花の中の娘たち / Hana no naka no musumetachi / Girls in the Orchard [1953]

Release date: September 15th, 1953

Director: Kajiro Yamamoto

Studio: Toho

Cast: Mariko Okada, Yoko Sugi, Keiju Kobayashi, Hiroshi Koizumi, Eijiro Tono, Fumiko Honma, Sachio Sakai, Shoichi Hirose, Akihiko Hirata, Mitsue Tachibana, Kazuko Ran et al.

Availability: No physical media release. Streaming in HD on JP Amazon. Available in full on Internet Archive with English subtitles.

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The first thing to know about Girls in the Orchard is that it was Toho's first full-color film. It's always been surprising to me how obscure it is, considering that - Toho hasn't even put it out on DVD (yet), although it is available on Amazon. It's also somewhat surprising that I've neglected to write about it for so long, since it is a personal favorite of mine. Let's fix that, and wish this movie a happy 73rd birthday, which is today.

Fairly risqué poster (by 1953 standards, at least) for an incredibly tame movie.

It is necessary at this juncture to provide some background on the history of color film. The first really widely-used color film was of course Kodachrome, introduced by Eastman Kodak in 1935 and, relevant to our current discussion, available in Japan starting in 1936. Around the same time, in the mid-1930s, Japan had a pretty good thing going with chemical development domestically as well: Fujifilm, now a worldwide conglomeration, was founded in January of 1934 as a spinoff of Dainippon Celluloid.

Japan's first domestically-produced color reversal film was not, however, a Fujifilm product. In 1941, the company Rokuosha began manufacturing their Sakura Natural Color Film, sold by the company that would later become Konica. Rokuosha's film used the same development method as Kodachrome - which Rokuosha had spent five years researching - but to avoid patent issues, they chose to use a development method where color development was controlled by exposure instead of by chemicals. Ironically, Kodachrome would itself switch to this method later.

Obviously some stuff was happening in the 1940s, so Rokuosha was forced to suspend film production until 1948, but by that time Fujifilm had also gotten their game on, releasing Fujicolor Reversal Film (sometimes just called "Fuji Color Film") in 1948. This is what Girls in the Orchard was shot on. Fujicolor's descendant, the Fujichrome line, was launched in 1972 and still continues down to this day. The most recent product, Fujichrome Provia, is quite expensive on eBay and, from what I've heard, lauded by film enthusiasts.

To discuss the first color motion picture ever made in Japan, we have to dial back all the way to 1937, when Dai Nippon Natural Color Film produced Thousand Stitches (Senninbari) using foreign-made stock. Long considered lost, Thousand Stitches was rediscovered in 2003 during a reorganization of the Russian State Film Archive and restored by IMAGICA Ltd. Japan's first effort at producing a color film on domestically-made stock would unfortunately not be so lucky: 1945's Song of Spring (Haru no uta), produced using Fujicolor while still in its prototype stage, was destroyed in an air raid just before completion. Daiei would make another attempt in 1947 with Cabaret Flower Basket (Kiyabare no hanakago), but for unknown reasons this film was shelved and never screened.

Since previous efforts were pretty fragmentary and largely do not survive, Shochiku's 1951 film Carmen Comes Home (Karumen Kokyo ni kaeru) is generally considered Japan's first domestically-produced color film, also shot with Fujicolor. Ironically, both Carmen Comes Home and Girls in the Orchard share similar thematic elements, but treat them much differently: while Carmen involves a girl from the city embarrassing her rural family with her newfangled ways, Girls depicts a girl living in the country who desperately wants to move to the city. Following Carmen, Shochiku released their second color film in January of 1953: Natsuko's Adventure (Natsuko no bouken), an adaptation of a Yukio Mishima novel. This all leads us to Girls in the Orchard.

Issue 68 of Kinema Junpo, published in late July, featured some very rare behind-the-scenes pictures from Girls in the Orchard in its gravure section. (No, not that kind of gravure.) I own this issue, and decided to scan it, even though sticking a tattered 76-year-old magazine in my flatbed scanner gave me the agita, so here's the full 2-page spread:

The accompanying text goes over everything I've already discussed about color film and provides a short synopsis, which is available elsewhere, so it's not really worth quoting. We'll move on.

In the early days of color film (and even more so with black-and-white film), actors had to wear makeup tinted in very specific, unrealistic colors in order for their faces to photograph well. The Wikipedia page for Carmen Comes Home notes that Shochiku staff were actively learning during production what colors did and didn't come out good, and that the actors were not used to the kind of makeup they had to wear for this production. One can assume this was the same for Girls in the Orchard, since both were shot using Fujicolor. You can read more about makeup for early film here, although (as with many things...) it seems to have been written with only white people in mind.

As you can see, both the makeup and the sets used in the film were clearly designed to showcase what Fujicolor could do, similar to the way 3D movies often feature conspicuous scenes of stuff being thrust at the camera:

Makeup for the actors was not the only problem with color film that Toho's staff had to deal with: lighting was also an issue, since the film stock required the set to be much brighter than otherwise, and lighting technician Toshio Takashima recalls passing out on set due to the heat. Lead actress Mariko Okada also later said that there were so many reflective foil panels required to light close-up shots that it was almost blinding. All in all, despite this movie being such a milestone, Toho (and perhaps the industry as a whole) seems to have regarded color film technology as not quite ready for use at scale yet.

An interesting side note about this movie is that Toho's sponsor for it, Lion Corporation, who makes hygiene products, is still very much in business and you can buy their stuff. You will notice their Green Lion toothpaste pop up here and there throughout the movie.

This was, rather obviously, Akihiko Hirata's first role in a color film, but it's also one of his first roles in general, being the 4th of 5 films he appeared in during his first year of professional acting in 1953. He plays Kitakoji, a student (another side note: in 4 out of those 5 movies, he plays a student) from a Tokyo music school who comes to stay at the orchard run by the family of Mariko Okada's character, Momoko. Momoko seems to alternately have a really bad crush on Kitakoji and hate him a little, since he represents everything about refined, high-class Tokyo living that she wishes she had.

I like this role, even though Kitakoji doesn't do much aside from driving around a tiny car full of junk and playing the flute. It's a nice role for Hirata specifically, too, considering that he was very musically inclined in real life and did play one or two instruments (although I've never heard anything to indicate the flute was one of them).

He is so 25 years old in this.

Speaking of music, the soundtrack for this film was composed by Raymond Gallois-Montbrun, a Vietnam-born French violinist and composer who happened to be visiting Japan in 1952-53. Gallois-Montbrun doesn't seem to have done soundtracks for any other Japanese film, so I have no idea how Toho managed to snag him for this one. I'm not sure if the film's cast would have had any knowledge of the soundtrack ahead of time, but I can guarantee that Hirata would've been super into Gallois-Montbrun doing music for this film if he'd known about it, since he was himself a classical music nerd.

As one might be able to guess just from considering the age of the movie and the rapid growth of the Tokyo metropolitan area, the rural pear farm that Girls in the Orchard takes place in and around is no longer so rural today. While I haven't been able to find an exact filming location, the movie is set (and, I believe, filmed) around the Tama River, which separates Tokyo from Kanagawa. That the Ishii family grows pears is not just random: there are so many different cultivars of pears grown around the Tama River region that there is a Wikipedia page for "Tamagawa Pear".

You can also read (with a translator extension) a lovely blog post here from someone who went to visit the area where Girls in the Orchard was filmed. What is unfortunate, though, is that the author notes that the protection of the land and its pear orchards for agricultural purposes will end "in a few years", and since that post was written in 2019, I'm not sure if the orchards are still there today or have been built over.

Hiroshige Utagawa's "Autumn Moon over Tamagawa".

Now we can move on to looking at how this film was received, both within Japan and without. Kinema Junpo, Japan's oldest and most influential film magazine, featured Girls in the Orchard in five separate issues in 1953. Undoubtedly Girls was also covered in other film publications, but Kinema Junpo is both the most prominent and the only one I'm aware of that maintains a database. Unfortunately, I only own four of those five issues, but the first mention of Girls was only an introduction, which probably just meant a synopsis and a list of the cast & crew.

I usually wear gloves when handling my old books and magazines to protect them, but with issue 79, the gloves are for my own protection. I don't know what that is on the cover but it's yucky.

We've already looked at issue 68 above, so we'll stick to what was published in issues 73, 76, and 79. Issue 73, from September, doesn't really have anything interesting for us - it's mostly just a lengthy synopsis - but it does provide us our only published mention of Akihiko Hirata and his character. Since nothing else about the introduction is original, I'll only quote that part (hey, at least I'm open about my biases):

[...]Momoko herself harbors feelings for Kitakoji (Akihiko Hirata), a music student boarding at the Ishii home. He stirs romantic feelings in Momoko by playing the flute for her, but his words and actions eventually reveal that he is an outsider - someone who does not truly belong in this rural setting. He appears somewhat frivolous, so the audience grasps the author's perspective on him from the start. Ultimately, the scenes capturing the pastoral rapport between Momoko and Katsuzo are more successful than the interactions between Momoko and the music student.

 Let's look now at Kinema Junpo's review of the film from issue 76, published in October and written by one Heiichi Sugimoto. I will quote it here in full.

This is the third color film, and like the previous two, it is a cheerful, amusing work. Interpreting color as something bright and liberating, and selecting subject matter that reflects this, demonstrates a rather elementary approach to color, though it is also a safe choice. Yet, the very fact that color is used consciously here - and this film is particularly deliberate in that regard - is significant.

At a basic level, it seems easiest to view color as representing mundane everyday life. As lipstick symbolized the secular world in contrast to the heaven of Stairway to Heaven or the convent in Black Narcissus, and as the city’s colors were contrasted with the countryside in Carmen Comes Home, this film also juxtaposes the city and the countryside. However, just as the contrast between the city and the mountains of Hokkaido was blurred in Natsuko’s Adventure, there is no real color-based contrast here either. This is because, when Japanese people perceive color as "beautiful," they unconsciously link it to "scenery," leading them to choose locations like Mount Asama or the wilds of Hokkaido.

In this respect, however, this film goes a step further: it consciously attempts to isolate color from the rural landscape itself, rather than simply presenting the landscape as a colorful backdrop. The emphasis is placed on the colors of the countryside, rather than contrasting the countryside with a garish, "mundane" city. The successful use of color in these rural landscapes is likely due to the nature of Fujicolor; its somewhat muted rendering of color is perfectly suited to the soft, understated hues of Japanese scenery. One might even speculate that if our daily lives were captured using the flashy Technicolor of American films, the reality of our lives would fail to sustain such a palette, resulting instead in an unnatural appearance.

In this setting, garish elements like neon lights appear dull, while soft hues, such as those of rapeseed blossoms, cherry blossoms, and magnolias, look truly beautiful. Observing the specific color palette chosen for this film makes one wonder if our own lives are naturally lacking in artificial colors. One particularly interesting moment occurs when a young man from the city arrives and someone hurriedly hides a red loincloth hanging on a clothesline - I felt this revealed Director Yamamoto’s wit regarding the colors of our daily lives.

While seeing elements like carp streamers, a bride’s tsunokakushi headpiece, or the red-and-white curtains and scarlet felt rugs of a cherry-blossom viewing party in the film evokes a sense of familiar warmth, they are not necessarily remarkable in themselves. Yet, such attention to color schemes delights the viewer.

The human characters are essentially manipulated to showcase these visuals; the motivation for the woman who had moved to the city to return to the country youth is unnatural, and the story itself is mediocre at best. The film’s only spark of vitality comes from the spirited, comic-style performances of Mariko Okada, Keiju Kobayashi, and Eijiro Tono.

Can you imagine calling something "the third color film"? Not "the third color film directed by so-and-so", but the third color film made in your country ever?

The next and last mention of the film, from issue 79, released in December, is rather fleeting; it's described somewhat unfavorably in a conversation between four people named Daikuro, Ueno, Togawa and Shigeno. I'm not sure who these people are, but I thank them for their opinions.

Togawa: About Girls in the Orchard...

Shigeno: That was Toho's first color film, after all.

Daikuro: Is there anything else by Kajiro Yamamoto?

Ueno: Moth Lamp (Yuugato) and Girls in the Orchard... well, the color stands out first and foremost.

Shigeno: I was disappointed by the color. One would expect significant progress to have been made in the six months since Natsuko's Adventure. Yet, while there were areas where progress was evident, there were others where it was lacking, so, all things considered, it amounts to saying there was no progress at all.

Daikuro: There was a great deal of progress between Carmen Comes Home and Natsuko's Adventure.

Shigeno: Being able to shoot on sets might count as progress, but the tone shouldn't vary from shot to shot. I believe harmonizing the overall tone is the crucial thing.

Moving on to overseas reception, the film was known in America as early as 1954, when it was mentioned alongside other early color films from Japan in Japan Information, an official publication of the Japanese Embassy's Information Section. As far as U.S. screenings go, I don't believe there were any.

This film did, however, screen alongside several other early Japanese color pictures as part of Italy's 29th Il Cinema Ritrovato festival in 2015, using a print sourced from the National Film Archive of Japan. During this festival it was screened with English subtitles; these are, I believe, the subtitles that accompany my Internet Archive upload, but I'm not sure where the subtitles themselves originate from. Galbraith indicates in his Toho Studios Story that Toho themselves produced an English-subtitled version, but I would say the subtitles from the film festival do not read like they date to the 1950s.

Screenings within Japan are not really anything to write home about. There have been a few over the past decade or so, including one conducted by the National Film Archive of Japan in 2022, and a couple of television broadcasts as well, but like I said at the beginning, I don't feel like this film has gotten the attention it deserves as Toho's first full-color work. It's great that it's on Amazon, but I do wish Toho would put it out on DVD or Blu-Ray.

We'll end our discussion of this unfairly overlooked movie here, and I'll entreat you once again to go check it out for yourself via the Internet Archive link at the top of the post. The subtitles are quite good and now include translated opening credits as well.

Promo still cribbed from a closed auction - unfortunately just a promo, the movie doesn't include any scene like this.