NHK特集 想定ドキュメント 輸入食料ゼロの日 / NHK tokushū: sōtei dokyumento: yunyū shokuryō zero no hi / NHK Special: Hypothetical Documentary: Day of Zero Imported Food [1978]

No images from this docudrama exist, but I don't like to make posts without images, so here's an entirely unrelated book about the same subject.

Intro

A while ago, I spent a very long time assembling what I believe is the most comprehensive list of every single one of Hirata's film, television and stage credits, which ended up amounting to somewhere around 350 titles (the actual list is slightly less, but I usually say "around 350" to account for anything I might have missed due to obscurity). People generally like stories about the strange and unusual, so let's ask the question: out of that number, what is the weirdest thing he was in?

Well, that depends on what we consider "weird". First off, I want to absolutely avoid the pitfall of calling something weird just because it's from Japan. His The Sound of Music or Gone With the Wind aren't "weird" just because they're Japanese productions of English-language works. None of the game shows or variety shows Hirata was on¹ in the late '70s and early '80s qualify as "weird" just because we've never heard of them. Okage wa Waga kokoro ni ari - a docudrama about the founder of a specific Shintō sect - is a bit surprising, but I'm not going to call something "weird" because it involves a religion that I don't subscribe to. And I'm not talking about movies that are "weird" in a narrative or conceptual sense. The H-Man is objectively pretty weird, but it's science fiction, so that's to be expected.

So with all of those qualifiers, I think the one thing I can say for certain is actually pretty weird is the TV docudrama about what would happen if Japan suddenly stopped importing food. Maybe "weird" is not the most precisely accurate term here, but it's the sort of thing that's just a bit unusual to see in an actor's filmography - and it would be for any actor. You could imagine your favorite British soap opera star in something like this and it would still be weird. In any event, here is everything I can tell you about Yunyū shokuryō zero no hi.

Who made this thing

Despite not having a Wikipedia article, the director of the docudrama, Sakae Okazaki, has been a part of NHK's history (and the history of television as a whole) since 1953, which is essentially when television broadcasting began within Japan. Okazaki's main interest when he began working for NHK was producing media related to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Okazaki's home had been burned down by an American air raid, and when he was stationed at the Hiroshima branch of NHK, he created radio dramas on the subject of the atomic bomb. Okazaki was initially very reluctant to move from radio to television, but he found success in the mid-1960s when he produced what is considered to be Japan's first docudrama, Sōnan ["Disaster"], about the search for thirteen students from a mountaineering club who were lost on Mount Yakushi. After that, he also produced Japan's first color taiga drama, Ten to chi to. In the late 1970s Okazaki was in charge of "NHK Special", the series that Yunyū shokuryō zero no hi belongs to more broadly. Okazaki is still alive at 95 years old and was interviewed by Yahoo! News about his long career in March of this year.

I can find virtually no information about the docudrama's main screenwriter, Mamoru Tanabe. His name appears as a credit on a plethora of NHK programs dating back to, as far as I can tell, the mid-1950s. I'm not sure where he is now or when he stopped working, if he has.

As for the rest of the cast: Momoko Kōchi's in it, I just want to say that before I get to anybody else. There are a few other fairly well-known actors in the cast as well, including Gin Maeda, Toshiaki Nishizawa, Toei "hey it's that guy" Fumio Watanabe, and prolific voice actor Akira Kume. I have no idea what Hirata's role in this was, but I think "miscellaneous scientist" is a fairly safe bet. It usually is.

What is this thing

The general idea of the docudrama is summed up in its title. At least as of 1978, Japan was importing 60-70% of all its food product, and the docudrama takes place in the year "19XX", after Japan's government, acting on top-secret information regarding the upcoming sudden stoppage of all imports, begins to assess the country's capacity for food production, an endeavor mainly undertaken by the Ministry of Agriculture. The production capacity of rural agricultural areas is analyzed by computer and the answer given is apparently not reassuring: with its current production capacity, one-third of the population would starve within the year if food imports were to cease. The docudrama - which took more than a year to produce and involved real-world experiments in food production using underutilized land such as golf courses - features actual staff of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, and reporting by Ryōjū Katsube, a real-life NHK reporter who was, among other things, in charge of local reports for the world's first television broadcast from Japan's Showa base in Antarctica.

Please see Hiroshi Makita's thread on the docudrama. I am clowning on it a little, but this scenario is an important thing to consider; it's very concerning knowing your country may not be able to adequately feed its own population in a time of crisis, and from what Makita says, this problem has not been fully solved even today.

This was not the only speculative docudrama that NHK produced. Within the "Hypothetical Document" series, two other scenarios were explored: an earthquake warning and a large-scale blackout in Tokyo. There is a little footage and some stills from the other two docudramas, but as far as I know not a single image from the one we're looking at today is available online.

Can we watch it

No.

Well, not unless you're affiliated with a university in Japan and/or can get special permission to view it for educational purposes.

There are more NHK TV specials that are lost to time and to Japan's draconian copyright laws forcing tapes to be destroyed following television stations restructuring than there are grains of sand on a beach. Fortunately, this is not one of them: it is held in Yokohama's Broadcast Library, which is the only facility in Japan that collects and archives television programs, radio programs, commercials, and related material and provides free-of-charge viewing. I promise you from the bottom of my heart that if I am ever in Yokohama, I will find a way to watch it there. I will tell you all about it.

That's not the only place where the docudrama is held, though. As it was released to VHS in 1990, numerous universities now have a copy: CiNii, Japan's equivalent of WorldCat, a website that allows you to search for any book in any library anywhere, lists 29 universities that have a tape. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the tape seems to be unavailable for general consumption: academic institutions are the only places that got a copy, as far as I know, and I'm not even sure what the tape looks like. If I do ever find a copy, you will know about it.

_____

1 Okay, the Beat Takeshi thing was probably weird. I will eventually write something about that.

断崖の決闘 / Dangai no ketto / Duel at the Precipice (aka Kill the Killer!) [1961]

Release date: June 27th, 1961

Director: Kozo Saeki
Studio: Takarazuka Motion Picture Co., distributed by Toho
Cast: Yosuke Natsuki, Tadao Nakamaru, Kumi Mizuno, Tatsuya Mihashi, Keiko Awaji, Akihiko Hirata, Michiyo Tamaki, Tetsuro Tamba et al.
Availability: No home media or streaming release.

____

The film we're looking at today was included in the 1962 edition of Toho Films, Toho's catalogue of releases that were available for licensing and distribution to international markets. Something interesting to point out is that while international cuts of Japanese films often shave down the run time, whatever Toho did to the English version of this film actually extended it - the original was 77 minutes, the version distributed by Toho International was 85. Added B-roll, perhaps? Unfortunately, we probably won't ever know.

The production crew of this film is largely unknown to us Toho fans, since this was produced by Takarazuka (even though the catalogue says "Produced by Toho Co., Ltd"... hmmm). Director Kozo Saeki helmed a lot of the very popular Ekimae films that ran alongside the President series for a number of years throughout the 1960s, but he actually got his start as a director during the silent film era, and was never exclusive to Toho, working for many different studios throughout his ultimately quite short life (he died in 1972 at the age of 60). In fact, the Ekimae series were not technically Toho productions: they were produced by Tokyo Eiga, a subsidiary of Toho. They certainly earned Toho a good deal of cash, though.

If we're familiar with anybody on the production side of this film, it would probably be Riichirō Manabe, a prolific composer who did the soundtrack for - among other things, but most notable to us - Godzilla vs. Hedorah and Godzilla vs. Megalon.

Now, let's look at how Toho sold the film to English-speaking markets.

Hirata's character is named Otaki but the copy-writer for the catalogue seems to have mis-transliterated it as "Otake". Otaki is the boss of a drug ring and sounds like a generally nefarious person according to other synopses, but was not the main villain and eventually had a change of heart, handing over a list of the drug dealers he worked with to one of the good guys just before dying.

long poster is long

Now, just because a movie was included in that Toho Films catalogue doesn't necessarily mean that it was picked up for distribution. In fact, I can't find any record of Kill the Killer! playing in U.S. theaters, nor any stateside mention of the film under any other name. (I did find out during my research that Dobunezumi Sakusen got a U.S. release, which is kind of insane.)

So, unfortunately I don't have any English-language newspaper blurbs to show. Japanese reviewers imply that Saeki, who worked primarily in comedies, may not have been the ideal director for the film - adding in comical touches that didn't fit the storyline - and that perhaps Senkichi Taniguchi would have been better (give the man a break, though, he was already directing about a bazillion movies for Toho per year). Read a more extensive review from my friend (not really my friend, but I like their reviews and they always put "-sama" after Hirata's name) over here.

As for screenings within Japan, the film played in theaters in 2019 and was broadcast on television in 2021. So not terribly obscure, but definitely not available for anybody to watch any time they want. It's a shame that this never got picked up for stateside distribution, because a lot of Toho's early '60s crime films did manage to stick around after being exported and are readily obtainable today - The Last Gunfight, Merciless Trap, Big Shots Die at Dawn, et cetera. This could have been one of them if only a few theater owners had been interested enough to license it.

The Human Condition [人間の条件] (1958 Stage Play)

I've been meaning to write about this for a while, because it's something I consider to be a pretty big deal, but I've been slow to obtain materials I feel like I need to flesh out the post. When I talk about Hirata's filmography I tend to say that he had "two and a half" lead roles: one is Tetsuwan namida ari, the "half" is when he dubbed the lead role in Man from Vera Cruz, and the third is this, the lead role in a 1958 stage adaptation of The Human Condition, which ran from roughly September to November or possibly December. Not only did he play the lead role, this was also his first time acting for the stage in this capacity.¹

from my personal collection

I'm not really going to be talking about The Human Condition in general here, because the much more famous film adaptation starring Tatsuya Nakadai is widely acclaimed as one of the masterpieces of Japanese cinema, so enough has been said about that and probably about the novel that it's based on as well. I'm focusing solely on this particular stage adaptation. Like most of the plays I've written about, there doesn't seem to be any pictures taken while the play was being performed, so most if not all of the visual evidence related to The Human Condition comes from promotional pamphlets for it.

The play was co-directed by two people. One was Kazuo Kikuta, a very respected playwright of the post-war era. He worked for Toho to produce, among other things, Japanese adaptations of English-language plays such as My Fair Lady and Fiddler on the Roof. Kikuta was even well-known enough outside of Japan to have received an obituary in the New York Times after his death in 1973. The other director was Shozaburo Kubo, who I unfortunately cannot find much information about. He seems to have perhaps been involved in the artistic side of the production. The script was written by Kinji Obata, a playwright of some note who was not terribly prolific but was sometimes said to be "a successor" to Kazuo Kikuta.

I own a pamphlet from this performance. Inside is a brief blurb intended to sell potential viewers on it. Roughly translated, it reads:

Highly praised by all critics!

"A powerful work that makes the most of the original" (Asahi Shimbun)

This four-hour epic dramatizes the first and second parts of the original, said to be the biggest postwar bestseller.

The anguish of Kaji, a man of conscience and humanism, is depicted with a raw, breathtaking sense of tension.

It's worth a look.

"Pursues the stupidity of war" (Tokyo Shimbun)

For Geijutsu-za, which has mostly run mid-season plays up until now, this is a rare work that is almost a fully new drama. It is not just a digest of the original work, it is interesting, and there are many thought-provoking issues. This dramatization of four acts, thirteen scenes, and four hours is a success.

"A popular structure" (Sankei Shinkai)

In addition to being a timely project, the script (by Kinji Obata) and direction (by Kazuo Kikuta), overflow with humanism within a popular structure, making it a perfect performance for Geijutsu-za. [Akihiko] Hirata's excellent performance is also noteworthy.  

From the home to the workplace, The Human Condition receives wide-ranging recommendations: National Workers' Cultural Association, Mother & Housewife Association, Tokyo Regional Women's Organizations Federation, Manchu Association, Repatriates' Organizations Federation, Tetsudo Manchuria-Mongolia Compatriots Support Association, Tokyo Teachers' Union, Kaimenkai, National Film and Theater Workers' Union.

Before we move on, I just want to point something out about that pamphlet. See this?

They misspelled his name. That says "Teruhiko".

I have some further information on the process of adapting the original work to the stage. All of the writers and producers had some familiarity with each other prior to the play being staged: Obata was commissioned by the company that Kubo worked for to adapt the book, and Obata had also met the author of The Human Condition, Junpei Gomikawa. Obata was paid ¥10,000 for the script (about $70 in today's USD). This happened early in Obata's career, and because of the success of this endeavor, he went on to become a writer and director for Toho.

not from my personal collection, but maybe someday it will be. top: Yoko Tsukasa, bottom: Aiko Mimasu

The Human Condition was performed at the Geijutsu-za, a theater operated directly by Toho. How directly? Well, it was literally inside what was their headquarters building at the time. By modern standards this theater was fairly small, seating only 750 people. The Geijutsu-za has now closed, but it is still a theater, just under a different name (Theater Creation) and new ownership. Photos from the inside of the Geijutsu-za while it was operating under that name are surprisingly scarce, but we can get a general idea of the space from photos of Theater Creation:

While I was doing research into this play, I ran across something that I don't see often. Shortly after Yoshiko Kuga passed away last year, Makoto Kobayashi, a former Toho actor who is currently 90 years old and still blogging, wrote a post about her, Hirata, and this play. Kobayashi says that he did not work with Kuga often but did work with Hirata on many occasions as part of the drama club, and that he was a very nice person with a "strict and slightly serious" personality who was a good fit to be Kuga's husband.

Although I can only experience it through machine translation, I cannot overstate how valuable Kobayashi's blog is to anyone like myself who has a fascination with Toho's "golden age". Although he worked mostly for stage, not screen, Kobayashi acted alongside many of the actors who I frequently mention on this blog and he is still very much alive and writing about his recollections of his experiences. Here he is as an extra in an NHK drama. He states that this photo was taken where the famous Godzilla statue in Shinjuku is today.

I wish there was more I could give you, because to me it's really unexpected that Hirata would even be in something like this. I think it speaks to a lot of confidence to be able to act the lead role in a four-hour play that ran for over three months - and not just any play but an adaptation of The Human Condition, of all things. I'm going to try to dig up contemporary reviews or mentions, because there has to have been some in film periodicals from the time, but I'm not sure how much luck I'll have on that front. In any case, there may be updates to this post or further, separate posts on the topic in the future.

^_____

1 I have a vague notion that he may have done some stage acting at a May Day festival at some point around the late 1940s or early 1950s, but I haven't looked deep enough into that to be able to say for certain. The Human Condition was, in any case, probably his first "real" stage acting gig.

Comedy Trio [Owarai san'ningumi] with English Subtitles

I am extraordinarily pleased to announce that I've finished up my subtitles for two of the surviving three episodes of Comedy Trio. This is the first time any of Yoshiko Otowa's work has gotten English subtitles. Please check the episodes out here. I also timed everything completely by hand.

As always, I want to make it very clear that I don't know enough Japanese to just bang this out by ear, so this translation was assisted by dictionaries and carefully cross-referenced machine translation. This particular job was especially difficult because the style of dialogue in a live comedy show is much different from a normal scripted drama. People talk over each other, talk during audience noise, don't enunciate, speak too quietly or too far away from the mic, and so on. These subtitles are not perfect, but I really hope they're more good than bad. (I’m gonna be honest, I doubt I'll be subtitling live television again any time soon.)

If anyone out there wants to mess with these, I'm more than happy to provide the raws and my .txt files.

Some TL notes under the cut:

Toho's Salaryman Comedies of the 1950s and '60s

Many American fans of Toho movies may not be aware of it, but much of what kept the studio afloat during the 1950s and '60s (and even later, although the appeal fizzled out towards the 1970s) consisted of light comedy films about office workers. Perhaps the most significant series during that time was the President [Shachō] series, starring Hisaya Morishige as Okanda, an irreverent company president, Keiju Kobayashi as Suyama, his practical-minded secretary, and a semi-regular cast of tertiary characters including Frankie Sakai, Daisuke Katō, Asami Kuji, Norihei Miki, Yoko Tsukasa, Ichirō Arashima, and more. The series ran for 33 films between 1956 and 1970, with an additional six films that are considered adjacent to the series itself. The majority of entries were directed by the same two people: Shue Matsubayashi and Toshio Sugie. Nobuo Aoyagi, Yasuki Chiba and Kunio Watanabe helmed early entries, but after Salaryman Chushingura, directorial duties were traded off between Sugie and Matsubayashi for the rest of the series' run. There's never really been a huge push to export this kind of film outside of Japan, as far as I know.

The President series was not, of course, the only set of salaryman films Toho produced. The much shorter Diary of a Successful Salaryman [Sarariiman shusse taikoki] series - which we'll look at in a bit - starred Keiju Kobayashi in the president role. Kobayashi also appeared with Morishige in the Third-Class Executive [Santōjūyaku] trilogy early in the 1950s. Honestly, if you want a list of salaryman comedies, just look at Kobayashi's filmography - these types of role were his bread and butter.

The scope of our current examination of these works is necessarily going to be quite narrow (as in, we're only going to be covering the ones that Akihiko Hirata was in, which should be obvious considering that this is, in fact, an Akihiko Hirata fansite), but it's worth bringing in some other titles to provide context. Now that we have that out of the way, though, we're going to look at everything in Hirata's filmography that could merit being called a "salaryman comedy". All English titles used in this article are unofficial, and are sourced from Galbraith’s Toho Studios Story.

I am limiting this list to salaryman comedies, specifically - we'd be here all day if I just went through all the films Hirata had a role in that took place partially or mostly in an office (Young Challengers, one or two Crazy Cats movies, The Luckiest Day, Structure of Hate, et cetera).

Company President in High Spirits [Harikiri shachō], 1956, dir. Kunio Watanabe

I covered this one a while ago. It is the third entry in the series and the only one to be directed by Watanabe, and also marks the introduction of Asami Kuji as a regular cast member, playing Okanda's wife. Until early 2021 it was not available on home media.

Very loosely, the film is about Okanda coming up with various schemes to improve sales for his bicycle company. Okanda's personality gets in the way of socializing with potential benefactors, and he ends up holding a "Miss Cycle" contest to promote his company, which lands him in trouble with his new wife. Suyama, simultaneously, has some light relationship troubles. Hirata's appearance in the film consists entirely of one scene (unless you count a photo of him that is seen earlier) and he is quite literally only there to look pretty. He's brought in as a potential romantic rival standing in the way of Suyama and the girl he's trying to court.

Employee With the Secret Savings and the Autocrat President - Employee With the Secret Savings Fights Bravely [Hesokuri shain to wanman shachō - Hesokuri shain kantosu], 1956, dir. Motoyoshi Oda

These two have some tokusatsu appeal - Motoyoshi Oda made Godzilla Raids Again! This film stars Norihei Miki, Kingoro Yanagiya, Yasuko Nakata, Gen Funahashi and Hiroshi Koizumi, and the plot seems to revolve around "a drug that makes you hate alcohol". This one and its sequel were adapted from a book by Ichiro Kitamachi, who was a prolific and multi-award-winning novelist during the 1940s and '50s.

Hesokuri shachō was the name of the first film in the President series, released in early 1956, and Kitamachi released Hesokuri shain in 1957, but the two have nothing to do with each other. This film was part of a duology, the second of which we'll cover next, and ran for only 53 minutes - but the second was even shorter, clocking in at just 46 minutes. We have just exactly one still from the film courtesy of Laputa Asagaya, who screened it at some point in 2007, and it's grainy and small, but it's the kind of picture we want. 

There must have been other screenings or broadcasts since then, as the film's only review on Filmarks is from 2024; although I suppose it is plausible that somebody who saw it in 2007 decided "hey, let me review that salaryman comedy I saw seventeen years ago". You can find another short review from someone who watched it at Laputa here.

Employee With the Secret Savings and the Autocrat Company President - The Autocrat President's Pure Heart [Hesokuri shain to wanman shachō - Wanman shachō junjo su], 1956, dir. Motoyoshi Oda

The second part in the duology, released a week after the first, features all the same actors. Hirata seems to have had somewhat of a more important role in this second film, and we can get an idea of what his character was like: spoiled and not very nice, apparently; a torrid relationship wherein Hirata's character Oda continues to make unwanted advances towards Yasuko Nakata's character Masako takes up a large part of the plot. Koizumi and Hirata's characters get into a physical fight at one point, and ultimately Nakata ends up with Funahashi's character, who is named Onoda, so, really, she went from one Onoda to the next.

One reviewer suggests that Yanagiya not fitting the image of a company president was the reason why the series ended after two films, but I'm not sure if that implies that this was an attempt by Toho to get a series off the ground or if it's just speculation (these films lack a Wikipedia page). For this one we have a Toho News pamphlet, a poster, and a press photo, but none of them feature Hirata's character, despite him playing what essentially sounds like the main antagonist role, if a salaryman comedy can be said to have antagonists. Read a review here; I can't determine what screening this reviewer saw.

Speaking of screenings, I have confirmed that this movie was actually re-screened at the now-closed Yurakuza theater two years after its release as part of a Tanabata festival in the town of Musashi-Kosugi. The H-Man was part of that lineup as well. I have read that there's a picture inside this book of the Fuse Line Theater (the Lion-za at the time) displaying a marquee for this film, but I haven't seen it.

Props to Motoyoshi Oda, it's a bold move to direct a movie in which the most unlikeable character shares your surname.

Diary of a Successful Salaryman - Conclusion - Bridegroom Manager No. 1 [Sarariiman shusse taikoki - kanketsuhen - Hanamuko-bucho No. 1], 1960, dir. Masanori Kakei

The fifth and final film in the Successful Salaryman series is also the only one that Hirata appeared in. Other stars include Keiju Kobayashi, Reiko Dan, Ikio Sawamura, Daisuke Katō, Ichirō Arashima, Arihiro Fujimura and Mickey Curtis. We have one poster, featuring some guys in brownface (the film involves the sale of a new car model to Iraq) and our man, who looks vaguely like Tatsuya Nakadai here for some reason. I believe this film was shown alongside Daughters, Wives and a Mother, which does actually have Tatsuya Nakadai in it. We can watch a very cringey two and a half minute clip of the film here, but honestly I wouldn't recommend it. If nothing else it at least proves that this movie has been digitized at some point.

By far the most interesting thing about this movie is that the grandchild of Linda Beech, the white woman pictured on the poster above, posted on Reddit thirteen years ago hoping to connect with someone who could help them find more information about her. I'm unsure if this person's search was successful, but since Beech doesn't have a Wikipedia page, it's nice to hear a little more about her.

Executive Candidate No. 1 [Jūyaku koho-sei NO. 1], 1962, dir. Kengo Furusawa

That headshot of Hirata is actually not from the film and is one of his "official" Toho portraits.

According to Wikipedia, this is a Momotaro adaptation centered around salary workers. Wikipedia also notes that because the film was released immediately before Furusawa's far more famous work Irresponsible Age of Japan, its theater run lasted only one week, and it fell into obscurity. Stars include Tadao Takashima, Mie Hama, Hiroshi Sugi, Ureo Egawa (Dr. Ichinotani from Ultra Q), Yumi Shirakawa and Akira Oizumi. I can't say much about this one but we do at least have some nice posters. I suppose Hirata must have had a decent role considering he is on both of them.

Money is Most Important [Banji okane], 1964, dir. Shue Matsubayashi

This is the hand gesture for "money".

I stole this from somebody's blog so I have no idea who the person highlighted in yellow is, but you can see Hirata (in hat, to the left of Kyu Sakamoto) in the front row.

The film was adapted from a novel by Keita Genji by the prolific screenwriter Toshiro Ide and headlined by popular singer Kyu Sakamoto of "Sukiyaki" fame. Watch two minutes of retro Japan B-roll from the film here. Reviews indicate that this was a very fun and light-hearted movie but, surprisingly, Sakamoto doesn't sing at any point, and plays a comedy-relief-type character. It doesn't seem like this one is too obscure, but still, it doesn't have any home media release.

Hirata plays Sakamoto's rival, a manipulative billionaire "in his forties" who tries to use his money to win over the woman Sakamoto loves. Other stars include Yuriko Hoshi, Ichirō Arashima, Mie Hama, Junzaburo Ban, Chieko Naniwa and Ikio Sawamura. You know, I'm realizing that a lot of Hirata's roles in these films fit into a character archetype that can broadly be defined as "Mr. Steal Your Girl".

Anyway, Money is Most Important is the sole film on our list that got a U.S. release with subtitles, which was almost certainly thanks to Kyu Sakamoto's worldwide popularity. It first played during late April 1965 for what I think was a fairly short run at the Mamo theater in Hilo, Hawaii, and was hyped as "a gay comedy with a cast of popular funsters". In a surprise turn, this was not the last time the film was seen stateside in the '60s: the next year, in March of 1966, it played on a double-bill at the Pioneer Theater in Salt Lake City, Utah. This is, therefore, probably the closest connection we will ever be able to establish between Akihiko Hirata and Mormonism.

Greenhorn Salaryman: Youth Belongs to Us! [Botchan shain - seishun wa ore no monoda!], 1967, dir. Takeshi Matsumori

Thanks to a Noriko Takahashi fansite, we have some pictures from this otherwise fairly obscure film, and the knowledge that a print has been digitized. As far as I understand it, the word "Botchan" entered common parlance after its use as the title of a novel by Natsume Sōseki, and came to refer to a young boy innocent of the ways of the world - so, "greenhorn", basically. Other stars of this film include Tadao Takashima, Yosuke Natsuki, Mie Hama, Yoshiko Toyoura, Yu Fujiki, Jun Tazaki, Ichirō Arashima and Ikio Sawamura. Hirata plays Iwaki, a secretary.

Takashima had previously starred in a series of "Botchan" films for Shintoho, and his appearance as a friend of Natsuki's character in this film led a lot of people to believe that it was a revival of that series. This was also a duology, but we're only looking at the first film here; from what I've heard, the second was mostly a rehash of the first. This particular film was adapted from the novel Botchan shain, also by Keita Genji.

That's just about it for salaryman comedies. Hirata had a tendency to get cast in just one or two random parts of a long-running series (or a sequel but not the first film, et cetera), so this list should not be taken as representative of salaryman comedies as a whole, but hey, at least I admit my biases. Despite their popularity during their initial release, these are some very obscure films today - as far as I'm aware, a total of one film from this list has any kind of home media release at all. As we've seen, though, they're not all totally lost, with digitized prints in existence that could potentially end up on YouTube at some point.