男対男 / Otoko tai otoko / Man Against Man [1960]

Release date: August 14th, 1960

Director: Senkichi Taniguchi

Studio: Toho

Cast: Toshirō Mifune, Ryō Ikebe, Takashi Shimura, Yūzō Kayama, Jun Tazaki, Akihiko Hirata, Yumi Shirakawa, Akemi Kita, Tadao Nakamaru, Yuriko Hoshi, Yutaka Sada, Shoichi Hirose, Yoshifumi Tajima, Ikio Sawamura, Sachio Sakai, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Hideyo Amamoto et al.

Availability: VHS release. Available online via Internet Archive.

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I keep seeing random people say that they watched this online, but try as I might, I've never been able to find it anywhere, so I did what it is reasonable to do in that situation and spent $60 on a VHS tape that I digitized. Unfortunately, the VHS release is a reissue that shaves a full 26 minutes from the film's original running time of just under two hours. I'm not sure what was in that lost 26 minutes or if the file supposedly circulating online is the original or the cut version, but the VHS is all I've got, so I may never know.

Wherever else this might be hiding online, it is now available on the Internet Archive until and unless Toho decides otherwise.

Since this will be a "watch-along" post, I won't get too heavy on the production backstory so as not to make this preamble longer than it has to be. (Gee, I never do that, do I?) In fact, the only thing I really want to note before I get into the movie itself is that its subtitled export version (also running 116 minutes) was kicking around Western shores throughout the 1960s; it was brought to the Toho La Brea in March of 1961, and also screened in Hawai'i in the summer of 1964. According to Galbraith, Toho also produced an English dub; details about that escape me. It's actually surprising that this isn't something Toho has chosen to release on DVD, considering that it stars Toshirō Mifune and was Yūzō Kayama's film debut.

Two warnings before we get started: 1. The picture quality on this tape is extraordinarily bad, and 2. Our man plays a real scumbag in this one.

I am NOT kidding about the picture quality. You can't even make out "Perspectiva Stereophonic Sound" in the title card.

We begin with a flashback to the war, a time when everything was sepia. Kaji (Mifune) and Kikumori (Ikebe) were friends and competitors in marksmanship. We see Kaji throw himself over Kikumori to shield him from a bomb lobbed into their camp.

After the war, however, things change. Kaji is the foreman of a stevedoring crew and Kikumori runs a yakuza-affiliated nightclub, both based in Yokohama. Chotaro Masue (Takashi Shimura), the president of Masue Shipping, the company Kaji works for, sends his inexperienced, spoiled son Toshio (Kayama) to work under Kaji. Toshio shows up dressed pretty spiffy and balks when Kaji expects him to change his shoes to something more utilitarian.

Toshio's hardly been on the ship more than five minutes when there's an accident in which a crate containing an engine is dropped on one of Kaji's men, killing him. At the man's funeral, Kaji hands the president a request for retirement, which the president immediately rips up.

Looking disheartened, Kaji goes to visit his old friend Kikumori's Blue Moon nightclub to tell him about what happened to his crewman. When he arrives, Kikumori says something that implies he doesn't visit too often, so we get the feeling that they've drifted apart a bit. Kaji also seems aware that Kikumori is associating with yakuza, and Kikumori for his part is also pretty open about it, but neither of them comes off overly reproachful of the other's life choices. Kikumori has a girlfriend(?) named Natsue (Yuriko Hoshi) who is deaf-mute, we're also introduced to her in this scene.

Ryō Ikebe looking at this monkey like how I look at my bank account after I spend $60 on a VHS tape again

We also get Yūzō Kayama performing a little ditty; I guess Toho's not quite letting him flex his Young Guy chops with a real performance yet, because the lyrics to the song he's playing are basically "be-bop-a-bop-a-diddy-dah-bop-a-be-bop". As an aside, the dubbing here is really terrible. There's no sound while Mifune is looking through a window in Ikebe's office that opens onto the stage, and the song cuts really awkwardly before it feels like it should.

Plot starts happening when Kaji stops to have a drink with his crew at a ramshackle dockside hotel. One of his crewmen, Taro (a very bare-chested Yoshifumi Tajima), finds that another, Santa (Ikio-chan), had a wad of cash stuffed in his suitcase, and it comes out that he'd been asked by a yakuza to steal something for money. The crew doesn't take this well. Santa apologizes, gives up the money, and describes the man who paid him off. Kaji and a few others decide to let the plan proceed, and then lie in wait while Santa presents the yakuza and his men with the goods he's procured.

Taro threatens the yakuza with a little sickle; the head yakuza Igarashi (Ren Yamamoto) pulls a pistol. But Kaji has even more men at the ready and they outnumber the yakuza. The boat cops(??) arrive and everyone disperses, but Kaji takes Igarashi back to the ship where Igarashi "helps him with his inquiries". Right as Igarashi is about to confess, though, an unknown party sticks their hand through a window and shoots him dead, leaving his gang's secrets beyond Kaji's reach - for now.

It's pretty obvious here that Kikumori, having been established as affiliated with yakuza, is somehow involved. After the failed confession scene, we're introduced to Hirata's character Toriumi along with some other henchmen. Toriumi is a hitman working under a Kobe yakuza boss named Tsukamoto (Jun Tazaki), who plans to take over Masue Shipping by force and establish a drug trade with their shipping routes. Tsukamoto is frustrated that Kikumori seems to be reluctant to get in Kaji's way and has a little parlay with him along with several of his goons.

I read a review of this movie that described it as having "elements of BL".

Toriumi dresses like he's in a '30s American gangster movie.

Yoshio Tsuchiya is here; he usually is.

So now we've got a few elements in play: Tsukamoto is an outside force pitting two men against each other who, although opposed morally, had been in equilibrium until then. And then we've got Toshio, who is a liability due to being such a chucklehead, and is still hanging around Blue Moon. Tsukamoto's gang discusses the boy with his henchmen and with Harumi (Akemi Kita), a waitress; I think I caught Toriumi saying basically "You want me to do him?" so our Wakadaisho is on thin ice. (Kaji actually calls Toshio "wakadan'na" - foreshadowing??)

I'm gonna have a coronary.

There's a little romantic subplot in the fact that, although Natsue lives with Kikumori, she's really in love with Kaji, and Kaji is in love with her too (Kikumori doesn't seem to treat her very well), but I don't care for romantic subplots so I was not paying attention to it. Yumi Shirakawa's character, the elder Masue's secretary, is also in love with Kaji. Natsue visits Kikumori in his office, but leaves when she sees that Shirakawa also has her eye on Kaji.

"Gomenasai" - sorry/forgive me.

Harumi is now working for Tsukamoto, and as I've said, Toshio is a galoot who is easily manipulated by her. This comes into play later. When Toriumi and his associates show up and Toriumi tries to snatch Harumi from Toshio, a big dramatic fight breaks out. Mifune is literally just chucking dudes bodily around the dance floor, it's extremely entertaining.

I have to say I'm really impressed by Hirata's acting here, he is unrecognizable as just this absolute dirtbag yakuza underling, such a deeply sleazy, nasty guy. He's speaking dialect, he wears a patterned silk shirt later in the movie, it's all very typical yakuza.

Mifune threw him into a fountain.

Meanwhile, back at the plot, Toshio has been persuaded by Harumi into stealing stock certificates from his father's safe. Toshio's father immediately knows it's his son who stole the certificates, so he goes to Harumi's place to confront him there. (I have to admit I'm getting a kick out of Kayama's first-ever screen role being "guy who sucks".)

Toriumi had been listening carefully from the closet somewhere outside Harumi's room, waiting for Shimura to leave, and once he did, he hit him with his car - not killing him, but critically injuring him. He is brought to surgery and his secretary assures Kaji that he'll be alright.

Toshio immediately regrets what he did and calls Harumi (who is also involved with Toriumi) to ask for the stock certificates back, but she tells him that she doesn't have them anymore. Kaji and Taro go to her room to confront/intimidate her, and at the same time Tsukamoto gets on the phone with her asking about the certificates - she decides to give them to Kaji and his man instead. It's right at this point in the film that Kaji learns the full extent of Kikumori's involvement with Tsukamoto, as Harumi confesses that Kikumori is a pawn in the whole thing.

Kaji goes to Kikumori and confronts him about his dealings with the Kobe gang, with his crew tailing him, making a nuisance of themselves and insisting to be served. There's an interesting dynamic going on here that I think serves as a thought-provoking contrast to later yakuza films: Kaji is the one who's in charge of a bunch of roughnecks, but they're hard-working, honest people; meanwhile Kikumori owns a nightclub full of dangerous men in sharp suits that looks posh on the surface but runs on corruption. We get to see our obligatory scantily-clad Toho nightclub dancer, who this time is actually a white lady. We also get nightclub fight scene #2, and while it is another all-out brawl, Kaji and Kikumori are the main fighters this time.

But suddenly a gunshot stops the commotion: it's Natsue, firing one of Kikumori's rifles to get everyone to stop fighting and make up.

Another thing I read about this movie when I was looking at reviews before watching it was that it's surprisingly mean to its women characters, and oh boy, is that ever true. Kikumori has Harumi "help him with his inquiries" in quite violent fashion involving the use of a hot shower. Somebody said that this "feels like a Nikkatsu movie" and I think that's a great way to sum it up. I think Toho was going for a deliberately gritty, rough vibe here, and it comes out pretty harrowing to watch at points, although it is ultimately too dated and fakey to feel genuinely upsetting.

I'm... not entirely sure where else to mention this, but I think Sachio Sakai is playing his character camp gay for some reason.

During one of the bar fights he breaks a bottle over someone's head and then apologizes.

Anyway, Tsukamoto has his heavies set fire to some cargo while Kaji's crew is working with it. Also, some more of Tsukamoto's men go to Blue Moon and dunk Toshio's head in a big pot full of water (again, very amused that this was the public's first impression of the guy who would become one of Toho's biggest heartthrobs).

Kaji seems to have confidence in Toshio despite him being a spoiled wimp, so he and Toshio announce their decision to take on a dangerous job hauling crates of gunpowder to regain some of the trust that was lost when their client's cargo got attacked under Masue Shipping's watch. The men agree, and Toshio goes back to his still-bandaged father to tell him that he's restoring their company's good name.

Because this movie kind of hates women, Toriumi assaults Natsue as she's about to leave Kikumori's house for good, and she then commits suicide. It really doesn't feel like there's any point to this.

Now, here is where we get to the part I was most anticipating based on what I had read about it in reviews: Kikumori and Toriumi have a rifle duel while both of them are riding speedboats, which is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds and I kind of love it. So much of this movie is goofy-icky, it's nice to see something that's just goofy-goofy.

Imagining some 16-year-old girl madly in love with Ryō Ikebe ca. 1960 watching this and just losing her entire mind

Both shoot, and Toriumi grazes Kikumori and knocks him over, but Kikumori kills Toriumi. (And now there's still ten minutes left to go, so I have to watch ten more minutes of Man Stuff to write about it on here...)

Kaji begins hauling the gunpowder, and Kikumori goes to Tsukamoto's lair to confront him and his men, but is ambushed by them. Hideyo Amamoto is here now as a miscellaneous unnamed henchman (his usual fare around this time). He dies quickly and has no lines but I always like seeing him.

Tsukamoto demands that Kikumori snipe the gunpowder while Kaji is loading it on the ship. They take him to the dock, hand him a rifle, and of course he starts shooting the yakuza instead. During the shootout, Kikumori is fatally wounded while kicking Kaji out of the way of one of the yakuza's bullets, and he tells Kaji that the Tsukamoto gang plan to shoot up the gunpowder and cause it to explode.

Kaji shoots Tsukamoto dead, effectively ending the whole plot - and the movie, as police sirens approach from the distance. I found it interesting that Kaji is almost in the same uniform he started the movie with, during the war flashback. Maybe some commentary about how Kaji stayed true to what he believed in as a soldier, while Kikumori "took off the uniform", so to speak, or maybe I'm reading way too much into it (I'm almost definitely reading way too much into it).

Well, I certainly have some quibbles with this movie from my 21st-century feminist standpoint, but setting that aside, this was pretty good. It was surprisingly rough (some awkward cuts in addition to the poor dubbing) but Toho movies were usually produced pretty quickly so that can be excused. Mifune is good as always, and Ikebe is a bit flat, but I thought Hirata was fantastic in this role. I feel like it's rare to see him get a role where he can actually be something instead of just delivering lines, and he always does it well, whether it requires him to be emotionally messed-up, like in Godzilla and Farewell Rabaul, or downright scummy, like in this movie.

In any event, you should go watch the whole thing for yourself, and when Toho puts this out on DVD like they should, I'll be the first to buy it and see it in decent quality instead of a grimy VHS rip.

不良少年 / Furyō shōnen / The Wicked Boy [1956]

Release date: June 1st, 1956

Director: Senkichi Taniguchi

Studio: Toho

Cast: Kenji Sugawara, Akira Kubo, Chishū Ryū, Kyoko Aoyama, Kyoko Anzai, Yasuko Nakata, Tatsuyoshi Ehara, Yu Fujiki, Akihiko Hirata, Makoto Satō, et al.

Availability: Theater screenings and possible television broadcasts within the past 5 years. No home media availability.

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Let's look at an old, obscure movie with Akira Kubo in it.

Because of its generic title (a less poetic translation could be something like "Bad Boy"¹, and it's far from the only movie called that), this one is a little difficult to find information about online. Even more difficult to find is information about the work it was adapted to the screen from, so that's what I'll cover first and foremost. Shigeru Nishimura's Humorless Diary of Youth [Warawanai seishun], released the previous year, formed the basis for the film. Nishimura seems to have had a rough go of it as a young man, first losing both of his parents before the age of 10, then landing in a sanatorium for tuberculosis treatment in his 20s (during which time he wrote his first novel), and eventually becoming a staff member at a juvenile welfare facility. Much of what Nishimura wrote centered around juvenile delinquents and orphans. Nishimura also wrote in opposition to nuclear testing and war.

In November of 1955, the work was adapted into a stage play by Haiyuza Theater Company. It ran for only just under two weeks and I can find virtually no information about it, but here's a page with some names of the staff and here's an auction listing of a pamphlet showing the names of the cast. Note that there is very small text in the lower right-hand corner of the cast page mentioning that the work will subsequently be made into a movie by Toho.

Adapting Nishimura's work to the screen fell to a team of two people: Ryūzo Kikushima and Dai Nishijima. Of the two, Kikushima is the most famous by far, with screenwriting credits for some of the most internationally famous Japanese films of all time: Stray Dog, Throne of Blood, Hidden Fortress, The Bad Sleep Well, and Tora! Tora! Tora!, just to name a few. Nishijima has fewer credits, but readers may recognize Farewell Rabaul and Girls in the Orchard.

Other names involved in the production of the film are some of our Toho frequent fliers: Tomoyuki Tanaka as producer, Senkichi Taniguchi as director, a young Kihachi Okamoto as assistant director, and Kazuo Yamada of The Vampire Moth as cinematographer.

The work seems to have been partially autobiographical, with the main character's name (Shigeo Nishida, played by Kenji Sugawara) bearing very obvious similarity to Nishimura's own. The film is set at a reform school for juvenile delinquents that houses a lot of war orphans, and Nishida, a teacher, was a former resident himself. As a teacher he tries to help the boys at the reformatory but they respond poorly. From synopses, there seems to be a story about multiple women in Nishida's life having to turn to prostitution running in parallel to the story of the boys at the reformatory. Akira Kubo and Tatsuyoshi Ehara play who I assume are the "leaders" of the delinquent boys, since their characters' names are the only ones mentioned in synopses. Hirata plays a character named Miyashita; given his age at the time I'm guessing he probably played a staff member as opposed to a resident at the reformatory, but who knows. His name is on posters, so he must have had some kind of role, but I can't find anything out about it. This was also Makoto Satō's debut film.

This is unfortunately quite an obscure one. Thanks to its screening at Showa Nerd Mecca Laputa Asagaya, we have this very tiny still photo, showing Akira Kubo and another actor (possibly Kenji Sugawara, given his prominence in the film) mud-wrestling.

Another tiny wee still comes from cinemanavi.com, again showing Kubo and Sugawara.

Oddly, the only actual promotional still I could find for the film is just a picture of Chishū Ryū's character. (We know it's from this film because the auction listing shows the title written in pencil on the back.)

Two separate Toho News pamphlets seem to have been produced for the film. These sort of pamphlets usually came with a text side that would give a synopsis, some hype, and the staff/cast, but unfortunately I can't find clear enough pictures to be able to translate any of the text. A Toho Studio Mail flyer was also published, but again, pictures are too grainy to make any of it out.

Speaking of screenings, there are a few that I can confirm: three at Laputa in 2010, 2017, and 2019, and two in 2014 at the unfortunately now closed Kichijoji Baus Theater and Shibuya's Cinema Vera. There must have been other screenings or television broadcasts because Filmarks also has reviews from 2023 and 2024. Reviews are a bit lacking in detail but seem generally quite positive, and one reviewer links the film to Taniguchi's previous film (also starring Hirata) No Response from Car 33. It is very reassuring to at least know that prints exist and are in good enough condition to be viewed.

you and I could have been seeing Furyō shōnen here if not for stupid inconsequential reasons, such as "not being in Japan in March of 2014"

Twitter user @honehone_man_7 gave us some pictures of Sugawara and Satō just a few months ago. From the quality of the pictures, these seem to have been taken from some kind of satellite TV broadcast. I'm guessing if it was broadcast on television it would have been on SkyPerfect, probably on the Satellite Theater channel, since that's where these kinds of things usually get shown.

That's about all I can give you. This film is still being viewed, and prints survive, which is more than I can say for a lot of things I talk about here, but it's frustrating that I can't see it (at least not now). As always, though, if I find a copy of the film or more information about it, I will post updates.

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¹ Nishimura's fifth novel was titled Furyō shōnen after the film adaptation of Warawanai seishun, but this seems to have largely been a name-recognition strategy; the content of the novel was completely different.

Godzilla Day Extra: How Many People Have Played Dr. Serizawa?

I did my serious, long-form Godzilla Day post, now it's time to do the "I can write whatever I want" one.

Ask most people who have seen a couple of Godzilla movies who played Dr. Serizawa and I'd wager most of them would be able to name Akihiko Hirata. Maybe. I could be assuming too much here. A solid 4 out of 10 respondents would most likely call him "Akihito", but at least they'd have the general idea.

But, regardless, I'd like to get a little silly with it and ask another question: Who else played Dr. Serizawa? I'm not talking about any of those extraneous Monsterverse Serizawas. I'm talking about our man Daisuke. How many people have played him? In my totally objective opinion as a normal human being, I consider the answer to that question to be not one, but six. I will elaborate forthwith.

Daisuke Serizawa #1: Akihiko Hirata

You know, him:

Daisuke Serizawa #2: Masahiko Naruse

Pre-faceplate removal.

If we were doing this chronologically, I would put this entry at the top, because Naruse was actually the first person to play Dr. Serizawa. He had the honor of voicing him in the radio drama Kaiju Gojira which was broadcast by Nippon Broadcasting System in late summer of 1954, preceding the film's release by several months. Something I'd like to note is that, while Naruse's given name was properly pronounced "Masahiko", the kanji (昌彦) can also be read a different way. And that different way is Akihiko. ("Masahiko" is also Hirata's older brother's birth name, of course, but if I recall correctly, it's spelled with different kanji.)

Naruse was an accomplished screen actor who was frequently cast in villain roles. As with many Japanese actors who continued their career through the decline of the film industry and the rise of television, he was more prolific on TV than he was in the theater. Us tokusatsu fans might recognize him as the robot secretary in episode 48 of Ultraseven, who has had several figures and toys made of him. He would later play the human form of some other aliens in the Ultra series as well, namely Alien Prote and Alien Nackle from Return of Ultraman. 

Naruse did end up co-starring with Hirata in one film: Siege of Fort Bismarck, 1963, the one where he jumps into the Big Pool with all his clothes on. Apart from that, the two had guest roles in different episodes of a few television series, but never in the same episode at the same time.

[sighs deeply] I have to cover Young Serizawa next, I guess. I knew this day would come.

Daisuke Serizawa #3: Miki Otani

The Docs are a must for any Serizawa cosplayer worth their salt.

So I actually do not know who this person is. I'd include a picture of her, but I can't find any, so we have to look at that goddamn thing instead. Another Miki Otani has a Wikipedia page and is a fairly prolific voice actor, but her name is spelled with different kanji, so I'm not sure it's the same person. Godziban's Otani plays multiple roles including singing the title theme and narrating at various points, and also voices Luluvera, the priestess of the juvenile Battra named Basshu. (A lot happens in Godziban, please don't ask me to summarize it all.)

I may not have been able to find out much information about Miki Otani, but I at least have her name. For our next two entries, however, we're going to take a look at two actors whose identity is entirely unknown, before concluding with one actor for whom it would be difficult to find anybody in the world who hasn't seen him at least once.

Daisuke Serizawa #4: Whoever this person was

I've never, ever heard anybody speculate about the identity of the two people playing Serizawa and Ogata in the shots of them during their dive to deploy the Oxygen Destroyer, which is unusual, considering that people have speculated about pretty much every single millisecond of Godzilla. Takarada and Hirata filmed their scenes on land, with an aquarium full of water placed between them and the camera to simulate the ocean, but there were actual underwater scenes filmed with "stunt" actors as well, and to my knowledge, no one has ever identified who those actors were.

One guess would be that they were Haruo Nakajima and Katsumi Tezuka, the film's two main suit actors. Nakajima was no stranger to (almost dying during) underwater filming, so Toho definitely had in him someone who could do underwater scenes in a heavy suit. But that's just conjecture. We might never know. These days stock footage might be used in a similar circumstance, but it's obvious that the underwater scenes in Godzilla were shot specifically for the film, since one of the actors is holding the Oxygen Destroyer prop.

"Daisuke" "Serizawa" #5: Whoever this person was

You're kidding me here, right? Surely Terry Morse or whoever else I can blame for this would not truly have the audacity to use a body double for Serizawa in profile shots?

The actors who played the body doubles of the Japanese cast in Godzilla, King of the Monsters! were uncredited within the film, and I cannot find any other sources that mention their names. If this particular body double wasn't either a crew member or a random person they hired for a single day of work, I guess it's plausible we might find them in Jewell Enterprises' other two sterling productions, Untamed Women and Girls on the Loose, but I'm sure as hell not scrubbing through those movies on the off chance I might be able to spot this person.

Also, it bothers me that the font they chose for the closing credits makes the letter "T" look like a capital "C", somehow.

Comoyuki Canaka. You can't unsee this now.

Our last Serizawa needs no introduction.

Daisuke Serizawa #6: James Hong

James Hong, along with his comedy partner Sammee Tong, voiced all¹ the Japanese roles in Godzilla, King of the Monsters!. I'll let Wikipedia explain the process:

"The dubbing for the entire film was recorded in under five hours. James Hong and his then comedy partner Sammee Tong were cast to provide the voices. They were locked in a room with Morse and were told to read for every role. Each line was recorded at different speeds and the best one was chosen to match the footage. The voice actors never saw the film as they recorded their lines, and completed the entire film sitting at a table with a microphone before them. Hong confirmed that several Japanese actors auditioned for the voice-over job. However, Hong and Sammee Tong were hired due to their versatility. Tong recorded voices for six older characters, while Hong recorded for seven younger characters."

Locked in a room with another guy, given nothing to contextualize your role, just you, a microphone, and a table, for five hours? Sounds more like a police interrogation than a dubbing session.

I almost didn't include Hong in this list, because once I start to talk about dubs, that way madness lies. Because who dubbed Serizawa in the Spanish dub of Godzilla? Or the Chinese dub? Or the Russian dub? How many languages has it been dubbed into? If I start counting voice actors, do I have to expand this list to include every single voice actor from every single dub? Is that a threat? It might be. But for now, we're going to let James Hong represent all non-Japanese Serizawa VAs, and leave it at that.

So, yes, six people, and one of them a woman. Between Miki Otani and Dr. Ashizawa from Water Monster Yagon I think we can posit that being a Serizawa or Serizawa-adjacent character is open to all genders. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

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1 Just to be as pedantic as possible, I should also mention the unknown second Serizawa dubber who occasionally cuts in for brief lines. As far as I know this other voice actor hasn't been identified, and the way the dub switches between him and Hong gives the whole thing an even more slapdash quality than it already had.