Comedy - Yotsuya Kaidan / 喜劇 四谷怪談 (1969)

This post has been in the works almost continuously since I found out from my Sound of Music pamphlet that Hirata had been in some kind of Yotsuya Kaidan thing. (This is the role he was referring to when he mentioned that he sang a solo in a Yotsuya Kaidan adaptation with Norihei Miki.) There is scarcely enough information on it out there to warrant an entire post, but here goes.

What I know: This was a stage play that ran from September 3rd to September 26th at Tokyo's Imperial Theater. It was a comedy, with the very talented Norihei Miki in the lead role as Iemon and '60s-'70s Toho actress Masako Kyōzuka as Oiwa. It was co-directed by Miki and distinguished opera director and former noh actor Hideo Kanze. Of note is that the play was scripted by someone named Isamu Onoda - I have looked into this Onoda in the past, as this play is actually not the only time he's worked with Hirata, but as far as I can tell he is unrelated. Isamu Onoda was also born in Yotsuya, which is probably why he was chosen to script the play.

The reason I'm doing this post is because after a great deal of searching and becoming convinced there was no visual record of this play, I finally came across a booklet. Unfortunately these are the only pictures of this booklet that I have, it seems to only have come up for sale once. I believe Hirata's character's name is read as Yoemon Kamiya - running it through DeepL, Google Translate, and Papago all gave me the same result, with slight variations in vowel placement - but this role seems to be exclusive to this specific adaptation, as it doesn't come up in relation to Yotsuya Kaidan at all in any other capacity.¹ Obviously, this name is very similar to "Iemon Tamiya", and since this is a comedy, I'm wondering if that was an intentional joke.

The auction photos are not very clear, but to my surprise I was actually able to use Google Lens on it and come up with some more information about Hirata's role. It's not great information, but it's the only information I've ever heard: It seems like this Yoemon is some kind of drifter who comes to Edo and falls in love - with whom, I'm not clear; it may be Oiwa herself - and dies after going mad at some point in the play. The booklet describes him as "a playboy" if the translation is to be trusted.

The auction listing provides a few photos of Miki in the lead role, but as for Hirata? Well, you have to squint, but I'm fairly certain there is a photo of him in there.

Fairly certain. I've seen 103 of his films (not counting rewatches) and I could probably recognize him with my glasses off, but this is not a good picture.

Obviously, if I ever get my hands on one of those booklets, I'll either make a new post or overhaul this one with the information I get out of it. Until then, that's the extent of what I've found out from my extensive research into this play. It's tantalizing for me as a lover of all things Yotsuya Kaidan, but I just wish there were better scans of that booklet.

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¹ This is wild and irresponsible speculation, but there is a similar (it features a woman who is cursed to become disfigured, specifically with eye trauma, just like Oiwa) kabuki ghost story involving a character named Yoemon. It's called "Iro-Moyo Chotto Karimame", but more commonly referred to as "Kasane". I doubt this Yoemon was an intentional reference to that Yoemon, but maybe we've got some kind of Avengers-style expanded kabuki ghost story universe going on.

夏目漱石の三四郎 / Natsume Soseki no Sanshirō / Sanshirō (Stray Sheep) (1955)

Release date: August 31, 1955
Director: Nobuo Nakagawa
Studio: Toho
Cast: Shinji Yamada, Kaoru Yachigusa, Chishū Ryū, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Tatsuyoshi Ehara, Kaneko Iwasaki, Toki Shiozawa, Ikio Sawamura, Nobuo Kaneko, Akihiko Hirata et al.
Availability: None.

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Little bit of a self-indulgent post because I really like Nobuo Nakagawa and until recently I was unaware that Hirata had ever been involved in anything he'd directed. (This is one of two - the second is a few episodes of the mediocre 1974 Kurama Tengu TV series.)

Here are two minutes and twenty seconds of this film courtesy of your friend and mine packy1954.

I won't go into detail about the novel this film is based on, as it is fairly well-known and fully translated into English. Its Wikipedia page is sufficient for a plot summary and details on who translated it and when. What you won't see, however, is any mention of the character who Hirata plays - from what I can gather, this character, Sugimoto, was exclusive to the film and was not present in the original novel. Sugimoto is the protagonist's love interest's fiancé through arranged marriage¹ and only shows up at the end of the film.

The overall impact of this film among Sanshirō adaptations seems pretty negligible. Even in Nakagawa's oeuvre it is not well-known. There is no home media release of this, so the only way to see it is to be lucky enough to catch a screening. Fortunately, there have been a few - I enjoy tracking down screenings and broadcasts when I write posts about very obscure films such as this one, so I have a list of all the confirmed screenings I can find²:

1. June 2012, at Cinema Vera, Shibuya
2. September 2008, at Jinbōchō Theater, Chiyoda, Tokyo
3. Again at Jinbōchō in March 2017
4. Again at Jinbōchō for several weeks from October to November 2023
5. "Namikiza" at an unknown time (I'm not sure if this is referring to Dotonbori Museum Namikiza or something else, my source only says "I saw it at Namikiza")
6. March or April 2006, at Laputa Asagaya, as part of a Nakagawa retrospective
7. At least one other Laputa showing at an unknown time
8. Cine Nouveau, Osaka, in 2019, in memory of Kaoru Yachigusa
9. Broadcast on SkyPerfect TV in 2007
10. Broadcast on Nikkatsu's Channel NECO in 2006 (?)

Oh boy. A whole ten screenings in the past 20 years.

The film was featured in the early October special issue of Kinema Junpo and the late August 1955 issue. I would love to get my hands on these but they do not seem to currently be up for sale anywhere. It seems like the scenario is held in the Institute for Research in Humanities main library at Kyoto University. On the topic of universities, it would appear that stills from the film were also included in a 2008 exhibition series on literary adaptations at the National Film Center in the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo.

I guess my point in making this post is to show that this movie has surviving prints that are in good enough condition to be screened as recently as November of last year, and may even have been digitized, as it was aired on TV, so it could be released on DVD! But it isn't.

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^1 Hmm.

^{2  The source I have for three of these screenings is the same blogger, who writes that they've seen it a total of four times, so, like, shoutout to this person for never turning down any possible opportunity to watch Sanshirō.}