Legend of the Irresponsible Hero II: 2 Irresponsible 2 Heroic

I greet you again today with news of new subtitles! I was not planning on making another post for Legend of the Irresponsible Hero (I already wrote one with less detail a few years back), but once I started subtitling the movie I found that there was, in fact, still enough to talk about to justify a new post.

We'll start with a little production history.

A Little Production History

Production on this one was touch-and-go. The film was originally slated for a March release, but during filming, in January of 1964, Hitoshi Ueki was hospitalized for about a month due to overwork. (Unsurprising; I'm not sure how all seven of these guys were not constantly either overworked or ending up with broken ankles from all their stunts). The film was eventually released in the middle of July on a double bill with Hiromichi Horikawa's Brand of Evil. 

According to Keiko Awaji's audio commentary, the Hong Kong location shooting was done at the same time as the shooting for the previous film Crazy Cats Go To Hong Kong. There is something kind of weird going on with some of the location footage, specifically the external location shots done in Macau; the bottom of the frame is occasionally blurry in some shots, and the film stock seems different. I'm wondering if post-production was especially rushed, because that's not the only film oddity here; a good number of the cuts in this movie are noticeably very messy and have visible artifacting along the bottom of the screen.

Example of blurry frame...

 

...and messy cut. And these are both from the HD remaster, which if anything makes the sloppy cut job even more obvious.

This was director Toshio Sugie's last time with the Cats, which is too bad; his entries in the series are some of the most outlandish and spectacular. Sugie had worked for Toho since its PCL days and was very versatile, contributing entries to many of Toho's big series: the President series, the Young Guy series, their lesser-known Rakugo Guy films, and the Crazy series, of course.

Music is a huge part of these Crazy Cats movies, obviously. The two people responsible for creating the film's soundtrack were Hiroaki Hagiwara (music) and Shigeru Tsukada (lyrics). Hagiwara was involved with Crazy Cats in some way or another even before the band was in its final form: he was initially a member of the band's predecessor Hajime Hana and the Cuban Cats, but left to focus on composing music. He continued to write for the band up to his death, including writing Hitoshi Ueki's big hit Suudara-bushi. In addition to that, though, he also wrote for other singers, one of whom just so happened to be Yoshiko Otowa, Akihiko Hirata's younger sister. Listen to Ramen Girl in Love here.¹

I think you should also know this about him:

In the waiting room at Hakodate Port, Hagiwara was reading the newspaper. Soon [Hitoshi] Ueki noticed a strange smell and took a closer look, seeing that Hagiwara's coat was touching the stove, and a faint wisp of smoke was rising from it. "[Y]ou should move a little further away," Ueki warned, but Hagiwara only gave a half-hearted reply and continued reading the newspaper. Soon the coat began to burn, so Ueki said, "Your coat is on fire," but Hagiwara replied, "I know," and continued reading the newspaper.

Fly Pan Am: International Distribution

Legend of the Irresponsible Hero opened at the Toho La Brea on September 23rd, 1966 under the title It's a Bet, and was shown as a double feature with Dark the Mountain Snow, a now-mostly-forgotten Hideko Takamine picture directed by Zenzō Matsuyama. Just a few weeks prior, the Toho La Brea had also shown Boss of Pick-Pocket Bay on a double-bill with Campus A-Go-Go. The movie continued to kick around until October and was then never shown theatrically again, as far as I can determine. I have not found any indication that the movie had any theatrical screenings outside of Japan and the United States.

Crazy Cats were not unknown outside of Japan at this time, but were certainly not a household name; places like Hawai'i and Los Angeles that had a large nisei and sansei population and theaters that showed Japanese films would have been familiar with them. In fact, 1966 could probably be considered the height of the Cats' international stardom, as they actually made a visit to Toho's Honolulu theater in July of that year.

Although this section is for international distribution, I do want to at least mention briefly that when the film was aired on television in Japan in 2019, previews introduced Hirata's character with the subtitle "The Man Who Killed Godzilla and Zetton".

...Zetton? Really? Zetton? I mean... technically, I guess?

Image credit @kortoku on Twitter

Don't Have A Macau, Man: Geographic Context and Gambling

As of 1964, Macau was still a Portuguese territory. Japan (surprisingly) did not occupy the island during the second World War aside from installing "government advisors", and it was actually the United States who were responsible for really the only direct military action that occurred during the war, when they bombed the island after learning that the colonial government had plans to sell fuel to Japan. Portugal relinquished control over Macau to China in 1974 as a "Portuguese territory under Chinese administration" and finally agreed to hand over the colony entirely by 1999.

(You will notice in the opening credits that the Hong Kong actors have "Cathay Organization" written in parentheses next to their names. That is these folks. I do not know if Cathay had any stake in the actual production of the film or if their involvement was limited strictly to providing actors.)

Now is the part of the post where I talk about gambling, which had been legal in Macau since the 1850s. This is skippable, since I don't think there's any part of the movie that will be completely ruined if you don't have context for the game that's being played, but I had to learn this, so dammit, now you do, too. Here's a quick run-down of all the games played in Legend of the Irresponsible Hero.

Sic Bo

Also known as "big and small", this is an uneven game of chance that essentially involves betting on the outcome of a dice roll. It's commonly played in casinos across Asia but has spread internationally. You can read more about it on its English Wikipedia page here. As one would expect, we only see Ueki's character win at sic bo, specifically with a triple match, which according to Wikipedia has a 215-to-1 chance of happening, and he does it twice.

Oicho-kabu

Ueda and Hanaki play a quick round of oicho-kabu in Hanaki's apartment in loving memory of Hanaki's mustache. You can read about oicho-kabu on Wikipedia here; it is from this game that we get the word "yakuza", but oddly enough the name of the game itself is derived from the Portuguese for "eight end" (oito cabo). Oicho-kabu can also be played with a hanafuda deck, which is mentioned in the film's theme song ("cherry blossom and moon over the mountain, plum and pine" are all hanafuda cards).

Mahjongg

You already know what mahjongg is.

In the cold open of Legend of the Irresponsible Hero, Ueda wins with a "Big Three Dragons" hand, which jisho.org defines as a "winning hand consisting of pungs or kongs of each of the three types of dragon tiles​". This means that Ueda held three-of-a-kinds (or four-of-a-kinds) of each of the three dragon "suits". To tell you the truth, I am never more miserable while subtitling a movie than I am when people are playing mahjongg. Fortunately, it doesn't show up in the movie any more after the opening.

Chō-han

You most likely also know what chō-han is if you've seen even one yakuza film, ever, at any point in your life. Incredibly simple: two dice go into a cup, the cup is shaken, players bet on whether the dice will be even (cho) or odd (han). And yet, the amount of onscreen bloodshed that has resulted from such a rudimentary game...

Ueda and Zhang play three rounds of cho-han against each other at the end of the film, although Zhang cheats... kind of? I don't think there's really any way to cheat at cho-han unless you play with loaded dice, since it's pure chance, but he does take advantage of his opponent's weakness. Read about chō-han on Wikipedia's very short and sweet page for it here.

Rōkyoku LARPing: Historical Background

A memorial stone erected by Torazo Hirozawa, originator of "Torazo-bushi" whom we met in our Boss of Pick-Pocket Bay / Crazy Violence at Shimizu Harbor post.

It is a relatively major recurring joke in Irresponsible Hero that Hanaki and Ueda think their situation is just like the famed "Brawl at Koujinyama", and they invoke the story as motivation and justification for their adventures in Macau (much to the chagrin of their long-suffering significant others). This is obviously familiar ground for Japanese viewers, but it is as obscure or even more so than much of the Shimizu Jirocho lore we discussed in our post about the same would be to non-Japanese viewers. (Actually, this IS Shimizu Jirocho lore, just a kind of side-story. The Shimizu Jirocho Cinematic Universe, if you will.)

The "Brawl at Koujinyama" refers to a turf war that took place on April 6th and 8th, 1866, at what is now the site of Koujinyama Kannon-ji temple in Suzuka City. It began as a dispute between two gamblers, Nagakichi of Kanbe and Annotoku (the nickname of Tokujiro Anou), the latter of whom was a local yakuza boss who had seized territory - including a gambling den, hence the relevance in Irresponsible Hero - as his own. The conflict escalated when Jirocho of Shimizu himself got involved after hearing of the death of his sworn brother Nikichi Kira. Jirocho supposedly raised 480 men against Annotoku's side; the battle ended in an apology and an eventual peace agreement, which was finalized in 1869. Among the combatants and serving as something of a mediator was Jirocho's man Omasa, played by Hirata in both Crazy Cats Shimizu films.

Nikichi Kira, who both Hanaki and Ueda seem to want to be, became sort of a folk hero after his death by gunshot wound(!) at the age of 28 during the battle at Koujinyama. Nagakichi of Kanbe, Chen Shumei's counterpart according to Hanaki, was an underling of Annotoku until his adopted son got into a fight and his house was set on fire by Annotoku's men. Nagakichi survived the conflict.

This battle, while historical, has been embellished over the years (as has Jirocho) through its telling by kōdan and rōkyoku performers. This kind of thing was experiencing a resurgence in the mid-1960s, which may explain both its inclusion in Legend of the Irresponsible Hero and the impetus behind the two Shimizu films.

"Have You Spotted Any Suckers?": Translation Notes

I actually do not have much else to say in the way of translation notes; much of the context I feel is necessary to fully understand the film's historical references has already been explained above. The only thing I really want to mention is that the long musical number in the middle of the film is sung in the format of a specific type of traditional counting song where the opening verse of each stanza begins with a number ("one", "two", etc; or in Japanese "hitotsu", "futatsu", etc) and then the verse that follows begins with the same kana as the initial number. I found that there was no way to make this work in English without compromising the translation itself, so I had to settle for using the same letter to begin the first two verses.

I guess I should also mention that I did not translate the Chinese dialogue directly at all; I translated it from the on-screen Japanese subtitles, which from experience are not always quite accurate, but, also from experience, it is an absolute fool's errand for a non-Chinese speaker (myself) to attempt to translate Chinese phonetically. (I did transcribe the English dialogue by ear as opposed to using the Japanese subtitles, because allegedly I do speak English.)

Now, in conclusion, I'm going to get a little weird for the ensuing several paragraphs. Bear with me here. I was a linguistics nerd before I was anything else.

I am very fond of Akihiko Hirata's English performance in this film, and I wanted to make sure I was accurately transcribing it, which led me down a bit of a rabbit hole that involved, among other things, rewatching Submarine E-57 Will Not Surrender so that I could get a feel for the specific way that he spoke English. That he could speak it at more than just a phonetic/memorization level is kind of a slightly ridiculous hill that I will nevertheless die on. 

Due to the aforementioned rabbit hole, I realized that I think I can actually kind of tell not only that he did have some level of formal instruction in English, but specifically when and from whom he learned it. And this is not specific to him by any means; a lot of native Japanese speakers who you hear speaking more than a word or two of English in Showa-era films will have a similar speech pattern. 

Listen to this British Pathé newsreel from 1933 (another good example here)...

...and then listen to Hirata's English lines in Latitude Zero.

I don't know how much of this is just me bullshitting, but it would make a ton of sense that he'd pick up basically a Received Pronunciation speech pattern considering that he had to have learned English sometime in the first half of the twentieth century (by 1956 at the very latest, since A Brother and His Sister, released that year, was the first time I'm aware of that he spoke English on film) and probably not from an American, considering the political climate at the time. Admittedly, though, he also just naturally had really strong vocal fry, which could be part of why it sounds to me like he's got a little RP in his English, since vocal fry was very characteristic of RP speakers from the time (look up more Pathé newsreels for examples).

So I could be utterly, completely wrong about all of this, but I do think it's striking to listen to those two clips back-to-back. I love his performance as Zhang in Irresponsible Hero, and it was really intriguing to realize for the first time "wait, could he be using RP?"

Anyway, yeah, that's it, that's all I had to say. If you're still with me at this point, shoutout to you.

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1 Me hearing Kei Tani say "Don't cry, little sister" in Legend of the Irresponsible Hero: "OMG, is he referencing Yoshiko Otowa's 1953 King Records A-side duet with Toshiro Oumi, 'Don't Cry, Little Sister'?!"