家内安全 / Kanai anzen / Family Safety (1958)

Release date: March 12, 1958

Studio: Toho

Director: Hisanobu Marubayashi

Cast: Tatsuyoshi Ehara, Kenji Sahara, Shūji Sano, Kyōko Mine, Masayuki Ōkawa, Keiko Ieda, Yasuko Nakata, Kyoko Aoyama, Choko Iida, Akihiko Hirata et al.

Availability: None, outside of infrequent theater screenings.

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I've been writing about - and watching - a lot of movies with Tatsuyoshi Ehara in them lately. Here he's part of a cast of some of Toho's best and brightest young stars, in a movie that, like almost everything I write about, is unfortunately quite obscure. The English translation of this film's title dulls it down a little; "kanai anzen" is a formula typically written on omamori (good-luck charms, basically) for the safety and well-being of a household.

Let's start with the director. Hisanobu Marubayashi entered the film industry in the late 1930s, and joined Toho as a screenwriter before being drafted and spending several presumably long years embroiled in the Pacific War. Despite the war ending in 1945, Marubayashi was not demobbed until 1947, and returned to Toho immediately afterward to apparent fanfare:

"He returned to Toho Studios in August of that year, and on the day of his return, he bumped into lighting technician Tsuruzo Nishikawa at the main gate of the studio, who shouted "Maru's back! Hey Maru!" so loudly that it echoed throughout the studio." from Wikipedia

So, despite never having directed anything that you or I would know by name (although he did serve as assistant director for Ikiru, and worked with Kurosawa in other respects - also, I have a thing about his film Female Detective Story: Woman SOS), people at Toho apparently liked Marubayashi. He stayed with the company throughout the labor dispute and began his solo directing career in 1950. Family Safety was adapted by prolific screenwriter Toshirō Ide from a work by salaryman-turned-writer Genji Keita, originator of Toho's golden goose Shachō series.

The majority of the cast play siblings: the Ibuki family, composed of father Yosuke (Sano), eldest son Yotaro (Hirata), second son Yojiro (Ehara), daughter Masako (Mine) and youngest son Hiroshi (Ōkawa). The breadwinner of the family, though, is Yosuke's mother, Tokuko, played by Choko Iida in a rare leading role. Grandma seems to be a bit of a yenta when it comes to her grandchildren, and from synopses I've read, most of the plot points involve her getting into whatever business the younger Ibukis are up to, which is mostly falling in love with each other's girlfriends.

I think Choko Iida deserves at least brief spotlight here as well. She was born in 1897 and lived into the 1970s, which is altogether not that long of a span of time in the grand scheme of things, but when you think about where Japan's motion picture industry was circa 1897 (i.e. virtually nonexistent; the first motion picture camera was imported from France that same year) and where it was in 1972 (Godzilla vs. Gigan, Female Prisoner #701, Girl Boss Guerilla, Hanzo the Razor) it is kind of an incredible contrast. Iida was known for playing grandmotherly roles and had a long and successful career during which she appeared in over 300 films. Her husband was cinematographer Hideo Shigehara, pioneer of talkie cinema.

A print of the film does exist, but according to reviewers, it isn't in the best condition. It was screened (like every movie ever made) at Laputa Asagaya in 2011 as part of a Genji Keita retrospective, and again in 2015; at Cinema Vera in 2020; and at the Shin-Bungeiza in 2022. There may have been other screenings as well, since one reviewer mentions that they go see it "every time it is screened". From the Laputa screenings, we have two wee little stills, which are quite grainy since I've had to enlarge them:

Our man also golfs in Structure of Hate.

It sounds like a fun movie driven by several competing character archetypes: Yotaro is a philanderer, Yojiro suffers from lasting effects of a childhood bout of meningitis, and of course grandma Tokuko is an active, outspoken presence. I'm actually interested in this from a feminist perspective; I think it would be fascinating to hear someone smarter and more well-versed in the source material talk about how Iida's role subverts (and reinforces) gender norms of the time.

Favorite review: "I love this grandma who only changes into modern western clothes when she goes to a bar in Ginza."

Cribbed from Toshiaki Sato's Facebook page. Toshiaki Sato has seen every movie.