Hyappatsu Hyakuchu Gaiden: Literally Just The Entire* Previously Unavailable International Export Version

*Technically not the entire dub, since about 10 minutes are missing due to censorship, but as of a few days ago the number of available minutes of this dub was zero, so.

I had basically finished up my research into Ironfinger and its international export versions when I found something interesting: An eBay listing for an Indian VCD claiming to have an English-dubbed version of the film. I knew the original Frontier Enterprises dub was currently considered lost/unavailable, so this caught my eye, but I thought "Nah, why would it be on an Indian VCD? It's probably just an original dub done in-house by the distributor, I’m not gonna spend money on that."

And then I thought "...unless?"

So, anyway, here, available online for the very first time (as far as I'm aware) is the international export version of Ironfinger.

I’m keeping the seller's name off of this because I don't know if he wants to be associated with, ahem, unofficial merchandise. But "DJ", you know who you are.

People who know more about these things than I do have pointed out that it is clearly identifiable as Frontier Enterprises' work by the cast of VAs. Akira Takarada is voiced by Burr Middleton and Susumu Kurobe is voiced by William Ross. I'll add more names as I fill out the full roster (which I hopefully will do). You'll be able to see right away the the dub is in very poor condition and about ten minutes are missing due to censorship, but some people are working right now on a reconstruction using the Japanese print, so it's likely a proper version in decent quality will be available soon.

We're actually very lucky that this is from India, because Indian films are required to show their censor certificate (or at least all the ones I've seen have been), and we can glean a great deal from this certificate. Using Google Lens to translate, I was able to find out that the certificate itself was issued in August 1977 with an expiration date of August 1987. This means that the Frontier dub has been kicking around India for close to fifty years while the rest of the world knew nothing. That's... kind of astounding to me, honestly. It's also intriguing that we can see there is English writing in the upper left-hand corner that says "recertification". Was this movie being shown in India even earlier?

We can also see by the big "A" for Adult that this was given India's equivalent of basically a PG-13 or a soft R: it's for adult audiences only, but you still can't show nudity.

Now, lastly, I know what you're all wondering: Does Yumi still call Komori "Mr. Only-Interested-In-Men" in the English dub? The answer is no, she does not; she calls him "Mr. Handsome of Aonuma".

100th Post Special: １００発１００中 / Hyappatsu hyakuchu / 100 Shot, 100 Killed (aka Ironfinger) [1965]

One hundred posts! I don't know whether to be proud or embarrassed.

In any case, to celebrate my hundredth post (and Akira Takarada's birthday), let's take a good, long look at 100 Shot, 100 Killed, or Ironfinger, as it's better known to audiences outside of Japan. Before we get started, though, if you haven't heard the full version of Akira Fuse's theme from the movie, do yourself a favor and listen to it on YouTube here; it is leaps and bounds better than the version used in the movie.

Thus soundtracked, let's begin by looking at some of the films that influenced Ironfinger. This post will, to no one's surprise, run very, very long, but I aim to make it worth your while.

Influences, part I: The Name's ボンド... ジェームズ ボンド

The first Japanese translation of a James Bond novel came in 1957, when Hayakawa Shobo published Live and Let Die as part of their "Hayakawa Pocket Mystery" series. The novels were published out-of-order; Casino Royale, chronologically the first Bond novel, wasn't published in Japanese until 1963. Japan first saw Bond on screen that same year, in Dr. No, retitled "007 is the Number of Killing" and released as a road show. Surprisingly, according to Wikipedia, ticket sales were very poor; the film grossed only 57.8 million yen, which didn't even place it within the top ten foreign films distributed in the country that year.

For whatever reason, audiences decided to give it another shot when From Russia With Love came to town the next year, and that film grossed 260.8 million yen - a drastic improvement that would become a pattern. Goldfinger¹- the third entry in the James Bond series - premiered in Toho-owned theaters on April 1st, 1965 and grossed 706.32 million yen, making it the highest-grossing film of that year period, even including domestically-produced films.

Thus far, every Bond movie released in Japan had multiplied its gross returns by about four times the previous one, and Toho managed to capitalize perfectly on that success by releasing Ironfinger at almost the same time as the fourth Bond movie, Thunderball, which again brought in a mind-boggling profit. Raking in over one billion yen, Thunderball was Japan's top-grossing film of 1966 (its December 1965 release made it count for the next year). 

Two years after Ironfinger, Bond himself would come to Japan on-screen in You Only Live Twice, the production of which was assisted by Toho (they provided soundstages, personnel, and Mie Hama and Akiko Wakabayashi as Bond girls). I could say many things about the film and its source novel's depiction of Japan, Japanese culture, and Japanese people, but its Japanese Wikipedia page does a better job than I ever could by succinctly describing several aspects of it as "absurd" and "unrealistic".

However, while Ironfinger does clearly tie itself to the Bond series through its title and the timing of its theatrical release, the film that arguably inspired much more of its overall style and tone is a relatively lesser-known French-Italian co-production called That Man From Rio.

Influences, part II: The Name's Belmondo... Jean-Paul Belmondo

One has only to watch Goldfinger and That Man From Rio back-to-back (as I did during research for this post) to see that Rio clearly had a much larger influence on Ironfinger in almost every respect. Jean-Paul Belmondo's performance as Rio's protagonist, unassuming train concierge/aviator/international man of mystery Pvt. Adrien Dufourquet, is very physical, taking advantage of his height to portray a character who almost comes off goofy and awkward at times but is, despite outward appearances, capable of holding his own in almost any situation. These are all things that are also true of Akira Takarada's performance as Andy Hoshino, and I'll eat my hat if Takarada wasn't studying Belmondo in preparation for his role in Ironfinger.

And it's not just Belmondo's acting that Ironfinger obviously takes a cue from: the fast-paced, zany yet self-aware tone of Rio feels like a blueprint for Ironfinger's similarly frenetic tempo. There is even a scene in the back quarter of Rio where Dufourquet steals a small passenger plane that, as far as I'm concerned, Ironfinger was paying direct homage to with its own prop plane chase scene.

Phillipe de Broca's That Man From Rio premiered in Japan in October of 1964, and both it and Belmondo were enormously popular in Japan at the time (JP Wikipedia states that he was equally as popular in the country as Alain Delon but had more male fans). Belmondo influenced a number of Japanese productions where characters were modeled after him - again, there's no way Takarada wasn't looking to him for inspiration. Most notably, Belmondo was a direct inspiration for the manga Lupin III, and in fact when Belmondo's films began airing on television², Yasuo Yamada - by far best known as the voice of Lupin - became his exclusive Japanese dubber.

The line between all of these influences (though Ironfinger takes more from some than from others) is a closed circle, considering That Man From Rio was itself intended to be a bit of a Bond send-up. To get a more comprehensive picture of everything that went into Ironfinger, we'd have to conduct a full examination of the history and scope of the spy genre within Japanese cinema might be appropriate here - Bond did not invent the spy/crime movie, and neither of the two films we've just looked at were the first time Japan became acquainted with the genre - but such an examination is unfortunately outside the scope of this article.

So, for now, we'll leave it at that and move on to discussing the film itself.

Discussing The Film Itself

Ironfinger was released to laserdisc in 1997 (image credit to sinekon on Ameblo). Fun fact: That is a real rifle and it was gifted to screenwriter Kihachi Okamoto by Toshirō Mifune.

Although Ironfinger bears clear influences from other, contemporary films, in order to properly appreciate it on its own, I want us to set those associations aside, at least a little. Focusing too much on them runs the risk of distracting from the fact that the crew Toho assembled to work on this movie were some incredibly talented people, whose particular creative tendencies were perfectly suited to produce a zippy, eye-catching crime movie - Bond and Belmondo influences or not.

The film was directed by Jun Fukuda, whose style is all over it, but I would argue that Ironfinger's overall vibe owes as much if not more to the combination of Fukuda and Kihachi Okamoto as screenwriter than simply Fukuda alone. Okamoto's movies have an instantly recognizable look and feel to them no matter what genre he's working within, and although he only co-wrote the screenplay, I think something of his distinctive style shows through in the actual aesthetic of the film itself.

Okamoto's co-writer on the screenplay was mystery and sci-fi writer Michio Tsuzuki, who deserves mention as well. After the war, Tsuzuki worked on editing translations of French mystery novels and then began translating English mystery novels on his own, despite his inexperience (at the time) with the language. Tsuzuki's involvement with Ironfinger is extremely apropos, considering that he was working for Hayakawa when the company was producing the first Japanese James Bond translations - although I'm not certain if he was involved with Bond in any way before being brought on to co-write Ironfinger.

Looks can be deceiving: Ironfinger is so well-outfitted (despite a few reused sets) that it's very easy to believe actual overseas location shooting was used; in reality, the entire film was shot within Japan.

The film's cinematography and overall aesthetic are top-notch. Ironfinger's art director, Kazuo Ogawa, worked on many projects that reflect the typical style of 1960s Japanese cinema; he contributed to a lot of Crazy Cats films and Hitoshi Ueki's Japan's No. 1 ___ Man series, as well as two of Toho's Seishun TV dramas (among many other things). Cinematographer Shinsaku Uno is a much more obscure character, with only a few credits to his name and none of them particularly well-known, but he does a remarkably good job with Ironfinger despite being kind of a nobody. One thing I particularly appreciate is that the two rival crime families are color-coordinated to match their names, with the head of the Aonuma gang wearing blue (ao) and the head of the Akatsuki gang wearing red (aka). Komori, the Aonuma hitman who we'll meet shortly, even wears a blue tie and has some blue trim on the breast pocket of his suit. 

Ironfinger's boppy 1960s soundtrack was created by Masaru Sato, who really needs no introduction since you've most likely heard his work if you've seen more than one or two Japanese movies. As mentioned above, Akira Fuse sings the theme song, which was written by Tokiko Iwatani. Iwatani may not be a household name to Western audiences, but she's enormously important within the history of Showa-era pop music and composed lyrics for the likes of Yūzō Kayama, Hiromi Go, and The Peanuts. Within Japan she was also enormously prolific within the field of translating stage performances into Japanese. (Jesus Christ Superstar!)

From Toho's official DVD release. Splash text reads (in part) "Is this the Japanese 007!?"

In terms of acting, the star of the show is obviously Akira Takarada, although the movie would not be what it is without an excellent ensemble cast backing him up. Takarada's physicality is what sells the role, I think - he rarely spends a moment sitting still, even when he's tied up by some villain or another. Takarada himself has looked back on this role fondly in interviews, and it's considered by fans to be one of his best; his oft-mistranslated "Mr. 100 Shots" line in Godzilla Final Wars is, in the original Japanese, a reference to this role, inserted at the behest of director Ryūhei Kitamura.

Many reviews of Ironfinger that I've read tend to agree that Akihiko Hirata's character is really underused. Hirata plays Komori³, a hitman for the Aonuma family, one of two rival gangs both vying for the same shipment of firearms. Komori almost acts as a foil for Hoshino, or at least he would have if his character had been a little more developed. Hoshino's also a hitman, as we learn at the end of the film, but Hoshino is nothing but an impenetrable shield of bravado under which his true identity lies, whereas with Komori, what you see is what you get. And what you see is a really ruthless killer who carries a pocket flask full of acid.

This off-white pinstriped suit Komori wears for the first half of Ironfinger is one of my favorite suits Hirata's worn on film. It also ties into the color-coding of the two rival gangs, because after Aonuma dies (and it starts to become clear Komori wasn't only working for Aonuma), we see Komori in a plain grey suit without the blue accents.

The last thing I'd like to note before we move on is that while Takarada seems to have learned his French lines phonetically⁴, Hirata actually learned French in military school and had planned to become a military attaché to the French embassy if there hadn't been a war. That was about 20 years before Ironfinger, so I have no idea how much of that he retained, but he certainly had familiarity with the language at the very least. He has fewer French lines than Takarada, but to me (someone who knows absolutely no French) I think he does sound a little more natural in his delivery.

With that on our minds, let's take a look at Ironfinger on the international stage.

A Parisian in America (and Romania, Italy, Brazil, etc): Ironfinger Goes Global

"Squirm as a girl takes over!"...?

Ironfinger's entrance into the United States market is somewhat murky. Its first mention in English-language print material dates back to volume 9 number 2 of UniJapan Film Quarterly, published in 1966. This seems to be the first time the "Ironfinger" title was associated with the film. In 1968, the film was included in volume 13 of Toho's Toho Films catalog of movies available for purchase and screening to distributors in the U.S., also under the Ironfinger title. An English-dubbed version, produced in Tokyo by Frontier Enterprises, was offered; I am uncertain at what point English subtitles were created for the movie, but as we'll see shortly, in its brief U.S. theatrical run, it was shown with subtitles, not dubbed.

Up until now, the full Frontier Enterprises export version has been considered unavailable. We're going to explore that dub further in its own separate post because, as it happens, I found it on a bootleg Indian VCD. Like, the entire thing. I am not joking.

We might also have some scanty evidence that the film was briefly considered for marketing under a different title: TohoKingdom user Terasawa notes here that a film titled "Last Man From Paris", mentioned in a Variety article about Toho's deal with Henry Saperstein, might very well be Ironfinger. Given that the title "Last Man From Paris" evokes That Man From Rio (if you squint), I'm inclined to agree with that speculation.

While Saperstein may not have succeeded (if he ever actually tried?) to bring Ironfinger to American shores, he was (unfortunately) instrumental in cross-pollenating Japan's Western-influenced spy movies back into the Western market by way of his involvement in what would eventually become What's Up, Tiger Lily?. Saperstein acquired the rights to Key of Keys, an entry in Toho's International Secret Police series and, when text audiences reacted well to it, attempted to bring in Lenny Bruce to write English comedy dialogue for a re-dubbed version. Bruce refused, which led Saperstein to hire Woody Allen for the project instead. (As a sidenote, Google's AI overview claims that Ironfinger is part of the International Secret Police series, which it most definitely isn't.)

Oddly enough, some of our earliest English-language marketing for the film comes from Singapore. Thanks to the National Archives of Singapore, a government-run website, I've managed to dig up a promotional flyer for the film produced bilingually in Chinese and English. I'm going to guess this ad copy may have been used for other English-speaking markets as well, and I'm going to reproduce it here in full because it is so rare (and, honestly, weird... tell me this doesn't sound exactly like it was written by ChatGPT):

ACTION: Does it have a limit? Not in Toho, where action pics are loaded with every twist, every hook contributing towards satisfying the audience's gourmand craving for filmic feasts claiming a maximum of high-strung movement in adventure. 

Toho, like many other first-class production firms in the world, has for years created action-thrill-suspense films tailored to fill the routine-thinking movie-goer's demands for that which will transport him for brief hours to the unattainable world of heroicism[sic] and hair-trigger action the average male secretly longs to live in. Needless to say, Toho's audiences are never disappointed.

And then came 007.

Not to be outdone, Toho undertook still another new approach to the problem of action-adventure film production. And the answer was IRONFINGER.

Replete with thrills, spills, action, special effects, arch killers, intrigue, truly inventive methods for slaughtering unwanted citizens and, of course, sex - all presented in a humorous vein - IRONFINGER is another milestone in the careers of director Jun Fukuda and Kihachi Okamoto, director by trade, who wrote the tightly-woven script.

IRONFINGER is a ruthless character, target for killers throughout the world, who operates an illegal gun manufacturing plant on an island not far from Manila. Humor gets underway, when an attempt on the life of the Interpol agent sent from Paris to check out the operation results in the death of the wrong man. Sex, with the dainty appearance of a curvy murderess. Action and hair-raising adventure never cease, as two gangs of cutthroats butcher each other in gauche attempts to seize the weapons.

Akira Takarada, credited with such brilliant performances as the elder brother in Toho's classic DIFFERENT SONG, stars as the Interpol agent. And lovely Mie Hama, costar of the Italian-French-Japanese coproduction LES PLUS BELLES ESCROIQUERES DU MOND, is cast as the oversexed killer.

In color, of course, IRONFINGER boasts a score by the gifted Masaru Sato, the great Kurosawa's first choice as a composer, a man honored with music credits for such prize-winning masterpieces as Kurosawa's YOJIMBO and RED BEARD.

Warm inside in winder, cool inside in summer, just right in spring and fall is not enough, exhibitors have got to book good pictures to lure that reluctant audience into the theater. Toho's IRONFINGER will help them solve this problem.  

While Ironfinger never received a wide U.S. theatrical release, it did play in at least a few theaters stateside. In June and July of 1971, the film made its rounds through Hawaiian theaters, first at Toho's Honolulu location and then at the Mamo theater in Hilo, which appears to possibly have been running a nudie show at the same time. The film was hyped a little in the May 24th issue of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, and the blurb kind of makes it sound like it's a brand-new film, so I think it's pretty safe to say that this summer 1971 release was probably the first time it had played with English subtitles anywhere.

While America was faffing about, many other countries got the film much earlier. France was the first, and released it under the title "Chasseur d'Espions" (with the alternate title "Traquer d'Espions") in November of 1966. 

That most exotic and mysterious of locales, Canada, got the film starting in April of 1967 with a second run in 1968. I have found quite a few Quebecois ads for it. It seems never to have been screened on its own; the ads I've found show it running as part of a double- or even triple-bill.

Are we really still advertising "in color!" as a selling point in 1967?

Italy seems to have gotten the film in 1968, and an Italian dub was produced for the occasion. The entire dub isn't extant as far as I know, but you can see clips here and here. Interestingly, Italy was also showing the film on TV; I've found TV guide listings for the film from 1979, 1980, and 1981. While most countries that imported the film screened it under more or less a transliterated version of the title "Ironfinger", Italy decided to forge their own path and retitle the film Colpo grosso a Manila, or "Big Heist in Manila".

I have some questions about the way Italy does things.

I'll close out this section (and the post at large) with the film's most ephemeral international release: its Romanian run in November of 1970 at Bucharest's Moşilor theater, which you can see with your eyes here. Not a lot of information to be gleaned about that.

"Please Excuse Us": The End

Ironfinger is still fairly obscure to most people outside of Japan - a fact that I tend to forget, because in my heart, it's a smash hit. The film and its sequel are both licensed by Janus Films and available for streaming on the Criterion Channel with some very good subtitles which are, as far as I've seen, currently the only set that exist. If you haven't already seen the film and I've managed to entice you, you've got no excuse not to go check it out. 

Screenshot taken seconds before absolutely nothing disastrous happens at all.

_______

1 Goldfinger the book had been available in Japanese translation since 1960.

2 There is, as is often the case, A Copyright Situation™ with Belmondo's filmography in Japan.

3 "Komori" is phonetically identical to the Japanese word for "bat" (as in the animal), but Komori's name is written with different kanji. This probably means nothing.

4 The source I got this from did not cite a reference, hence the "seems to have". "[Actor] learned their lines phonetically" is a claim that REALLY pisses me off when people throw it around without verifying it, so I want to be very clear that I don't know this for certain.

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 television broadcasts. Now available on archive.org.

____

Edit: Since writing this post, I’ve been given a copy of the film and subtitled it. You can watch it here. I’m leaving this post as is for posterity but do be aware that it is outdated since the full movie is now available.

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 Nakamura, 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.

____

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.

____

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 (and one television adaptation) 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.

____________

^{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.}