Studio: Shintoho
Director: Goro Kadono
Cast: Kyoko Kagawa, Akira Kishii, Saburo Boya, Kyu Sazanka, Shintaro Kido, Kasho Sanyutei, Motomi Hirose, Kingoro Yanagiya et al
Availability: No home media or streaming release. One confirmed theater screening and one confirmed television broadcast in the 1980s. Prints said to be extant.
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A while back I posted about the two films I know of that Akihiko Hirata worked on as an assistant director during his time at Shintoho before he became an actor. The earlier of the two, Lynching, I was actually able to get a hold of, but I wasn't going to go into as much depth for Youth Decameron, since it's much more obscure. However, I've decided there is in fact enough information about it to fill out a post (and consequently I'm going to take down my original post about both movies, since it's not necessary now that I've written about them separately in their own dedicated posts).
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| This poster is from the film's shortened re-release in 1956 under the title Crazy Uproarious Laughter (Bokusho koukyo tanoshi1) (extremely rough translation). |
Let's start with the director, Goro Kadono. Kadono was one of the founding members of Shintoho, working with the company starting in 1947 after it split off from Toho. In 1948 he began working as an assistant director under the likes of Kon Ichikawa and Yasuki Chiba, and in 1950 he made his debut as a solo director with Youth Decameron, but would continue picking up work as an assistant director even afterward, while still also directing his own features. Kadono directed 20 pictures for Shintoho, but after the studio collapsed, the last record of him is that he worked on a pink film called Peeping Private Room (Nozokareta koshitsu) for Sankyo in 1964. Nothing else is known of his whereabouts after that, and his date of death is not recorded.
The film's screenwriter, Umetsugu Inoue, is a far bigger name. Inoue had been at Keio University's Faculty of Economics when he was drafted, and after the war he continued school and graduated in 1947, subsequently beginning a career at Shintoho. He became a director after working as an assistant (and other jobs) for only five years - a relatively short period within Japan's rigid studio system. He joined Nikkatsu in the mid-'50s with some success, then went freelance in 1960 and worked for several studios before ultimately joining Shochiku Ofuna. This put him on a trajectory that would result in him being mentioned on this very blog: Inoue directed for Edogawa Ranpo's Beauty Series, which is one of only a few series that could boast appearances from multiple Onodas. Inoue also directed Hirata in New Hangman. Since both Ranpo and Hangman aired in the '80s, their paths had been crossing for well over 30 years at that point.
I wrote more about what an assistant director's job was at this time and what Hirata may have been doing more specifically in my post about Lynching, but in short: since he was uncredited, he could not have been either a chief assistant director or a first assistant director and was probably not even a second assistant director, which means we can narrow down the scope of his work on the film to things like setting up props, writing staging descriptions, working with extras for crowd scenes, working with any animals required on-set, miscellaneous work assisting the other assistant directors, or just holding the clapperboard. He would have been 22 at this time and working under his birth name.
Now onto the movie itself.
A quick machine translation of the text says:
"A lineup of top entertainers, featuring art, songs, and pink excitement! A dreamlike tale of Tokyo's One Thousand and One Nights!"
"This is a striptease film with songs, and a very entertaining film. The staff is amazing. Director Goro Kadono is a rising star, and we have high hopes for his future. [Umetsugu Inoue] also showed his sharpness in the [...]"
Yes, that's right, our man worked on pink films. Keep in mind that this was de rigeur for Shintoho, and what was racy back then would hardly merit a batted eyelash today. Director Goro Kadono actually got in trouble during another production for asking Michiko Maeda to hike up her skirt.
One of my other main sources of general film information, Toshiaki Sato2, relates a general outline of the plot: four friends working as shepherds on a ranch dream about moving to Tokyo and getting hired at a renowned cabaret called "Blue Fantasy". They learn where the owner of the cabaret is staying, and try to plot and scheme their way into getting him to hire them, only to find that the "owner" is an impostor. According to Sato, there were a lot of musical interludes featuring tons of performers who were popular at the time.
Kyoko Kagawa was not top billed, but she was undoubtedly who Shintoho wanted people to know was in the film before anyone else. The tagline even mentions her character Oharubo (a nickname, probably for "Haruka") by name. Without a real plot synopsis, though, I can't tell you anything else about who she plays. The rest of the main cast is mostly comedians, one stripper (Motomi Hirose), and several more prominent actors in small roles, including Kingoro Yanagiya and jazz singer Dick Mine.
Fitting for such a vanishingly obscure film, the only confirmed theater screening in the last 75 years took place at a bit of a strange location: Studio ams, a multi-purpose hall (not a movie theater) on the fifth floor of the Sangenjaya building, as part of a Kyoko Kagawa film festival. All of my information about this screening comes also from Ken Shimomura, who says he thinks the screening took place sometime in the 1990s but has no more specific details than that.
I think that's about all I can tell you for this one. If I can manage to find out any other films Hirata AD'd on (there has to have been more than two) I will of course write about them, but for now, I think I've pretty well covered it.
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2 Toshiaki Sato please hit me up. You are my idol.
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