. Tamura finally meets his friends, but they practise cannibalism which is a human being eating another human being’s flesh. Therefore, Tamura kills them and runs to the field where there was smoke.

One theme of the movie is humanity which is the act of being kind to others. The soldiers who were abandoned and left behind in the Philippines are hungry and they have insufficient weapons to fight against their enemies. However, the Emperor’s allies do not send more troops to help them. In other words, they can only fight to the death since it is merely impossible to make it to Palompon. Firstly, there are airplanes, tanks and vehicles moving around the city to look for the Japanese soldiers so they have no way to escape. Secondly, they do not have enough food to maintain their daily needs; they will die of hunger in the end. Thirdly, the Filipinos will kill them if they see the Japanese soldiers. As a result, the soldiers can not hide anywhere. Perhaps there were many difficulties in the Japan mainland so he could not help his citizens abroad. However, the government puts its people in danger (started the war) first, it should evacuate as many soldiers back to Japan as possible. Another main aspect of humanity is cannibalism. Tamura’s comrades kill other living humans for food and they refer to those to “monkeys”. When one person faces the problems of insufficient food, what should he choose to keep him alive? Tamura eats grass and leeches so he has no energy. His comrades eat flesh because either they die, or others do. So they choose to sacrifice others. Near the end of the movie, there is a Buddhist follower who eats mud as food and he said “I can’t make the forest.” I believe forest here means lives. There are many species, fruits and trees in the forest that humans can make use of. Once the forest is destroyed, myriads of lives end.

The main character Tamura’s personality gradually changes throughout the movie. He treats every life as valuable even Filipinos. When he saw the Filipino girl who screams when she sees him, he is trying to drop his gun but he kills her since the girl cannot stop screaming. It seems that others will notice his existence so he has to shoot at her to close her mouth. When she is dead, he fixes her clothing and makes her look neat. From this action, I can tell that he feels sorry to her. At the beginning, he hides whenever he sees the smoke from a field. After he knows the reason that farmers burned the field, he runs to the field although the probability of keeping himself safe is low.  “I know it is dangerous, but I want to see people who are leading a normal life”. Tamura is scared of death; he tries his best to get to the evacuation area. However, he is brave to run to the smoke field because he wants to live as a normal human being. He does not want to be someone who eats human flesh. He does not eat any of the dead bodies he saw on the way to Palompon. All the things he does show that he wants to live as a normal person in a peaceful society. He is not afraid of death but he is aiming for a normal life.

I like this film a lot as it changes some of my old views toward Japanese of the WWII period. I am Chinese; I learned that Japanese invaded many countries. I still remember there are many documents about how cruel the Japanese treated Chinese men, women and even children. As a reason, I thought Japanese soldiers were all cold-blooded. However, I see that Tamura has no real intention to kill anybody in the film and he disagrees with cannibalism no matter how hungry he is. From my perspective, maybe it was just the government’s decision to invade other countries yet many of the Japanese soldiers had to follow the central orders. So I do not think they are as bad as I thought. Thus I will recommend this movie to people who dislike the Japanese; it will change your perceptions.

Categories
anti-war drama, melodrama post-war

The Value of Lives Through Twenty-Four Eyes of Innocent Children

Kinoshita Keisuke’s Twenty-four Eyes (Nijyū yon no hitomi, 1954) is one of the most famous Japanese post-war classics alongside of Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai), directed by Kurosawa Akira. It was released in 1954 and won a Golden Glove Award in the foreign film category. This film was based on the novel “Twenty-four Eyes” written by Tsuboi Sakae and later remade into colour film in 1987 and then into a famous TV series in 2005. In this movie, Kinoshita inserts historical perspectives by depicting twenty years of devastating Japanese history, beginning in 1928 and continuing through post WWII. Kinoshita portrays this film as an anti- war drama, focusing on the actions and the interactions between the main characters, Ōishi Hisako and twelve school pupils (the twenty-four eyes), during turbulent years in Japan. The movie is portrayed alongside beautiful unchanged scenery of the Setonai Ocean while many nostalgic melodies are repeated over and over throughout the film. These nostalgic melodies with their changing styles and tempos help accentuate Kinoshita’s theme of pacifism.

The story primarily focuses on the interactions between teacher Ōishi Hisako (Takamie Hideko) and her twelve pupils and the community, as well as the struggles they face during two turbulent decades in Japan. The story begins with the arrival of a new teacher at a typical village school in a rural sea island called Shodoshima. The female teacher (Onago Sensei) first appears on the scene by riding a brand-new bike with western clothes on. At this time bikes were thought to be the high-class vehicles for men, so the modern look of this female teacher shocks the peasants in the remote community. Soon after her arrival, Mrs. Ōishi becomes the centre of gossip by villagers and arouses peasants’ antipathy due to her modern look and her unorthodox style of teaching. After Mrs. Ōishi becomes a teacher of the twelve first graders, she gets severely injured by her pupils’ prank, which eventually leads her to quit her village school. After Mrs. Ōishi had been gone for a long time, the twelve children decide to meet her since they regret what they have done and start to long for Mrs. Ōishi. It is at this point the community understands the true value of Mrs. Ōishi and see the children’s love toward her, which leads to reconciliation and acceptance of her into the community. Five years after this incident and the quitting of the village school, Mrs. Ōishi again gains a chance to teach, now adolescent pupils. However, around this time censorship was tightened and patristic militaristic ethos were being spread, so she is labelled a communist and decides to quite teaching. Again, time passes; Mrs. Ōishi and twelve children grow older and get intertwined in a devastating period, going through various hardships surrounded by economic depression, poverty and war. By the end of the movie, the children grow up to have their own kids and realize the happiness of peace as well as the sadness of loved ones who died in war and poverty.

Through the strongly held attitude and actions of Mrs. Ōishi and the dialogue held between Mrs. Ōishi and her pupils, Kinoshita enables the audience to grasp the theme, which emphasizes pacifism. Kinoshita inserts pro-peace and anti-war views by showing Mrs. Ōishi’s response toward the “Red Incident”. Despite the fact Mr. Kataoka, one of the teachers at Mrs. Ōishi’s school, gets arrested for writing an anti-war “Red” essay, Mrs. Ōishi still holds firm to her anti-war ideology. Regardless of the risk of getting arrested, she reads aloud Mr. Kataoka’s “Red” essay in class, and teaches children the importance of being alive. She goes as far as leaving her job as a teacher when the militaristic government restricts teachers to only teach patriarchal pro-war materials. Also, the simple dialogues and conversations between Mrs. Ōishi and her pupils help accentuate the stupidity of war. As the hue of anti war gets stronger, Mrs. Ōishi’s pupils become inspired to become soldiers and fight for the sake of the Empire of Japan. Mrs. Ōishi feels a deep sorrow upon hearing her students say being a soldier is their future dream. Instead of praising and being proud of their sacrifice for the nation and its people, she tells them that it is foolish to die for the nonsense of war. She also says she prefers to see them alive than to see them becoming a nation’s dead “hero”. In addition to Mrs. Ōishi’s pacifistic actions and attitudes, her joy at the termination of war directly brings the message of anti-war with the importance of peace. After hearing the emperor proclaiming the end of the war on the radio, she expresses joy by telling people that it is great not to see families and children suffer and die in war anymore while having a bittersweet feeling toward those who died. This happiness is in contrast to the sorrow of Japan’s loss in the war. This contradiction of joy and sorrow dramatises the idea of pacifism.

Kinoshita’s distinct choices and uses of music play into the sorrow of death, thus underlining the theme. Kinoshita employs various folktale songs and frequently changes the choice of songs and tempo depending on the emotions and perspective carried in the film. One of the conspicuous examples is the melody used during social changes. Since Shodoshima is a tiny remote island in Japan, the town itself did not receive much damage during the war as it is indicated by the unchanged beautiful scenery of the ocean and mountains. As well, the lives of peasants in Shodoshima remain unchanged during the Manchurian invasion except for the song choice played in the background. Here, Kinoshita inserts a sadder and slower song in comparison to other classics used earlier in the film, illustrating the grief and sadness directed toward the people who died in battle.

Kinoshita did an excellent job telling the horror of war and conveying the message of peace by depicting innocent children dying from war alongside melancholic music played in the film.

I think this film gives a misleading impression that Japan is a victim, not a perpetrator of war. By sentimentally depicting naïve and innocent children, who are passively forced to be involved in wars while omitting detailed information about the pupil’s willingness to fight for the war, Kinoshita fails to insert Japan’s factual position as a perpetrator in the war. As a result, the audience may get the mistaken impression that Japan was a victim of war. With basic knowledge about the background of the Pacific War, Twenty-four Eyes is enjoyable and educational for those who are interested in Japanese life during turbulent years as well as those who enjoy classical cinema.

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drama, melodrama gendai-geki post-war

“Shubun” – Theme of Moral Degeneration

Shubun or Sukyandaru (English: Scandal), written and directed by Kurosawa Akira, was made by Shochiku Studio as a post-war drama released in 1950. Inspired by a celebrity gossip column named “Scandal”, Kurosawa directed this film which centers on the rise of the Japanese media press in the 1950’s when Japanese society is recovering after the war. However, under the influence of western “celebrity-obsessed” culture, the media company Armour presented in the film was ethically challenged between morality and profit. The main characters are Aoe Ichiro (Mifune Toshiro), Saigo Miyako (Yamaguchi Yoshiko), and Hiruta (Shimura Takashi). Together, the cast plays a story of intertwined decline of morality, courtroom drama, and human redemption.

Aoe Ichiro, an artist painter, meets the famous classical singer Saijo while painting in the mountain. Discovering Saijo is going in the same direction as he is, Aoe gives her a ride to a nearby mountain village on his motorcycle, followed by paparazzi. Saijo rejects when the paparazzi requests to take photographs of her. As revenge, and also because they cannot return to the Amour with empty hands, the paparazzi secretly takes a photo of Aoe and Saijo when they have meals together and turns the photo into a foul love affair under the title: “Love Story on Motorcycle”. Aoe tries to explain to the public but the situation only worsens. On the other hand, Saijo does not bother to explain anything because she is terrified of further disgracing her ruined reputation. Enraged, Aoe decides to sue the company and hires a crooked lawyer Hiruta, who has a daughter ill with tuberculosis. Under the dilemma of self-righteousness and fighting against the morally corrupted Amour and the financial pressure of being unable to treat his ill daughter, Hiruta accepts a bribe from Amour and works for both parties. And the results of numerous court trials are disastrous. However, with the guilt and despair of cheating himself, his daughter, and Aoe, Hiruta finally attempts to make an astonishing move to turn the situation around during the final trial under his own belief of what is right to do.

In this film, the theme of profit dominating one’s morality is greatly explored and revealed in two extreme ways: malicious on the chief organizer of Amour Company and mild yet forgiving on Hiruta.

The theme is most prominent during the scene where the chief organizer takes a bold action of inventing a false scandal out of a mere photograph, totally disregarding other people’s doubts and concerns about the deceitful deed and the possibility of innocence between the couple. With his confidence overwhelming, the chief organizer arrogantly concludes that “nobody cares about the details. And the targets (of the scandals) do not even bother to protest. The most could happen to us is being looked down at.” He even admits that it is not the first time they have tried to make money out of untrue scandals. Furthermore, the organizer even hopes for people to take action, since the more people get involved, the more sales they make. This scene is especially taken by a long close-up. Such way of filming is rather effective towards enhancing the theme because with close-up shots, the audience can see the chief organizer’s expression very closely, thus further understand his malicious purpose by observing every detail of his facial expression.

The theme of money overruling morality is again presented with Hiruta. This time however, the theme gains the audience’s sympathy and forgiveness because Hiruta faces the dilemma of whether to accept the bribery from Amour and cure his daughter, or to follow his own sense of righteousness and proceed with court trials where he gains essentially nothing. The technique of repetition of script used in the scene where Hiruta purposely gets himself drunk successfully protects Hiruta’s reputation because Hiruta repeats his guilt numerous times “I’m a dog; I’m a worm.” Again, a couple of close-up shots of Hiruta crying results in great sympathy towards him especially when he cries and claims his New Year’s resolution of becoming a good man at the same time. Often we find a character is more forgivable than others (in this case Hiruta) because he demonstrates understandings of his wrongdoings under harsh circumstances, and most of all – Hiruta shows remorse.

Overall, Scandal is one of the more lighthearted black-and-white films to examine for academic purposes than other serious jidai-geki and post-war films; mainly due to its simple plot which makes it very easy for audiences to understand and enjoy. Part of the reason for the easier enjoyment of this film is because it is very similar as to reading another magazine on some unproven random scandals of some famous celebrities, which is a thing that people probably do quite frequently. Through the film Kurosawa proves that history repeats itself – people do not change; untrue scandals are still being made today all over the world amongst people whether celebrities or not.

Categories
anti-war literary adaptations post-war shomin-geki

Miss Pebble & Her Twenty-Four Eyes: A look at Twenty-Four Eyes by Kinoshita Keisuke

Based on the 1952 novel by Tsuboi Sakae of the same name, Twenty-Four Eyes (Nijūshi no hitomi) is a 1954 black-and-white film directed by Kinoshita Keisuke. It stars Takamine Hideko as a schoolteacher named Ōishi Hisoka. Her students are played by various actors as the children grow throughout the years to become adults with sons and daughters of their own. Twenty-Four Eyes would later be remade in colour in 1987 by director Asama Yoshitaka.

The story is set on an island called Shodoshima, or Shodo Island. It spans over a period of twenty years (“two eras,” the film calls it) from 1928 to 1946, following the lives of Miss Ōishi and her twelve students, to whom the twenty-four eyes of the movie’s title belong to. The students, who begin the film as first-graders, quickly nickname her “Miss Pebble” (her real name, Ōishi, means “big stone”) for her diminutive size. Miss Ōishi is introduced to the audience as a modern woman: she rides a brand new bike to work, is a trained and licensed teacher from the city, and wears Western clothing. She chooses to use her students’ nicknames as opposed to their given names; she teaches them country songs. As a result, she fast becomes the talk of the village for her sophisticated appearance and unorthodox teaching methods. However, as the students grow attached to her, so too do the children’s parents. She remains close to her students as they are swept up in the ever-changing landscape of life—through the Red Scare, the oncoming war, and beyond until everything comes full circle at the end, twenty years later, when Miss Ōishi finds herself teaching the children of her former students. The last image we get is of Miss Ōishi riding her bike to the school the same way she did when we first met her at the beginning of the film.

Although he is less of an international household name as his counterparts, Kinoshita is an equally skilled director who, here, has made lovely use of extreme long shots and towering crane shots to capture the brilliant landscape of Shodoshima. The camera frequently pulls away during moments in which the audience might expect a close-up, such as when Miss Ōishi is waving goodbye to her students rowing away: we see her only as a tiny silhouette against the massive backdrop of the rolling sea and the wide sandy shores of the beach. Throughout the film, we continue to get similarly wide shots of the grassy flatlands and the gently sloping hills as the camera tracks the children. These extreme long shots seem to emphasize the film’s mood, suggesting that the characters are but small figures within a world that will sweep them along in its devastating wars and economic hardships. And though there are certain undeniable anti-war sentiments, often expressed through Miss Ōishi who remains steadfast in her belief that nothing good can come of war—she is glad when Japan is defeated because it means the war is over—it is the personal tragedies of the characters which strike the strongest note. Whether it is poverty, illness, or war that swallows their lives, these losses are made keenly personal because of Miss Ōishi’s connection with her students.

Along with its deft handling of the cinematography, the film also makes beautiful use of music—most notably the children singing. Their songs underscore the images on screen and evolve along with the characters and the time period. At the beginning, the songs are generally uplifting and melodic; when the war descends upon Japan, however, their songs take on a patriotic and militaristic edge. It isn’t until the war is over and the movie draws to a close that we return to the same childhood songs of old. Like the visual of Miss Ōishi riding her bike down the same road twenty years later, the music comes full circle as well.

Twenty-Four Eyes is a moving film that is quite clearly a product of the post-war period, but at the same time, it transcends the simple label of anti-war or post-war to become a story about the way our lives are touched by the world around us. It’s a bittersweet look at the way life will always carry on no matter what hardships come along: after a full two decades and years of war, children are still going to school and Miss Ōishi, despite all of her losses, continues to teach. The film is poignant, often sorrowful, but ultimately quietly triumphant.

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