Release date: October 27, 1953
Director: Eisuke 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:
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| 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(?).
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| 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.
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