鉄腕涙あり / Tetsuwan namida ari / Even the Mighty Shed Tears (1953)

Release date: October 27, 1953

Director: Hidesuke Takizawa

Studio: Toho/Takarazuka

Cast: Akihiko Hirata, Kahoru Uji, Sachio Sakai, Kyosuke Segawa, Shirayuki Shikibu et al.

Availability: No known home media release. No known recent screenings. The entire film is on DailyMotion in two parts, here (part 1) and here (part 2). Good quality print but the aspect ratio is stretched, I recommend sticking it into VLC and fixing it. Or you can install Stretch Video, my favorite browser extension developed by a professor of philosophy.

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Apparently it escaped my attention that the movie I've been wanting to see more than practically anything else (looking at you, The Last Embrace) has been online in its entirety for the past six years. Usually when I do a review of something I've seen, it's because I've shelled out money for a DVD or something that not everybody will have access to, and I want to provide information about it that is otherwise unavailable on the internet, so since this movie is readily available for anyone to see, reviewing it kind of breaks with that idea. But nobody really seems to be talking about this, certainly not on any English-language corners of the internet, so... just humor me here.

Some factual background: this film was based on a 1952 novel by Bunjiro Asakura called Chōsen oni (something like "Challenge Oni"?) and featured heavy involvement from Takarazuka Revue, an all-female theater troupe founded in 1913 and still very much going strong. Kahoru Uji was a member of the troupe and the music was provided by the music club arm of the institution. 

Here's a poster stolen off AucFan. The jpeg, I mean, I didn't actually steal the poster.

Obviously this thing is very, very not subtitled. I'm relying on online summaries and my own poor Japanese skills to figure out the plot. I encourage you to go watch this for yourself if you're interested.

The reason why I was so interested in seeing this over anything else is that this is, as far as I'm aware, literally the only time in Hirata's entire 30ish-year career where he plays the protagonist. Not the sidekick, not the important tertiary role, not the scientist or the villain or the villain's boss or something. The main character. Even before I watched this I could never understand why he didn't get any lead roles, and after having seen it I understand even less: he's fantastic in this. His character experiences visible growth throughout the arc of his story and Hirata conveys the ups and downs of Ryusaku's life whole-heartedly.

So let's move on to the actual film.

The storyline is fairly predictable and easy to follow. Hirata plays Ryusaku, a college student. Him and his girlfriend, Natsuko, are jumped by a bunch of gangsters while coming home from a movie, and they knock Ryusaku nearly unconscious and take Natsuko offscreen. Afterward, Ryusaku has a conversation with a friend in which the possibility of involving the police is brought up but dismissed (again, I do not understand much Japanese, I'm winging this super hard). Ryusaku instead resolves to get really good at karate in the hopes that nothing like the incident with the gang would ever happen again.

This is "Akihiko Hirata Does Karate: The Movie". That's it. That's the film.

He also gets a part-time job doing... uh, whatever this is:

Some kind of disinfectant service, I guess? Something something covid.

He partners up with Sachio Sakai's character, going door-to-door doing... that. On his rounds he runs into Natsuko, who doesn't want anything to do with him, and has left to start a new relationship and become a singer in a nightclub. We then get one of those scenes that are in every Toho movie of a girl singing in a swanky '50s club. Later, Ryusaku visits Natsuko at the nightclub to try to reconcile. This doesn't work out and he ends up slapping her (Ah, the '50s. Also he gets slapped later too, so, you know, equality.), she asks him to leave, and he gets into a scuffle with the guys who work at the bar, but of course this time around he knows karate.

The resulting brawl obviously gets him in some trouble both at his dojo and his part-time job. In the meantime, one of his fellow students, Sachiko, meets up with him and tries to talk to him but (from what I understood) he makes up some excuse, says he doesn't want to see her and literally sprints off in the opposite direction. He then gets fabulously drunk, gets into yet another fight with some street toughs, and ends up spooking them all into running away.

There's another woman here who I'm not sure how to fit into the picture; her and Ryusaku had previously joked about him being her "bodyguard" and while he's still drunk he stumbles back to her place. She actually tries to put the moves on him, but he doesn't appear to be into it and leaves after giving her a bundle of money(?).

Girl, me too.

Eventually Ryusaku's friends get him into a karate tournament between his university's dojo and a rival to try to raise his spirits; he seemingly wins this tournament. Afterward, he gets a letter from Katsuko telling him to meet her at a shipyard, but when he gets there, some other guy shows up instead. He asks where she is, and I didn't catch everything the other guy says, but he tells Ryusaku that the letter was a fake. Several other goons step out from the shadows. In a repeat of the beginning of the film, they all mob him... but remember, he's super good at karate now. Katsuko does eventually show up, but one of the thugs shoots her. At the last possible moment, she gets off a shot too, and kills the head of the gang before dying in Ryusaku's arms. The film ends on a high note, though, with everybody back at college and Sachiko and Ryusaku seemingly getting together for good.

WOW. So in addition to being one of the rarest titles in Hirata's filmography, Tetsuwan Namida Ari is actually really good. I'm sure I'm missing a lot due to the language barrier, but to me the film is excellent at conveying the story of a person who experiences something traumatic and makes a decision about how to respond to it that ultimately leads down a difficult path. When Ryusaku decides to pursue karate out of a desire for revenge, it doesn't lead to him gaining the ability to protect the people he cares about, but just gets him into trouble instead. It's only once he gets a handle on his own feelings of desperation and regret that he can use karate for good.

And I gotta say it's really funny to see Akihiko Hirata doing karate. I don't know anything about karate, so I have NO idea if Hirata's actually good at it or even good at faking being good at it. I did notice that, while he does some mirror sparring and brick-breaking and a couple of judo shoulder-flips, during the tournament scene at the end, you don't see him fighting his opponent; the camera keeps cutting to frontal shots of him instead of showing him actually doing anything to the other guy. But again, I can't really judge his karate skills, this is an area I have no expertise in whatsoever outside of watching a lot of Sonny Chiba movies.

I apologize heartily, because this post is long enough already, but if you're still with me, there's one last mystery here. This is going to be bothering me now. While watching this I remembered something from Hirata's IMDb page:

He absolutely does not have an eyepatch at any time in this movie. He's got kind of a bandage around his head after he gets beat up by the gang at the beginning, but it doesn't cover either of his eyes. I'm pretty sure I've heard this "fact" echoed at least a couple other times, and I am now in a position to say with 100% confidence that it's wrong. (I'm very fun at parties.) Meaning either somebody totally made it up, or there's another movie floating around where he wears an eyepatch (besides the obvious ones, I mean). Considering that that quote also mentions Tetsuwan namida ari as his "first" film role - which it is not, The Last Embrace is - I'm thinking it's possible that whoever wrote it got mixed up with The Last Embrace. But unfortunately, if that's the case, I'll never know; The Last Embrace seems all but lost.

Anyway that's it from me today. See you next time. I hope at least one person reads this and finds it interesting.

人喰海女 / Hitokui Ama / Man-eating Ama (1958)

Release date: July 27, 1958

Director: Yoshiki Onoda

Studio: Shintoho

Cast: Ken Utsui, Yōko Mihara, Utako Mitsuya, Masayo Banri¹, Kyôko Yashiro, Namiji Namiura, Akihiko Hirata, Tetsurō Tamba et al

Availability: No online streaming, no known recent screenings. At least one television broadcast, possibly in 2017-18. A DVD can be purchased on amazon.co.jp if it is not out of stock. (If it is out of stock, you might try getting in touch with the folks at Shintoho Cinema Nostalgia, who put out the DVD.)

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I had plans to write about this film at some point, but I didn't think I would be writing about it after having actually seen it. I assumed that, with no physical media release, I had no chance. Even its Wikipedia page says “the film has never been released on home video, but is not lost as some sources claim.²" But then I found out that it did get a physical release - in the form of (almost) the entire movie included as a bonus feature on a DVD of another ama film. I say "almost" the entire movie because apparently the DVD release contains only 71 out of the film's total runtime of 74 minutes. I of course bought a copy immediately. I'm not sure if the missing footage was the reason why this wasn't given its own solo release or if it was something else, but I wouldn't imagine I'm the only person who would pay good money for a DVD with just Hitokui Ama alone.

Believe me when I say this is the most excited I've been about a movie in a very, very long time.

I've done as much research into this film as I could, but I still don't know anything about its production history, which is something I'm really curious about. If anybody has issues of Kinema Jumpo from August or October of 1958, hit me up, they might contain more information about this. It also had some kind of theatrical release in Belgium, which is... a little weird.

If you look in the top right corner of this poster you can very faintly see "Yoshiki Onoda" written in pencil - this means somebody had to have been told specifically how to read his given name, because it's very hard to get it right if you're just going off the kanji and don't know how to pronounce it. (Machine translations vacillate between "Yoshimoto" and "Yoshimiki", among others.)

Also, unlike some of the other DVDs I've obtained, this one did not have subtitles of any kind, so I'm relying entirely on my own garbage Japanese skills and online plot summaries.³

Let's gooooooo.

We start the film off with a catfight between two women on the beach, because Shintoho. The fight is stopped in its tracks when one of the women notices a dead body washing onto the shore. There's a short scene at a police station afterwards, and it's revealed that the decedent had a vial of some kind of drug in his pocket. The cops rule it a suicide, but a single detective, Maruyama, believes otherwise.

Hirata's in this movie so briefly it's like he's trying to get out of there before Toho realizes he's gone.

The two main leads in the film are women divers named Sada and Kazue. They might be biological sisters; I can't really tell for sure, you know how it is. Sada had a checkered past in Tokyo that she lied about when she came back to become a diver, and while she wasn't directly responsible for the murder, she did hire an old boyfriend, Yoshizaki, to do it for her. Yoshizaki promised he'd leave after the murder, but he becomes an alcoholic and starts following Sada around, threatening her secret. Sada's new boyfriend Goro (played by Starman himself, Ken Utsui) doesn't know anything about her past, and he wants her to stop diving out of fear for her safety after the murder. We also get a fight scene between Yoshizaki and Goro that perfectly mirrors the catfight from the beginning, which I thought was interesting. This does have nice cinematography.

There's some fun underwater filming here that's surprisingly good for its time, if a bit stiff and the picture a bit cloudy. Also, Tetsurō Tamba is here. He plays a character named Miyata, who wants Goro's fishing grounds. He initially doesn't know about Sada, but Yoshizaki eventually tells him, and he becomes another party who is manipulating Sada by using her secret as leverage.

We get yet another addition to the cast when Kazue saves a man named Kimizuka, a visiting reporter from Tokyo, from cliff-diving in a dangerous spot. He and Maruyama go to a bar in Tokyo to question the proprietress about the dead man's identity.

Kazue is played by Utako Mitsuya, Yoshiki Onoda's future wife. She would later say she fell in love with him while filming this movie, when she didn't want to do a nude scene and he told her she could wear a swimsuit and strategically-placed towel instead.

Sada eventually ends up killing Yoshizaki out of self-defense. She stashes the body in the same rough patch of ocean Kazue stopped Kimizuka from diving into, but Kazue eventually finds it. There's a brief moment when we think Kazue is going to tell on Sada to Kimizuka... aaaand then we have a "Miss Ama" beauty pageant, because Shintoho. The pageant scene is actually surprisingly tense, with a group of women being looked over by a crowd of men and nearly atonal music building up to the moment when Sada comes out onstage, visibly distraught, not knowing who in the audience knows her secret.

Sada finally gives up and goes back to Miyata to let him do to her what he will. Goro knows about her secrets at this point, and was going to leave her to the cops and reporters, but Kazue convinces him to follow her to the island where she and Miyata are. We get another scuffle between Utsui and Tamba at the end, and there's a great moment where Tamba loses the fishing spear he'd been holding, pulls out another knife, then throws that knife away and grabs the fishing spear again, like, dude, just pick a knife. This seemed silly until it became apparent that he had to throw aside the second knife so Sada could conveniently find it and escape her ties.

Sada stabs Miyata, but dies from... something? Exhaustion? It's not very clear what actually happened to her. I was a bit disappointed by this because it felt like the narrative chose to take the easy way out by killing her instead of allowing her character any further growth.

Depending on how you look at it, this movie is either a murder mystery interrupted by a bunch of lengthy scenes of attractive people swimming, or a bunch of lengthy scenes of attractive people swimming interrupted by a murder mystery. I expected there to be, y'know, some cop stuff, the usual kind of thing you get in a murder mystery, but there's really not. And I kind of love it! It has this vibe like a darker, more grown-up version of a teenage beach movie, like something you'd sneak into with some friends who are not old enough to get into the theater legitimately. It's never super explicit, but there's definitely some stuff I can't post on here. It's not the best movie, but it's a relic of the past; I can't judge it by today's standards. This kind of thing made Shintoho money and gave people jobs, so I respect that.

As for the print, it's... certainly what you would expect from a film whose existence was uncertain for much of the last 65 years. The sound is pretty good, and it's visually crisp (i.e. not blurry or pixelated at all), but it's so dim at times that I couldn't tell if they were doing day-for-night shots or if it was the film itself. No frame is without grain and vertical lines running through it, although it's not enough to be distracting. As I said at the beginning, there's three minutes missing, and you can definitely tell that there's points where a scene cuts off prematurely or skips oddly. All in all it's a very old, very rare movie that we're extremely lucky has survived and is now (kind of) back in print.

If nothing else, I highly recommend this if you've got it bad for Tetsurō Tamba.

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¹ Banri and Toyoko Takechi are currently the only two people I'm aware of who worked with all three Onoda siblings.

² The source referred to here is Jasper Sharp's 2008 book Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema. Sharp dedicates pages 33-43 to a very astute survey of the phenomenon of ama films, and of Hitokui Ama, he says: "Shintoho would find a suitably buxom replacement for [Michiko] Maeda in the form of Yôko Mihara, first appearing in Yoshiki Onoda's intriguingly-titled Cannibal Ama in 1958, a movie which unfortunately appears to be no longer with us."

³ I'm very thankful to this person's blog post for providing me with a lot of information about the plot, as well as the knowledge that this was broadcast at some point in the past.

空想天国 / Kūsō Tengoku / Fantasy Paradise (1968)

Release date: August 17, 1968

Director: Takeshi "Ken" Matsumori
Studio: Toho
Cast: Kei Tani, Wakako Sakai, Akira Takarada, Yû Fujiki, Hajime Hana, Senri Sakurai, Yoshiko Toyoura, Makoto Fujita, Akemi Kita, Akihiko Hirata, Ikio Sawamura et al.
Avaiability: Streaming on Amazon Prime (Japan only). An unsubtitled DVD is also available. No known recent screenings.

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We've got a fairly obscure one today. It's got all your usual Toho guys (and gals) in it, but for some reason you have to go to the film's Wikipedia page to find out that Hirata is in the cast at all. IMDb doesn't mention him, and neither does eiga.com or even TohoKingdom. Not sure why this is; he's got a small role, but he's definitely there. For those keeping score at home (Me. It's just me.) that's five Crazy Cats movies Hirata's been in: 

• Musekinin Yūkyōden [It's a Bet, AKA Tale of Irresponsible Justice]
• Kureji no Daibakuhatsu [Crazy Big Explosion]
• Kurējī no Musekinin Shimizu Minato [Crazy Irresponsible Shimizu Port, AKA The Boss of Pick-Pocket Bay]
• Kurējī no Nagurikomi Shimizu Minato [Crazy Raid on Shimizu Port]
• This movie.

And as long as we're talking Crazy Cats, RIP Hiroshi Inuzuka, who died about six months ago and was the last surviving member of the troupe.

A lot of people might not know about this, but Toho is arguably referencing Gamera in the name ("Gamara") of the protagonist's imaginary frog friend. A lot of ink has been spilled about what an officially-sanctioned Godzilla vs. Gamera movie would be like, and that may never come to pass, but it's interesting that as early as 1968, Toho was acknowledging their biggest rival.

It should also be noted that "kuso" - without the stressed syllables - is basically the equivalent of "shit" (or can be used to convey that something is smelly/shitty). I cannot imagine that this was unintentional.

Anyway, let's get it going. I'm using my usual method of putting on the Japanese subtitles and pointing my phone at the screen to translate. Again, all screenshots are from my own DVD copy, but everything contained therein is copyrighted to Toho.

This movie has some very cool animated opening credits.

Kei Tani plays Keitaro Tamaru, an absent-minded office worker at an architectural firm who lives with his mother. He has an imaginary friend named Gamara, and the film opens with a dream sequence in which Keitaro and Gamara are torpedoing enemy subs until their own sub is hit and sunk. When Keitaro goes into work that day, he gets news that a school building his firm designed recently collapsed in an earthquake. He goes to Kaitō to meet with the daughter of the school's principal, who died in the collapse, and subsequently gets into a brawl with Yû Fujiki and his goons about whether the collapse was the fault of Keitaro's firm or of the builders, who cut corners during construction. This whole thing doesn't really come up again, but it's an excuse to have Fujiki in the movie, and I always like seeing him be a goofball, so I can't complain.

Akira Takarada is here too. And he plays soccer. His character is named Maeno, and he and Keitaro are constantly competing for the affections of the same women - Maeno far more effortlessly than Keitaro.

The primary "gimmick" of this movie is that Keitaro keeps lapsing into elaborate fantasy sequences where he's any number of archetypical heroes: sometimes a swordsman in a jidaigeki, sometimes a singer with a ukulele, sometimes a soldier at war, sometimes a Western-style, gun-toting badass who must defeat his opponent, "One-Eyed Jack" (Maeno) before he marries the girl Keitaro has a crush on. I was really, really hoping Takarada would show up in an eyepatch so I could make some terrible jokes, but alas, he does not.

Also, I gotta be honest here, Gamara kind of scares me.

Black eyes... like a doll's eyes.

One day, Keitaro's boss lets him know that he's bought into a new building material that's supposed to be super-strong but super-light, and is extremely valuable. Everyone wants to get their hands on it, but the plans that incorporate this new material are top-secret. Keitaro keeps mum, but pretty soon there's a robbery at the firm and some of these important plans are stolen. The thieves knock the chief of security unconscious and kidnap his daughter, Hiroko. We find out that this theft was an inside job, and the shot-caller was the firm manager's secretary, Michiko, who we'd met earlier in the film. Keitaro and Maeno both pursue, but the cops get the wrong idea about Keitaro and arrest him. Maeno is stealthier, and makes it to the apartment where Michiko and her thugs have Hiroko tied up, but ends up in the same situation as Hiroko.

Meanwhile, Keitaro breaks out of jail and a long chase/fantasy sequence ensues, but it's all in vain as the criminals catch him too and whisk the three of them - Keitaro, Maeno, and Hiroko - off to some kind of secret location on an island. Their boss is, of course, Akihiko Hirata with a highly dastardly goatee. (His character is just credited as "Boss" here, no actual name.)

The three of them eventually escape, and locate a raft, but unfortunately the raft only fits two people, so Maeno and Hiroko return to the mainland for help while Keitaro has another fantasy sequence. The cops show up, arrest all the criminals, and Keitaro still does not get the girl, because that would ruin the whole point of the film.

This movie... eh. I think I'm just not a fan of the kind of comedy where the whole joke is "isn't it funny how no one will date this guy". It's visually a treat - I didn't take many screenshots, but the entire film has beautifully vibrant, uniquely 1960s cinematography. The action is fun, and the framing device of the protagonist repeatedly having fantasy and dream sequences allows for more action than would otherwise befit a movie like this. But all things considered, I wasn't too jazzed about this one, which is a bit dismaying. I never thought I'd be at a point in my life where I could think an industrial espionage comedy musical where the main character has an imaginary friend who's a guy in a frog suit was boring. Apparently, when this came out, it was released on a double-bill with Admiral Yamamoto, which is... certainly one hell of a double-bill.

I don't think this was the best entry into the Crazy Cats canon for somebody completely unfamiliar with it, but fortunately I've found that all of the other films I mentioned at the start of this review are also available to buy on amazon.co.jp for the next time I feel like being financially irresponsible.

If you're also interested in Crazy Cats, there's a really wonderful website run by someone who gives easier-to-read (though still in Japanese, you'll have to use a translator) information than Wikipedia on all the films and more.

サウンド・オブ・ミュージック / The Sound of Music (1975)

As they say on Wikipedia:

I only found out relatively recently that Hirata acted for the stage as well as the screen, but I haven't paid much attention to the list I found of performances he took part in, because I figured since stage shows are so ephemeral and everything happened such a long time ago, there would be no visual record of any of it. But something did catch my eye: The Sound of Music? Like, von Trapps, lonely goatherd, the hills are alive, all that? I thought, "oh I NEED to find out more about this immediately."

As it turns out, there's not much to be found. There's hardly any information about it on the internet, and certainly no videos (but we kind of have pictures, as you'll see). All I know about this performance is that it ran from July 5th to July 30th, 1975, at the Toho-owned Imperial Theater in Tokyo (also known as the Teigeki). The translation was done by Sumiko Takeuchi and Kotaro Taki, and the play was directed by Sadao Hirobe. The rest of the cast was Kaoru Yodo (as Maria), Tetsuro Sagawa (as Captain von Trapp), Yuki Okazaki, Tamaki Sawa, Asao Koike(!), Kimiko Jō, et al. Hirata plays von Schreiber, the German Navy admiral who attempts to summon Georg von Trapp to his new post in Bremmerhavn. In the 1965 film with Julie Andrews, von Schreiber is mentioned, but not seen; in stage shows, as far as I know, he has one scene where he comes to the von Trapps' mansion to ask why Georg hasn't shown up to his post. He does not sing, unfortunately. I watched the 1965 film in preparation for this post, and I think he would have made a GREAT Captain von Trapp, but that's another conversation for another time.

I did extensive internet scouring for any record of this performance at all, and as I said, I didn't find a whole lot, but I did find an online listing at an antiquarian bookseller in Tokyo for some kind of booklet related to this specific show. The listing had no pictures, and I couldn't find any from other sources, so I really had no idea what it was exactly.

So I did what any reasonable person would do: I bought it, sight unseen, from Japan. I think this is the only time in my life I've ever bought anything online without seeing pictures of it. It just arrived this afternoon, and oh boy. Boy oh boy.

I did not expect any actual photos from the performance, because I figured that a booklet like this would be something that was published prior to the show, for people to familiarize themselves with the lyrics and the story and whatnot. That's pretty much what it is, but there are pictures of the cast in full costume...

Don't mind the latex gloves. I was really sweaty.

...as well as short interviews with the cast about the musical.

I've saved the best for last. The other thing the listing said about this booklet that really cinched my decision to buy it was that it included a ticket stub. I know I sound like a freak and a half here, but it's doing my head in to think that somebody probably had this on them while watching the actual show almost 50 years ago.

The Teigeki has been renovated since 1975 (and is due to be renovated again next year), so the seating chart in the book probably doesn't resemble what the theater looks like now (at least I don't think it does - this may shock you, but I have never been to the Imperial Theater). Whoever owned this book saw the show on July 22nd, and they had pretty decent seats, I think.

So yeah this is basically my favorite thing that I own. I don't want to break the spine to stick it in my scanner, but I'll upload more photos taken with my phone if anybody really wants to see them.

鞍馬天狗 御用盗異変 / Kurama Tengu Goyō-tō Ihen / Kurama Tengu Official Thief Incident (1956)

Release date: March 13, 1956

Director: Kyōtarō Namiki
Studio: Toho
Cast: Kanjūrō Arashi, Takamaru Sasaki, Ryōtarō Oki, Shinobu Araki, Chikage Ōgi, Tomoko Matsushima, Mitsugu Terashima, Isao Yamagata, Akihiko Hirata et al.
Availability: No known online streaming, no known recent screenings. A DVD can be purchased from YesAsia or other proxy sites.

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I apologize for the long gap between posts, which unfortunately might happen often, since I live in America and it takes ages for stuff I buy from Japan to get to me. This seems to be a fairly obscure film: no ratings on IMDb, no Letterboxd page, no Wikipedia page (Japanese or otherwise), no one has logged it on eiga.com. I'm dipping into my own personal DVD collection for this one - which means screenshots! (As always, all images are copyright Toho, I own nothing but the disc.) Also, the DVD came with a booklet with some lovely posters I've never seen on the internet, here's one of them.

If you're reading this blog, I'm willing to bet you're the kind of person who already knows what Kurama Tengu is. I can't possibly cover the whole breadth of the series here, but in short, “Kurama Tengu” is the title character (he does have a real name, but in this review I'm going to refer to him as Kurama Tengu, since most characters in the film do) of a series of books written by Jirō Osoragi, adapted into many films over many years, starting in the early 1920s. Kanjūrō Arashi is probably the most widely known actor to take up the title role, and the first film starring him (Kurama Tengu: Kyōfu Jidai, or Frightful Era of Kurama Tengu, released in 1928) set an example for jidaigeki to come, with its energetic swordfighting and charismatic lead. Arashi is not the first, last, or only actor to play this role, however, and even during his tenure, other films with other actors in the lead were being produced. The film we're looking at today is the second-to-last to feature him.

My DVD did not come with English subtitles, but it did come with Japanese subtitles, so I was able to watch the whole thing with my phone pointed at the screen to translate. Which felt super janky, but it worked. So here we go.

So the plot concerns the actions of a group of "Official Thieves", sanctioned by the Satsuma clan to raise distrust in the Shogunate among the citizenry. They run riot in Edo, but are internally divided between those who believe they should stick to their mission and those who are using their status as an excuse to have their way with women and generally act without constraints. Kurama Tengu goes to the head of the clan to explain that his plan to hurt the government is only hurting the common people, and asks him to stop his men from causing such havoc. We then divert for a moment to some of the Satsuma goons catching a wayward boy, who escapes them - but will become relevant later - and then the scene changes to a worker at an inn finding a murder victim wearing a tengu mask in one of his rooms. The murder victim is revealed to be a samurai of some importance named Amakusa. (Not that Amakusa.)

Now, the boy - Sugisaku - seems to be someone known to Tengu; I'm not sure if he was a character in a previous film, but he talks about regretting leaving Sugisaku in Kyoto during a time of upheaval. Whatever the case, at the same time as Tengu is investigating the murder and trying to figure out what to do about the Official Thieves, Sugisaku is looking for Tengu and trying to find his way back to Edo. He ends up being taken in by a woman named Otaki... and this is where Hirata's character comes in. He's playing some kind of old-timey scientist (named Irie), which is really funny to me; even in jidaigeki, he can't escape getting typecast. More specifically, he's playing a very dedicated scientist who's invented something for a good cause that could be used for evil, and he's afraid of it falling into the wrong hands... hmm... somehow this sounds really familiar... anyway, the Shogunate gets wind of this and wants to use it to destroy the Satsuma clan and their thieves. Meanwhile, Sugisaku takes up with a group of other street children whose families were killed by the Satsuma clan's thieves.

I had to do a double-take because I thought Sugisaku's dragon hood was a Mechagodzilla mask before I remembered this movie came out in 1956.

Tengu's got a target on his back: people close to him keep turning up murdered, all wearing tengu masks. He meets with Irie, who initially thinks he's the one who stole his research and used it for the murders, but they come to an understanding. Otaki, however, still believes Tengu is a killer, and goes after him with a pistol. We learn that her vendetta against the Satsuma clan's thieves is because she was kidnapped by them after witnessing them kill her father. She confesses all this to Irie, and the two of them separate to work out their feelings, Irie going back to his house and being so distraught that he's caught unawares by the Satsuma men, who kidnap him.

Tengu, now knowing Irie's stolen "medicine" is in the hands of the Satsuma clan, has Saikuniya, their leader, take him to where he's hiding it... but it's been stolen once again. I should mention there's been somebody else in a tengu mask lurking around in the background for all this time, and Tengu confronts them and unmasks them to find that it's a woman with a grudge against him for killing her husband in self-defense. (At this point I am thinking this movie has a lot to do with previous films I haven't seen.) She admits she's the one who stole the medicine in an attempt to finally kill Kurama Tengu.

Lord, this was worth the $40 and the four weeks it took to get to me.

In the final act, Tengu quickly wraps things up by freeing Irie from the palanquin the clan had been using to bring him to whatever fate they had in store for him. Fighting off a whole host of bad guys, Irie returns to his secret lab, and... you guessed it, burns it all and takes his own life, leaving nothing of his research left to be misused by evildoers. Really not reminded of anything here, nothing at all, not even slightly. Tengu puts down the official thief plot and rides off - not quite into the sunset - while Sugisaku and his new friends call after him.

This was a really fun movie. I was afraid it was going to be mostly about Sugisaku and his gang of street urchins, but there's not too much of that; the plot moves along at a steady pace and doesn't branch off into different paths so often as to become tedious. I liked what I saw of Kurama Tengu as a character: he fights for the common people and is very open about it, even saying he'd use his sword against the Shogunate were it ever to do anything that would endanger the people. He seems to be a hero who fights not for any specific faction but for the force of good as a whole.

And I have to say this is a REAL treat for Akihiko Hirata fans. This was an unusually dynamic role for him and it's really fun to see him be the "damsel in distress" (thankfully his girlfriend is packing heat). It's also extremely funny that he is basically playing Ye Olde Serizawa here. This is another film that makes me really, really wish I wasn't seemingly the only person outside of Japan with an interest in this kind of thing. More people should watch this.