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 for other English-speaking fans like me, so you don't have to go to like ten different websites and translate Google search results), so... y'all wanna see his younger sister?

Yoshiko Otowa (born 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 just 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. Information about her is fairly scanty, but it seems that she made regular appearances on a widely-beloved comedy show called Owaraisan'ningumi. I just found out about it this morning, so I don't know much, but it was a live, 30-minute comedy series broadcast on NHK between 1956 and 1966. A massive amount of episodes were produced, and as the title implies, the main cast is a group of three comedians: rakugo performer Sanyutei Koganba, storyteller Teiho Ichiryusai, and impersonator Nekohachi Edoya. Before it became a television series it was also a radio broadcast from 1955 to 1960.

It seems that this is all but lost media. Only a small handful of episodes survive. A DVD with three of them was released in the 1990s, and in 2020, a fourth episode was discovered.

Here is one of them. This appears to be the only full episode on YouTube. Otowa plays a character named Kaoru. It isn't difficult at all to figure out which one she is, but I was surprised at how tall she was when I watched this for the first time!

This video has 1.7 million views, and here's just a sampling of the nostalgia-filled 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."

I also really appreciate the lone English commenter who says Yoshiko Otowa looks like Mary Tyler Moore. I guess I vaguely see it.

Here, also, is a trailer for one of several (I think) Owaraisan'ningumi movies. 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.

Older Japanese comedy seems to have gotten a lot of mileage out of jokes about part-time jobs.

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

I wasn't going to include the trailer, since it's just a trailer, but then I noticed who directed (and wrote) it: Yoshiki Onoda! All film adaptations of the series appear to have been produced by Shintoho, the studio Onoda was working for at the time. It's too bad Hirata could not have been in any of them since Toho had him in their clutches. He would, however, make it into Shintoho's Hitokui Ama in 1958, which I may make a post about at some point, as well as one episode of the 1972 Kogarashi Monjiro TV series that Onoda directed - an episode which happened to air on his birthday. (We are big on random trivia here.) 

I have seen three of Yoshiki Onoda's films (Female Slave Ship, The Flower Flute Murders, and Samurai Justice 2: Mother and Daughter) and they're perfectly serviceable.

I hope you found this as interesting as I did. I'm a die-hard lost media lover, and now that I'm aware of Owaraisan'ningumi, I'll be keeping an ear to the ground in case any more episodes are discovered. 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.

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. This is, however, the only one of those that is not a war movie. 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, but stick around to the end of the post for something really interesting.

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'm aware, the first time American audiences would ever have seen Akihiko Hirata. In fact, if we want to go further, this is (again, as far as I'm aware; I could be wrong about this) the first time American audiences would have seen anybody from the main cast of Godzilla. Takashi Shimura had been acting the longest of any of them, but I don't believe any of his earlier films saw American release until at least after 1955.

I don't know. I just thought that was really cool. 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

Obligatory Introduction Post

Oh boy, how do I introduce this mess?

I'm Rhys, you may or may not know me from my main blog. I've kind of been going down this extensive rabbit hole for several years that started when I watched Godzilla for the first time wherein I'm attempting to track down and watch every single film Akihiko Hirata was in. In doing so, I've realized that there is little to no English-language information out there about a good chunk of these films. I also recently discovered, for the first time, that back in the Geocities days somebody was running an entire Akihiko Hirata fansite (Wayback Machine link here; it is wonderful and glorious), and when I found it I thought: Oh thank god, I'm not weird! I'm just the North American branch of the fan club.

So, thus vindicated by the presence (~20 years ago, but still) of other people as dedicated to Hirata and his filmography as I, I'm embarking on a project to bring more information about his more obscure movies (& television and stage productions) into the English-speaking parts of the internet. I'll be titling my posts with the original, Romaji, and English-translated (where applicable) names of each film, in the hopes that this blog will come up if anybody else in the Anglosphere like me is searching for these films.

For my part, I can read kana, but no kanji, and I understand a tiny bit of spoken Japanese, but I will be relying on machine translations often. If I post a machine translation, it will be supplemented by me cleaning up sentence order/pronouns/general legibility. I'm going to make an effort whenever I have to use machine translation; I don't just want to be one of those people who sticks something into Google and calls it a day. But there are inevitably going to be things I miss due to lack of knowledge. Apologies in advance.

I specifically want this blog to focus on little-known, usually non-subtitled works. While Godzilla has a place in my heart and always will, I probably won't be talking about Dr. Serizawa on here. And most likely, no one will even read this. I think I am just nostalgic for Geocities and the days when the internet felt like a real community instead of something automated and impersonal.

I encourage anybody who may be reading this to get in contact with me about the content of this blog. I'm always looking for new information. There'll be no regular update schedule; whenever I come across something that I think will make for a good post, I'll write it up and post it. I've generally always got DVDs and other goodies coming to me from overseas, so stay tuned for more big posts in the coming months.

I especially encourage you to get in contact with me if you have leads on or copies of any of the stuff tagged "things I haven't seen". And hey, if anybody out there wants to fansub anything I have tagged as "things I have seen" that isn't already subbed... holler at your boy. I'll also do posts on request... I guess? I can't imagine a situation in which anybody would want that, but if you come to me and you're like "tell me every single thing you know about Taiyo ni Hoero!", who am I to say no?

Lastly, here's, uh, my spreadsheet where I keep track of what I’ve seen.