I Will Buy You (Masaki Kobayashi, 1956)

Yunosuke Ito and Keiji Sada in I Will Buy You

Daisuke Kishimoto: Keiji Sada
Ippei Tamaki: Yunosuke Ito
Fudeko Tanaguchi: Keiko Kishi
Goro Kurita: Minoru Oki
Ryoko Taniguchi: Mitsuko Mito

Director: Masaki Kobayashi
Screenplay: Zenzo Matsuyama
Based on a novel by Minoru Ono
Cinematography: Yuharu Atsuta
Art direction: Kazue Hirataka
Film editing: Yoshiyasu Hamamura
Music: Chuji Kinoshita

We have come to accept that professional sports is a big and sometimes corrupt business, so that movies about that business, like Jerry Maguire (Cameron Crowe, 1996) and Moneyball (Bennett Miller, 2011), are designed more to show how things work than to serve as exposés. In fact, I think we have to go back to Japan in 1956 and Masaki Kobayashi's I Will Buy You to see a film that really purports to be shocked about the venality behind a supposedly innocent and much-loved game like baseball. In Kobayashi's view, the bidding war over a star college player becomes a nastily cynical exhibition of greed, corrupting everyone, including the player and his family. The central figure in the film is Kishimoto, played by Keiji Sada as an essentially nice guy who is dismayed by what his job, persuading a player named Kurita to sign with the Toyo Flowers, forces him to do. Sada has some of the look and manner of a Gregory Peck (without Peck's ineradicable blandness), making it possible for us to sympathize with the character and also to understand how he can persuade Kurita's wary mentor-trainer, Tamaki, that he has the player's best interests at heart -- unlike the more ostensibly greedy rivals from other teams. Tamaki is something of a shadowy figure: He may have been a spy during the war, and for most of the film we're not entirely sure that his occasional attacks of pain from gallstones aren't faked, an attempt to win sympathy. He also has a wife and child, but spends most of his time with his mistress, Ryoko, whose younger sister, Fudeko, is Kurita's girlfriend. Fudeko professes to hate baseball, and she is ashamed of her illegitimate birth. Every character in the film, it seems, has a complex backstory. That includes the members of Kurita's family, who live in the country and are mistakenly treated as naive yokels by some of the agents attempting to sign the young player. In the end, the greed of the family even produces brother-on-brother violence. The film ends in irony loaded on irony, capping a well-told and sardonic story.

Somewhere Beneath the Wide Sky (Masaki Kobayashi, 1954)

Masami Taura and Akira Ishihama in Somewhere Beneath the Wide Sky

Ryochi Morita: Keiji Sada
Hiroko: Yoshiko Kuga
Yasuko: Hideko Takamine
Noboru: Akira Ishihama
Shun-don: Minoru Oki
Hisako: Toshiko Kobayashi
Mitsui: Masami Taura
Shige: Kumeko Urabe
Natsuko: Chieko Nakakita
Imai: Shin'ichi Himori
Shinkichi: Ryohei Uchida

Director: Masaki Kobayashi
Screenplay: Yoshiko Kusuda
Cinematography: Toshiyasu Morita
Art direction: Kazue Hirataka
Film editing: Yoshi Sugihara
Music: Chuji Kinoshita

Somewhere Beneath the Wide Sky* is a reminder that Masaki Kobayashi began his career as an assistant to Keisuke Kinoshita. It not only employed Kinoshita's brother Chuji as composer of the score, along with the director's usual film editor, Yoshi Sugihara, it also displays one of Kinoshita's usual domestic drama themes: the conflict of tradition and modernity as several generations of a family try to work out a way of living together in postwar Japan. And it shares some of Kinoshita's sentimentality in the developments of its plot. In tone and theme, Somewhere Beneath the Wide Sky could not be more different from the film Kobayashi made just before it: the harsh, fierce The Thick-Walled Room, which was made in 1953 but which the studio withheld from release until 1956. For that matter, it's not much like Kobayashi's bleak slum drama Black River (1956) or his unsparing three-part antiwar epic The Human Condition (1959-1961). Kobayashi would find his way out of the genteel trap that Somewhere etc. represents. Which is not to say that he didn't make a pleasant, thoroughly enjoyable film in which everyone seems to find themselves on the right path by the time the plot works itself out. Ryochi and Hiroko, who run the family liquor store, have married for love, which alienates his stepmother, who would have preferred an arranged marriage. Abetted by Ryochi's depressed, self-loathing sister, Yasuko  the stepmother constantly finds fault with Hiroko. Eventually, however, everyone makes peace, thanks in large part to Ryochi's steadfast good nature in defense of his wife and to Yasuko's unexpectedly finding love and a new purpose in life. The feel-good elements of the film are not quite so convincing as the harsher parts, but the performances -- especially that of Hideko Takamine in a cast-against-type role -- are persuasive.

*The Criterion Channel title is a translation of the Japanese title Kono hiroi sora no dokoka ni. IMDb gives it as Somewhere Under the Broad Sky, and I've also seen it referred to as Somewhere Beneath the Vast Heavens.

Black River (Masaki Kobayashi, 1957)

Tatsuya Nakadai and Ineko Arima in Black River

Shizuko: Ineko Arima
Nishida: Fumio Watanabe
Killer Joe: Tatsuya Nakadai
Landlady: Isuzu Yamada
Okada: Tomo'o Nagai
Okada's Wife: Keiko Awaji
Kurihara: Eijiro Tono
Kin: Seiji Miyaguchi
Sakazaki: Asao Sano

Director: Masaki Kobayashi
Screenplay: Zenzo Matsuyama
Based on a story by Takeo Tomishima
Cinematography: Yuharu Atsuta
Production design: Ninjin Kurabu
Film editing: Yoshiyasu Hamamura
Music: Chuji Kinoshita

Masaki Kobayashi's remarkable slice-of-life drama Black River takes place in a slum near an American army base. It's a festering dump, inhabited by a variety of people, from lowlifes attempting to make a living by exploiting the soldiers to dead-enders with no place else to go. Into this morass wanders a naïve university student, Nishida, in search of cheap lodgings, who tries to make a little money as a used-book seller. He falls for a pretty waitress, Shizuko, who longs to escape from the slum, but their attachment puts him in the line of fire of a swaggering young gangster called Killer Joe, who has his own designs on Shizuko. Presiding over everything is the landlady, who has plans for the property that don't include its tenants. She's played to a fare-thee-well by the great Isuzu Yamada, perhaps best known as the Lady Macbeth equivalent in Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood (1957). Here she's outfitted with a snaggly golden-toothed grill, a fitting correlative for the concealment of the moral rot within. But the real scene-stealer of the film is Tatsuya Nakadai as Killer Joe, in one of his first major film appearances, perfectly blending the charisma that would make him a star with the menace that would allow him to play memorable villains as well as heroes.

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.

The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer (Masaki Kobayashi, 1961)

Tatsuya Nakadai in The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer

Kaji: Tatsuya Nakadai
Michiko: Michiyo Aratama
Shojo: Tamao Nakamura
Terada: Yusuke Kawazu
Choro: Chishu Ryu
Tange: Taketoshi Naito
Refugee Woman: Hideko Takamine
Ryuko: Kyoko Kishida
Russian Officer: Ed Keene
Chapayev: Ronald Self

Director: Masaki Kobayashi
Screenplay: Zenzo Matsuyama, Koichi Inagaki, Masaki Kobayashi
Based on a novel by Junpei Gomikawa
Cinematography: Yoshio Miyajima
Art direction: Kazue Hirataka
Film editing: Keiichi Uraoka
Music: Chuji Kinoshita

Homer's Odysseus made it home to Ithaka and Penelope, but Masaki Kobayashi's Odysseus, Kaji, doesn't make it home to his Penelope, Michiko, and he's not certain that his Ithaka in southern Manchuria still exists. Kaji struggles toward her against all odds, but dies in a snowstorm, without even a moment of transcendence or a heavenly choir on the soundtrack to ennoble his death. It's a downer ending to a nine-hour epic, but if it feels right it's thanks to the enormous conviction of Tatsuya Nakadai as the stubborn idealist Kaji. The Human Condition is an immersive experience rather than a dramatic one: Drama would demand catharsis, and there is really none to be had from the film. The human condition depicted in the film is Hobbesian: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short -- though the length of the film works against the last adjective. It is a statement film: War is a stupid way for people to behave to one another. And as such it never quite transcends its message-making, leaving the film somewhere short of greatness. Still, it has to be seen by anyone who seeks to understand Japan in the twentieth century and after, and by anyone who wants to know the limits of film as an art form.

The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity (Masaki Kobayashi, 1959)

Tatsuya Nakadai in The Human Condition II: Road to Eternity

Kaji: Tatsuya Nakadai
Michiko: Michiyo Aratama
Shinjo: Kei Sato
Obara: Kunie Tanaka
Yoshida: Michiro Minami
Kageyama: Keiji Sada
Sasa Nitohei: Kokinji Katsura
Hino Jun'i: Jun Tatara

Director: Masaki Kobayashi
Screenplay: Zenzo Matsuyama, Masaki Kobayashi
Based on a novel by Junpei Gomikawa
Cinematography: Yoshio Miyajima
Art direction: Kazue Hirataka
Film editing: Keiichi Uraoka
Music: Chuji Kinoshita

If, as I said yesterday, the first part of Masaki Kobayashi's The Human Condition makes me think of the earnest "serious pictures" that came out of Hollywood in the 1940s -- I have in mind such movies as The Razor's Edge (Edmund Goulding, 1946), in which Tyrone Power searches for the meaning of life, or Gentleman's Agreement (Elia Kazan, 1947), in which Gregory Peck crusades against antisemitism -- then the second part, Road to Eternity, suggests, even in its subtitle, the influence of  From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953), that near-scathing* look at brutality in Army basic training. Kaji, our idealistic protagonist, has been sent to war, and has to endure all manner of abuse even though he's an excellent marksman and a sturdy trooper. His objections to Japanese militarism and his belief that the war is wrong mark him out as a "Red," and for a time he contemplates escaping into his idealized version of the Soviet Union. But his sympathy for his fellow recruits keeps him plugging away, occasionally taking heat for his defense of them, especially from the military veterans who have been called up to serve. They object to his treating the recruits he is put in charge of training with respect and human decency -- they went through hell in basic training, so why shouldn't everyone? The film ends with a cataclysmic battle sequence, during which Kaji has to kill one of his fellow soldiers, who has gone stark raving mad and with his antics threatens the lives of other soldiers. It's not the first time Kaji has resorted to killing a fellow soldier: Earlier, he has been mired in quicksand with a brutal man who has caused the suicide of a recruit, and Kaji lets him drown. The intensity of the battle scenes takes some of the focus away from Kaji's intellectualizing, which is all to the good.

*I have to quality: From Here to Eternity is not as scathing as the James Jones novel on which it's based, thanks to the Production Code and the residual good feeling of having won the war. In some ways, The Human Condition II is more properly an anticipation of Stanley Kubrick's no-holds-barred
Full Metal Jacket (1987).

The Human Condition I: No Greater Love (Masaki Kobayashi. 1959)

Tatsuya Nakadai and So Yamamura in The Human Condition I: No Greater Love

Kaji: Tatsuya Nakadai
Michiko: Michiyo Aratama
Tofuko Kin: Chikage Awashima
Shunran Yo: Ineko Arima
Kageyama: Keiji Sada
Okishima: So Yamamura
Chin: Akira Ishihama

Director: Masaki Kobayashi
Screenplay: Zenzo Matsuyama, Masaki Kobayashi
Based on a novel by Junpei Gomikawa
Cinematography: Yoshio Miyajima
Art direction: Kazue Hirataka
Film editing: Keiichi Uraoka
Music: Chuji Kinoshita

The first three and a half hours of Masaki Kobayashi's nine-hour, 47-minute epic The Human Condition are themselves divided into two parts, though the break seems more a courtesy to the Sitzfleisch of the viewer than to any inherent division in the story. I have a friend who says he's never read a bad novel over 600 pages long, because once he's done with it he has to justify the time spent reading. I think something like that may apply to The Human Condition once I've finished it. Which is not to say that there isn't a greatness that adheres to Kobayashi's unsparing, audacious film, even though at times I found myself feeling that The Human Condition I: No Greater Love derived as much from the more earnest black-and-white Hollywood films of the 1940s, the ones that starred Tyrone Power or Gregory Peck, than from the high artistry of Ozu or Mizoguchi. It is often unabashed melodrama: We worry that Kobayashi hasn't burdened his protagonist, Kaji, with more than is really credible. An idealist, he not only finds himself supervising slave Chinese labor in Manchuria during World War II, he also has to manage a brothel staffed with Chinese "comfort women." And the more he does to better the lot of the workers, the more he elicits the ire of the kenpeitai, the Japanese military police. On the other hand, if he compromises with the authorities, the Chinese prisoners and prostitutes make his life miserable. And not to mention that, his wife is incapable of comprehending the stresses that make him so distant at home. But Tatsuya Nakadai is such an accomplished actor that he gives Kaji credibility, even when we're beginning to think he's too virtuous, too idealistic, for his own good.

The Inheritance (Masaki Kobayashi, 1962)

Keiko Kishi in The Inheritance

Yasuko Miyagawa: Keiko Kishi
Senzo Kawahara: So Yamamura
Kikuo Furukawa: Tatsuya Nakadai
Satoe Kawahara: Misako Watanabe
Naruto Yoshida: Seiji Miyaguchi
Junichi Fujii: Minoru Chiaki
Mariko: Mari Yoshimura
Sadao: Yusuke Kawazu

Director: Masaki Kobayashi
Screenplay: Koichi Inagaki
Based on a novel by Norio Najo
Cinematography: Takashi Kawamata
Art direction: Shigemasa Toda
Film editing: Keiichi Uraoka
Music: Toru Takemitsu

Looking as chic and mysterious as Anouk Aimée, Delphine Seyrig, or Monica Vitti ever did in the French and Italian films of the era, Yasuko Miyagawa steps from her car, dons her sunglasses, and goes for a bit of window-shopping. But in front of a jewelry store window, she is stopped by a man she once knew. She agrees to join him in a cafe, where the flashback that constitutes most of Masaki Kobayashi's The Inheritance unfolds in her narrative. When they knew each other, she was a secretary and he was a lawyer for the wealthy businessman Senzo Kawahara, and both of them had key roles in determining who would benefit from Kawahara's will. The rest is a noir fable, based on the oldest of plot premises: Where there's a will, there are people scheming to benefit from it. Upon learning that he has cancer and only a short while to live, Kawahara set his managers the task of locating his illegitimate children: He and his wife, Satoe, have none from their marriage. And in the search for the heirs, even the searchers are prone to make deals with the potential legatees. By law, Satoe stands to inherit a third of her husband's 300 million yen estate, but she of course wants more, which means making sure that none of her husband's offspring earns his favor. And then there are the offspring, some of whom have adoptive families that would benefit from being included in the will, while others have come of age and want to curry favor with the father they've never met. No holds are barred: not only fraud but also murder and rape. But mainly the film is the story of Yasuko, beautifully played by Keiko Kishi, transforming from the self-effacing secretary into the consummate schemer, motivated at least as much by revenge as by greed. It's a nasty tale, but an involving one.

Yotsuya Kaidan (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1949)

Ken Uehara and Kinuyo Tanaka in Yotsuya Kaidan

Oiwa/Osode: Kinuyo Tanaka
Iemon Tamiya: Ken Uehara
Naosuke: Osamu Takizawa
Kohei: Keiji Sada
Oume: Hisako Yamane
Yomoshichi: Jukichi Uno
Takuetsu: Aizo Tamashima
Kohei's Mother: Choko Iida

Director: Keisuke Kinoshita
Screenplay: Eijiro Hisaita, Masaki Kobayashi
Based on a play by Nanboku Tsuruya
Cinematography: Hiroshi Kusuda
Production design: Isamu Motoki

Yotsuya Kaidan is one of the most famous Japanese ghost stories, put in classic form in the kabuki drama written by Nanboku Tsuruya in 1825. But in adapting the tale of a ronin, a masterless samurai, pursued by the vengeful phantom of the wife he murdered, Keisuke Kinoshita and his screenwriters, Eijiro Hisaita and the uncredited Masaki Kobayashi, jettisoned the supernatural elements to turn it into a psychological drama with overtones of Shakespeare tragedy: the ambition of Macbeth and the jealousy of Othello, abetted by an Iago-like villain. The ronin of Kinoshita's film, Iemon Tamiya, was dismissed by his former master for failing to guard the storehouse from a thief; he now ekes out a living with his wife, Oiwa, making and selling umbrellas. But while drowning his sorrows in sake one evening, he is approached by Naosuke, who plants in him the idea of wooing the wealthy Oume, whose father has the connections that would enable him to find a master and restore his status as a samurai. Naosuke also plots with Kohei, with whom he served some jail time, to woo Oiwa, with whom Kohei has been infatuated since the days when she worked in a teahouse. Kohei's attentions to Oiwa arouse Iemon's jealousy, which Naosuke plays upon. As the prospect of marrying Oume becomes more likely, Iemon is given a poison to use on Oiwa, but he's initially reluctant to go that far. When Oiwa accidentally scalds her face, producing a horrible disfigurement, Naosuke provides an "ointment" that puts her in terrible pain and Iemon administers the poison. In the turmoil that follows Oiwa's death, Naosuke also kills Kohei. Freed to marry Oume, Iemon finds himself tormented by a guilty conscience, and when he learns that Naosuke was the one who robbed the storehouse that led to Iemon's dismissal by his former master, he turns on the conspirator. A fiery conclusion results. Kinoshita released the film in two parts, the first running for 85 minutes, the second for 73 minutes. Part I is more tightly controlled, efficiently introducing its characters -- there are lots of secondary ones, including Oiwa's sister, Osode (also played by Kinuyo Tanaka), and her husband, Yomoshichi, who provide a kind of grounding in normal life. Kinoshita is not as successful at marshaling all of the secondary plots in Part II, and I tend to blame the director's tendency to sentimentalize, including the search of Kohei's mother for her son, for the weaknesses in the later parts of the film. But he gives his characters depth -- there is more sympathy for Iemon in the film than in more traditional versions of the story, which has been filmed many times: Turner Classic Movies has Nobuo Nakagawa's 1959 film version on its schedule later this month.

Samurai Rebellion (Masaki Kobayashi, 1967)

Like his Harakiri (1962), Kobayashi's Samurai Rebellion has a theatrical, almost Shakespearean quality and is sharply critical of the samurai code of honor. Toshiro Mifune plays Isaburo, a samurai whose son Yogoro (Go Kato) is ordered to marry the concubine Ichi (Yoko Tsukasa) of the daimyo of the clan he serves. Yogoro is reluctant, partly because Ichi has a son by the daimyo, but eventually they fall in love. Unfortunately, the daimyo's older son dies, making Ichi's child the heir, and she is ordered to return to his household. The ensuing rebellion against the daimyo's order proves calamitous for all concerned. The beautifully committed performances by all concerned heighten the story's tragic drive. The film's English title was apparently designed to convince Western audiences that they were going to see a conventional samurai film, whereas it's really a story about the heroism of Ichi, giving a distinctly feminist spin to the genre.

Harakiri (Masaki Kobayashi, 1962)

A study in tragic irony, Harakiri was intended as a commentary on Japan's history of hierarchical societies, from the feudal era through the Tokugawa shogunate and down to the militarism that brought the country into World War II and finally the corporate capitalism in which the salaryman becomes the latest iteration of the serf, pledging fidelity to a ruling lord. Working from a screenplay by Shinobu Hashimoto from a novel by Yasuhiko Takiguchi, director Masaki Kobayashi sets his film on a steady pace that at first feels static. There are long scenes of talk, with little moving except the camera's slow pans and zooms. But as Kobayashi's protagonist, Hanshiro Tsugumo (brilliantly played by Tatsuya Nakadai), tells his harrowing tale of loss, the film opens out into beautifully crafted scenes of action, as well as one terrifying and painful scene of cruelty, in which a man is made to commit the title's ritual disembowelment with a sword made of bamboo. Although there is an extended fight sequence in which Hanshiro takes on the entire household of the Ii clan, the true climax of the film is the duel between Hanshiro and Hikokuro Omodaka (Tetsuro Tanba), the greatest swordsman in the Ii household. Especially in this scene, the cinematography of Yoshio Miyajima makes a brilliant case for black and white film, aided by the editing of Hisashi Sagara that cuts between the dueling men and the waving grasses on the windswept hillside where the fight takes place. Harakiri is one of the best samurai films ever made, but even that observation contains its own note of irony, since Kobayashi's aim with the film is to validate his protagonist's assertion that "samurai honor is ultimately nothing but a façade."