兄とその妹 / Ani to sono imoto / A Brother and His Sister [1956]

Release date: September 19th, 1956

Director: Shue Matsubayashi

Studio: Toho

Cast: Ryo Ikebe, Setsuko Hara, Yoko Tsukasa, Keiju Kobayashi, Eijiro Yanagi, Akihiko Hirata, Daisuke Kato et al.

Availability: No home media or streaming release. Infrequent theater screenings; most recently in 2015.

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Recently we had a look at Summer in Eclipse, so now let’s see about the film it played on a double-bill with (in some theaters, at least). With its all-star cast - Setsuko Hara, Yoko Tsukasa and Ryo Ikebe all playing off each other, whew - it’s surprising that there’s so little coverage of this movie out there. Unfortunately that means the amount of information I can give you about this one will be pretty limited, but let's see what's up anyway.

A Theater SS News pamphlet showing A Brother and His Sister playing alongside Summer in Eclipse.

Our director, Shue Matsubayashi, does not need much of an introduction; he was a bit of a Toho workhorse, producing some big hits for them such as The Last War, Storm over the Pacific, and The Imperial Navy. For a long time I made the mistake of associating Matsubayashi specifically with war dramas, since those are his most well-known films, but he did also make light comedies and romances as well: he directed quite a few entries in Toho's Shachō [President] series, and some one-offs with goofy titles such as Oddball Nippon and Dimple of Tokyo. A Brother and His Sister was the first film Matsubayashi directed under his contract with Toho.

A Brother and His Sister is a remake of Yasujiro Shimazu's 1939 film for Shochiku of the same name, which is usually referred to in English under the slightly different title A Brother and His Younger Sister. This film is, from what I've seen, generally regarded as a classic within the wider canon of Japanese cinema; see this for better context than I could give it. Since the earlier film is readily available, I've watched it in the process of writing this post. Obviously this was very useful for familiarizing me with the plot of the earlier film, but because I don't have the later film to compare it to, I can't say how similar or different they are.

I will say that the earlier film is so much a product of 1939 and is so modern for its time in ways that would not have had the same impact as they would in 1956 - men and women talk about issues of marriage and gender roles freely, and the lead character, Mamiya (Shin Saburi in the original), is utterly respectful of his younger sister Fumiko (Michiko Kuwano) and her ability to make her own decisions and live an independent life - that, unless the entire purpose of the remake was to examine the way gender roles and society had changed in the 17 years since the original's release, I'm not really sure what the point of remaking it was. The original film also ends on a fairly imperialist note, with the protagonist being hired on at a firm that is in the process of expanding into Manchuria and further into mainland Asia; this was, as I understand, removed in the remake.

(The original also has a funky organ soundtrack that I doubt the remake could replicate.)

Tsukasa, Ikebe and Hara.

Ikebe may be the star of this movie, but we are not, sorry to say, a Ryo Ikebe fanblog. Akihiko Hirata plays Michio, the role that Ken Uehara filled in the 1939 film, and having watched the original I can say that Michio is an inveterate flirt, or at least as much of an inveterate flirt as one could be on film in 1939. I had no trouble whatsoever imagining Hirata in this role. Ostensibly, Michio also speaks English; in the 1939 film this is only referenced in conversation as an important plot point (Fumiko speaks English as part of her job as a typist, and overhears Michio talking about her in English when he thinks she can't understand him, which leads to an essentially one-sided romance and a marriage proposal) and not shown on screen. Having not seen the remake, I'm not sure if it's still the case that characters are established as speaking English without us actually hearing them speak English.

Regardless, I see a lot of people assume that Hirata could not speak English or had to learn his lines phonetically due to his heavily-accented English performance in Latitude Zero, but personally I think there are way too many movies where he speaks English and sounds fine for him to have been doing all of that phonetically. He actually does seem to confirm that he knew some English - but perhaps didn’t have a very high opinion of his skills - in an interview where he's asked if he's seen the American version of Godzilla '54 and he answers "Yes, I was surprised at how good my English was."

Getting down off my soapbox, I have to admit that signs do point towards no one in the remake speaking English either, as no reviews I've found mention Hirata's English performance in this film. I also haven't been able to drag up any pictures of him as Michio, despite it sounding like he has a fairly prominent role.

Laputa Asagaya - Showa film nerd holy land - played the film thrice: once in 2003 as part of a Yoko Tsukasa film festival, once in 2007 as part of a Shue Matsubayashi film festival, and once in 2015 as part of a Setsuko Hara film festival. (Where is the Akihiko Hirata film festival?) It also played at the Shin Bungeiza in 2015 alongside A Good-Natured Couple, another 1956 Toho film starring Ikebe.

It's too bad that this one hasn't had more attention given it, because Matsubayashi is a very good director and I would think it would be interesting from a film-historical standpoint to look at a post-war remake of an esteemed pre-war film. For some reason, English-language sources seem to have decided that the 1956 film is called "Ani to sono musume" instead of "Ani to sono imoto", which is... not correct... like, at all... but that is the title it is listed under on IMDb as well as what turns up the most results in a Google search. It doesn't seem to have ever had an English-subtitled release anywhere outside of Japan, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had a small run in Hawai'i in the 1950s; it seems like the kind of thing that might have been shown over there.

Well, now you and I know about it, at least.

はりきり社長 / Harikiri Shachō / Fighting President (1956)

Release date: July 13, 1956

Director: Kunio Watanabe

Studio: Toho

Cast: Keiju Kobayashi, Hisaya Morishige, Asami Kuji, Yoko Tsukasa, Yasuko Nakata, Norihei Miki, Akihiko Hirata, George Luiker et al

Availability: Available on DVD from Amazon JP and streaming on Prime Video (Japan-only).

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[This is a revised and expanded version of a post that was originally published on April 1st, 2024.]

Today we're going to take a look at the third entry in Toho's long-running "Shachō" ("company president"; henceforth President) series, which is comprised of 33 films released across 14 years, plus 6 that are considered supplemental/tie-in works. The President series may not have garnered as much international recognition as Toho's tokusatsu films, but salaryman comedies like this and prolific, long-running series such as the Ekimae ("front of [train] station") series were the studio's bread and butter during the 1950s, although the concept began to fizzle out in the 1960s and finally collapsed in 1970s along with the studio system.

The President series starred Hisaya Morishige as the president of a company - a different company each time - and Keiju Kobayashi as his secretary, with Kobayashi playing straight-man to Morishige's goofy president. One thing I find interesting about the series is that the names of Morishige and Kobayashi's characters change between films. I'll be honest here and admit that this is the only entry in the series I have actually seen (many such cases), so I can't tell whether the actors play different characters in each separate film, or if they're the same people, just with new names. Norihei Miki, Daisuke Kato, Frankie Sakai, Asami Kuji and Yoko Tsukasa were also staples of the series.

Considering that there were well over 30 of these films made, it's somewhat surprising that Fighting President is the only time Hirata found his way into the President series, and even more surprising that his role in this movie amounts to basically a walk-on. He appears in two scenes, and that's if we're being very generous and counting two people looking at a photograph of his character ("chotto handsome, dessho?") as "a scene". George Luiker, an actor of Armenian and Estonian parentage, also guest stars in Fighting President for the first of what would be four appearances in the President series. Luiker of course later went on to star alongside Hirata in Legend of the Irresponsible Hero.

As I said, this is the third entry, so we're still pretty early into the series, and things are just now starting to take shape that would influence the rest of the films. For example, this is the first time Asami Kuji appeared as the president's wife, and it is also the only time Kunio Watanabe was in the director's chair; most - but not quite all - of the following films were directed by either Shue Matsubayashi, Toshio Sugie, or Yasuki Chiba. Within Japan, this movie was released on a double-bill with Madame White Snake, which most definitely had more staying power in the Western film canon than Fighting President did. 

Kunio Watanabe (left) with Hisaya Morishige. Credit to @tnmiyako38.

I want to stay on the subject of Watanabe for a minute, because his Wikipedia page makes him out to be something of an interesting character. Born in 1899, he became a left-wing activist in college, got fired from his first job for spurious reasons, and then met the then-head of Nikkatsu, who hired him on as an actor even though he wanted to direct. Watanabe finally did become a director throughout the 1920s and joined Toho in 1936, at which point his politics had evidently changed; when Toho had a wee spot of union trouble Watanabe led an anti-communist right-wing movement and was vocally anti-union. Following that he joined Shintoho in 1947 and directed their first picture. His Wiki page states that he had a habit of throwing his hat on the ground and stomping on it, which I didn't think was a thing anybody actually did outside of cartoons. He also had twelve siblings.

Ryōzō Kasahara, Fighting President's screenwriter, has a far terser Wikipedia page in terms of personal detail but a filmography that speaks for itself: not only did he pen most of the entries in the President series but also Toho's Sazae-san series, Eizō Sugawa's stellar You Can Succeed, Too, a few of the more famous Crazy Cats/Hitoshi Ueki films and a couple of Wakadaisho movies.

English title translation issues have always plagued the President series. When these movies were released (or even just mentioned) in English-speaking markets, they were usually assigned titles that were some variation upon "Three Gents" or sometimes "Five Gents": Aloha Three Gents, Five Gents Prefer Geisha, Three Gents Go West, Hail the Three Gents, etc. Oddly enough, newspaper reviews and publicity from the time when these movies were being exported (early to mid-1960s, mostly) use the English and Japanese titles interchangeably, and a few President movies seem to actually have been shown under their Japanese title with no translation provided at all.

Within a two-week period in mid-December 1958, Honolulu's Kapahulu theater brought out three Toho hits (or semi-hits): Fighting President, 1956's Hesokuri Shachō under the title "The Frugal President", and - unrelated to the President series, but relevant to our interests - Zoku-Zoku Oban under the title "Mr. Fortune Maker". The English title of the movie we're looking at today comes from that Hawaiian theatrical run. I originally published this post using the title Stuart Galbrath gives it in his magisterial Toho Studios Story, "Company President in High Spirits", but since Fighting President seems to have been handed down by Toho themselves, I've decided to use that one from now on instead. ("Harikiri" is a word that means "enthusiastic", "go-get-'em", "hyped", etc. It has nothing whatsoever to do with ritual suicide.)

France also got involved - the only country I'm aware of aside from Japan and the United States where this film has been released - and re-christened the film "La Vie trépidante des décideurs: l'ardeur au travail", which literally translates to "The Fast-Paced Lives of Decision-Makers: Zeal for Work". Fighting President was screened in France a few times, in fact: once in 2008, once in 2012, and just recently, in February of 2026.

But wait, the title confusion gets worse... You will not find this movie on IMDb under either Fighting President or Company President in High Spirits, but instead "Three Generations of Company Presidents". I have not been able to determine where this title came from. I honestly think, unless I'm missing some international release where it ran under that title, that this could very well be the result of a translation mix-up, since this was the third entry in the President series.

But wait, it gets even worse... 1959's Zoku Shachō Taiheki is on IMDb as "Three Generations of Company Presidents Part II". Not only is Zoku Shachō Taiheki very much NOT a sequel to Fighting President, it's actually a sequel to the first Shachō Taiheki, which is a completely different movie.

You see why I said English titles are a problem with this series?

We'll wrap things up there before it gets any more convoluted, but I'm also going to retain my live commentary from the original version of this post (under a jump cut; slightly revised as well) for posterity's sake.

Playing Yoshiko Otowa on a 100-Year-Old Phonograph

...because that's just what you have to do sometimes.

Here's Yume o yobu mado ("Window that Brings Dreams") by Yoshiko Otowa, released in 1957, played on my 1925 His Master's Voice model 101 phonograph. Apologies for the video quality; Blogger has a 100mb limit so I've had to compress it quite a bit.

I own a phonograph and a few of Yoshiko Otowa's records, and am working on getting recordings of them archived and uploaded online. I won't be making individual posts for each of them but you can always check up on my discography list which I'll be updating as I get the songs uploaded.

(Apologies for poor audio as well - I am new to 78s and still getting the hang of how to crank mine enough so that it plays a full song at a consistent rate of speed. I am having a hell of a good time, though.)

(Also please note that it is usually a bad idea to play shellac records from the 1950s or later on a machine of this age, due to newer records typically being made of more fragile material that is not suited to the weight of the tonearm on these older machines. Japan - as with many things - seems to have continued older methods of manufacturing shellac records for longer than other countries, so even though my records are from the 1950s, they are safe to play on this machine.)

日蝕の夏 / Nisshoku no natsu / Summer in Eclipse [1956]

Release date: September 26th, 1956

Director: Hiromichi Horikawa

Studio: Toho

Cast: Shintaro Ishihara, Yoko Tsukasa, Mieko Takamine, Setsuko Wakayama, So Yamamura, Kuniko Miyake, Akihiko Hirata, Makoto Sato, Nadao Kirino, Noriko Sengoku et al.

Availability: No home media or streaming release. Very infrequent theater screenings of a print that is noticeably degraded.

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It's finally summer! Not right now, because I’m writing this way back in spring and putting it in the queue, but that's not important - let's celebrate the solstice with a summery-titled movie.¹

This movie brought to you by... canned peaches, I guess?

This film was adapted from an original work by its star, writer/actor/sucky politician Shintaro Ishihara, who we met briefly in our post about Toho's Youth School TV series. Ishihara is the brother of Yujiro Ishihara, himself quite a prolific actor who has shown up on the blog a few times, most notably in his mainstay role on the long-running detective drama Taiyo ni Hoero!. Shintaro Ishihara was enjoying quite a bit of success in 1956, with Eclipse being the fourth film released that year in which he had a leading role.

Adaptations of Ishihara's literary works were instrumental in the development of what are referred to as "Sun Tribe" films, which portray a kind of rebellious, youthful subculture closely associated with similar American movements such as rockabilly. (Eclipse is the only Sun Tribe movie in Hirata's vast filmography, due mostly to the fact that Toho was generally not putting these kinds of films out; it was usually Nikkatsu.) In addition to writing the original material, Ishihara also co-authored the screenplay with Toshiro Ide, who we've seen here a few times before as well.

Ishihara plays Naoki Mishima, who from plot synopses sounds like a generally disaffected youth, spending much of his time riding motorcycles and motorboating. He has an elder brother named Masaki (played by Hirata) who recently broke off an engagement to a woman named Taeko (Setsuko Wakayama). We later learn that the reason why the engagement was nullified was because Taeko was having an affair with Masaki's father Kozo (So Yamamura). This is only one of what sounds like quite a few joyless and ultimately futile romantic endeavors had by numerous characters, including the protagonist: starting off the film with a girl his age named Kyouko (Yoko Tsukasa), Naoki eventually begins a relationship with another woman, Setsuko (Mieko Takamine), who is several years his senior.

While Ishihara was at the height of his popularity around this time, it doesn't seem like Eclipse is one of his more well-regarded films. Even the director, Hiromichi Horikawa, a purveyor of otherwise very solid films for Toho, regards this one as "a flop" (shippaisaku). Funnily enough, I also encountered an interview with Nobuyoshi Ishihara, Shintaro's fourth son, in which the interviewer brings up a poster for Eclipse hanging in Nobuyoshi's studio; his response was to say, basically, "Yeah that movie was fine but did you hear about the one he did with Francois Truffaut?"

This is a tie-in poster promoting Suzuki's "Colleda" motorcycle model, which featured heavily in the film. (Reminiscent of the Godzilla posters that want to make sure you remember Ogata rides a Cabton.)

Try as I might (and buddy I am trying) I cannot turn up any pictures of Hirata from the film. Reviews that I've read describe his character as "calculating/scheming" which would seem to imply he does have some kind of role in the overall plot, but evidently it was not a big enough role to get him featured on any posters nor even have a little portrait of him in press sheets, the way Toho often did. Here are some weirdly high-quality stills from the film; none feature our man, but I want access to whatever OP's source was for these. I am very curious about this role because I cannot imagine how a character could be described as "scheming" while also having his fiancée end up leaving him for his dad. What exactly is Masaki scheming? A way to win his fiancée back from his dad?

Screenings of the film seem incredibly sparse and reviewers have noted that the print does not look good. This person writes a travelogue featuring a poster for the movie displayed in the city of Ome, which seems to be a smallish place known as a nice respite for those looking to get away from the general Tokyo-ness of Tokyo. Laputa Asagaya has, of course, shown the film at least once.

Thanks to the attention given to the Sun Tribe movement by film scholars studying Japanese cinema, Eclipse has been cited in multiple research papers. None that I've seen, however, go in-depth on the film's actual content; it is simply mentioned as part of a list of Sun Tribe films produced around this period that demonstrate the same kind of boundary-pushing sensibilities as all of their ilk. The majority of these papers have been in English (I assume there are some in Japanese as well, but have not found any) save for one in Italian and one in French.

Outside of Japan, the film made its way to Hawaiian theaters in late 1957 under the unusual but poetic title The Summer the Sun Was Lost. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin advertised the film as "a tense drama of modern Japan". Thanks to the Hawaii Hochi, we have - blessedly, gloriously - an actual English-language review of the film, written by your friend and mine Max Morinaga. I will quote it here in its entirety.

A film which I saw recently and which I found to be oddly entertaining was titled "The Summer The Sun Was Lost".

Shintaro Ishihara, one of present-day Japan's most popular authors, was the star of the film. As an actor, he ain't much. But as I understand it, his novels about juvenile delinquents and teenage sinners are sold by the hundreds of thousands!

"The Summer The Sun Was Lost" didn't do so well at the box office of the Kapahulu, where it was shown last week, but it did a terrific big business in Japan.

One of the high spots of this picture was the scene showing sweet-faced Yoko Tsukasa indulging in some mighty passionate kissing with Shintaro in the semi-darkness of a private garage.

Shintaro is mighty disillusioned when he discovers that his sweet-faced girl has had numerous affairs with numerous boys, and he is also disgusted with his parents when he learns that his father has a mistress and his gentle and gracious mother has a lover!

Shintaro himself indulges in an affair with a middle-aged woman (Mieko Takamine) who still looks mighty good in a bathing suit!

On that note, I think I've given about all the information about this surprisingly obscure film that I can. Considering that its Sun Tribe contemporaries are much better preserved, it's disappointing that this one only seems to live on in dingy prints and no home media release. One can always hope it'll get some kind of digitization before the print degrades past watchability, if it hasn't done so already.

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1 I am not allowed to write about Summer Farewell [Natsu no Wakare].

Koto no Tsume, Revisited (or: Koto no Two-me)

This is just a quick post to make mention of something I'm extraordinarily excited about. Recently, I was contacted by someone who had read my post about Koto no Tsume (which we're henceforth going to call Last Days of the Samurai) and asked me if I was interested in subtitling the movie, since they actually had a copy of it. That's the kind of thing you don't have to ask me twice!

You can now, for the first time in close to 70 years, watch this movie with English subtitles here. Massive thanks to kagetsuhisoka for proofreading and re-timing the entire thing after Aegisub let me down.

Now that I've actually watched the movie, I can say more about it. Last Days of the Samurai is a very emotionally fraught film, but in terms of its visuals, it's quite the bare-bones affair: there are maybe two or three sets (which could very well have been re-used from another production), the whole thing takes place over the span of about two days, and it has a relatively small cast, out of which surprisingly few people have speaking parts. Hirata's character Ushioda only has a couple of lines; his role is basically to be salty about the whole affair and then eventually die off-screen, and yes, as seen above, when we first see him he is shaving Yu Fujiki's face, which is, uh, interesting? Again, not as fun as his role in Inagaki's Chushingura, but I do always enjoy these roles where he gets to be angsty as I think he plays that particular emotion very well.

I find it kind of unusual that Ushioda isn't referred to by name in the film - as in, there's no point where anybody directly addresses him using his name (his name is mentioned, but only when he's off-screen). The same goes for most of the miscellaneous ronin. Looking at the Toho News sheet I included in my last post, it seems like the actors did have their characters' names written under their pictures in promotional materials, but aside from that, you wouldn't be able to tell who the less-prominently-featured members of the cast were meant to be playing.

As for the rest of the cast, this film feels mostly like a vehicle for its three leads (Ganjiro Nakamura, Chikage Ogi and Koshiro Matsumoto), and they really hit it out of the park. There's not much of a script to work with, here, and the storyline is well-trodden territory, but Ogi and Nakamura as the star-crossed lovers especially give a very evocative performance, and Matsumoto pulls off his role with exactly the strong sense of dignity that was no doubt intended. (We may recall Senjaku Nakamura getting all his teeth pulled out in Yagyu Secret Scrolls.) 

Takanori Ushioda's terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.

Anyway, if all of that sounds like something you'd be interested in, you can now judge the film for yourself. It's a pleasure to know that this is out there in a format more accessible to English-speakers, so I hope you'll give it a look-see. The link, again, is here, the movie is available as both an mp4 with burned-in subtitles and as a higher-quality mkv.

琴の爪 / Koto no tsume / Koto Plectrum [1957]

Release date: July 13th, 1957

Director: Hiromichi Horikawa

Studio: Toho

Cast: Senjaku Nakamura, Ganjiro Nakamura, Chikage Ogi, Shin Morikawa, Haruo Tanaka, Kojiro Matsumoto, Someshou Matsumoto, Akihiko Hirata, Yu Fujiki, Ikio Sawamura, Sachio Sakai et al

Availability: No home media release; infrequent television broadcasts. Now available on archive.org.

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Edit: Since writing this post, I’ve been given a copy of the film and have subtitled it myself. You can watch it here. I’m leaving this post as is for posterity but do be aware that it is outdated since the full movie is now available.

We've beaten the drum and played the flute, now we're going to pluck the koto with this obscure little 50-minute-long film.

The first thing to know about this movie is that it's directly related to Chushingura, the story best known worldwide as "47 Ronin". While the incident itself took place in the early 1700s, the background of Koto Plectrum dates back only to the 1930s, to a series of Shin Kabuki plays written by Seika Mayama collectively titled Genroku Chushingura. These plays were produced and staged over a seven-year period starting in 1934 and ending in 1942. Koto Plectrum is an adaptation of the last story in the cycle, and its full title is Genroku Chushingura - Oishi's Last Day. For a pretty detailed report on an actual stage performance of this story, see here; you'll need a translator extension if you don't read Japanese, but it seems to translate fairly coherently.

Koto Plectrum was an installment in a surprisingly little-known series of films that Toho called their "Diamond Series". These were very short films (usually under an hour) that were adapted from stories by well-respected authors and were made on a small budget. The first film in the series was Will-O'-The-Wisp, directed by Yasuki Chiba and starring Daisuke Kato; virtually none of the films that follow have had any lasting Western name recognition save for Nobuo Aoyagi's The Living Koheiji which is known to kaidan nerds such as myself. While these were small films, they did not lack for stars; their casts boasted some of Toho's most popular actors at the time.

The cast of our movie is filled with kabuki actors, the most prominent being the two Nakamuras and the two Matsumotos, one of whose career took a bit of an odd turn: Someshou Matsumoto started out on the stage and then left to become a screen actor in the mid-1950s, taking some very small roles in some very recognizable films such as The Human Vapor, King Kong vs. Godzilla, Crazy Big Adventure, and Onibaba, just to name a few.

Speaking of small roles, Hirata plays Takanori Ushioda, also known as Matanojo, a real-life personage who was (obviously) one of the 47 Ako ronin. Matanojo inherited a 200-koku fief and was known to be skilled with a spear; not much about his personal life outside of his involvement with the raid seems to be available. I haven't been able to find any mention of this character in reviews of the film, so I really can't tell you anything about how Hirata plays this role or how involved his character is with the plot (probably not very). I think it's fairly safe to say that whatever he does in this movie is not as cool as his role in Inagaki's Chushingura, because in that one he gets to carry Kira's head.

We have a grand total of two pictures of Hirata in this role, and neither of them are very good.

Laputa Asagaya I'm begging you please use images that are larger than 200x200

...we'll need to "computer, enhance!" that second one...

am I your favorite purveyor of grainy images? please say yes

While there are a fair amount of reviews of the film out there (generally middling; mostly written by kabuki fiends who know their stuff) from its various screenings and television broadcasts - some as recent as last year - there is, as far as I know, no footage of the movie itself available online and not really even any stills. Oddly enough I was able to dig up a bizarrely high-quality behind-the-scenes photo from an obituary for Chikage Ogi on [checks notes] a sports website:

...but, really, there's scarce little mention of this out there, although it has apparently been digitized, which means it could be released on DVD if Toho saw fit. 

Another odd thing to note is that this film is on Letterboxd (which itself is surprising) under the English title "Last Days of the Samurai". This title seems to have been more or less arbitrarily chosen; it's the kind of phrase you hear tossed about in reference to various events and media, and was also the English title of a more famous film, The Pass: Last Days of the Samurai. While the film did have a Western release (again, this is very surprising to me), it was not under that title; the export title was instead Chushingura Hero, which will provide our segue into talking about this film's life outside of Japan.

Most probably the film played in other theaters, but the only record of it in Hawai'i that I can find is a few showings throughout Februrary of 1958 at the Kapahulu in Honolulu. It played on a double bill with 1956's Engagement Ring which does appear to also have been one of Toho's Diamond features. 

Quite soon afterward, in March of 1958, the film played in Los Angeles' Adams Theater; I can find virtually no information about this. It seems to have played on a double bill during this run as well, potentially with Floating Clouds which if you ask me is just not really very fair to Koto Plectrum.

After this initial 1958 run, the Rio Theatre in San Francisco showed the film in March of 1961 under yet another English title, A Samurai's Last Hour, on a double bill with Saga of the Vagabonds. And look! Look!! They actually name our man in the cast! (For Vagabonds, not Plectrum, but still, this is rare to see.)

The final American run of the film I can confirm was when it finally made its way into the Toho La Brea in January of 1962. While the film itself first showed in Western theaters in 1958, America seems to consider 1962 its "official" release date, and you'll still see that listed as its year of release in various corners of the internet. I guess a movie doesn't matter until it plays in Los Angeles?

In 1962 our film was included (under the title "Last Day[sic] of Samurai") in the Academy Award Reminder List of Eligible Releases, a booklet given to members of the Academy that - as the name would imply - lists every film eligible for an Academy Award that year. Now, Koto Plectrum was, of course, nowhere even remotely near being nominated for an Academy Award, but it is very interesting to know that members of the Academy were aware of it, and perhaps thought about it for a moment before moving on to whatever else was popular that year.

And now, today, where is this movie? Nowhere. Can you and I watch it? No. From Oscar eligibility to total (Western) obscurity in 64 years...

柳生武芸帳 / Yagyu bugeichō / Yagyu Secret Scrolls (pt. I) [1957]

Release date: April 14th, 1957

Director: Hiroshi Inagaki

Studio: Toho

Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Koji Tsuruta, Mariko Okada, Yoshiko Kuga, Denjiro Okochi, Kyoko Kagawa, Senjaku Nakamura, Akihiko Hirata, Eijiro Tono, Nobuko Otowa, Bokuzen Hidari, Yoshio Tsuchiya et al.

Availability: Full movie available online; unofficial English-subtitled DVD also available. Official Toho DVD (not subtitled) available through amazon.jp.

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Today is Toshiro Mifune's birthday, so I wanted to feature something that he starred in. I'm thankful for Mifune, because our man happened to co-star with him in quite a few films, and I've always felt that without the international appeal Mifune had, a lot of Hirata's movies would be far more obscure. 

I'll also say upfront that although this is a duology, I'm just going to be talking about the first part; you usually will see Hirata credited as being in both movies, but he's actually only in the first one.

It's likely that anybody who has seen more than one or two jidaigeki films from the Showa era has seen something by Hiroshi Inagaki. Inagaki was one of those directors who seems to have made a name by not necessarily doing anything too innovative, but by being extremely good at sticking to the conventions of the genre he was working within. Taking one of his epic films - let's say his 1962 Chushingura - and comparing it to, say, Seven Samurai, there's a lot less depth of character and a lot more perfunctory plot points, but the sheer grand scale of Inagaki's work and the way his films are costumed and colored still make them achievements in historical drama.

A paperback collecting volumes 4-8 of Yagyu bugeichō.

This film, along with many, many others, was adapted from a serialized novel by Yasusuke [Kousuke] Gomi. I find Wikipedia's statement that the story was "so complicated it was discontinued [from serialization]" very amusing. Despite being discontinued, it still spanned seven volumes. This work and others came at a time when fiction about swordfighting, ninjas, and other historical intrigue of the sort was rapidly gaining popularity. Much of this fiction - and the films that were subsequently made from it - defines modern perceptions of jidaigeki tropes. However, a lot of it was also just kinda made up. I'm not discounting authors who did actual historical research, but you can look at the work of Rob Tuck at Critical Ninja Theory for an idea of how much of this was either invented whole-cloth or based on unclear historical sources that authors had to extrapolate from extensively. The personages, clothing styles, and place-settings in Yagyu Secret Scrolls may correspond roughly to historical truths, but all-in-all, this is a "new" story, based off of a contemporary work of fiction.

(I'm also not saying a movie has to be perfectly historically accurate to be good. When I'm watching The Three Treasures, I'm not bothered about whether or not people ever actually wore their hair like that.)

Toho's two-film adaptation may have been the first, but it most certainly wasn't the last. The next filmed adaptation came from Toei, who produced nine films starring Juushiro Konoe between 1961-64. Konoe also starred in a TV series adaptation staring in 1965; also featured in the series was a young Hiroki Matsutaka, who would go on to play the lead role in another television adaptation in a five-episode series between 1990 and 1992. (No, the Brits are not the only ones who can make TV series that run for five episodes over two years.)

Note both eyes.

Jubei Yagyu was a real guy. Of that much, there does seem to be general scholarly consensus. However, he has been romanticized throughout history, which ironically is due in part to how little is known about his life, rather than how much. Jubei was an attendant in the court of Hidetada Tokugawa and subsequently a sword instructor for Iemitsu Tokugawa, but after that was dismissed fairly suddenly from his post after sixteen years of what was seemingly distinguished service. In a work authored by Jubei himself, he claims to have been, quote Wikipedia, "Traveling the countryside [and] perfecting his skill". I don't think it's difficult to see why this kind of thing would generate intrigue: one imagines an accomplished figure with a comfortable life in court being dismissed for mysterious reasons and then choosing to go off on his own, a shadowy lone swordsman, an individual in an age defined by obeisance and class stratification.

There is also a legend that Jubei lost one of his eyes at some point and wore an eyepatch. This is, as far as I can tell, made up, but it has been proliferated throughout pop culture depictions of him, to the point where it's become his most recognizable characteristic. (Far be it from me to complain about a guy in an eyepatch.) In the movie we’re talking about here, Jubei is missing his left eye, but doesn’t wear an eyepatch; Denjiro Okochi just kinda squints that eye. It’s not very convincing, but it gets the point across.

In Toho's adaptation, Hirata plays Tomonori Yagyu, the illegitimate half-brother of Jubei Yagyu. Tomonori was also a historical figure; he had a 2,000-koku fief and held various positions of rank, but died very young. Tomonori replaced Jubei after the latter's dismissal as sword instructor to Shogun Iemitsu. There is some vague suggestion that Tomonori and Iemitsu were in a romantic relationship, but as far as I know none of that is verifiable, and most of the evidence given for it seems to simply be that Iemitsu was apparently unusually angry to hear that Tomonori had died.

Hirata stars alongside his future wife, Yoshiko Kuga; the two had first met in 1949 and would later meet again on the set of Story of Osaka Castle, hit it off, and marry in October of 1961. He plays Tomonori with a lot of restraint, which can also be said of pretty much the entire cast, even Mifune; watching Yagyu Secret Scrolls feels like watching an adaptation of a stage play. Although there are different factions and motivations in play among the characters, every actor feels like they're on the same level and nobody steals the spotlight (again, even Mifune). This is one of my favorite things about older Japanese movies, especially jidaigeki - it feels like other countries' film industries lost their ties to stage play and moved into cinéma vérité as default much faster than Japan did.

He also wears some cool outfits.

Although Inagaki's films are generally known for being very dry, there is one scene involving Tomonori that I've always found extremely funny, which is when young Prince Chiyomatsu (later Mitsukuni Tokugawa, played by Ken Yamauchi in the Toho version), who is around ten years old, demands to be instructed in Yagyu-style swordfighting. All the Yagyu guys demur, but Matajuro Yagyu agrees, and in the ensuing fight Chiyomatsu accidentally whacks open a secret compartment and one of the titular secret martial arts scrolls falls out.

There's also the part where Tomonori pulls all of a guy's teeth out for a secret plan that as far as I can tell did not actually even end up working.

Anyway, the film was shot in Agfacolor, which I want to make a brief note of since it's different from the usual Tohoscope that the studio had debuted the same year. I think the film does look noticeably different from others that were shot in Tohoscope; there is a distinctive tone to it.

Very small picture of Inagaki on-set of Yagyu Secret Scrolls.

We're now going to move away from discussing the film's background and production within Japan to seeing where it went when it was exported and released to theaters overseas.

The first theatrical run of the film outside of Japan that I can confirm was a startling two and a half months after its original release (this would still be fairly quick for a Japanese export even today). The film ran in Honolulu's Kapahulu theater with English subtitles in late June of 1957 under the title Yagyu Confidential. Its use of Agfacolor was a selling point in newspaper ads. Hawaii Times mentions its upcoming release a few days prior, in the June 28th edition.

What's really interesting, though, is that Hawaiians would have been aware of the movie only a matter of weeks after its initial Japanese release. The May 9th edition of Hawaii Times printed a statement accompanying the grand-reopening of the Kapahulu from Toho's then-president Fusao Kobayashi wherein he said "[...]it gives moviegoers of Japanese ancestry, as well as other residents of Hawaii, the opportunity to appreciate more Japanese-made motion pictures. By doing this, Toho hopes to promote increased friendship between Japan and the United States. I expect Toho's other super-films, Rodan, Snow County, and Yagyu Confidential will also be shown in various parts of the world in the near future."

The film was back the next year by popular demand - by August of 1958 the second film had already been released, but audiences apparently wanted to see the first one again, so it returned to the Kapahulu.

It took ten years for the film to get a wider theatrical run in the continental United States. On October 11th, 1968, the film premiered at the Toho La Brea in Los Angeles. Agfacolor was not as exciting at this point; the film is marketed simply as being "In Color", and in fact the L.A. Times article about its release falsely claims the film is in Eastmancolor. As usual, I've had to cobble together the contents of the article from shoddy OCR, but here's what I can make of it:

 'YAGYU SECRET SCROLLS' A Toho production with Toshiro Mifune, Koji Tsuruta, Yoshiko Kuga, Kyoko Kagawa, Mariko Okada, Deniiro Okochi, Jotaro Togami, Akihiko Hirata, Eijiro Tono. Director: Hiroshi Inagaki,  Associate producer: Tomoyuki Tanaka.

Screenplay (based on story by Kosuke Gomi): Inagaki, Takeshi Kimura. Photography: Tadashi Imura. Art directors: Takeo Kita, Hiroshi Ueda. Sound: Yoshio Nishikawa. Music: Akira Ifukube.

[...]the secret of the scrolls it is necessary to get all three.

The crux of the story deals with samurai-magician Mifune's attempt to grab the set for his master and the princess' efforts to bargain with hers to restore her house and make secure the future of her 50 retainers. Not unpredictably, Mifune and the princess fall in love. Filmed in the old standard ratio and in beautiful Eastmancolor, this 1957 film was directed by Hiroshi Inagaki with his customary verve and has an outstanding score by Akira Ifukube, one of the best composers in Japanese pictures. The acting is in the traditional operatic manner, with Mifune acquitting himself well, as always. 

The sequel played the next year, with the Times giving it a much more negative review, calling it, among other things, "[...]hopelessly confusing, especially since the first film played here last October, too long ago to remember in detail." At least the credits for the second film don't mistakenly include Hirata.

My favorite showing of the film, however, did not occur at the Toho La Brea nor the Kapahulu. My favorite showing was at a fundraiser for a Japanese-language school in 'Ewa Beach, Hawai'i in 1964. The film was shown at 7:30 PM following a half-hour performance put on by the students themselves. At the time 'Ewa was a small plantation town; even today it only holds some ~16,000 residents. I've always said that I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and see movies at the Toho La Brea, but if I really did have a time machine, I don't think I could ask for anything more than to be watching Yagyu Secret Scrolls at a fundraiser in a Japanese-language school in a plantation town in Hawai'i.

After the film's Hawaiian run, Hong Kong was next to get it sometime in 1960. I can't turn anything up about that except for a single crusty poster.

Title should be read right-to-left in Chinese.

The U.S. runs and the Hong Kong run are unfortunately the only theatrical releases I can confirm definitively. IMDb lists Polish and Brazilian titles for the film as well, but I've done some newspaper scouring and haven't been able to turn up any positive evidence for a theatrical run in either country.

Intriguingly, however, I do have evidence for, if not an Italian theatrical run, at least awareness of the film within Italian-language sources. (Wonder what the Italians re-named our man this time.) A 1957 edition of the left-leaning film magazine Cinema nuovo mentions the film. Unfortunately, Google Books doesn't let me view the full contents, so I can't say anything more about it. I did try to ask some Italian eBay sellers if they'd be willing to ship it to me overseas but no dice on that front.

I think that about covers everything, so we will leave Yagyu Secret Scrolls there. The sequel is a fine film, and they work well back to back (which is somewhat rare; sometimes you watch one movie and you're just too tired of it to watch more of the same), but we won't be covering it here. Hopefully this was informative.

太鼓たゝいて笛吹いて / Taiko tataite fue fuite / Beat the Drum, Play the Flute [1958]

Release date: May 13th, 1958

Director: Toshio Sugie

Studio: Toho

Cast: Mariko Miyagi, Hiroshi Koizumi, Norihei Miki, Ichirō Arashima, Seizaburo Kawazu, Mitsuko Kusabue, Ikio Sawamura, Shunji Sakai, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Akihiko Hirata, Yasuo Nakata, Asami Kuji, Yoshifumi Tajima et al

Availability: No home media or streaming release, but prints extant; infrequent theater screenings.

____

There is a vanishingly small amount of information on the internet about this movie, especially in terms of visual materials like posters or stills, but fortunately, kosho.or has wares if you have coin. I'm happy to say I can present some material in this post that has never been seen on the internet before. This will be a very text-heavy post.

I suspect that some of the trouble I've had in researching this film is because its title can be written in Japanese in two different ways: the one I've used in the post title, and 太鼓たたいて笛吹いて. The only difference is this little sucker:ゝ, which is used to indicate a repeated kana (in this case the two "ta"s in "tataite"). Another big issue is that this same title was used for a biographical drama about Fumiko Hayashi, first staged in 2014, which is far more popular than our nearly 70-year-old film.

Anyway, we'll start off with the cool stuff first: the pamphlet I got my hands on through kosho. Below you'll find full scans of the entire thing. Since the pamphlet isn't bound, I could get actual decent scans of it without fear of breaking the spine. You'll note that the back page features an ad for All About Marriage as well (IYKYK).

As we'll see shortly, everything about this movie was designed to evoke an Edo-period troupe of traveling actors, and as such, the pamphlet opens with an introduction written from the point of view and with the kind of language used by a troupe of actors. Here is a quick machine translation:

We are here today, the familiar Toho Star Troupe, who are always so grateful for your patronage. This time, at the request of our loyal supporters, we will be showing the film in spectacular detail on screens all over Japan, so we hope to invite everyone - young and old, men and women alike, from the houses in the fields to the top and bottom of the recently popular four- and five-story reinforced concrete apartment buildings - to come along and enjoy the show. We sincerely hope that you will all attend.

Now, if you'd like to pique your interest further, the troupe, led by Toshio Sugie and resident playwright Toshio Yasumi, also known for his work on A Story from Chikamatsu, features mariko Miyagi, along with Norihei Miki, Ichiro Arashima, Hiroshi Koizumi, Mitsuko Kusabue, Fubuki Koshiji, Yasuko Nakata, Masuda Keaton, Shunji Sakai, and Kamatari Fujiwara - a troupe that will have you laughing out loud just hearing about it. The troupe, sensing the scent of spring, is on a journey, or is the play the journey? [A] wandering tale of floating weeds in the water will soothe your souls with a play entitled Beat the Drum, Play the Flute.

First up is Mariko Miyagi, performing solo, leading the way with the taiko drums, then the music behind her, followed by the accompaniment of a female gidayu. While diligently caring for the troupe, she reveals the flower of love hidden deep within her heart, a girl's heart filled with tears and laughter, wondering whether it will bloom or not. Watching this, Norihei Miki and Ichiro Arashima, though timid, offer their support; not just in a shrewd manner. They're admirable in their way of telling her what to do, but everything they do is rambling and tearful - no laughing matter. 

We feel nostalgic when we hear the flute [calling] "Let's play the den-den taiko drum" ¹. Today, we travel around the country blowing the flute and beating the drum as a herald. After performing beautifully, we would appreciate a round of applause.

Next up the pamphlet gives us some explanatory text (kaisetsu), which is basically a short blurb selling you on the movie - these tend to be pretty hyperbolic, and are not meant as a synopsis, just a little excitement to get you to come see it.

This epic period drama, produced in Tohoscope and featuring regular cast members from Toho musicals as well as some of the finest film and theater talent of the day, is presented in full color with Eastmancolor. The film depicts the tenacious vitality and hilarious lives of traveling actors who move from town to town throughout the year, with an innocent young girl as the protagonist. Based on an original idea by Kazuo Kikuta, the screenplay was written by Hideo Oguni and directed by Toshio Sugie, who is enjoying success with The Capital of Love. The cast includes Mariko Miyagi [as] a handyman for a traveling troupe who does not only casual work but also props, costumes, and musicians, and is even a narrator for the gidayu musicians, all of whom are extremely active. 

Other performers include Norihei Miki and Ichiro Arashima as the pair Danshichi and Danhachi ², who are nominally actors but [get no good roles]. Hiroshi Koizumi plays the troupe's leading handsome man, Dannojo; Mitsuko Kusabue plays Otaki, the innkeeper who has an affair with Dannojo despite being married; Seizaburo Kawazu as a popular Edo kabuki actor; Akihiko Hirata as the handsome Shinnosuke and Asami Kuji as Otoku who runs off with him; Shunji Sakai as the troupe's female impersonator, Senshou; Masuda Keaton as the elderly Hikoemon; Yasuko Nakata as the innkeeper. More performers in the lively cast include Noriko Sengoku and Ikio Sawamura. The staff includes an original story by Kazuo Kikuta, screenplay by Hideo Oguni, cinematography by Taiichi Kankura and art by Shinobu Muraki, sound by Wataru Konuma, lighting by Mitsuo Kaneko, music by Yoshiyuki Kozu, and production by Shiro Horie.

Next up is the synopsis, which is a more elaborate than anything else available online. Strap in.

A group of traveling performers streamed into the Tabuhara Inn on the Nakasendo Trail, nestled between the Norikura and Komagatake mountain ranges. This was the Dankuro Ichikawa troupe, a traveling group of actors who migrate from place to place year-round. [They are] led by Dankuro, his wife Oshino and son Dannojo; Umezo Bando and his wife Otoku; Hikoemon Bando, Makuya Nakamura, Senshou Nakamura, Shinnosuke Nakamura, Ubei, Kisuke, and Takichi, as well as the pair of cut-rate actors ³ Danshichi and Danhachi and the assistant Okei. The troupe, made up of 15 members, is exceptionally impoverished and live hand-to-hand. Not only do they do the chores to feed everyone, but they also handle props, craftsmen, costumes, and even narrators and actors, literally beating drums and blowing flutes as they go.

Upon arriving at the post town, Danshichi, Danhachi, and Okei, carrying the traveling theater's drums, immediately circled the crowded side of the [town's] main inn. They were pushed back by the horsemen and laborers, but Okei stumbled and bumped into Okaji, the wife of Tanomo Osawa, a samurai from Bishu, and her servant Sanai, who were entering the "Tsuruya" inn. Okaji had lost her baby in a fire in this same town 20 years earlier, and had returned to the area in search of this daughter.

The troupe set up in a tent in a vacant lot in Niida.

The theater hall was sparsely populated. To make matters worse, handsome Shinnosuke has given up on the troupe and is plotting to steal it by having an affair with Otoku, while Makuya and Senshou are more interested in the innkeepers Okiyo and Otetsu than in performing on stage. Danshichi [...] laments his inability to find a single woman. He sets his sights on Okei, nicknamed "daikon no shippo" ⁴, and courts her. Danhachi, playing the same role, is not to be outdone, and begins a battle for her, playing an untimely "love match". However, she secretly has feelings for only one man: Dannojo. He, however, is in the midst of an affair with Otaki, the wife of the troupe's former tayu, Ubei, a situation that is causing her father, Dankuro, a great deal of headaches. The plan: Enraged by Dannojo's treatment, wholesaler Kichigoro waits for an opportunity to punish him.

Meanwhile, Okaji learns from Ubei that Dankuro's troupe also performed at the same inn 20 years ago during a fire, and Dankuro found a baby there at that time.

Okaji explains the purpose of her visit to Oshino, but Oshino greets her with [an unfriendly rejection.] ⁵ Feeling down, Okaji spots Okei working in the kitchen on her way home. Without identifying herself as her mother, she quickly hands Okei a hairpin and leaves.

Then, Dankuro collapses on stage. When he passes away, Oshino forces Dannojo and Okei to marry. Kichigoro and his men burst in to kill Dannojo, but are left dumbfounded by Oshino's actions. Moreover, Otoku and Shinnosuke are down on their luck, and Ubei says that the road is currently being traveled by popular Edo actor Gonjuro Arashi's troupe, so there's no way Dankuro's feeble troupe could possibly intrude.

Desperate to save the troupe from crisis, Okei invites Danshichi and Danhachi to visit Gonjuro inside, but the clerk, Kiyozo, won't allow them to see her at all. Okei, learning that Gonjuro has requested a massage, tricks anma Oshige and successfully gains entry to his room in disguise, but Gonjuro, with his keen intuition, sees through her. After hearing Okei's struggles, Gonjuro readily agrees to cooperate with the troupe as a memorial performance for Dankuro, a fellow performer dedicated to his art.

The theater, which had previously been hardly attended, is packed to capacity on that day. The act was Gonjuro's signature piece, "Shiobara Tasuke", and even Danshichi and Danhachi, the cut-rate actors, were highly praised, much to their delight. Gonjuro, completely taken with Okei's personality, suddenly proposed marriage to her. The rest of the troupe cheered with open arms, but Okei turned him down. Though he was her husband in name only, Okei truly loved Dannojo and felt sorry for him. Meanwhile, the ever-cheating Dannojo and Otaki were finally discovered by Kichigoro's men, and Dannojo fell to Kichigoro's sword. Summoning his last bit of strength, he made it to the tent and died in Okei's arms.

The troupe was finally at its end. Umezo, who knows Okei's background, urges her to return to her parents, but Okei proposes going to Edo with the others, sticking with Gonjuro, and making a name for herself. She even uses her precious hairpin as part of her travel expenses. Okei's enthusiasm inspires the group. Edo... Edo. The powerful footsteps of the troupe approach again today.

The first thing I want to note now that you're familiar with the characters is that the names of the troupe leaders are puns on popular actors of the time (actually sort of a bit before this time, but they were still known and respected): "Dankuro Ichikawa" is Danjuro Ichikawa, "Umezo Bando" is Tsumasaburo Bando, and "Gonjuro Arashi" is Kanjuro Arashi.

So now we know about the movie and we can lament the fact that we can't watch it. In terms of stuff to look at, aside from the pamphlet, we have two posters (the first is presented in two halves because long poster is long):

And a second one which is more or less a variation on the first.

Thanks to some screenings of this film, one from 2015 (top) and one from 2008 (bottom), we also have two stills. Both are pretty grainy, very small, and not that interesting, but they're really exciting to have considering how little else there is:

To talk briefly about Hirata's character Shinnosuke (because that's what we do here), it's very amusing to me that his role in this does literally seem to be "just there to look pretty". I assume he gets further characterization in the film itself, but the synopsis doesn't give anything besides the fact that 1. He is handsome and 2. He is up to no good. That one spicy picture is our sole visual evidence of his character. I've also read in other synopses that the troupe puts on a performance of Chushingura, which that means Hirata was in two film adaptations (and one television adaptation) of Chushingura and a movie where people perform Chushingura.

I'm surprised at the general lack of visual material related to the film, because it has actually been seen a fair amount of times within the past couple of decades - in addition to the Laputa screening, it played at the Jimbocho Theater as part of a Norihei Miki/Junzaburo Ban film festival in 2018 and at the same theater again as part of a Kazuo Kikuta festival in 2023. Which is great, because if it last screened three years ago, that means prints probably exist, so it can hypothetically be digitized and put out on DVD. Reception of the film seems decent - it's largely just mild, middle-of-the-road praise, but one Filmarks reviewer gave it "full marks" and said "I cried". Alright.

With a really strong cast, a capable Toho director, and several other prominent names with writing credits, this is certainly one I wish I could see somehow. Mariko Miyagi also appeared in my pet movie Rakugo nagaya wa hana zakari and sang on its soundtrack, performing a duet with Enoken in a song about eating radishes with your wife. Miyagi sang the theme song to this film as well, which you can listen to here. I think it's quite lovely.

____________

^{1 This is a reference to "Edo Lullaby", a traditional song. Read more about it here if you have a translator extension.}

^{2. Their names mean "Seven" and "Eight". "Dankuuro" is also a number pun; it replaces the kanji 十 (juu, "ten") in "Danjuro" with 九 (kyuu, "nine"). Re: names - there is some uncertainty about how to read some of the characters' names here; I've done my level best, but I wouldn't be able to tell you with full confidence how all of them are pronounced unless I watched the movie.}

^{3 This pamphlet repeatedly uses a phrase with no direct translation that I've had to sort of dance around: "uma no ashi"; it literally means "horse's legs" and it refers to actors who are so unpopular or untalented that they mostly play roles such as the back half of a fake horse.}

4 This is a bit rough to translate, but "daikon" basically means "ham actor" and "shippo" means "tail", so I'm guessing the meaning of Okei's nickname is something along the lines of "person who trails along behind mediocre actors". I was very close to just putting "roadie", but that felt a bit cheeky.

^{5 "Ken mo furoro" - idiomatic phrase that really doesn't have a direct translation.}