Turning Japanese : Melting Pot Cinema Part IV

Akira Kurosawa would be the one-man band that introduced the Western world to Japanese cinema with his 1950 release of Rashomon, which garnered the esteemed Golden Lion at Venice and was an overnight Cannes sensation. The quick spread-word would influence Kenji Mizoguchi, to call and respond with his lesser appreciated but nonetheless and all stop pullers with three subsequent entries; Saikaku Ichidai Omna (The Life of Oharu, 1952), Tales of The Pale and Silvery Moon, 1953) and Sansho Dayu ( Sansho the Bailiff, 1954).

Rashomon would finally be recognized by the Academy for some golden boy bragging rights and at the same time in 1954, Cannes would lend an ever so kind golden palm to Teinosuke Kinguasa for his 1953 effort, Gates Of Hell ( Jigokumon) It was clear the now viable force of nature that
the Japanese theater was quickly becoming.

                           Chambara, a prime example of Jidaigeki






Jidaigeki , or historical genre films gained the most notoriety and all five of the Japanese prize winning films were of this genre. Period dramas were produced fast and furious before the outbreak of World War Two, they would make up more than half of the overall film production in Japan. In the  war's aftermath, American occupation forces would issue guidelines and provisions, that sadly impinged on their creative impetuses, the occupation forces were vehemently against the idea
of Japan producing films that centered on their collective ideologies of anti-democracy and their
feudal lineage. However the desire of Japanese directors to release their Jidai-geki films which were almost always based on the Edo (Tokugawa period) was powerful. The directors were still expected to adhere to the sanctions of the occupation, and would certainly appease the ruling, however screaming and kicking,  by releasing films about contemporary life in Japan, and this genre was known as gendai-geki, these would comprise seventy-five percent of Japanese film production. Gendai-geki would inspire future sub-genres that specifically dealt with contemporaneous mores, and would raise questions about the family role as well as depicting the social class.

             Rumpen-mono were abstract films, days in the lives of the lumpy proletariat






Rumpen-mono films were the read all about it subject of the lumpen proletariat,( Marxism's lower classes). There would exist, yet another more mainstream and embraced genre called shomin-geki, and these films also mainly concentrated on class systems, with a particular focus on a lower to middle-class, working Japanese family. Artistically superior, sophisticated productions would emerge out of this now seasoned genre, and Yasujiro Ozu, Mikio Naruse and Heinosuke Gosho would lead its way.


Haha-mono and tsuma-mono (respectively 'mother' films and 'wife' films) were one of the more acknowledged genres, and were subdivisions of kachusha-mono which means a woman who is both martyr and heroine. This would be based on the heroine in a late Tolstoy novel Resurrection, and the women in these films were always self-sacrificial, indomitable and determined to risk life and limb as needed, for their children and at times for their lovers.

                       Noh can do - and did influence Kurosawa
           


There was a post-war phenomenon and that was in the name of  tsuma-mono, and nothing could possibly be more exemplary than Ozu's Kaze No Naka No Mendori (A Hen In The Wind, 1948) in this story a destitute mother turns to a life of ill repute as a means to pay for her ailing child's hospital bills while she simultaneously must await  her husband's demobilization.  Many literary and theatrical methods were the key influences of Japanese cinema. For instance, in Rashomon, the spiritualist who speaks to the dead,  summons the deceased samurai husband , which was an essential ingredient in the lyrically classical Noh theatre ( a dramatic style that is played out on a barren stage by a strictly male cast using carefully restrained and controlled gestures). Kurosawa's breathtaking interpretation of Shakespeare's Macbeth, Kumonosu-Jo (Throne of Blood, 1957) borrows from Noh theatre and that is seen in the unusual makeup technique of Lady Macbeth, and the background music is also an element of Noh. There has not been a massive influence of Noh Theatre in Japanese cinema as a whole, but on the other hand Kabuki Theater would adorn a fair number of jidai-geki, as well as the chambara, (sword fight) films that boasted numerous plots and themes. One of the most noted is the story of the Loyal 47 Ronin, of which several film remakes have ensued. On an experimental level, the cinematic uses of Kabuki theater in Keisuke Kinoshita's Narayamushi-Ko (The Ballad of the Narayana, 1958) are quite gratuitous. His sets drop and slide out of the frame when they are no longer necessary; the lighting is minimal at the end of most sequences as a deliberate imitation of Kabuki stage techniques. The best-known development of Kabuki influence would be Kon Ichikawa's Yukingo henge (An Actor's Revenge, 1963) and here Kazuo Hasegawa plays the double-role (local gangster and Kabuki actor of female roles) that he played in Kinugasa's staggering 1935 version of the same story.


Influential Directors


In the early 1950's, the critical acclaim that Japanese Cinema was achieving was the turning point that Kenji Mizoguchi discovered he was now a revered master abroad and would also now have a financial independence that was not a reality for him during the oppressive and impoverished post-war 1940s years. Mizoguchi would have a new focal point; contemporary stories that would host a common thematic of the fate of the geisha girl, historical epochs and all this would have a contemporaneous relevance. The ravaging ramifications of the war, the fallen courtesan and the fate ensued. The ruling class, it's cause and effect and how it would prove problematic for lovers of the lower social order. Films that specifically dealt with these subjects were : Ugetsu Monogatari, The Life of Ohara, Sansho the Bailiff, and Chikamatsu Monogatori, (The Crucified Lovers, 1954).

                        Oharu dere!


In The Life of Oharu, despite the fact that the plot was was seemingly askew and full of contrivances, it would prove to be the most acclaimed of the set and seen as having the most gravitas. The colorful American critic Johnathan Rosenbaum once mused, in regards to Oharu ' The most powerful feminist protest ever recorded on film.' 






Mizoguchi, in all polemical splendor and narrative ferocity, pursues his theorem, encompassing a broader variety of moods and tensions. As Oharu (Kinuyo Tanaka) the stunning young daughter of a samurai falls hopelessly in love with a commoner and is then exiled to the country, into a downward spiral, descending into a life of poverty and prostitution. Yoshikata Yoda would script this poignant story. Yoda was also Mizoguchi's favorite writer. The script delineates the decline in a manner that perpetually emboldens Oharu's objectification and exploitation by the men that desire her. This is expertly interwoven into Oharu's personal tale. A voluminous panoramic view of court life in Kyoto in 7th century is conveyed through Mizoguchi's inimitably lavish directorial style. The film's end parallels it's beginning - with the seasoned heroine, now completely reduced to the status of street-beggar, as she walks, virtually invisible down the street and past a pagoda.


The suffering of women is a tried and true theme that is ever present in Ugetsu Monogatari when the war encroaches on their once peaceful lives. A potter's spouse (Kinuyo Tanaka) is killed at the time her husband is being led astray by a malicious spirit that presents itself in the incarnation of a strikingly beautiful aristocratic woman. (Machiko Kyo) A farmer's wife then becomes a prostitute  when her husband goes seeking glory and recognition as a poser samurai. The fantastical and elements of the supernatural are interspersed effectively with the detailed re-creation of sixteenth century life.


In Sansho Dayu - an entire aristocratic family is disrupted but eventually the son finds his mother ( Kinuyo Tanaka, how ubiquitous was she)? again. She has now become a superannuated prostitute, enfeebled and blind.


In The Crucified Lovers, a bourgeois woman is spuriously accused of being adulterous with a servant but then actually falls in love with him before they both tragically succumb. Mizoguchi's last phase took in a new creative angle of experimentation - the use of color in Yokihi (Princess Yang Kwai-fei 1955) and Shin Heike Monagaturi (1955) The former, despite a winning performance from Machiko Kyo, has a slightly indecisive tone ( mainly due to Mizoguchi's difficulties with the film's Hong Kong co-producers), but Shin Heike Monagatari, was a major accomplishment. A complex study of the filial allegiances and religious impasse, it's arresting images shot by Mizoguchi's right hand cameraman, the incomparable Miyagawa, would make it rueful that he never lived long enough to continue the experiments in color, wide screen and 70mm film. The film also proved Mizoguchi's ability, when required, to be a shrewd, swift, economical action director.


Mizoguchi was, in the best sense, the most regal of directors, facile, adaptive, effects played no part in his artistic make-up. He was inexhaustibly exploring, refining, and cultivating a cinematic language to which he alone would possess the key.