琴の爪 / Koto no tsume / Koto Plectrum [1957]

Release date: July 13th, 1957

Director: Hiromichi Horikawa

Studio: Toho

Cast: Senjaku Nakamura, Ganjiro Nakamura, Chikage Ogi, Shin Morikawa, Haruo Tanaka, Kojiro Matsumoto, Someshou Matsumoto, Akihiko Hirata, Yu Fujiki, Ikio Sawamura, Sachio Sakai et al

Availability: No home media release. Infrequent theater screenings and television broadcasts.

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We've beaten the drum and played the flute, now we're going to pluck the koto with this obscure little 50-minute-long film.

The first thing to know about this movie is that it's directly related to Chushingura, the story best known worldwide as "47 Ronin". While the incident itself took place in the early 1700s, the background of Koto Plectrum dates back only to the 1930s, to a series of Shin Kabuki plays written by Seika Mayama collectively titled Genroku Chushingura. These plays were produced and staged over a seven-year period starting in 1934 and ending in 1942. Koto Plectrum is an adaptation of the last story in the cycle, and its full title is Genroku Chushingura - Oishi's Last Day. For a pretty detailed report on an actual stage performance of this story, see here; you'll need a translator extension if you don't read Japanese, but it seems to translate fairly coherently.

Koto Plectrum was an installment in a surprisingly little-known series of films that Toho called their "Diamond Series". These were very short films (usually under an hour) that were adapted from stories by well-respected authors and were made on a small budget. The first film in the series was Will-O'-The-Wisp, directed by Yasuki Chiba and starring Daisuke Kato; virtually none of the films that follow have had any lasting Western name recognition save for Nobuo Aoyagi's The Living Koheiji which is known to kaidan nerds such as myself. While these were small films, they did not lack for stars; their casts boasted some of Toho's most popular actors at the time.

The cast of our movie is filled with kabuki actors, the most prominent being the two Nakamuras and the two Matsumotos, one of whose career took a bit of an odd turn: Someshou Matsumoto started out on the stage and then left to become a screen actor in the mid-1950s, taking some very small roles in some very recognizable films such as The Human Vapor, King Kong vs. Godzilla, Crazy Big Adventure, and Onibaba, just to name a few.

Speaking of small roles, Hirata plays Takanori Ushioda, also known as Matanojo, a real-life personage who was (obviously) one of the 47 Ako ronin. Matanojo inherited a 200-koku fief and was known to be skilled with a spear; not much about his personal life outside of his involvement with the raid seems to be available. I haven't been able to find any mention of this character in reviews of the film, so I really can't tell you anything about how Hirata plays this role or how involved his character is with the plot (probably not very). I think it's fairly safe to say that whatever he does in this movie is not as cool as his role in Inagaki's Chushingura, because in that one he gets to carry Kira's head.

We have a grand total of two pictures of Hirata in this role, and neither of them are very good.

Laputa Asagaya I'm begging you please use images that are larger than 200x200

...we'll need to "computer, enhance!" that second one...

am I your favorite purveyor of grainy images? please say yes

While there are a fair amount of reviews of the film out there (generally middling; mostly written by kabuki fiends who know their stuff) from its various screenings and television broadcasts - some as recent as last year - there is, as far as I know, no footage of the movie itself available online and not really even any stills. Oddly enough I was able to dig up a bizarrely high-quality behind-the-scenes photo from an obituary for Chikage Ogi on [checks notes] a sports website:

...but, really, there's scarce little mention of this out there, although it has apparently been digitized, which means it could be released on DVD if Toho saw fit. 

Another odd thing to note is that this film is on Letterboxd (which itself is surprising) under the English title "Last Days of the Samurai". This title seems to have been more or less arbitrarily chosen; it's the kind of phrase you hear tossed about in reference to various events and media, and was also the English title of a more famous film, The Pass: Last Days of the Samurai. While the film did have a Western release (again, this is very surprising to me), it was not under that title; the export title was instead Chushingura Hero, which will provide our segue into talking about this film's life outside of Japan.

Most probably the film played in other theaters, but the only record of it in Hawai'i that I can find is a few showings throughout Februrary of 1958 at the Kapahulu in Honolulu. It played on a double bill with 1956's Engagement Ring which does appear to also have been one of Toho's Diamond features. 

Quite soon afterward, in March of 1958, the film played in Los Angeles' Adams Theater; I can find virtually no information about this. It seems to have played on a double bill during this run as well, potentially with Floating Clouds which if you ask me is just not really very fair to Koto Plectrum.

After this initial 1958 run, the Rio Theatre in San Francisco showed the film in March of 1961 under yet another English title, A Samurai's Last Hour, on a double bill with Saga of the Vagabonds. And look! Look!! They actually name our man in the cast! (For Vagabonds, not Plectrum, but still, this is rare to see.)

The final American run of the film I can confirm was when it finally made its way into the Toho La Brea in January of 1962. While the film itself first showed in Western theaters in 1958, America seems to consider 1962 its "official" release date, and you'll still see that listed as its year of release in various corners of the internet. I guess a movie doesn't matter until it plays in Los Angeles?

In 1962 our film was included (under the title "Last Day[sic] of Samurai") in the Academy Award Reminder List of Eligible Releases, a booklet given to members of the Academy that - as the name would imply - lists every film eligible for an Academy Award that year. Now, Koto Plectrum was, of course, nowhere even remotely near being nominated for an Academy Award, but it is very interesting to know that members of the Academy were aware of it, and perhaps thought about it for a moment before moving on to whatever else was popular that year.

And now, today, where is this movie? Nowhere. Can you and I watch it? No. From Oscar eligibility to total (Western) obscurity in 64 years...

柳生武芸帳 / Yagyu bugeichō / Yagyu Secret Scrolls (pt. I) [1957]

Release date: April 14th, 1957

Director: Hiroshi Inagaki

Studio: Toho

Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Koji Tsuruta, Mariko Okada, Yoshiko Kuga, Denjiro Okochi, Kyoko Kagawa, Senjaku Namamura, Akihiko Hirata, Eijiro Tono, Nobuko Otowa, Bokuzen Hidari, Yoshio Tsuchiya et al.

Availability: Full movie available online; unofficial English-subtitled DVD also available. Official Toho DVD (not subtitled) available through amazon.jp.

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Today is Toshiro Mifune's birthday, so I wanted to feature something that he starred in. I'm thankful for Mifune, because our man happened to co-star with him in quite a few films, and I've always felt that without the international appeal Mifune had, a lot of Hirata's movies would be far more obscure. (On a much more personal note, it is also the six-year anniversary of the first time I watched Godzilla '54, which eventually led me to create the fansite you're reading now.)

I'll also say upfront that although this is a duology, I'm just going to be talking about the first part; you usually will see Hirata credited as being in both movies, but he's actually only in the first one.

It's likely that anybody who has seen more than one or two jidaigeki films from the Showa era has seen something by Hiroshi Inagaki. Inagaki was one of those directors who seems to have made a name by not necessarily doing anything too innovative, but by being extremely good at sticking to the conventions of the genre he was working within. Taking one of his epic films - let's say his 1962 Chushingura - and comparing it to, say, Seven Samurai, there's a lot less depth of character and a lot more perfunctory plot points, but the sheer grand scale of Inagaki's work and the way his films are costumed and colored still make them achievements in historical drama.

A paperback collecting volumes 4-8 of Yagyu bugeichō.

This film, along with many, many others, was adapted from a serialized novel by Yasusuke [Kousuke] Gomi. I find Wikipedia's statement that the story was "so complicated it was discontinued [from serialization]" very amusing. Despite being discontinued, it still spanned seven volumes. This work and others came at a time when fiction about swordfighting, ninjas, and other historical intrigue of the sort was rapidly gaining popularity. Much of this fiction - and the films that were subsequently made from it - defines modern perceptions of jidaigeki tropes. However, a lot of it was also just kinda made up. I'm not discounting authors who did actual historical research, but you can look at the work of Rob Tuck at Critical Ninja Theory for an idea of how much of this was either invented whole-cloth or based on unclear historical sources that authors had to extrapolate from extensively. The personages, clothing styles, and place-settings in Yagyu Secret Scrolls may correspond roughly to historical truths, but all-in-all, this is a "new" story, based off of a contemporary work of fiction.

(I'm also not saying a movie has to be perfectly historically accurate to be good. When I'm watching The Three Treasures, I'm not bothered about whether or not people ever actually wore their hair like that.)

Toho's two-film adaptation may have been the first, but it most certainly wasn't the last. The next filmed adaptation came from Toei, who produced nine films starring Juushiro Konoe between 1961-64. Konoe also starred in a TV series adaptation staring in 1965; also featured in the series was a young Hiroki Matsutaka, who would go on to play the lead role in another television adaptation in a five-episode series between 1990 and 1992. (No, the Brits are not the only ones who can make TV series that run for five episodes over two years.)

Note both eyes.

Jubei Yagyu was a real guy. Of that much, there does seem to be general scholarly consensus. However, he has been romanticized throughout history, which ironically is due in part to how little is known about his life, rather than how much. Jubei was an attendant in the court of Hidetada Tokugawa and subsequently a sword instructor for Iemitsu Tokugawa, but after that was dismissed fairly suddenly from his post after sixteen years of what was seemingly distinguished service. In a work authored by Jubei himself, he claims to have been, quote Wikipedia, "Traveling the countryside [and] perfecting his skill". I don't think it's difficult to see why this kind of thing would generate intrigue: one imagines an accomplished figure with a comfortable life in court being dismissed for mysterious reasons and then choosing to go off on his own, a shadowy lone swordsman, an individual in an age defined by obeisance and class stratification.

There is also a legend that Jubei lost one of his eyes at some point and wore an eyepatch. This is, as far as I can tell, made up, but it has been proliferated throughout pop culture depictions of him, to the point where it's become his most recognizable characteristic. (Far be it from me to complain about a guy in an eyepatch.) In the movie we’re talking about here, Jubei is missing his left eye, but doesn’t wear an eyepatch; Denjiro Okochi just kinda squints that eye. It’s not very convincing, but it gets the point across.

In Toho's adaptation, Hirata plays Tomonori Yagyu, the illegitimate half-brother of Jubei Yagyu. Tomonori was also a historical figure; he had a 2,000-koku fief and held various positions of rank, but died very young. Tomonori replaced Jubei after the latter's dismissal as sword instructor to Shogun Iemitsu. There is some vague suggestion that Tomonori and Iemitsu were in a romantic relationship, but as far as I know none of that is verifiable, and most of the evidence given for it seems to simply be that Iemitsu was apparently unusually angry to hear that Tomonori had died.

Hirata stars alongside his future wife, Yoshiko Kuga; the two had first met in 1949 and would later meet again on the set of Story of Osaka Castle, hit it off, and marry in October of 1961. He plays Tomonori with a lot of restraint, which can also be said of pretty much the entire cast, even Mifune; watching Yagyu Secret Scrolls feels like watching an adaptation of a stage play. Although there are different factions and motivations in play among the characters, every actor feels like they're on the same level and nobody steals the spotlight (again, even Mifune). This is one of my favorite things about older Japanese movies, especially jidaigeki - it feels like other countries' film industries lost their ties to stage play and moved into cinéma vérité as default much faster than Japan did.

He also wears some cool outfits.

Although Inagaki's films are generally known for being very dry, there is one scene involving Tomonori that I've always found extremely funny, which is when young Prince Chiyomatsu (later Mitsukuni Tokugawa, played by Ken Yamauchi in the Toho version), who is around ten years old, demands to be instructed in Yagyu-style swordfighting. All the Yagyu guys demur, but Matajuro Yagyu agrees, and in the ensuing fight Chiyomatsu accidentally whacks open a secret compartment and one of the titular secret martial arts scrolls falls out.

There's also the part where Tomonori pulls all of a guy's teeth out for a secret plan that as far as I can tell did not actually even end up working.

Anyway, the film was shot in Agfacolor, which I want to make a brief note of since it's different from the usual Tohoscope that the studio had debuted the same year. I think the film does look noticeably different from others that were shot in Tohoscope; there is a distinctive tone to it.

Very small picture of Inagaki on-set of Yagyu Secret Scrolls.

We're now going to move away from discussing the film's background and production within Japan to seeing where it went when it was exported and released to theaters overseas.

The first theatrical run of the film outside of Japan that I can confirm was a startling two and a half months after its original release (this would still be fairly quick for a Japanese export even today). The film ran in Honolulu's Kapahulu theater with English subtitles in late June of 1957 under the title Yagyu Confidential. Its use of Agfacolor was a selling point in newspaper ads. Hawaii Times mentions its upcoming release a few days prior, in the June 28th edition.

What's really interesting, though, is that Hawaiians would have been aware of the movie only a matter of weeks after its initial Japanese release. The May 9th edition of Hawaii Times printed a statement accompanying the grand-reopening of the Kapahulu from Toho's then-president Fusao Kobayashi wherein he said "[...]it gives moviegoers of Japanese ancestry, as well as other residents of Hawaii, the opportunity to appreciate more Japanese-made motion pictures. By doing this, Toho hopes to promote increased friendship between Japan and the United States. I expect Toho's other super-films, Rodan, Snow County, and Yagyu Confidential will also be shown in various parts of the world in the near future."

The film was back the next year by popular demand - by August of 1958 the second film had already been released, but audiences apparently wanted to see the first one again, so it returned to the Kapahulu.

It took ten years for the film to get a wider theatrical run in the continental United States. On October 11th, 1968, the film premiered at the Toho La Brea in Los Angeles. Agfacolor was not as exciting at this point; the film is marketed simply as being "In Color", and in fact the L.A. Times article about its release falsely claims the film is in Eastmancolor. As usual, I've had to cobble together the contents of the article from shoddy OCR, but here's what I can make of it:

 'YAGYU SECRET SCROLLS' A Toho production with Toshiro Mifune, Koji Tsuruta, Yoshiko Kuga, Kyoko Kagawa, Mariko Okada, Deniiro Okochi, Jotaro Togami, Akihiko Hirata, Eijiro Tono. Director: Hiroshi Inagaki,  Associate producer: Tomoyuki Tanaka.

Screenplay (based on story by Kosuke Gomi): Inagaki, Takeshi Kimura. Photography: Tadashi Imura. Art directors: Takeo Kita, Hiroshi Ueda. Sound: Yoshio Nishikawa. Music: Akira Ifukube.

[...]the secret of the scrolls it is necessary to get all three.

The crux of the story deals with samurai-magician Mifune's attempt to grab the set for his master and the princess' efforts to bargain with hers to restore her house and make secure the future of her 50 retainers. Not unpredictably, Mifune and the princess fall in love. Filmed in the old standard ratio and in beautiful Eastmancolor, this 1957 film was directed by Hiroshi Inagaki with his customary verve and has an outstanding score by Akira Ifukube, one of the best composers in Japanese pictures. The acting is in the traditional operatic manner, with Mifune acquitting himself well, as always. 

The sequel played the next year, with the Times giving it a much more negative review, calling it, among other things, "[...]hopelessly confusing, especially since the first film played here last October, too long ago to remember in detail." At least the credits for the second film don't mistakenly include Hirata.

My favorite showing of the film, however, did not occur at the Toho La Brea nor the Kapahulu. My favorite showing was at a fundraiser for a Japanese-language school in 'Ewa Beach, Hawai'i in 1964. The film was shown at 7:30 PM following a half-hour performance put on by the students themselves. At the time 'Ewa was a small plantation town; even today it only holds some ~16,000 residents. I've always said that I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and see movies at the Toho La Brea, but if I really did have a time machine, I don't think I could ask for anything more than to be watching Yagyu Secret Scrolls at a fundraiser in a Japanese-language school in a plantation town in Hawai'i.

After the film's Hawaiian run, Hong Kong was next to get it sometime in 1960. I can't turn anything up about that except for a single crusty poster.

Title should be read right-to-left in Chinese.

The U.S. runs and the Hong Kong run are unfortunately the only theatrical releases I can confirm definitively. IMDb lists Polish and Brazilian titles for the film as well, but I've done some newspaper scouring and haven't been able to turn up any positive evidence for a theatrical run in either country.

Intriguingly, however, I do have evidence for, if not an Italian theatrical run, at least awareness of the film within Italian-language sources. (Wonder what the Italians re-named our man this time.) A 1957 edition of the left-leaning film magazine Cinema nuovo mentions the film. Unfortunately, Google Books doesn't let me view the full contents, so I can't say anything more about it. I did try to ask some Italian eBay sellers if they'd be willing to ship it to me overseas but no dice on that front.

I think that about covers everything, so we will leave Yagyu Secret Scrolls there. The sequel is a fine film, and they work well back to back (which is somewhat rare; sometimes you watch one movie and you're just too tired of it to watch more of the same), but we won't be covering it here. Hopefully this was informative.

太鼓たゝいて笛吹いて / Taiko tataite fue fuite / Beat the Drum, Play the Flute [1958]

Release date: May 13th, 1958

Director: Toshio Sugie

Studio: Toho

Cast: Mariko Miyagi, Hiroshi Koizumi, Norihei Miki, Ichirō Arashima, Seizaburo Kawazu, Mitsuko Kusabue, Ikio Sawamura, Shunji Sakai, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Akihiko Hirata, Yasuo Nakata, Asami Kuji, Yoshifumi Tajima et al

Availability: No home media or streaming release, but prints extant; infrequent theater screenings.

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There is a vanishingly small amount of information on the internet about this movie, especially in terms of visual materials like posters or stills, but fortunately, kosho.or has wares if you have coin. I'm happy to say I can present some material in this post that has never been seen on the internet before. This will be a very text-heavy post.

I suspect that some of the trouble I've had in researching this film is because its title can be written in Japanese in two different ways: the one I've used in the post title, and 太鼓たたいて笛吹いて. The only difference is this little sucker:ゝ, which is used to indicate a repeated kana (in this case the two "ta"s in "tataite"). Another big issue is that this same title was used for a biographical drama about Fumiko Hayashi, first staged in 2014, which is far more popular than our nearly 70-year-old film.

Anyway, we'll start off with the cool stuff first: the pamphlet I got my hands on through kosho. Below you'll find full scans of the entire thing. Since the pamphlet isn't bound, I could get actual decent scans of it without fear of breaking the spine. You'll note that the back page features an ad for All About Marriage as well (IYKYK).

As we'll see shortly, everything about this movie was designed to evoke an Edo-period troupe of traveling actors, and as such, the pamphlet opens with an introduction written from the point of view and with the kind of language used by a troupe of actors. Here is a quick machine translation:

We are here today, the familiar Toho Star Troupe, who are always so grateful for your patronage. This time, at the request of our loyal supporters, we will be showing the film in spectacular detail on screens all over Japan, so we hope to invite everyone - young and old, men and women alike, from the houses in the fields to the top and bottom of the recently popular four- and five-story reinforced concrete apartment buildings - to come along and enjoy the show. We sincerely hope that you will all attend.

Now, if you'd like to pique your interest further, the troupe, led by Toshio Sugie and resident playwright Toshio Yasumi, also known for his work on A Story from Chikamatsu, features mariko Miyagi, along with Norihei Miki, Ichiro Arashima, Hiroshi Koizumi, Mitsuko Kusabue, Fubuki Koshiji, Yasuko Nakata, Masuda Keaton, Shunji Sakai, and Kamatari Fujiwara - a troupe that will have you laughing out loud just hearing about it. The troupe, sensing the scent of spring, is on a journey, or is the play the journey? [A] wandering tale of floating weeds in the water will soothe your souls with a play entitled Beat the Drum, Play the Flute.

First up is Mariko Miyagi, performing solo, leading the way with the taiko drums, then the music behind her, followed by the accompaniment of a female gidayu. While diligently caring for the troupe, she reveals the flower of love hidden deep within her heart, a girl's heart filled with tears and laughter, wondering whether it will bloom or not. Watching this, Norihei Miki and Ichiro Arashima, though timid, offer their support; not just in a shrewd manner. They're admirable in their way of telling her what to do, but everything they do is rambling and tearful - no laughing matter. 

We feel nostalgic when we hear the flute [calling] "Let's play the den-den taiko drum" ¹. Today, we travel around the country blowing the flute and beating the drum as a herald. After performing beautifully, we would appreciate a round of applause.

Next up the pamphlet gives us some explanatory text (kaisetsu), which is basically a short blurb selling you on the movie - these tend to be pretty hyperbolic, and are not meant as a synopsis, just a little excitement to get you to come see it.

This epic period drama, produced in Tohoscope and featuring regular cast members from Toho musicals as well as some of the finest film and theater talent of the day, is presented in full color with Eastmancolor. The film depicts the tenacious vitality and hilarious lives of traveling actors who move from town to town throughout the year, with an innocent young girl as the protagonist. Based on an original idea by Kazuo Kikuta, the screenplay was written by Hideo Oguni and directed by Toshio Sugie, who is enjoying success with The Capital of Love. The cast includes Mariko Miyagi [as] a handyman for a traveling troupe who does not only casual work but also props, costumes, and musicians, and is even a narrator for the gidayu musicians, all of whom are extremely active. 

Other performers include Norihei Miki and Ichiro Arashima as the pair Danshichi and Danhachi ², who are nominally actors but [get no good roles]. Hiroshi Koizumi plays the troupe's leading handsome man, Dannojo; Mitsuko Kusabue plays Otaki, the innkeeper who has an affair with Dannojo despite being married; Seizaburo Kawazu as a popular Edo kabuki actor; Akihiko Hirata as the handsome Shinnosuke and Asami Kuji as Otoku who runs off with him; Shunji Sakai as the troupe's female impersonator, Senshou; Masuda Keaton as the elderly Hikoemon; Yasuko Nakata as the innkeeper. More performers in the lively cast include Noriko Sengoku and Ikio Sawamura. The staff includes an original story by Kazuo Kikuta, screenplay by Hideo Oguni, cinematography by Taiichi Kankura and art by Shinobu Muraki, sound by Wataru Konuma, lighting by Mitsuo Kaneko, music by Yoshiyuki Kozu, and production by Shiro Horie.

Next up is the synopsis, which is a more elaborate than anything else available online. Strap in.

A group of traveling performers streamed into the Tabuhara Inn on the Nakasendo Trail, nestled between the Norikura and Komagatake mountain ranges. This was the Dankuro Ichikawa troupe, a traveling group of actors who migrate from place to place year-round. [They are] led by Dankuro, his wife Oshino and son Dannojo; Umezo Bando and his wife Otoku; Hikoemon Bando, Makuya Nakamura, Senshou Nakamura, Shinnosuke Nakamura, Ubei, Kisuke, and Takichi, as well as the pair of cut-rate actors ³ Danshichi and Danhachi and the assistant Okei. The troupe, made up of 15 members, is exceptionally impoverished and live hand-to-hand. Not only do they do the chores to feed everyone, but they also handle props, craftsmen, costumes, and even narrators and actors, literally beating drums and blowing flutes as they go.

Upon arriving at the post town, Danshichi, Danhachi, and Okei, carrying the traveling theater's drums, immediately circled the crowded side of the [town's] main inn. They were pushed back by the horsemen and laborers, but Okei stumbled and bumped into Okaji, the wife of Tanomo Osawa, a samurai from Bishu, and her servant Sanai, who were entering the "Tsuruya" inn. Okaji had lost her baby in a fire in this same town 20 years earlier, and had returned to the area in search of this daughter.

The troupe set up in a tent in a vacant lot in Niida.

The theater hall was sparsely populated. To make matters worse, handsome Shinnosuke has given up on the troupe and is plotting to steal it by having an affair with Otoku, while Makuya and Senshou are more interested in the innkeepers Okiyo and Otetsu than in performing on stage. Danshichi [...] laments his inability to find a single woman. He sets his sights on Okei, nicknamed "daikon no shippo" ⁴, and courts her. Danhachi, playing the same role, is not to be outdone, and begins a battle for her, playing an untimely "love match". However, she secretly has feelings for only one man: Dannojo. He, however, is in the midst of an affair with Otaki, the wife of the troupe's former tayu, Ubei, a situation that is causing her father, Dankuro, a great deal of headaches. The plan: Enraged by Dannojo's treatment, wholesaler Kichigoro waits for an opportunity to punish him.

Meanwhile, Okaji learns from Ubei that Dankuro's troupe also performed at the same inn 20 years ago during a fire, and Dankuro found a baby there at that time.

Okaji explains the purpose of her visit to Oshino, but Oshino greets her with [an unfriendly rejection.] ⁵ Feeling down, Okaji spots Okei working in the kitchen on her way home. Without identifying herself as her mother, she quickly hands Okei a hairpin and leaves.

Then, Dankuro collapses on stage. When he passes away, Oshino forces Dannojo and Okei to marry. Kichigoro and his men burst in to kill Dannojo, but are left dumbfounded by Oshino's actions. Moreover, Otoku and Shinnosuke are down on their luck, and Ubei says that the road is currently being traveled by popular Edo actor Gonjuro Arashi's troupe, so there's no way Dankuro's feeble troupe could possibly intrude.

Desperate to save the troupe from crisis, Okei invites Danshichi and Danhachi to visit Gonjuro inside, but the clerk, Kiyozo, won't allow them to see her at all. Okei, learning that Gonjuro has requested a massage, tricks anma Oshige and successfully gains entry to his room in disguise, but Gonjuro, with his keen intuition, sees through her. After hearing Okei's struggles, Gonjuro readily agrees to cooperate with the troupe as a memorial performance for Dankuro, a fellow performer dedicated to his art.

The theater, which had previously been hardly attended, is packed to capacity on that day. The act was Gonjuro's signature piece, "Shiobara Tasuke", and even Danshichi and Danhachi, the cut-rate actors, were highly praised, much to their delight. Gonjuro, completely taken with Okei's personality, suddenly proposed marriage to her. The rest of the troupe cheered with open arms, but Okei turned him down. Though he was her husband in name only, Okei truly loved Dannojo and felt sorry for him. Meanwhile, the ever-cheating Dannojo and Otaki were finally discovered by Kichigoro's men, and Dannojo fell to Kichigoro's sword. Summoning his last bit of strength, he made it to the tent and died in Okei's arms.

The troupe was finally at its end. Umezo, who knows Okei's background, urges her to return to her parents, but Okei proposes going to Edo with the others, sticking with Gonjuro, and making a name for herself. She even uses her precious hairpin as part of her travel expenses. Okei's enthusiasm inspires the group. Edo... Edo. The powerful footsteps of the troupe approach again today.

The first thing I want to note now that you're familiar with the characters is that the names of the troupe leaders are puns on popular actors of the time (actually sort of a bit before this time, but they were still known and respected): "Dankuro Ichikawa" is Danjuro Ichikawa, "Umezo Bando" is Tsumasaburo Bando, and "Gonjuro Arashi" is Kanjuro Arashi.

(I can explain that readily, but what I'm not clear on is why there are three separate guys named Nakamura in this and neither this synopsis nor anything else that I've read about the movie comments on it. It seems to me like they're kind of implied to be brothers, but I don't know for sure. I also don't know what relation Hikoemon Bando is to Umezo Bando. You know, that was a really detailed synopsis, but I still have questions.)

So now we know about the movie and we can lament the fact that we can't watch it. In terms of stuff to look at, aside from the pamphlet, we have two posters (the first is presented in two halves because long poster is long):

And a second one which is more or less a variation on the first.

Thanks to some screenings of this film, one from 2015 (top) and one from 2008 (bottom), we also have two stills. Both are pretty grainy, very small, and not that interesting, but they're really exciting to have considering how little else there is:

To talk briefly about Hirata's character Shinnosuke (because that's what we do here), it's very amusing to me that his role in this does literally seem to be "just there to look pretty". I assume he gets further characterization in the film itself, but the synopsis doesn't give anything besides the fact that 1. He is handsome and 2. He is up to no good. That one spicy picture is our sole visual evidence of his character. I've also read in other synopses that the troupe puts on a performance of Chushingura, which that means Hirata was in both two film adaptations of Chushingura and a movie where people perform Chushingura.

I'm surprised at the general lack of visual material related to the film, because it has actually been seen a fair amount of times within the past couple of decades - in addition to the Laputa screening, it played at the Jimbocho Theater as part of a Norihei Miki/Junzaburo Ban film festival in 2018 and at the same theater again as part of a Kazuo Kikuta festival in 2023. Which is great, because if it last screened three years ago, that means prints probably exist, so it can hypothetically be digitized and put out on DVD. Reception of the film seems pretty decent; largely just mild praise, but one Filmarks reviewer gave it "full marks" and said "I cried". Alright.

With a really strong cast, a capable Toho director, and several other prominent names with writing credits, this is certainly one I wish I could see somehow. Mariko Miyagi also appeared in my pet movie Rakugo nagaya wa hana zakari and sang on its soundtrack, performing a duet with Enoken in a song about eating radishes with your wife. Miyagi sang the theme song to this film as well, which you can listen to here. I think it's quite lovely.

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^{1 This is a reference to "Edo Lullaby", a traditional song. Read more about it here if you have a translator extension.}

^{2. Their names mean "Seven" and "Eight". "Dankuuro" is also a number pun; it replaces the kanji 十 (juu, "ten") in "Danjuro" with 九 (kyuu, "nine"). Re: names - there is some uncertainty about how to read some of the characters' names here; I've done my level best, but I wouldn't be able to tell you with full confidence how all of them are pronounced unless I watched the movie.}

^{3 This pamphlet repeatedly uses a phrase with no direct translation that I've had to sort of dance around: "uma no ashi"; it literally means "horse's legs" and it refers to actors who are so unpopular or untalented that they mostly play roles such as the back half of a fake horse.}

4 This is a bit rough to translate, but "daikon" basically means "ham actor" and "shippo" means "tail", so I'm guessing the meaning of Okei's nickname is something along the lines of "person who trails along behind mediocre actors". I was very close to just putting "roadie", but that felt a bit cheeky.

^{5 "Ken mo furoro" - idiomatic phrase that really doesn't have a direct translation.}

Rodan on CED (Capacitance Electronic Disc)!

Poor Rodan always seems to end up being the subject of some of my weirdest posts.

"What is this thing that kind of looks like a giant floppy disc?" You might ask. This is a CED, or Capacitance Electronic Disc, which I'm continually having to resist calling a "CED disc" because that's like saying "ATM machine". For a better summary of what it is and what it does, check out Techmoan's video, which includes a teardown of a CED machine (or three). For a full list of titles released to the U.S. market on CED, see here. For the U.K. market, see here. (Rodan is listed as "Uncommon", and was not released in the U.K.)

In short: it's a dead format several decades and millions of dollars in the making that turned out to be, as one YouTube commenter puts it, "a turkey". The actual video quality is not as bad as I expected - really no worse than some of the VHS tapes I've digitized - but the format has a quite unfortunate problem with stuttering and skipping, rendering a lot of movies flat-out unwatchable. More titles were issued on CED than you may think despite its short lifespan, and the list of U.S. titles includes both Godzilla 1984 and Godzilla, King of the Monsters!. My copy of Rodan is from 1983 and I got it dirt cheap; I have no idea if it's watchable, and don't have any plans to invest in a secondhand CED player to find out. It's mostly just a novelty to display in my room.

We owe Rodan's existence on CED to Vestron Video, who in 1983 put the pedal to the metal and decided to release the movie on every format simultaneously: VHS, Betamax, CED and LaserDisc. Rodan was also issued separately in 1965 on Super 8 as a black-and-white "digest" version, which you can watch here. It's most just an action cut and honestly isn't that bad if you just want to see monster stuff; it's a testament to how good Rodan was that it holds up even in such a condensed format. (Hirata's in the Super 8 version, but only a little, and for some reason looks even nerdier in black-and-white than he did in the original.)

Techmoan's video mentions CED in both the U.S. and the U.K., but having a kaiju movie on this format got me wondering if the format had any lifespan to speak of in the Japanese market. Japan is very good at keeping unusual media formats alive much longer than the rest of the world (cf. Minidisc), so I wanted to do some research to find out if any CEDs ever made it over there.

Short answer: Japan knew about CED but said nah.

Longer, more accurate answer: Japan did want it - or at least some people did - but was too busy at the time with a format war going on between VHD (Video High Density), LaserDisc, and Germany's obscure TeD (Television Electronic Disc), and although Hitachi was looking at commercializing the format for the Japanese market, it ultimately never entered domestic production, and only existed within the country as direct imports by collectors. I'm getting my information from JP Wikipedia, which unfortunately lacks a citation for this particular chapter of RCA's history, so I can't give you sources beyond what's written on the wiki. For a more personal, less objective opinion, I'll cite this blog post, whose author seems to have been entirely unfamiliar with CED. I wouldn't take one blog post as representative of the entire populace's knowledge of CED, though, and it's also worth pointing out that most people in the U.S. and U.K. - CED's actual target markets - probably have never heard of it either.

However, and more interestingly, I also turned up this article in Japanese, which is a pretty comprehensive look at what a CED was and how the format works. It's dated to 1982, so CED was still extant at the moment, although moribund; I don't know why somebody would have gone through the trouble of producing a Japanese-language guide to the format if there was not at least some interest in it within the country. This, also in Japanese, mentions CED as well, but only to make a brief note of its fleeting existence.

So that's some Rodan miscellany for you.

What In The World Was Italy Doing With "Saga of the Vagabonds"?

I swear to god someday I'm gonna turn up a poster for Secret of the Telegian that says "Thaddeo Nakamaru"

I'd like to thank this Letterboxd review for turning me on to this subject. Sometimes I read something online and immediately think "Oh yeah, that's gonna have a whole post written about it."

In 1959, Toho released Sengoku gunto-den, retitled for the English export market as Saga of the Vagabonds. The English title is fairly accurate to the original; a more literal translation could be "Sengoku Bandit Legend", or something like that. But I think Saga of the Vagabonds is just fine. However, when the film reached Italy in 1962, it was retitled Le scimitarre dei Mongoli, or "The Sword of the Mongols". 

So, first of all, yikes. Secondly: yikes. Third: I want to know more.

An Italian censorship visa was given to the film in March of 1962. (If you're wondering what a "censorship visa" is, it's this.) This preceded an official Italian theatrical release in August of that year. Thanks to a website archiving Italy's censorship decisions, we know that when the film was submitted to the censorship board, it was given approval. In practical terms, this means that the board viewed a dubbed version of the film and decided that it was fine for public viewing with no changes necessary. From other sources, I've been able to verify that the film was indeed shown in full, so nothing else was cut from the dub for reasons other than censorship, which is always nice.

Nino Cacace Cinematografica, the Italian distributor of the film - who I assume was responsible for the retitling - appears to only have had two other films credited to them: the Russian film Planet of Storms, which was retitled to The 7 Space Navigators, and the Yugoslavian film Signal Over the City, retitled Assault of the V Battalion. The company does not appear to have done anything other than import these three films.

Some of the lobby cards and posters are actually quite nice, but there's a few posters that I genuinely would not feel comfortable showing on here.

Although the film premiered in Palermo in 1962, it kinda hung around. My best source for the film's Italian half-life in the 1960s is a communist newspaper(!) that shows it having a robust existence as a third-run picture in May of 1963, playing at a total of five theaters: the Boito, the Corallo, the Doria, the Apollo and the Espero. I believe the Boito, Corallo, and Doria are still open, but the Apollo has long since been abandoned, and the Espero became a bingo hall. The newspaper also provides ratings for the films it advertises in its showtimes page; Scimitarre is rated "mediocre" - the meaning is the same in English as in Italian.

Credit to Elizabeth Graziani on fb

IMDb also lists a third Italian run of the film in 1965, which is more difficult to find specific information about. Turning to Google Books, however, did confirm that the film was being screened in the country in 1965. A book published in that year called Di riffe o di raffe (objectively a really good title, no matter what language you speak) by Italian screenwriter Giuseppe Marotta mentions the film briefly: "Damn it. A storm in a teacup; add to that the fact that I have to see a film for you, but the theaters are showing The Scimitars of the Mongols and The Titans Are Coming. What do I do, slit my throat or blow my brains out?"

I don't think Marotta cared for it.

It's pretty easy to conclude that this movie was marketed in Italy as a kind of Hercules-adjacent action picture of the type that were produced domestically on the cheap. Since the film evidently wasn't cut, though, all audiences would have had to do was actually go and see the movie to find out that the sword-and-sandals adventure with shirtless brawny men and damsels in distress vs. looming barbarian hordes they were promised was really just an average Japanese historical drama with an unusual amount of horses. This isn't specific to Italy; a lot of countries (including the U.S.) have historically not seemed to care much about marketing imported Japanese fantasy and historical films as anything other than exactly the same type of schlock they themselves were putting out.

You can spell out "Toshiro Mifune" but Toshio Sugie just gets called "T. Sugie"? Come on, there's only one letter of difference between "Toshiro" and "Toshio".

Actually, I'm going to stay on the topic of marketing for a bit longer, because it seems like the Mongolian connection went further than just an eye-catching title. I've turned up a synopsis for the film which I'm thinking might actually date back to its initial release - I have no way of proving that, but I think it might be a situation like how eiga.com and Kinenote will often use synopses that are from the first run of a film, even if said film is 70+ years old. Anyway, translated, it reads thusly:

"There is the hand of the great Akira Kurosawa, author of the script, in this compelling and well-shot war fresco. Protagonist Toshiro Mufune[sic], a Mongolian prince who turns into a sort of Robin Hood of the steppes, making raids to steal from the rich and redistribute the loot among the most humble populations. Released in Europe under the title 'Saga of the Vagabonds'."

So they really doubled down on that, huh? (Note, also, that this synopsis is different from what you'll find on the back of the DVD box; this is part of why I believe it may be original to the initial release.)

The film is still going by its Scimitarre title within Italy today but, as indicated by that Letterboxd review, it seems like people these days find it more baffling than anything else, given the total absence of either Mongolians or curved swords in the film. However, the Italian dub of the film is definitely still extant and available on DVD, although it seems to be out of stock in most places I’ve looked. And...

...yeah, that is absolutely, 100% a screenshot from Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster on the back cover.

We're talking strictly about the Italian release here, but in the interest of completeness I'll mention that Saga of the Vagabonds did get exported to quite a few different overseas markets as well. In Spanish it was retitled Los Diablos Rojos, which is actually a more accurate translation of the roving band of thieves' moniker than what the English subtitles provide. This Spanish release is relevant to the Italian release, because the Italian DVD cover is just the Spanish poster with some extra art added and the Italian title slapped on.

The film also got a Cuban release under a direct Spanish translation of the English title and, my dear friends, I am delighted to inform you that the Cuban poster slaps.

It slaps so much, I actually decided to print it out and put it in a frame on my wall.

As a last, ephemeral footnote, I've also found a listing in a TV guide for the film from 1981, so it was shown on television in Italy at some point as well. I'm not sure if it was cut for television broadcast.

So, no real point to this post, I just found something that I thought was a true oddity and decided to explore it a little further. I'm very curious about that Italian dub - I'd really like to know if there's any dialogue where the characters refer to themselves or each other as Mongolians or if that was purely a marketing decision. If you have a copy of the dub or happen to have seen it, I'd appreciate it a lot if you dropped me a line.

この恋！五千万円 / Kono koi! gosanmanen / This Love Costs ¥5,000

Release date: January 3rd, 1954

Director: Kozo Saeki

Studio: Toho

Cast: Junzaburo Ban, Tony Tani, Aiko Mimasu, Akemi Negishi, Shinobu Asaji, Kingoro Yanagiya, Toshiko Tsubouchi, Akihiko Hirata, Norihei Miki et al

Availability: One confirmed television broadcast; no known theater screenings. No home media release.

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It's Valentine's Day where I am in the U.S.! Let's talk about ❤️ love ❤️

...or, at least, a movie with "love" in the title.

When I look really quickly at this poster I sometimes think Tony Tani looks like Kenji Sahara here.

This movie has always stood out to me from the rest of Hirata's filmography because for some reason it is almost impossible to verify that he was in it. If you look at his Japanese Wikipedia page, it's right there with everything else, simple as. But Wikipedia is the only website that lists him as part of the cast. Kinenote? Nope. Allcinema? Nope. Filmarks? Nope. The almighty Miyata Gyaos Geocities site? Nope. Eiga.com? Nope. Hell, the actual posters from the film? Nope!

Eagle-eyed viewers may be able to see, however, that the poster does list an Onoda: Isamu Onoda, an extremely prolific lyricist/screenwriter/playwright who also acted a little. Because of his prevalence in the film industry, we have talked about his work a few times on here, but despite his surname he is apparently entirely unrelated to our man. By "acted a little" I do mean "a little": as an actor, he has just three credits to his name, including this film.

I think the reason for Hirata's role getting omitted so frequently is pretty simple: it was probably vanishingly small. His Wikipedia page lists his character's name as simply "Policeman" (keiji). Yes, I know "Keiji" is also a given name, but the kanji used to spell this character's name cannot be used to spell the name "Keiji". So, basically, I would imagine that he was "Cop #2" in the background of a random scene, or something like that.

Still from No Response from Car 33 for illustrative purposes.

To run quickly through some people who were in the movie before we move on: the film was directed by Kozo Saeki, who began his career in the silent era; written by Toshio Yasumi, who got his start at PCL as a screenwriter at around the same time; and adapted from an audio drama by the extremely prolific Kazuo Kikuta. The cast includes many people who we've seen frequently here, including comedians Tony Tani, Kingoro Yanagiya, and Norihei Miki. If I may get my amateur film scholar hat on, this particular period of Japanese cinema has always fascinated me because it feels like such a turning point for the industry as a whole: directors and writers who began their careers in the silent era and watched the birth of cinema itself were now working with a new generation of actors who had never grown up without it. It felt like film and older mediums such as stage plays and rakugo could coexist equally side-by-side, at least for a little while.

He's not even in the realm of having his name on posters for this one.

While we can't find Hirata on the film's Eirin (Japan's MPAA, basically) page, we can find out who had a vested interest in its production. The film was sponsored by Mie Prefectural Tourism Federation, Ise Shima National Park Association, Watarukano Tourism Association, Mie Kotsu Co., Ltd., and Kinki Nippon Railway.

I have confirmed one television broadcast of the film, which is always, always what we want to hear, because (modern) television broadcasts mean that someone, somewhere has digitized the film, and if someone has digitized it, then we don't need to worry about any physical prints rotting away in a warehouse somewhere. As per a defunct message board related to the kabuki bookstore Kobikido Shoten, the film was broadcast sometime in October 2000; unfortunately, I'm not sure on what station. The poster does not include their opinion on this film in specific, but lists it as part of what they call a solid lineup.

Speaking of screenings and broadcasts, I had a hunch that this was probably a "B" picture on a double bill due to its obscurity, and it turns out I was right: the film screened alongside Jirocho Sangokushi pt. 7, directed by Masahiro Makino.

Some promo stills exist:

Tony Tani and Akemi Negishi (hey, that's Noguchi's girl).

So, that's basically it. We can say that a digitized version of the movie may exist somewhere (if television network reorganizations over the years haven't led to it being lost at some point), but that's essentially it. I cannot find record of a single theater screening outside of its original run. I'm really curious about just how small Hirata's role in the film was, but unfortunately it seems like my chances of finding out are slim to none.