お笑い三人組 / Owaraisan'ningumi / Comedy Trio (1956-1966)

Alright, I'm fully aware this is going off on a little bit of a tangent, but it is still technically part of the purpose of this blog (bringing information related to Akihiko Hirata into a more accessible format to English-speaking fans), so... y'all wanna see his younger sister?

Yoshiko Otowa (born Kazuko Onoda, later took the surname Kume when she married NHK director Shoji Kume) was a singer and actress, born July 6, 1932. I'm not certain if she's still alive; her Wikipedia page simply says that "apparently" she's retired from the entertainment industry, so if she's still out there, she's probably living a quiet life well away from the spotlight.

We're going to look at what is probably her most famous role, which was as a regular cast member on the widely-beloved, long-running live comedy show Comedy Trio [Owaraisan'ningumi], broadcast on NHK between 1956 and 1966. As the title implies, the focus of the show is a group of three comedians: rakugo performer Sanyutei Koganba (later Kokinba), storyteller Teiho Ichiryusei, and impersonator Nekohachi Edoya. Before it became a television series it was also a radio show from 1955 to 1960. The television show ran for ten years and a massive amount of episodes were produced, but I'm not sure how much of it Otowa was in, since I've seen some posters for the series that don't have her name on them. Once she did join the show, though, she was fairly central to the cast. The series was quite popular, with very high viewer ratings, and was eventually made into a manga, with menko cards of the three goofballs available as well.

She's second from the right in this cast photo.

The three comedians were close friends to begin with, and when NHK was looking to round out their comedy offerings, writer Seiro Nawa created a radio show featuring the three of them in 1955. In the following year, it was turned into a television series. The setting of the show changed from time to time, and at one point it was even a period piece taking place in the Edo era, but this became unpopular and the setting changed back shortly. Roles changed as well; the three comedians had different jobs and their three female co-stars' relationships to them shifted (sometimes sisters, sometimes wives).

Unfortunately, the series is essentially lost media. Out of hundreds of episodes that were broadcast live, only four survive; DVDs with three of the episodes can be obtained for a decent chunk of change, and the fourth - which resurfaced in 2020 - is floating around on YouTube. You can watch it below, at least for now. NHK doesn't seem to like it being there, and a separate upload of the same episode was already taken down once. Otowa's character is named Kaoru and I don't think it's terribly difficult to pick out who she is.

Before NHK zapped it, the second upload of that episode had several million views and a comment section that was full of nostalgia. It's all gone now, but here are some of the comments:

"@masaseto8507

I used to watch this video more than 50 years ago ... . It was the time when TV was exploding .... I miss those days .... It was a great fun show back then． I am very happy to see it again ...."

"@genpome4587

It was my favorite show that still stays in my heart. It was 50 years ago.

Thank you for uploading the precious footage."

Also, the lone English commenter said Otowa looks like Mary Tyler Moore. I guess I vaguely see it.

Three Comedy Trio feature films were produced, one by Nikkatsu and two by Shintoho. There are two trailers extant on YouTube, for two separate films, and they have several million views between the two of them. I think it's pretty safe to say that memories of this show run deep.

Another snippet from the show can be found on NHK's website here.

Eagle-eyed viewers may notice a familiar surname in the above trailer: two of the Comedy Trio feature films were directed (and one written) by Yoshiki Onoda, the eldest of the three Onoda siblings. Due to having been a Toho contracted actor for a long time, Hirata didn't make it into any of his brother's films save for one up until the late 1970s, at which point the five-studio agreement had collapsed, Shintoho had also collapsed, Onoda was working in television, Hirata was not contracted anymore, and everybody was free to do whatever they wanted. Otowa did not appear in anything whatsoever with Hirata.

Here Otowa is third from left in the group in the back of the poster.

Just for fun, also, here's an extremely grainy and washed-out photo of Yoshiko Otowa with a bunch of other people including Enoken. She's fourth from the right.

I hope you found this as interesting as I did. I'll be keeping an ear to the ground in case any more episodes are discovered, and I will probably get my hands on that DVD at some point, but it is very expensive for some reason. The amount of episodes that were aired compared to the four that have survived is a real shame. I greatly enjoyed the episode I did watch, even if I could barely follow the plot, and I would love to see more; it seems like a real hoot. 

In addition to this, I do happen to have a movie that Otowa had a very brief role in available on my archive.org page.

伊津子とその母 / Itsuko to sono haha / Itsuko and Her Mother (1954)

Release date: February 17, 1954

Director: Seiji Maruyama (adapted from a short story by Shigeko Yuki)

Studio: Toho

Cast: Yaeko Mizutani, Ineko Arima, Rentaro Mikuni, Nobuo Kaneko, Akihiko Hirata, Kyoko Koyama et al.

Availability: No known DVD or VHS release; no internet availability; no known recent screenings. Apparently referenced in a 1987 publication compiling notes from a lecture series held at Kyoto Kaikan Annex Hall titled "Reading Japanese Movies: Messages of the Soul".

Some information about the plot is available here.

So we're starting out with a film that I haven't seen and have very little hope of seeing. This movie was directed by Seiji Maruyama, a Toho director who made several other films in which Akihiko Hirata was part of the cast. Hirata plays a character named Miyoshi, and since he's not mentioned in the synopsis, I'm assuming this is one of those small, peripheral characters he played so often. Since I haven't seen the film, there's not much else I can say other than the simple facts of its production and release.

I'm including some images from a promotional pamphlet I've found online. I'm going to try to source all of my images as I move forward with this blog, but in this particular case I am unable to do that. Clicking on the URL from Google Images gives me a 404 error, and trying to go straight to the parent website takes me to... a website for a spaghetti company? (I swear I'm not making this up; this is just how it goes when you're constantly doing internet archaeology like this.)

Anyway, the pamphlet presents both Itsuko and Her Mother and a second film, Young Eyes, which I suppose were probably released on a double bill. Unfortunately, the pages concerning Itsuko are not in good enough quality for me to do a camera translation of them. From what I can pick out, it seems to be outlining the sponsors, producers, and staff of the film. The front page just lists the titles of the two movies, and the small vertical text reads "The joys and sorrows of the young generation". I would love to get my grubby paws on this thing for real to flip through it, but for now we must make do with grainy photos from a pasta company's website. Also, the cover of the pamphlet is what gets used as a poster on Letterboxd and IMDb. I've never seen an actual official poster for this film.

(verso: Young Eyes; recto: Itsuko and Her Mother.)

Here is another advertising spread for this movie and several others. The right-hand side shows a film called Mother's Diary, and Young Eyes below it. On the left-hand side we have not just one but three movies Hirata had a role in! Farewell Rabaul at the top, and Tonight for One Night and Itsuko and Her Mother on the bottom. I don't ever wish I was alive in the 1950s, but... occasionally I wish I was alive in the 1950s.

Now for the entire reason why I wanted to post about this movie.

In trying to find more information, I dug up two articles in a Hawaiian newspaper from 1955. It would appear that this film screened at the Toyo Theater, which itself has an intriguing history that I urge you to look into. The first article talks about the film after it's been released and issues some corrections to the previous article, which came out three days before.

I didn't even realize this until later, but the paper is dated July 7th, 1955. Godzilla, King of the Monsters! would not be shown in the United States until 1956. The first film in Hiroshi Inagaki's Samurai trilogy got its U.S. release in November of 1955. Which makes Itsuko and Her Mother, as far as I can figure, the first of Hirata's films to get U.S. distribution. This is one of a handful of Toho films that I was surprised to learn had played in theaters stateside, and to me it's really fascinating to think that these movies did play here with English subtitles but are now virtually unknown.

Plausibly, there could have been people in the audience watching Godzilla, King of the Monsters! for the very first time and thinking "hey, it's that guy from that thing with Ineko Arima that we watched last year."

____

source of newspaper article: https://hojishinbun.hoover.org/?a=d&d=tht19550725-01.1.2&e=-------ja-10--1--img-------

source of advertising spread: https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/r1115531486