Director: Masahiro Makino
Studio: Toho
Cast: Toshirō Mifune, Yoshiko [Shirley] Yamaguchi, Takashi Shimura, Akihiko Hirata, Hiroshi Koizumi, Sachio Sakai, Ren Yamamoto, Toyoko Takegawa et al
Availability: No home media or internet streaming release. No known screenings within the past 15 years.
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I should have made this post last month for the film's 71st anniversary, but better late than never, I guess.
As of the time of writing, I have not seen this movie and am fervently searching for it. I've gone down many avenues, including contacting several individuals and institutions about it, but with no luck. I am certain, however, that the film is not lost, as screenings have taken place since the film's initial release¹. Toho also produced an English-subtitled version², but I'm unaware for what purpose. I will readily admit that there isn't anything particularly special about this movie in and of itself, apart from it having been Akihiko Hirata's very first film role, but that alone is enough to make me want to see it. (If you have a copy... you know where to find me.)
So I can't watch this thing, at least not currently, but what I can do is dump everything I know about it into, as far as I know, the only extensive English-language post about it on the internet. If I ever do get lucky enough to watch it, I will, of course, make a new post about it. There's also a Kinema Junpo issue with an article about the film from when it first came out, and if I lose my fool head and buy that issue, I'll make a new post about it as well. (Edit: Whoops.)
I have seen exactly two pictures of Hirata from the film and both of them are extremely rare:
Masahiro Makino may not be a name with the same kind of Western recognition as Akira Kurosawa or Yasujiro Ozu or someone like that, but he was an extremely prolific director, and before that, in the 1910s and '20s, he was also an extremely prolific actor as well. This means Makino was involved in Japan's film industry pretty much from its very beginnings - which makes sense, since his father was Shozo Makino, Japan's first professional film director. The Last Embrace was produced by Tomoyuki Tanaka, as many Toho films were, and the script came from an original idea by Tanaka and Toshio Yasumi, who was also a frequent scriptwriter for Toho.
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| extremely crusty poster |
As for the cast, it's all your usual Toho guys (and some gals), but fairly early in their careers for a lot of them except Mifune (for whom this was his 30th film) and Shimura. Yoshiko Yamaguchi has a bit of a cult following, from what I understand, and it's her presence in this along with big star Mifune that gives me any hope at all that somebody still cares about this movie enough to upload it to the internet someday.
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Yamaguchi's character seems to be the protagonist of the film. According to the plot summaries I've found, Yamaguchi plays a woman who lived in the mountains and was set to be married before her fiancé was killed in a sudden avalanche. She then moves to Tokyo, where she frequents a bar along with a group of poets, and meets a yakuza who looks like her dead fiancé (Mifune plays both roles). I am assuming Hirata has a very small role in this - he's probably one of the poets from the bar Yamaguchi hangs out in. His character's name is given as "alias Sandaime", which would imply some yakuza association, but I think that it is likely just a nickname as the group of poets seem to all have aliases.
Note the following poster: under Hirata's name it says "New Face".
While the film itself is frustratingly elusive, its main theme, sung by Yamaguchi, is on YouTube for your delectation. There's a nice slideshow of images from the film and pictures of Yamaguchi that plays during the song, along with lyrics in Japanese.
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| shoutout to the person who reblogged this on tumblr and just tagged it "#men" |
Some odds and ends to finish this off: Here is a post (in Japanese) from someone who has actually seen the movie. I believe this person saw either of the 2008 screenings mentioned in my footnotes. Mifune's website has a bunch of pictures of him from the film here. In the process of researching this post I found a blog dedicated to Yoshiko Yamaguchi, which I have a deep appreciation for.
That's it! That's everything I know! I know for a fact that people other than me are looking for this, so I remain hopeful that I'll watch it someday.
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¹ A 2008 screening at the Shin-Bungeiza theater in Tokyo is confirmed from a user on Kinenote, as well as a screening in the same year at the 6th annual Kyoto Film Festival; this blogger, writing in 2021, claims a screening about ten years ago. I have confirmation of a screening at the almighty Laputa Asagaya theater in 2005 as well. (What hasn't been screened at Laputa, honestly.) So that's a total of three and a half known screenings.
² Galbraith, Stuart. The Toho Studios Story. Scarecrow Press, 2008.
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