新 • 事件記者 大都会の罠 / Shin • Jiken kisha - Dai tokai no wana / (New) News Reporter - The Trap of the Big City (1966)

Release date: June 29th, 1966

Director: Kazuo Inoue

Studio: Produced by Tokyo Eiga, released by Toho

Cast: Tomoo Nagai, Keisuke Sonoi, Aiichi Yamada, Yasumi Hara, Gen Shimizu, Nobuo Kaneko, Mayumi Ozora, Akihiko Hirata et al.

Availability: Infrequent theater screenings and at least one pay-per-view television broadcast. No home media release.

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About 20 years ago, a BBS for Akihiko Hirata fans (yes, there was once such a thing, 'twas a glorious time) conducted a poll where people could vote for their favorite role of his from a fairly decent roster of films. Dr. Serizawa won, to absolutely no one's surprise, but what intrigued me was this movie at the very bottom of the poll, with no votes at all. Although the poll did not include every one of Hirata's 350-odd credits, multiple people voted for roles as obscure as the maybe-an-arms-dealer city councilman in At This Late Date, The Charleston. And yet no one could muster any enthusiasm for (New) News Reporter - The Trap of the Big City?

Credit to @herenkera1 on Twitter.

This was part 1 of Toho's duology of films spun off from a popular NHK television drama called Incident Reporter (Jiken kisha), which ran from 1958 to 1966 with a total of 279 episodes. Shortly after it ended, Fuji TV began airing a follow-up series with a few of the same actors from the original that had a shorter run of only 24 episodes, broadcast from October 1966 to March 1967. Concurrently, Nikkatsu also produced a series of theatrical movies - each very short in runtime, around 50 minutes - connected to the series. Ten of these were produced from 1959 to 1962, with, again, a different cast. This brings us, finally, to the Tokyo Eiga/Toho version, a set of two films in which most of the cast from the original series reprised their roles.

Most people who have even passing familiarity with Showa-era media have probably heard of Nikkatsu and NHK, but Tokyo Eiga is a name that comes up less often around here. They were one of two major subsidiaries of Toho (the other being Takarazuka Eiga) that had their own studios, independently located outside of Toho's lot. Being subsidiaries, Toho supplied the studios with their contracted actors and directors, but the technical staff belonged entirely to each studio. Tokyo Eiga was reorganized into Tokyo Eiga Shinsha in 1983 and finally fully merged with Toho and dissolved in 2004. Although Tokyo Eiga was a subsidiary, it actually produced some of Toho's most profitable films, such as the Ekimae series and a few later entries in the Young Guy series.

The cast of the original NHK drama. Credit to Yoshito Iio on FB.

As we've just seen, the original series was popular enough to spawn a multitude of spinoffs, but unfortunately Trap of the Big City was not one of the most notable of them. One source¹ for information about the film comes from a blog post written by someone who saw the film at its Laputa Asagaya screening in 2014. There are invaluable plot details contained therein, but the best the writer can give us in terms of an actual opinion on the movie is that it's "not that bad". (It is interesting, however, that the writer references the film apparently having a reputation for being mediocre, because that hints at prior critical reception of the film that may be lost to time.) Most reviews I've seen seem pretty positive, although I've heard at least one person say that Nobuo Kaneko does not put in his best performance here.

Both posters actually use the same picture of Hirata, but the poster at the top of this post flipped it horizontally, for some reason.

Hirata's role in Trap of the Big City doesn't appear to have been particularly noteworthy. He plays a man named Yano who, according to the Kinema Junpo plot summary, is arrested as a suspect in a mass poisoning event involving a soft drink company. He initially denies responsibility, but is revealed to have had a hand in it after another person confesses to having laced the drinks with poison at Yano's request. Yano doesn't seem to have been the central antagonist of the film, judging by how most of the synopses I've read bring him up and then move on; never having seen the film, though, I can't say for certain how important Hirata's role was. In 1969, he and Yasumi Hara played against each other as culprit and investigator once again for episode 20 of Operation: Mystery.

Aside from the two posters, I haven't been able to scare up any actual pictures of Hirata from the film. Some of our only stills come from a person who appears to really like buses in movies. (Command or ctrl+F "大都会の罠" to find the stills if you don't feel like looking at buses.) As we can see, the film was in color, which I think was considered a point in its favor since the original series was black-and-white. Friend of the blog² Toshiaki Sato provides a color still of something other than buses.

While I can't find any information about screenings from around the time when the BBS poll would have been going on, I can confirm at least three showings at Laputa in 2014, 2018, and 2022, as well as a pay-per-view broadcast in 2016. In 2010 it was also screened at the Jimbocho theater as part of a film festival focusing on film workers from Azabu, an upscale district of Tokyo. (I'm not sure who among this film's crew hails from Azabu. It wasn't our man, at least; his people are from Nakano.)

So, the movie's obscure, but not forgotten about - it actually has more Google search results by far than most of the stuff I've done research into. The print shown on pay-per-view doesn't seem to be in the best condition, but it blows some of the DeAgostini DVDs I own out of the water. As with almost everything I talk about on here, I can only hope someday this might get a DVD release, or at least some kind soul will upload it in full to the internet.

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1 There is an old fc2 site that purports to give a very detailed plot summary of this film, but unfortunately, it appears to actually be a summary of the follow-up film.

2 Not really. But I wish he was.

Comedy - Yotsuya Kaidan / 喜劇 四谷怪談 (1969)

This post has been in the works almost continuously since I found out from my Sound of Music pamphlet that Hirata had been in some kind of Yotsuya Kaidan thing. (This is the role he was referring to when he mentioned that he sang a solo in a Yotsuya Kaidan adaptation with Norihei Miki.) I initially posted this in August of 2024, but since I managed to actually snag a pamphlet from the performance - you can imagine I was quite excited about this - in November of 2025, I've overhauled it with more information from the pamphlet.

You can take a look at the entire thing for yourself on Internet Archive here.

This adaptation of Yotsuya Kaidan ran from September 3rd to September 26th at Tokyo's Toho-owned Imperial Theater. It was a comedy, with the very talented Norihei Miki as Iemon and '60s-'70s Toho actress Masako Kyōzuka as Oiwa. It was co-directed by Miki and distinguished opera director and former noh actor Hideo Kanze, produced and supervised by Kazuo Kikuta, and scripted by Isamu Onoda, a composer of commercial music as well as songs for the stage. (I have looked into Isamu Onoda a great many times and as far as I can tell he has no relation whatsoever to our Onoda.) He may have been picked to work on this play because he was actually born in Yotsuya himself, but that's just speculation; in all likelihood, considering how prolific he was, he probably just landed the gig anyway and his birthplace was sheer coincidence.

Hirata plays a character who is original to this play named "Yoemon Kamiya". Now that I have the pamphlet, I can tell you a bit more about his character, but the thing that I want to talk about first and foremost is that apparently Hirata was never supposed to be in the play at all - he stepped in for Akira Takarada after Takarada got injured somehow:

He's the type who comes across as very serious and gentlemanly. He's been married to Yoshiko Kuga for about eight years now, and it's rare to find such a stable and harmonious celebrity couple.

When I foolishly asked Yoshiko Kuga, "Is your husband always like that?", she simply replied, "Not really," and then brushed it off with a laugh.

He's one year senior to Akira Takarada at Toho Studios. It was a strange twist of fate that he stepped in as a pinch hitter for Yoemon when Takarada was suddenly injured. However, he's recently been making remarkable progress in stage acting, and he's scheduled to appear in "The Wives of Tokugawa, Part 2" at the Toho Theatre in October.

In hindsight, this is actually very obvious just from looking at the pamphlet. Most of the other actors have color portraits where they're wearing makeup from their roles in the play, but for Hirata, they used his black-and-white Toho headshot that was, by my estimation, maybe five or six years old at that point. They probably didn't have time to get this pamphlet published with pictures of him in makeup. (It also makes more sense now that he himself describes how he was sweating bullets during his solo: singing onstage every night for weeks in a role that he wasn't even meant to be in does sound absolutely nerve-wracking.)

This was, in fact, the second time Hirata had ended up in a role that was originally meant for Takarada.

Will I post about Wives of Tokugawa someday? Maybe, who knows. For now, let's talk about Yoemon, who was apparently quite the rogueish, playboy type (I'm wondering if this might be the "like that" that the above quote was referring to). Pardon the wall of text while we take a look at a quick machine translation of the synopsis to this particular adaptation of a very old and storied play. Bear with me.

Samon Yotsuya, a senior retainer of the Yotsuya family in Banshu Ako, has two daughters. The older sister, Oiwa, who is very plump, is in a dreamlike state, anticipating her grand wedding ceremony with Iemon Tamiya, whom she has long yearned for... 

Iemon is a foolish, timid man, a mere low-ranking samurai with a stipend of only thirty koku, a man who has never been popular with women. Yet, he is marrying the daughter of a high-ranking official, and moreover, the matchmaker is Lord Oishi, the chief retainer of the castle... 

The wedding hall is filled with envy and jealousy from everyone. However, this marriage was a mistake, due to Samon's carelessness; he confused Iemon with Yoemon Kamiya, a close friend and neighbor with the same stipend and rank, but completely different in that he was a handsome man and the biggest playboy in the castle. This caused a huge problem. 

Iemon, feeling that the situation was too good to be true, tried to back out, but his father pleaded with him, saying, "Now that the notification has been sent to the domain office and the lord's permission has been granted, as a high-ranking official of the domain, I cannot cancel it." Thus, Oiwa became Iemon's wife. 

The younger sister, Osode, a beauty, has a fiance named Yomoshichi Sato, but his friend Naosuke is secretly in love with her. This Naosuke, in league with Yoemon, deceives the lady-in-waiting Kasane and sells off the beloved carnation incense burner of the lady of the house. Yoemon, displaying his playboy nature, takes advantage of Kasane, who is pregnant with his child and clinging to him. 

At that time, the emergency drums resound throughout the castle, and news arrives from Edo of the Hangan's attempted assassination. The lord is ordered to commit seppuku immediately. The retainers are divided between those who want to defend the castle and those who want to commit suicide, and the council meeting is again filled with clamor and discord. 

Determined to make a name for himself in Edo, Yoemon instigated Iemon to break into the treasury, and as a parting gift, they broke into the treasury, killed the guard, and escaped from the castle. By the time the search for them was underway, Yoemon encountered Kasane, who had pursued them, at the Kakogawa embankment.

"The treasury guard was my father, so who is the culprit...?"

Yoemon, realizing he had been found out, laid his hands on Kasane. 

Meanwhile, Iemon and Oiwa, a couple who were as close as two peas in a pod, helped each other along the way, and before long, true marital love blossomed between them. 

A year passed, and the peaceful Genroku era in Edo was filled with a decadent atmosphere. Today, various people are gathered at the Okuyama carpet teahouse. A woman who was once the daughter of a high-ranking official is now a popular teahouse girl, and men come to the shop looking for Osode, the number-one girl there. 

Then, a woman named Oume, the daughter of Kihei Ito, a wealthy man from the Moronao family, arrived with her maid. In modern-terms, she was a free-spirited girl. Gonzo, a playboy, brought his companions and, trying to impress Oume and extort a reward from her family, staged a play, which was a resounding success. The plan worked too well, and Oume fell head over heels in love with Iemon. 

Naosuke, who had changed his profession to an eel merchant and was living in Edo, met Osode again after a long time and, pressing the scar on his forehead that Osode had inflicted on him, said, "The wound you gave me aches, and my feelings for you ache, too..." 

And then, as expected, Yomoshichi intervened. Having received a secret letter from Shozaburo Okuda, he attempts to deliver it to Lord Ōhoshi in Yamashina, but to deceive the enemy, he switches appearances with Shozaburo. 

Meanwhile, Samon confronts his son-in-law, Iemon, on suspicion of robbing the treasury... Iemon mistakes Samon for Naosuke, and Naosuke mistakes Shozaburo for Yomoshichi... the two murderers reveal their evil smiles. 

Meanwhile, Oiwa gives birth to a baby, and the accumulated fatigue from childbirth and faily life overwhelms her, confining her to her sickbed. Yet, she tries her best to serve her beloved husband, Iemon. Then, Oku, a maid from the Ito family, comes with medicine for Oiwa, saying, "I would like to offer you a drink as a token of gratitude for the other day, please come." At the Ito family's house, Iemon recieves the best hospitality, and the gold coins he is given as a thank you gift, along with Oume's seductive advances, are all part of Kihei's scheme to investigate the movements of the Yotsuya ronin. 

Unaware of this, Iemon is overjoyed by Oume's proposal. He initially refuses, saying "I am a married man", but then Kihei says, "The medicine I gave your wife earlier, which I said was a miracle cure for postpartum illness, is actually a poison that will disfigure her face." Hearing Kihei's words, Iemon considers how to separate from Oiwa. 

Gonzo's brother-in-law, Takuetsu, a masseur, is asked to house-sit, and is astonished to see Oiwa's face beginning to disfigure. While he is wondering what to do, he encounters Iemon, who, to create an excuse to leave Oiwa, tempts him with money to act as her lover. The greedy Takuetsu, despite his fear, took the money and ended up approaching Oiwa. As Oiwa's appearance deteriorated rapidly, however, he confessed all of Iemon's schemes. Iemon, who had also arrived on the scene, was so terrified that he tried to distance himself from Oiwa, but Oiwa stabbed herself in the throat with a blade stuck in a pillar. Iemon then killed Takuetsu, who was trying to escape in a panic, with a single stroke of his sword. It was Naosuke, ever-cunning, who then devices the plan to frame Oiwa and Takuetsu as lovers who committed suicide together, nailing them to a wooden plank and setting them adrift in the river. Kihei and Oume, who had come to peek into Iemon's house to see if he had successfully gotten rid of Oiwa, were then were then successively killed by Iemon, who was acting as if he were possessed by Oiwa's ghost and had gone mad. 

Now, in Edo, living the life of a ronin, as was common in those times, even the exceptionally handsome Yoemon completely fell in love with a town girl he had only just met. His face turned pale, he became emaciated, and he wasted away. Every night, Otsuyu, the girl in question, would come with the sound of her clogs clattering, but in reality, she was possessed by the vengeful spirit of Kasane, whom he himself had killed at the Kakogawa embankment. Eventually, due to the mischief of the vengeful spirit, Yoemon went mad and died. 

Osode, who began to suspect Naosuke of killing Yomoshichi, approached Naosuke herself and began living with him. Naosuke, an eel fisher, was working at the Sunamura Inbo-bori when he picked up a tortoiseshell comb tangled with hair and gave it to Osode. This comb was a memento from her sister Oiwa's mother, and Osode's suspicious deepened, thinking, "Could it be that my sister also...?" 

Eventually, Yomoshichi, who had delivered the secret message to Yamashina and returned to Edo, encounters Osode, who had believed him to be dead. Osode learns the whole truth and heads to Honjo Jazan to avenge her father and sister. In the hermitage at Honjo Jazan, Iemon, who is hiding there, is tormented body and soul by the ghost of Oiwa, who appears every night, and lives each day in a state of illness. The ghosts call to other ghosts, and a parade of ghosts - led by Oiwa, and including Takuetsu, Samon, Shozaburo, Gonzo, Yoemon, Kasane, Oume and Kihei - torments Iemon, until he finally falls to Osode's avenging blade. As Iemon dies, the gentle Oiwa in heaven beckons him with her hand. Cleansing away his many wicked deed with the falling snow, Iemon ascends to heaven to be with Oiwa. On earth, the battle drums of the loyal retainers of Yotsuya resound loudly.

Well, that sounds like just about the coolest thing ever. What a tragedy that I haven't yet been able to find decent pictures of Hirata in this role. I would absolutely love to see him when he's being haunted by Kasane, probably made up kabuki-style in greasepaint to look all ghoulish. I think it's probably worth keeping my saved search to see if any other editions of this pamphlet ever come up for auction. Which brings me to my next point...

Although I was absolutely psyched to get my hands on the pamphlet, one thing remains a mystery: whether or not this is Hirata as Yoemon in the below picture (top of the left-hand page) from an auction listing. My pamphlet seems to have been a first edition, because there are others that I've seen that include actual pictures from the play.

I still think it's him. It's not a clear photo at all but I'm confident.

So, even though I have a pamphlet now, there's not much else I can talk about aside from the story outline and the cast and crew. What I'd really like to do is show some pictures from the play, or hear from people who had seen it or been in it, but considering how long ago this performance took place, I'm wanting in the "personal anecdotes" category. I do have one, however:

It's a story from long ago, but in the "Yotsuya Kaidan Comedy" performed at the Imperial Theater, there was a scene where Norihei Miki, playing the role of Iemon Tamiya, appeared singing carefreely, "In the case of Francine..." I remember it not only because it was popular at the time, but also because of the darkly comical feel to it, which seemed to foreshadow the twisted position of Yotsuya the Ronin and the tragedy that awaited him afterwards.

The above quote is from a user named BANYUU, posting in 2013 on a thread discussing the song The Case of Francine, written by Goro Gō and Akira Imaizumi and sung by Yoko Shintani, about Francine Leconte, a woman who self-immolated in an act of anti-war protest. Not what I expected, but an incredibly valuable glimpse of what was going on during the actual play.

As always, if I find anything more, I will update this post.

Incredibly rare newspaper ad for the play. Credit to @takagi-mania on ameblo.

男対男 / Otoko tai otoko / Man Against Man [1960]

Release date: August 14th, 1960

Director: Senkichi Taniguchi

Studio: Toho

Cast: Toshirō Mifune, Ryō Ikebe, Takashi Shimura, Yūzō Kayama, Jun Tazaki, Akihiko Hirata, Yumi Shirakawa, Akemi Kita, Tadao Nakamaru, Yuriko Hoshi, Yutaka Sada, Shoichi Hirose, Yoshifumi Tajima, Ikio Sawamura, Sachio Sakai, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Hideyo Amamoto et al.

Availability: VHS release. Available online via Internet Archive.

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I keep seeing random people say that they watched this online, but try as I might, I've never been able to find it anywhere, so I did what it is reasonable to do in that situation and spent $60 on a VHS tape that I digitized. Unfortunately, the VHS release is a reissue that shaves a full 26 minutes from the film's original running time of just under two hours. I'm not sure what was in that lost 26 minutes or if the file supposedly circulating online is the original or the cut version, but the VHS is all I've got, so I may never know.

Wherever else this might be hiding online, it is now available on the Internet Archive until and unless Toho decides otherwise.

Since this will be a "watch-along" post, I won't get too heavy on the production backstory so as not to make this preamble longer than it has to be. (Gee, I never do that, do I?) In fact, the only thing I really want to note before I get into the movie itself is that its subtitled export version (also running 116 minutes) was kicking around Western shores throughout the 1960s; it was brought to the Toho La Brea in March of 1961, and also screened in Hawai'i in the summer of 1964. According to Galbraith, Toho also produced an English dub; details about that escape me. It's actually surprising that this isn't something Toho has chosen to release on DVD, considering that it stars Toshirō Mifune and was Yūzō Kayama's film debut.

Two warnings before we get started: 1. The picture quality on this tape is extraordinarily bad, and 2. Our man plays a real scumbag in this one.

I am NOT kidding about the picture quality. You can't even make out "Perspectiva Stereophonic Sound" in the title card.

We begin with a flashback to the war, a time when everything was sepia. Kaji (Mifune) and Kikumori (Ikebe) were friends and competitors in marksmanship. We see Kaji throw himself over Kikumori to shield him from a bomb lobbed into their camp.

After the war, however, things change. Kaji is the foreman of a stevedoring crew and Kikumori runs a yakuza-affiliated nightclub, both based in Yokohama. Chotaro Masue (Takashi Shimura), the president of Masue Shipping, the company Kaji works for, sends his inexperienced, spoiled son Toshio (Kayama) to work under Kaji. Toshio shows up dressed pretty spiffy and balks when Kaji expects him to change his shoes to something more utilitarian.

Toshio's hardly been on the ship more than five minutes when there's an accident in which a crate containing an engine is dropped on one of Kaji's men, killing him. At the man's funeral, Kaji hands the president a request for retirement, which the president immediately rips up.

Looking disheartened, Kaji goes to visit his old friend Kikumori's Blue Moon nightclub to tell him about what happened to his crewman. When he arrives, Kikumori says something that implies he doesn't visit too often, so we get the feeling that they've drifted apart a bit. Kaji also seems aware that Kikumori is associating with yakuza, and Kikumori for his part is also pretty open about it, but neither of them comes off overly reproachful of the other's life choices. Kikumori has a girlfriend(?) named Natsue (Yuriko Hoshi) who is deaf-mute, we're also introduced to her in this scene.

Ryō Ikebe looking at this monkey like how I look at my bank account after I spend $60 on a VHS tape again

We also get Yūzō Kayama performing a little ditty; I guess Toho's not quite letting him flex his Young Guy chops with a real performance yet, because the lyrics to the song he's playing are basically "be-bop-a-bop-a-diddy-dah-bop-a-be-bop". As an aside, the dubbing here is really terrible. There's no sound while Mifune is looking through a window in Ikebe's office that opens onto the stage, and the song cuts really awkwardly before it feels like it should.

Plot starts happening when Kaji stops to have a drink with his crew at a ramshackle dockside hotel. One of his crewmen, Taro (a very bare-chested Yoshifumi Tajima), finds that another, Santa (Ikio-chan), had a wad of cash stuffed in his suitcase, and it comes out that he'd been asked by a yakuza to steal something for money. The crew doesn't take this well. Santa apologizes, gives up the money, and describes the man who paid him off. Kaji and a few others decide to let the plan proceed, and then lie in wait while Santa presents the yakuza and his men with the goods he's procured.

Taro threatens the yakuza with a little sickle; the head yakuza Igarashi (Ren Yamamoto) pulls a pistol. But Kaji has even more men at the ready and they outnumber the yakuza. The boat cops(??) arrive and everyone disperses, but Kaji takes Igarashi back to the ship where Igarashi "helps him with his inquiries". Right as Igarashi is about to confess, though, an unknown party sticks their hand through a window and shoots him dead, leaving his gang's secrets beyond Kaji's reach - for now.

It's pretty obvious here that Kikumori, having been established as affiliated with yakuza, is somehow involved. After the failed confession scene, we're introduced to Hirata's character Toriumi along with some other henchmen. Toriumi is a hitman working under a Kobe yakuza boss named Tsukamoto (Jun Tazaki), who plans to take over Masue Shipping by force and establish a drug trade with their shipping routes. Tsukamoto is frustrated that Kikumori seems to be reluctant to get in Kaji's way and has a little parlay with him along with several of his goons.

I read a review of this movie that described it as having "elements of BL".

Toriumi dresses like he's in a '30s American gangster movie.

Yoshio Tsuchiya is here; he usually is.

So now we've got a few elements in play: Tsukamoto is an outside force pitting two men against each other who, although opposed morally, had been in equilibrium until then. And then we've got Toshio, who is a liability due to being such a chucklehead, and is still hanging around Blue Moon. Tsukamoto's gang discusses the boy with his henchmen and with Harumi (Akemi Kita), a waitress; I think I caught Toriumi saying basically "You want me to do him?" so our Wakadaisho is on thin ice. (Kaji actually calls Toshio "wakadan'na" - foreshadowing??)

I'm gonna have a coronary.

There's a little romantic subplot in the fact that, although Natsue lives with Kikumori, she's really in love with Kaji, and Kaji is in love with her too (Kikumori doesn't seem to treat her very well), but I don't care for romantic subplots so I was not paying attention to it. Yumi Shirakawa's character, the elder Masue's secretary, is also in love with Kaji. Natsue visits Kikumori in his office, but leaves when she sees that Shirakawa also has her eye on Kaji.

"Gomenasai" - sorry/forgive me.

Harumi is now working for Tsukamoto, and as I've said, Toshio is a galoot who is easily manipulated by her. This comes into play later. When Toriumi and his associates show up and Toriumi tries to snatch Harumi from Toshio, a big dramatic fight breaks out. Mifune is literally just chucking dudes bodily around the dance floor, it's extremely entertaining.

I have to say I'm really impressed by Hirata's acting here, he is unrecognizable as just this absolute dirtbag yakuza underling, such a deeply sleazy, nasty guy. He's speaking dialect, he wears a patterned silk shirt later in the movie, it's all very typical yakuza.

Mifune threw him into a fountain.

Meanwhile, back at the plot, Toshio has been persuaded by Harumi into stealing stock certificates from his father's safe. Toshio's father immediately knows it's his son who stole the certificates, so he goes to Harumi's place to confront him there. (I have to admit I'm getting a kick out of Kayama's first-ever screen role being "guy who sucks".)

Toriumi had been listening carefully from the closet somewhere outside Harumi's room, waiting for Shimura to leave, and once he did, he hit him with his car - not killing him, but critically injuring him. He is brought to surgery and his secretary assures Kaji that he'll be alright.

Toshio immediately regrets what he did and calls Harumi (who is also involved with Toriumi) to ask for the stock certificates back, but she tells him that she doesn't have them anymore. Kaji and Taro go to her room to confront/intimidate her, and at the same time Tsukamoto gets on the phone with her asking about the certificates - she decides to give them to Kaji and his man instead. It's right at this point in the film that Kaji learns the full extent of Kikumori's involvement with Tsukamoto, as Harumi confesses that Kikumori is a pawn in the whole thing.

Kaji goes to Kikumori and confronts him about his dealings with the Kobe gang, with his crew tailing him, making a nuisance of themselves and insisting to be served. There's an interesting dynamic going on here that I think serves as a thought-provoking contrast to later yakuza films: Kaji is the one who's in charge of a bunch of roughnecks, but they're hard-working, honest people; meanwhile Kikumori owns a nightclub full of dangerous men in sharp suits that looks posh on the surface but runs on corruption. We get to see our obligatory scantily-clad Toho nightclub dancer, who this time is actually a white lady. We also get nightclub fight scene #2, and while it is another all-out brawl, Kaji and Kikumori are the main fighters this time.

But suddenly a gunshot stops the commotion: it's Natsue, firing one of Kikumori's rifles to get everyone to stop fighting and make up.

Another thing I read about this movie when I was looking at reviews before watching it was that it's surprisingly mean to its women characters, and oh boy, is that ever true. Kikumori has Harumi "help him with his inquiries" in quite violent fashion involving the use of a hot shower. Somebody said that this "feels like a Nikkatsu movie" and I think that's a great way to sum it up. I think Toho was going for a deliberately gritty, rough vibe here, and it comes out pretty harrowing to watch at points, although it is ultimately too dated and fakey to feel genuinely upsetting.

I'm... not entirely sure where else to mention this, but I think Sachio Sakai is playing his character camp gay for some reason.

During one of the bar fights he breaks a bottle over someone's head and then apologizes.

Anyway, Tsukamoto has his heavies set fire to some cargo while Kaji's crew is working with it. Also, some more of Tsukamoto's men go to Blue Moon and dunk Toshio's head in a big pot full of water (again, very amused that this was the public's first impression of the guy who would become one of Toho's biggest heartthrobs).

Kaji seems to have confidence in Toshio despite him being a spoiled wimp, so he and Toshio announce their decision to take on a dangerous job hauling crates of gunpowder to regain some of the trust that was lost when their client's cargo got attacked under Masue Shipping's watch. The men agree, and Toshio goes back to his still-bandaged father to tell him that he's restoring their company's good name.

Because this movie kind of hates women, Toriumi assaults Natsue as she's about to leave Kikumori's house for good, and she then commits suicide. It really doesn't feel like there's any point to this.

Now, here is where we get to the part I was most anticipating based on what I had read about it in reviews: Kikumori and Toriumi have a rifle duel while both of them are riding speedboats, which is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds and I kind of love it. So much of this movie is goofy-icky, it's nice to see something that's just goofy-goofy.

Imagining some 16-year-old girl madly in love with Ryō Ikebe ca. 1960 watching this and just losing her entire mind

Both shoot, and Toriumi grazes Kikumori and knocks him over, but Kikumori kills Toriumi. (And now there's still ten minutes left to go, so I have to watch ten more minutes of Man Stuff to write about it on here...)

Kaji begins hauling the gunpowder, and Kikumori goes to Tsukamoto's lair to confront him and his men, but is ambushed by them. Hideyo Amamoto is here now as a miscellaneous unnamed henchman (his usual fare around this time). He dies quickly and has no lines but I always like seeing him.

Tsukamoto demands that Kikumori snipe the gunpowder while Kaji is loading it on the ship. They take him to the dock, hand him a rifle, and of course he starts shooting the yakuza instead. During the shootout, Kikumori is fatally wounded while kicking Kaji out of the way of one of the yakuza's bullets, and he tells Kaji that the Tsukamoto gang plan to shoot up the gunpowder and cause it to explode.

Kaji shoots Tsukamoto dead, effectively ending the whole plot - and the movie, as police sirens approach from the distance. I found it interesting that Kaji is almost in the same uniform he started the movie with, during the war flashback. Maybe some commentary about how Kaji stayed true to what he believed in as a soldier, while Kikumori "took off the uniform", so to speak, or maybe I'm reading way too much into it (I'm almost definitely reading way too much into it).

Well, I certainly have some quibbles with this movie from my 21st-century feminist standpoint, but setting that aside, this was pretty good. It was surprisingly rough (some awkward cuts in addition to the poor dubbing) but Toho movies were usually produced pretty quickly so that can be excused. Mifune is good as always, and Ikebe is a bit flat, but I thought Hirata was fantastic in this role. I feel like it's rare to see him get a role where he can actually be something instead of just delivering lines, and he always does it well, whether it requires him to be emotionally messed-up, like in Godzilla and Farewell Rabaul, or downright scummy, like in this movie.

In any event, you should go watch the whole thing for yourself, and when Toho puts this out on DVD like they should, I'll be the first to buy it and see it in decent quality instead of a grimy VHS rip.

不良少年 / Furyō shōnen / The Wicked Boy [1956]

Release date: June 1st, 1956

Director: Senkichi Taniguchi

Studio: Toho

Cast: Kenji Sugawara, Akira Kubo, Chishū Ryū, Kyoko Aoyama, Kyoko Anzai, Yasuko Nakata, Tatsuyoshi Ehara, Yu Fujiki, Akihiko Hirata, Makoto Satō, et al.

Availability: Theater screenings and possible television broadcasts within the past 5 years. No home media availability.

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Let's look at an old, obscure movie with Akira Kubo in it.

Because of its generic title (a less poetic translation could be something like "Bad Boy"¹, and it's far from the only movie called that), this one is a little difficult to find information about online. Even more difficult to find is information about the work it was adapted to the screen from, so that's what I'll cover first and foremost. Shigeru Nishimura's Humorless Diary of Youth [Warawanai seishun], released the previous year, formed the basis for the film. Nishimura seems to have had a rough go of it as a young man, first losing both of his parents before the age of 10, then landing in a sanatorium for tuberculosis treatment in his 20s (during which time he wrote his first novel), and eventually becoming a staff member at a juvenile welfare facility. Much of what Nishimura wrote centered around juvenile delinquents and orphans. Nishimura also wrote in opposition to nuclear testing and war.

In November of 1955, the work was adapted into a stage play by Haiyuza Theater Company. It ran for only just under two weeks and I can find virtually no information about it, but here's a page with some names of the staff and here's an auction listing of a pamphlet showing the names of the cast. Note that there is very small text in the lower right-hand corner of the cast page mentioning that the work will subsequently be made into a movie by Toho.

Adapting Nishimura's work to the screen fell to a team of two people: Ryūzo Kikushima and Dai Nishijima. Of the two, Kikushima is the most famous by far, with screenwriting credits for some of the most internationally famous Japanese films of all time: Stray Dog, Throne of Blood, Hidden Fortress, The Bad Sleep Well, and Tora! Tora! Tora!, just to name a few. Nishijima has fewer credits, but readers may recognize Farewell Rabaul and Girls in the Orchard.

Other names involved in the production of the film are some of our Toho frequent fliers: Tomoyuki Tanaka as producer, Senkichi Taniguchi as director, a young Kihachi Okamoto as assistant director, and Kazuo Yamada of The Vampire Moth as cinematographer.

The work seems to have been partially autobiographical, with the main character's name (Shigeo Nishida, played by Kenji Sugawara) bearing very obvious similarity to Nishimura's own. The film is set at a reform school for juvenile delinquents that houses a lot of war orphans, and Nishida, a teacher, was a former resident himself. As a teacher he tries to help the boys at the reformatory but they respond poorly. From synopses, there seems to be a story about multiple women in Nishida's life having to turn to prostitution running in parallel to the story of the boys at the reformatory. Akira Kubo and Tatsuyoshi Ehara play who I assume are the "leaders" of the delinquent boys, since their characters' names are the only ones mentioned in synopses. Hirata plays a character named Miyashita; given his age at the time I'm guessing he probably played a staff member as opposed to a resident at the reformatory, but who knows. His name is on posters, so he must have had some kind of role, but I can't find anything out about it. This was also Makoto Satō's debut film.

This is unfortunately quite an obscure one. Thanks to its screening at Showa Nerd Mecca Laputa Asagaya, we have this very tiny still photo, showing Akira Kubo and another actor (possibly Kenji Sugawara, given his prominence in the film) mud-wrestling.

Another tiny wee still comes from cinemanavi.com, again showing Kubo and Sugawara.

Oddly, the only actual promotional still I could find for the film is just a picture of Chishū Ryū's character. (We know it's from this film because the auction listing shows the title written in pencil on the back.)

Two separate Toho News pamphlets seem to have been produced for the film. These sort of pamphlets usually came with a text side that would give a synopsis, some hype, and the staff/cast, but unfortunately I can't find clear enough pictures to be able to translate any of the text. A Toho Studio Mail flyer was also published, but again, pictures are too grainy to make any of it out.

Speaking of screenings, there are a few that I can confirm: three at Laputa in 2010, 2017, and 2019, and two in 2014 at the unfortunately now closed Kichijoji Baus Theater and Shibuya's Cinema Vera. There must have been other screenings or television broadcasts because Filmarks also has reviews from 2023 and 2024. Reviews are a bit lacking in detail but seem generally quite positive, and one reviewer links the film to Taniguchi's previous film (also starring Hirata) No Response from Car 33. It is very reassuring to at least know that prints exist and are in good enough condition to be viewed.

you and I could have been seeing Furyō shōnen here if not for stupid inconsequential reasons, such as "not being in Japan in March of 2014"

Twitter user @honehone_man_7 gave us some pictures of Sugawara and Satō just a few months ago. From the quality of the pictures, these seem to have been taken from some kind of satellite TV broadcast. I'm guessing if it was broadcast on television it would have been on SkyPerfect, probably on the Satellite Theater channel, since that's where these kinds of things usually get shown.

That's about all I can give you. This film is still being viewed, and prints survive, which is more than I can say for a lot of things I talk about here, but it's frustrating that I can't see it (at least not now). As always, though, if I find a copy of the film or more information about it, I will post updates.

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¹ Nishimura's fifth novel was titled Furyō shōnen after the film adaptation of Warawanai seishun, but this seems to have largely been a name-recognition strategy; the content of the novel was completely different.