丼池 / Dobuike [1963 & 1968]

drawing by Kisaku Ito for the 1963 set plans

Background

Today we're going to look at three separate performances (and one film adaptation) of the same play. As I mention nearly every time I write about a stage play, it's difficult to research plays because there's usually not a wealth of visual evidence for them, and my area of interest is, of course, confined to a time before everybody had a camera in their pocket. But I'm pleasantly surprised that I was able to find a decent amount of information and images this time, so this post will run a bit longer than my other stage play posts.

What does "Dobuike" mean? I'll copy/paste Kotobank's definition, because it is as clear and concise as you're going to get: "A pond located in Minamisenba, Chuo Ward, Osaka City. It was filled in 1874. Before World War II, furniture wholesalers and textile wholesalers were crowded along Dobuike-suji, which faced the pond. Formerly known as Ashiike". 

The plays we're looking at today were written specifically for the stage; they are not adaptations of older literary works or traditional theater. The author/director of Dobuike was Kazuo Kikuta, who is so prolific and esteemed within his home country that to give a brief overview of his career in English feels almost insulting. Kikuta began as a playwright in the mid-1920s, working closely with Roppa Furukawa and his troupe, and then joined Toho in 1936. He left Roppa's troupe due to creative differences in 1943 and eventually became one of Toho's foremost stage directors in the 1950s. Kikuta was an enormously significant figure in the world of post-war Japanese stage musicals, and among many other achievements, he acquired the rights to My Fair Lady and became the first Japanese person to stage a Broadway musical. Many of his works focused on Osaka, including Dobuike.

I would encourage you to research Kikuta yourself if this sounds interesting to you - his career is far more expansive than I can cover here. Somehow, despite his domestic fame, he doesn't have an English Wikipedia page, but maybe some of you read French?

The Play (and the Movie)

The play is set in a back alley off of Dobuike-suji, where textile wholesalers do business. Masa Kanazawa, a woman with ten years of experience as a shop clerk who's just been cheated out of her life's savings, seeks a loan from Katsumi Muroi, the president of Muroi Trading, so that she might start fresh at a co-op trading center. To this end she meets with Sadahiko Kanemitsu, head clerk of the Sonoda firm. Katsumi is not in the business of giving out loans freely, and insists on carefully investigating the circumstances of her borrowers beforehand. To quote the synopsis from the booklet accompanying the Umeda Koma Stadium performance: "When we lend, we look like the Salvation Army; when the payment comes due, we look like vampires".

Chūhei Sonoda, president of the Sonoda firm, approaches Katsumi to arrange for a loan to a business in Minami-Kyūhōji. Initially Katsumi refuses, but then "Old Lady Matsuko", the firm's primary financier, steps in and asks Katsumi personally to provide the loan. This is not out of kindness, however; to quote the synopsis again, Matsuko says "You don’t necessarily have to drive them into bankruptcy; just strip them of their rights, transfer the business to someone else, and pocket the difference."

Then, a woman named Umeko Murata appears, asking for a financial consultation with Matsuko. Matsuko refuses, able to see through Umeko and recognize that she herself intends to bleed the local merchants dry, but Umeko forces the matter. Umeko is denied a loan from Katsumi, and through desperation, she winds up exploiting the weakness of Masunaga, a section chief at Iiyama Manufacturing, for women.

Katsumi, meanwhile, seeks to get out from under Matsuko's auspices by any means necessary. Finally, she comes up with an idea: Muroi Trading is to begin offering "Treasure Investment" certificates in the form of promissory notes, a scheme wherein the firm takes their customers' money and invests it in high-yield ventures that promise good returns. This would otherwise be illegal if it were not set up in the form of a "loan relationship": the customer gives money and receives a promissory note in return. The Treasure Investment concept proves enormously lucrative. Katsumi is able to break free of Matsuko, and even leaves her fiancé to focus solely on moneylending.

Although, to me, that sounds very serious and complicated, Kikuta ends his introduction in the Umeda Koma Stadium booklet by wishing his audience "an enjoyable day filled with laughter", so it's possible the actual play is more light-hearted than the synopsis makes it out to be.

In September of 1963, Toho released a film adaptation of Dobuike, which was directed by Seiji Hisamatsu, written by Giichi Fujimoto, and based off of Kikuta's original story. The main four actresses again reprised their roles, with a few new additions (notably Kenji Sahara). What's surprising to me about this movie is that, despite how detailed and colorful the sets appear to have been, the movie itself is in black-and-white.

Since we don't have any video from any of the plays, watching the movie would be our only chance to see Kikuta's original story performed with a live cast. Unfortunately, the movie is as obscure as the plays: it's been broadcast on television a few times, but never released to streaming or physical home media.

As for the main cast, it's a bit difficult to break it all down thanks to Dobuike having been staged so many times, but here's my best shot:

• Mitsuko Mori plays Masa Kanazawa in both 1963 plays and the 1963 film; Yuko Hamaki plays Masa in the 1968 Imperial Theater performance.
• Isuzu Yamada plays Umeko Murata in all three plays; Michiyo Aratama plays Umeko in the film.
• Aiko Mimasu plays Matsuko Taira in every version.
• Yoko Tsukasa plays Katsumi Muroi in every version.
• Akihiko Hirata plays Sadahiko Kanemitsu in all three plays; Keiji Sada¹ plays Sadahiko in the film.
• Kenzo Tabu plays Chūhei Sonoda in the Umeda Koma Stadium performance, and Ganjiro Nakamura II plays Chūhei in the film; the casting for this role in the other two plays is unknown to me.

I gather that Dobuike is Women's Business™. In Kikuta's aforementioned introduction, he highlights the main four actresses first, and then just kind of says "oh yeah and I guess the guys are pretty good too". Hirata himself is not mentioned at all in the Umeda Koma Stadium booklet aside from once, in a review, and it's a similar "and he is also there" statement. (Reviewers also were not shy about blatant spoilers, and as such I know that the story does not end well for Katsumi.)

Anyway, we'll move on now to the plays themselves. 

The Performances

1963 / Geijutsu-za [Arts Theater]

The first stage adaptation of Dobuike opened on New Year's Day, 1963, and ran into February; exact dates elude me. I'd imagine there's a booklet for this performance floating around somewhere, but I haven't seen any copies, if so.

The Geijutsu-za was a relatively small theater (to us, anyway) with a seating capacity of 750, located on the 4th floor of Toho's headquarters in Yurakucho, Chiyoda ward, Tokyo. It was directly managed by Toho - another thing foreign to us, since in America production companies cannot own theaters due to anti-trust laws. As of 1963 the theater was only 5 years old. Mitsuko Mori, one of the stars of Dobuike, appeared frequently in plays staged at the Geijutsu-za: she made her debut at the theater in 1958, and when it closed in 2005, she starred in its final performance.

The art director for this version of the play was Kisaku Ito, whose beautiful drawings for the set design you can see here. I really would recommend taking a look at them, they are absolutely gorgeous. Kikuta both wrote and directed this performance, which was staged by Toho. Ito died just five years after staging this play; his Wikipedia page doesn't note a cause, but he was only 67.

1963 / Umeda Koma Stadium

This second performance was staged at the Umeda Koma Stadium (now the Umeda Arts Theater) in Osaka, with involvement from Toho, and ran from June 1st to June 26th. I got my hands on a pamphlet for this performance and uploaded the entire thing to Internet Archive. As usual for my scans, they're not very good, but you should still be able to read the text, if that's what you desire.

Kazuo Kikuta again directed the play, and Kisaku Ito again handled the art direction, though we have no pictures of the set design apart from what's in the booklet. 

There actually are a lot of pictures of Hirata's character Sadahiko in this booklet, which I was not expecting. I'd been assuming his role was relatively minor, but he seems to have had a lot of scenes. Considering this, it's not surprising that Hirata didn't appear in the movie adaptation; after performing the same role twice a day (there was a matinee and evening show for this run) every day for a month, twice within one year, he was probably sick of it. (His friend Motohide Katayama recalls him mentioning that he preferred to act on film rather than the stage, because he found playing the same role over and over fairly boring.)

I will now direct your attention to his funky sweater:

1968 / Imperial Theater [Teikoku Gekijō]

We have some inside information about this run of the play courtesy of Makoto Kobayashi, a Toho stage actor who I have mentioned here before and who is still active online in his 90s. (In the above picture, Kobayashi is the guy standing around looking intimidating.)

I'm sorry, I just need to reiterate that. Makoto Kobayashi is blogging. He's 92 and he's blogging. He's a Showa-era Toho-contracted stage actor who is 92 years old and he is blogging about his career with perfect clarity. Toho fans, you all should be paying attention to this guy.

Anyway, this second run of the play ran from December 2nd to December 27th with largely the same cast. Kobayashi notes that during one performance one of the actors (Kinzo Takahashi) accidentally bumped into a piece of stage equipment during the show and made a hole in it, which made Isuzu Yamada and Aiko Mimasu laugh so hard that the play came to a stop for a few moments. Kobayashi also mentions that he fell asleep on stage while performing his role as a detective hiding out in some bushes. (He says that he did get scolded, but admits sleeping on stage feels really nice.) Kobayashi also has a pamphlet from this run of the play that I've never seen for sale or auction before.

Kazuo Kikuta was still credited for the original work, but for this run of the play Junji Tsumura directed.  I can't find much out about Tsumura; he may have been under Toho's employ, as the only other credits of his that I can dig up are other plays staged at Toho-owned venues, but I don't know anything for sure.

Conclusion

At some point I am going to have to figure out how to write a proper segue into an ending.

______

1 Toho casting department: "Okay, for our character Sadahiko we need somebody with either 'Sada' or 'Hiko' in his name, no exceptions."