Empire of Passion (Nagisa Oshima, 1978)

Kazuo Yoshiyuki and Tatsuya Fuji in Empire of Passion

Cast: Tatsuya Fuji, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Takahiro Tamura, Takuzo Kawatani, Akiko Koyama, Taiji Tonoyama, Sumie Sasaki, Eizo Kitamura, Masami Hasegawa, Kenzo Kawarasaki. Screenplay: Nagisa Oshima, based on a story by Itoko Nakamura. Cinematography: Yoshio Miyajima. Set decoration: Jusho Toda. Film editing: Keiichi Uraoka. Music: Toru Takemitsu.

A fine, creepy ghost story set in Edo period Japan. A man and woman plot to murder her husband and throw his body in a well. But as their passion cools, they become the subject of gossip and rumor, driving them apart. And then the murdered man's ghost begins appearing and the police decide to investigate. Handled with Oshima's characteristic take on sexual obsession.

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 Tattered Wings (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1955)

Hideko Takamine and Keiji Sada in The Tattered Wings

Fuyuko Terada: Hideko Takamine
Shunsuke: Keiji Sada
Keizo Ishizu: Takahiro Tamura
Kojiro: Teiji Takahashi
Ryo: Akira Ishihama
Tokiko: Toshiko Kobayashi
Kimiko: Kuniko Igawa
Shunsuke's Father: Eijiro Yanaki
Fuyuko's Father: Takeshi Sakamoto

Director: Keisuke Kinoshita
Screenplay: Keisuke Kinoshita, Zenzo Matsuyama
Cinematography: Hiroshi Kusuda
Art direction: Kazue Hirataka
Film editing: Yoshi Sugihara
Music: Chuji Kinoshita

Keisuke Kinoshita's explorations of postwar domestic dilemmas continue with The Tattered Wings, in which Fuyuko, a war widow, is torn between -- what else? -- love and duty. Before the war she was in love with Keizo Ishizu, but she was forced into a marriage with the older son of a wealthy distiller. Her husband was cruel and unfaithful, and he left her with a daughter when he was killed in the war. Meanwhile, her husband's younger brother, Shunsuke, has fallen in love with her. He's a nicer guy than his brother, but things get complicated when Keizo suddenly returns to town, paying a visit before he moves to a new job in far-off Hokkaido. Their meetings stir gossip in the town, some of it fed by Fuyuko's sister, a telephone operator with a direct line, as it were, to the latest news. Meanwhile, Shunsuke is there to remind her that her daughter needs a steady, reliable father. Will Fuyuko choose stability or an unknown, romantic future? Kinoshita works all of this out with finesse and his usual attention to environment -- the sometimes claustrophobic small town -- but lays on a bit too much of his brother Chuji Kinoshita's musical emotion-tugging.

Farewell to Dream (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1956)

Noriko Kikuoki, Shinji Tanaka, and Yoshiko Kuga in Farewell to Dream

Yoichi Akimoto: Shinji Tanaka
Oshin, Yoichi's Mother: Yuko Mochizuki
Toyoko, Yoichi's Older Sister: Yoshiko Kuga
Genkichi, Yoichi's Father: Eijiro Tono
Kazue, Yoichi's Younger Sister: Noriko Kikuoki
Sudo: Takahiro Tamura
Seiji Harada: Ryohei Ono

Director: Keisuke Kinoshita
Screenplay: Yoshiko Kusuda
Cinematography: Hiroshi Kusuda
Art direction: Kazue Hirataka
Film editing: Yoshi Sugihara
Music: Chuji Kinoshita

The English title, Farewell to Dream, seems to be grammatically or idiomatically off: We would expect Farewell to a Dream or ... Dreams instead. (The Japanese title is Yûyake-gumo, which Google Translate renders as "Sunset Cloud.") But then there's something a little off about this entire short film -- only 78 minutes long. Its young narrator, Yoichi, tells us his story about how circumstances made him bid farewell to his dreams, except that he doesn't seem to have had any substantial dream other than not following in his father's footsteps as a fishmonger, a job he hates because it makes him smell of fish, causing other boys to taunt him. We can't really blame him, but the film never suggests that Yoichi had a clear plan of escape from that life. He spends a good deal of his time looking out over the rooftops of Tokyo through his binoculars, sighting a pretty young woman whom he dreams of meeting. Eventually, he and his friend Seiji make their way across the city to where they think the young woman lives, only to arrive in her neighborhood as she's getting into an automobile with the man she's engaged to marry. Yoichi's story is also mixed with that of his sisters: The elder one, Toyoko, is pretty and vain, and has a handsome boyfriend, Sudo. But when Sudo's family goes broke, she marries an older man -- and then carries on an affair with Sudo. When his father falls ill, Yoichi's parents allow a rich uncle to adopt his younger sister, Kazue, in exchange for some financial support, and we see Yoichi bid a sad farewell to the girl. I think we're meant to sympathize with Yoichi in the collapse of his family, but the irony is that after his father dies, Yoichi turns out to be a very good fishmonger, building a thriving business from his own talent as a cook by developing a sideline as a caterer and seller of prepared meals. Like it or not, Yoichi has become what many families would see as a blessing: the son who successfully keeps the family business alive. The effect is that Yoichi's lament for his lost future feels like self-pity rather than legitimate dismay at unfulfilled potential.

The Eternal Rainbow (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1958)

Yoshiko Kuga and Yusuke Kawazu in The Eternal Rainbow 

Osamu Sagara: Teiji Takahashi
Chie Obita: Yoshiko Kuga
Shiro Machimura: Takahiro Tamura
Kikuo Suda: Yusuke Kawazu
Fumi Kageyama: Kinuyo Tanaka
Naoji Kageyama: Chishu Ryu
Minoru Kageyama: Kazuya Kosaka
Kyoichiro Obita: Minoru Oki
Hiroko Sonobe: Hizuru Takachiho

Director: Keisuke Kinoshita
Screenplay: Keisuke Kinoshita
Cinematography: Hiroshi Kusuda
Art direction: Chiyoo Umeda
Film editing: Yoshi Sugihara
Music: Chuji Kinoshita

An unstable mixture of documentary and domestic melodrama, The Eternal Rainbow begins with shots of the Yawata steel mill complex and a voiceover narration telling us how steel is made and then wandering out into the surrounding industrial community, where the company has built recreation and cultural facilities for the workers as well as what the narrator calls "beautiful apartment buildings." (They're rather bleakly landscaped multistory boxes with stairwells open to the elements.) We're also told that the smoke that rises above the mill appears in five distinct colors, although I couldn't discern much beyond various shades of gray and yellow. Despite the idyllic tone of the documentary, the lives of the workers don't seem particularly blissful: There's some resentment and discrimination between the factory workers and the office workers, which extends to the romantic entanglements that form the plot of the "fictional" side of  Keisuke Kinsoshita's film. The hazards of factory work are not overlooked, either. Twice we learn of accidents that send the steelworkers to the company hospital, though Kinoshita doesn't show either accident taking place. The second accident involves one of the principal characters, Suda, a handsome young worker whose job it is to ride on the front of the engine through the factory's railyards and leap off to run ahead and pull the switch. Suda rents a room from the Kageyamas, who have a son, Minoru, who never made the grade in strength or ability to work in the mill, and continually searches for a job. Naoji Kageyama is nearing retirement, and he and his wife will be forced to move out of the apartment they rent from the company. Suda also gets involved in pleading the case for his older friend Sagara, who is in love with the pretty Chie, who's not sure she wants to marry a steelworker; her parents want her to marry the engineer Machimura, who has just accepted a job with the company's Brazilian branch. These rather paltry domestic matters are not enough to carry the film by themselves, which may be why Kinoshita chose to insert them into the documentary. What interest the film has lies mainly in some impressive scenes inside the mill and in its environs, but it gets bogged down in scenes of the "Water Carnival" staged for the entertainment of the workers, consisting mainly of young women dancing to pop and light classical music in front of a band shell in the middle of a pond. There are too many characters to sort out for the fictional story to have much impact.

Thus Another Day (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1959)

Yoshiko Kuga and Teiji Takahashi in Thus Another Day

Yasuko Sato: Yoshiko Kuga
Shoichi Sato: Teiji Takahashi
Tetsuo Mori: Takahiro Tamura
Goro: Kazuya Kosaka
Kazuo Sato: Kanzaburo Nakamura
Kenzo Akada: Rentaro Mikuni

Director: Keisuke Kinoshita
Screenplay: Keisuke Kinoshita
Cinematography: Hiroshi Kusuda
Production design: Chiyoo Umeda
Film editing: Yoshi Sugihara
Music: Chuji Kinoshita

The hyperprolific Keisuke Kinoshita released two other films in 1959, and though Thus Another Day feels like it's crammed with ideas, they were given short shrift when it comes to working them out. It's a short feature, only 74 minutes, but it has enough plots and subplots for at least two movies. The central figures in the narrative are a married couple struggling to make ends meet. Shoichi works in Tokyo while Yasuko stays home with their young son, Kazuo. They have bought a house in the still semirural outskirts of the city, and Shoichi makes a mad dash for the bus every morning. Yasuko scrimps and saves, but receives scant praise for it from either Shoichi or their rather bratty child. Watching his mother do the wash by hand, Kazuo asks why they don't have a washing machine, and when she tells him they're saving up for it, he says he'd rather have a television set instead. Yasujiro Ozu treated the same kind of bullying juvenile materialism in a film made the same year, Good Morning, and Kazuo's blaming his father for not making more money is reminiscent of the children in an earlier Ozu film, I Was Born, But... (1932). Then Shoichi suggests that they rent out their house for the summer to a manager in his company who is looking for an escape from the city heat. It would not only help them pay the mortgage but would also curry favor with the higher-ups in the company. So Yasuko somewhat reluctantly agrees to take Kazuo and spend the summer with her family, who live in a resort area, while Shoichi bunks with a fellow employee in the city. At that point, the film begins to spin off into subplots and loses focus. Tension between Yasuko and Shoichi grows when he spends most of his occasional brief visits paying attention to his boss's wife, who is summering in the area. Yasuko befriends an older man who has a very young daughter to whom he is devoted, but when the little girl dies, he's sunk in a crippling, suicidal depression. The man's wife works at the resort, where some gangsters are hiding out and young thugs are bullying the locals, including a shy young man with a fine singing voice who is courting a local girl. Though all of these characters are interconnected in some way, Kinoshita never quite brings all of the relationships into focus, so when there's a murder disguised as an accident and an inevitable tragic denouement, these events don't have the impact they should. What does work in the film is Kinoshita's manipulation of atmosphere, from the sweltering city offices to the lush resort area, but this isn't enough to make the film more than a tantalizing sketch.

The River Fuefuki (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1960)

Okei: Hideko Takamine
Sadahei: Takahiro Tamura
Sozo: Koshiro Matsumoto
Ume: Shima Iwashita
Heikichi: Shinji Tanaka
Yasuzo: Kichiemon Nakamura

Director: Keisuke Kinoshita
Screenplay: Keisuke Kinoshita
Based on a novel by Shichiro Fukazawa
Cinematography: Hiroshi Kusuda
Production design: Kisaku Ito
Film editing: Yoshi Sugihara
Music: Chuji Kinoshita

In The River Fuefuki Hideko Takamine gives a remarkable performance as Okei, a woman who marries into a peasant family on the banks of the titular river. As generations pass in the small house that lies at one end of the bridge across the river, the family's sons are drawn, despite warnings from their elders, into service of the feudal lord in battle after battle. Keisuke Kinoshita has apparently designed the film as an antiwar fable, sometimes giving the monochrome images a storybook quality with overlaid washes and streaks of color, often highlighting just a candle or the fire in a small hearth with a spot of red. It takes the heroism of the samurai film and debunks it, reducing the combat to mere slashing and hacking. Okei endures and ages through the film, becoming the true hero of the story.