Tragedy of Japan (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1953)

Keiji Sada and Yuko Mochizuki in Tragedy of Japan

Haruko Inoue: Yuko Mochizuki
Utako, Haruko's Daughter: Yoko Katsuragi
Seiichi, Haruko's Son: Masami Taura
Sato: Teiji Takahasi
Tatsuya, a Street Musician: Keiji Sada
Masayuki Akazawa: Ken Uehara
Mrs. Akazawa: Sanae Takasugi
Wakamaru: Keiko Awaji

Director: Keisuke Kinoshita
Screenplay: Keisuke Kinoshita
Cinematography: Hiroshi Kusuda
Art direction: Kimihiko Nakamura
Music: Chuji Kinoshita

Tragedy of Japan is the Criterion Channel's title for Keisuke Kinoshita's film, but I prefer the one used on IMDb and elsewhere: A Japanese Tragedy. Not only does that title echo Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, but it also particularizes the story better. What happens to Haruko Inoue and her children is not a microcosm of recent Japanese history but a product of it -- one among millions, including those told in Kinoshita's many films. The film also demonstrates something of Kinoshita's tendency to overreach, often with distracting innovations such as the oval masks that frame scenes in You Were Like a Wild Chrysanthemum (1955) or the color washes that creep into The River Fuefuki (1960). Here it's an unwise use of extensive documentary footage of the war and its aftermath as a frame for the fictional story. The contrast between the raw actuality of news footage and the artifice of movie storytelling works to the disadvantage of the latter. Which is unfortunate because Kinoshita has a good story to tell about Haruko's attempts to survive and to provide for her children and the unforeseen consequences of her efforts, as well as the problems faced by Seiichi in his ambitious pursuit of a medical career and Utako in her disastrous involvement with her English teacher. None of Haruko's good deeds, it seems, go unpunished, as the skirting of the law that she found necessary is held against her in more peaceful and prosperous times. Despite the mistaken attempt to fold these stories into a larger historical context, this is one of Kinoshita's better films, marked by some very good acting and genuine human dilemmas.

The Garden of Women (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1954)

Mieko Takamine and Chieko Higashiyama in The Garden of Women

Mayumi Gojo: Mieko Takamine
Yoshie Izushi: Hideko Takamine
Tomiko Takioka: Keiko Kishi
Akiko Hayashino: Yoshiko Kuga
Sankichi Shimoda: Takahiro Tamura
Yoshikazu Sagara: Masami Taura
Masao Izushi: Takashi Miki
Masao's Wife: Kuniko Igawa
Landlady: Yoko Mochizuki
Schoolmaster: Chieko Higashiyama
President: Kikue Mori

Director: Keisuke Kinoshita
Screenplay: Keisuke Kinoshita
Based on a story by Tomoji Abe
Cinematography: Hiroshi Kusuda
Art direction: Kimihiko Nakamura
Film editing: Yoshi Sugihara
Music: Chuji Kinoshita

Youth rebellion films became a prominent genre in Japan, but Keisuke Kinoshita's The Garden of Women is distinctive in that the rebels are all women. They have a lot to rebel against: They are students in a hidebound women's college more determined to turn them into proper young ladies than into educated women. This causes difficulties for Yoshie Izushi, who is a few years older than her fellow students. Most of them come from wealthy families, but Yoshie had to work for several years to earn enough money for the tuition. She wants an education that would make her a fitting partner for her upwardly mobile boyfriend, Sankichi. But she struggles with some subjects, especially math, and when she tries to study after hours she comes up against school rules that forbid her from studying anywhere except in her room -- which is usually filled with her roommates' friends, who are plotting against the stern headmistress, Mayumi Gojo, aka "The Shrew." Yoshie wants no part of the rebellion: She wants to graduate and marry Sankichi before her family forces her into marriage with a wealthy man of their choosing. Eventually, the student rebellion succeeds, but Yoshie gets caught in the crossfire. The Garden of Women is one of Kinoshita's more successful films, mostly because it gives us an unexplored angle on Japanese society and its tumultuous postwar society. But it's somewhat overplotted, with a few too many characters whose backstories take away from the central narrative.

The Thick-Walled Room (Masaki Kobayashi, 1956)

Torohiko Hamada in The Thick-Walled Room

Yokota: Ko Mishima
Yamashita: Torohiko Hamada
Yoshiko: Keiko Kishi
Yamashita's Sister: Toshiko Kobayashi
Kawanishi: Kinzo Shin
Kimura: Tsutomu Shimomoto

Director: Masaki Kobayashi
Screenplay: Kobo Abe
Cinematography: Hiroshi Kusuda
Art direction: Kimihiko Nakamura
Film editing: Shizuo Oosawa
Music: Chuji Kinoshita

The resonant phrase "just following orders" hovers silently throughout Masaki Kobayashi's scathing The Thick-Walled Room. It's a portrait of postwar Japan more critical of all concerned, from the militarists who caused the war to the forces that occupied the country after it, than most of the films made by Kobayashi's contemporaries, which is why it was held from release for three years after it was made in 1953. The film focuses on the class-B and -C war criminals held prisoners by the occupying Americans -- and then by the Japanese -- for crimes they were ordered by their superior officers to commit. Meanwhile, many of those superior officers have been released and have returned to civilian life and even to important positions in business and government. The prisoners are both haunted by the things they were ordered to do and resentful of the injustice of their situation. They also remain ignorant of the way the outside world has changed. Yokota, for example, dreams of his girlfriend, Yoshiko, unaware that she has become a prostitute. The screenplay by novelist Kobo Abe is psychologically rich, and Kobayashi's direction makes the most of its subtleties.

Pigs and Battleships (Shohei Imamura, 1961)

Jitsuko Yoshimura in Pigs and Battleships

Kinta: Hiroyuki Nagato
Haruko: Jitsuko Yoshimura
Himori: Masao Mishima
Slasher Tetsuji: Tetsuro Tanba
Hoshino: Shiro Osaka
Ohachi: Takeshi Kato
Gunji, Gangster in Check Shirt: Shoichi Ozawa
Katsuyo: Yoko Minimida
Kikuo: Hideo Sato
Kan'ichi: Eijiro Tono
Sakiyama: Akira Yamauchi
Hiromi: Sanae Nakahara
Haruko's Mother: Kin Sugai
Harukoma: Bumon Kahara

Director: Shohei Imamura
Screenplay: Hisashi Yamanouchi, Gisashi Yamauchi
Based on a novel by Kazu Otsuka
Cinematography: Shinsaku Himeda
Art direction: Kimihiko Nakamura
Film editing: Mutsuo Tanji
Music: Toshiro Mayuzumi

It seems to be common in critiques of Shohei Imamura's work to contrast him with his mentor, Yasujiro Ozu. The world of Ozu's films is that of the settled middle class families, with their marriageable daughters and salarymen breadwinners, filmed in the stately, low camera angle style that almost immediately identifies Ozu's work. Imamura's films are full of low-lifes, people struggling to get along by any means necessary, and are full of flamboyant camerawork, such as the spectacularly crowded widescreen compositions in Pigs and Battleships. A contrast of Ozu and Imamura is rather like a contrast of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens: Both do things with radically different means, the one with a raucous, satiric assortment of colorful characters, the other with a quiet, ironic examination of manners and mores. But both Ozu and Imamura share something: an admiration for strong women. In the case of Pigs and Battleships, it's Haruko, struggling to find herself in the hurlyburly of Yokosuka, the port city infested with American sailors. She has had the misfortune to fall in love with the goofball Kinta, who wants to make his name as a yakuza, getting involved with the gang's pig-raising scheme. Hiroyuki Nagato gives a hilariously loosey-goosey performance as Kinta, mugging like Jerry Lewis when he really wants to be Humphrey Bogart. It's not entirely clear what Jitsuko Yoshimura's Haruko really sees in Kinta, but the performance of the two actors together is highly entertaining. Although the film plays mostly for comedy, culminating in the destruction of much of the red-light district by a stampede of pigs, it features several murders and the rape of Haruko by three American sailors, with the result that it's dominated by a kind of Swiftian satiric tone.