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.

がらくた / Garakuta / Junk (aka The Rabble) (1964)

Release date: August 1, 1964

Director: Hiroshi Inagaki

Studio: Toho

Cast: Somegoro Ichikawa (fifth generation), Yuriko Hoshi, Mayumi Ozora, Ichirō Arashima, Tadao Nakamaru, Chieko Nakakita, Akihiko Hirata, Nakajiro Tomita, Yutaka Sada, Sachio Sakai, Ren Yamamoto, Haruo Tanaka, Bokuzen Hidari, Hideyo Amamoto, Jun Tazaki et al.

Availability: No home media or streaming release. Infrequent television broadcasts and theater screenings.

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No, no, no. I didn't say this movie was bad. I said it was Junk.

Billed as Hiroshi Inagaki's 100th film, Junk was written by a three-person team that included Inagaki, Shintaro Mimura, and Masato Ide. Mimura had been working as a screenwriter since the late 1920s and was close with Inagaki (I recommend not looking at his Japanese Wikipedia page, you may not want to know how close), but this was his last credit as screenwriter; meanwhile Ide began work in the early 1950s and continued up until the early 1990s. The film was, as expected, produced by Tomoyuki Tanaka, with music by Ikuma Dan.

As is typical for Inagaki, this is a jidaigeki film. From what I can gather, the story centers around Kanzaburo (Somegoro Ichikawa), a drifter who rebelled against tyrannical authority in his youth, but was betrayed by his comrades and now wanders around the country. Kanzaburo ends up as a servant to a wealthy merchant with two daughters: a vain elder sister named Makie (Mayumi Ozora) and a kind younger sister named Midori (Yuriko Hoshi). After a disaster at sea, the boat that Kanzaburo and the sisters are on, along with a group of people of mixed social classes, wrecks on a deserted island. Kanzaburo fights (physically) with the high-class officials and takes leadership of the stranded group. He and Midori begin to fall in love, but her sister becomes jealous and incites a riot against Kanzaburo. Ultimately, Kanzaburo and Midori have a "happily ever after" ending, and journey together across the sea.

@packy1954 has a two-minute clip from the film that is very fun and makes me want to see the whole thing even more.

Akihiko Hirata ended up on at least one poster. He plays a character named Miyachiyo, who is a kyogen performer. Seeing him actually do a kyogen performance would be an absolute hoot - seriously, I want to see that so much - but I have no way of knowing whether or not that actually happens at any point in the film. Miyachiyo apparently goes mad at some point between when the ship is set adrift and when it runs aground on the island, and dies after being attacked by birds (other reviews mention this scene as being unintentionally comedic because it is such an obvious ripoff of Hitchcock's The Birds).

Much of the promotional material for this movie is basically Somegoro Ichikawa beefcake

Reviews give the impression that the film is as lushly outfitted as most of Inagaki's pictures. One refers to it as "Edo-period Lord of the Flies". Overall, the whole thing sounds very typical of Inagaki; there is a lot of swordfighting but not much death or bloodshed, and an attitude of defiance against corrupt authority figures without a lot of real change to the status quo. packy1954 also says that Eiji Tsuburaya worked on the film uncredited, which is pretty easy to believe. Some stock footage from previous jidaigeki films was used.

The interesting thing about this is that it received a wider release outside of Japan. Stuart Galbraith's Toho Studios Story gives us some tantalizing information: "U.S. version [...] released by Frank Lee International. English subtitles. Possibly also released in English-dubbed format in some markets. 'International soundtrack' version produced". Let's fact-check some of that.

On a Toho Kingdom forum thread, one poster is skeptical about other films claimed by Galbraith to have been released by Frank Lee International, with the reasoning being that Frank Lee operated primarily Chinese theaters that mostly showed Shaw Bros. films. We'll shelve that connection for a moment, and come back to it later. What we do know is that the film's earliest U.S. screening was at the Toho La Brea.

callout post for me: spent $140 on yahoo! auctions this month but is too cheap to pay for a newspapers.com subscription

Junk, released as The Rabble, was playing at the Toho La Brea from roughly mid-January 1965 to mid-March of the same year. Other sources (including Galbraith) say that March was the premiere, but it seems like ads were running as early as January. The film was also included in 1965's Reminder List of Eligible Releases, which is a publication given to members of the Academy that contains a list of all films eligible for that year's Academy Awards. This does NOT mean Junk was considered for an Academy Award; it was simply eligible that year.

So about the Chinese connection. I believed at first that the film having been released by Frank Lee International was not very likely, until I ran across an issue of Pacific Citizen that mentions the film having been dubbed into Chinese.

More research into the 55th Street Playhouse reveals that it had a history, particularly around the time period that this film was released, of showing Chinese films and other films dubbed into Mandarin. And I have confirmed that the theater was owned by Frank Lee. So, indeed, Junk was initially distributed by Toho, but also distributed by Frank Lee. The showing mentioned in the clipping above took place around April of 1968. The review of this dubbed screening is... unkind.

Unfortunately, that's about as deep as the rabbit hole (or Rabble-hole... my deepest apologies) goes. This movie was circulating within the U.S. at some point several years ago, and I did some digging to try to see if I could still get my hands on a copy, but to no avail. I won't rule out the possibility of ever seeing it the way I would for some other movies, though.

70 Years of Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy: Musashi In America

...but we can't let Godzilla '54 have ALL the fun. 

This year, Inagaki's Samurai trilogy also turned 70. The first film, Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto, is the only film Hirata was in that won an (American) Academy Award¹. Let's talk a little bit about the reception of these films in the United States.

In the early-to-mid-1950s, cinema from Japan was slowly starting to seep into Western theaters, and with the increased visibility came increased recognition - Gate of Hell won the grand prize at Cannes in 1954, as well as an Academy Honorary Award and the Golden Leopard at Locarno. Three years prior, in 1951, Rashōmon also won an AHA; as per Wikipedia it was "voted by the Board of Governors as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1951." This was the first time a Japanese film had been recognized by the Academy Awards.

Samurai I was released theatrically in the United States as Samurai: The Legend of Musashi on November 19th, 1955. It was only the fourth Japanese film to have a theatrical release in the United States. American actor William Holden had a lot to do with propelling the Samurai trilogy towards its stateside release and eventual Academy win - he even contributed VA work when it was finally shown in American theaters. 

On March 21st, 1956, Samurai I received an Academy Honorary Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Incredibly, footage exists of this.

Despite its recognition by the Academy, in the eyes of critics, Japanese film was - and would remain - something of a novelty. This is a New York Times article² about Samurai II from October of 1967 that I feel encapsulates the way Japanese film - particularly jidaigeki - was still "other" in the eyes of U.S. critics. I've chopped down some highlights that show the flippant tone that was pretty standard for American film critics confronting Japanese cinema:

"IF you like grunting and slashing sword-fighting by a heavily costumed Japanese, determined to demonstrate his chivalry to his ponderous rivals in a feudalistic and ritualistic society, then you might want to see what is billed as Part II of Hiroshi Inagaki's "Samurai," which is actually the second part of a trilogy called "Musashi Miyamoto." [...] For this and a lot more of the same sort of elaborately attitudinized pining and swooning by pretty females over the glowering hero that goes on in Part I is all you will see in this segment. It simply carries on for another couple of hours the series of bristling confrontations of the heroic title character of "Samurai," which was first shown here in 1956 and has been offered in a revival at the 55th Street for the last three weeks. I suppose it is as a favor to the Japanese audience in New York and to aficionados of Nippon and students of Japanese films that Toho International is now presenting in sequential engagements the three sections of Mr. Inagaki's trilogy, which was made in 1956 with the then magnificently vital and immensely popular Toshiro Mifune as its star.

   Films about samurai are now old hat—as commonplace as old Hollywood Westerns. And, anyhow, there have been several better than this—Akira Kurosawa's "The Magnificent Seven," for instance, and Mr. Inagaki's own "Chushingura," which we saw here in 1963 and which had qualities of decor and color much superior to those in "Samurai." This is not said with any critical prejudice against this old favorite of the Japanese, but simply to advise the general public that it is a conspicuously fustian and monotonous period piece."

Let's go a little further back in time, though; to a NYT article from when Samurai I first opened in 1956. It is similarly unkind.

"THE clearest description we can give you of the new Japanese film, "Samurai," which came yesterday to the Little Carnegie, is that it is an Oriental western, dressed in sixteenth-century get-ups and costumes, but as violently melodramatic as any horse opera out of Hollywood. The hero of this elaborate pastiche is a village gent who wants to be a samurai, a first-class warrior in the Japanese feudal system—or a big shot in a glorified bandit gang. And, in the pursuit of his ambition, he goes off with a somewhat reluctant friend to join the army of a local war lord and win everlasting fame. But the war is lost and our snorting sword-swinger, put to rout with the rest of the army and forced to flee, goes wandering about the country, making muscles and generally shunning amorous dames—all of which is entirely consistent with the behavior of heroes in western films.[...]

   It is futile to try to compare this lurid picture with such previous, exciting Japanese films as the intellectually absorbing "Rashomon" or the sensitive and esthetic "Gate of Hell." This one has no dramatic cohesion, no refinement of taste, no point of view. The most it says, in the way of social comment, is that martial ambition is the bunk. It is best to marry a loving woman and be peaceful, wise and virtuous. The only area of comparison is in performance and in the quality of color and camera-work. Toshiro Mifune is striking as the hero (He was the bandit in "Rashomon.") In the standard style of Japanese acting, he leans to the exaggerated gesture and flamboyant air.

People were not taking this stuff seriously. Inagaki was quoted as saying "It was completely unexpected that Samurai won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, which filmmakers all over the world have dreamed of. I never expected that my work, which has never won a Japanese film award, would win an American award." Given the harsh critical reception seen above, its win does feel pretty surprising.

But not every Western critic was so harsh on Inagaki. Donald Richie in his expanded edition of The Japanese Film: Art and Industry (originally published in 1959) spares some kind words for the Samurai trilogy and in doing so points out that non-Japanese film critics simply did not see much of the imagery the way that it was intended to be seen.

"Foreigners who were puzzled at Hiroshi Inagaki's intercutting his love scenes with shots of running water in Musashi Miyamoto (better known abroad as Samurai) failed to make the connection which Inagaki expected of his audience: earthly passion was being contrasted with the standard poetic image for the impermanence of life on this earth."

To be fair, the version that American audiences were seeing was heavily edited, so critics of the film were not being given it in its entirety. But, knowing them, if they had been, they'd probably just gripe about the runtime and excess of swordfighting.

Godzilla, King of the Monsters! was released in March of 1956. I have mentioned this on here before, but aside from Takashi Shimura, the only Japanese cast member who American audiences might have recognized when watching the Americanized Godzilla for the first time would have been Akihiko Hirata. And it's possible that they'd seen him in something even before Samurai I, since Itsuko and Her Mother received a small theatrical run a few months beforehand. This is, of course, all theoretical; I highly doubt American audiences cared much, if at all, about Japanese bit-part actors at this point.

The Criterion Collection has included the Samurai trilogy since the early 1990s when it was still releasing films on laserdisc. In 2012 the Criterion Collection re-released Inagaki's entire trilogy on DVD, updating the picture quality and sound and including interviews that supplied some historical background on the events of the film. Your local library may have a copy of one or all of these. As for (legal) streaming, all three films are on the Criterion Channel, and you can sign up for a free trial to watch them if you aren't already subscribed. These films are well worth watching if you have a passing interest in Japanese film, and they are important to its wider history, as well as its place in the international eye.

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1 The Academy Honorary Award was established in 1950 to cover films that were not included in pre-existing Academy Award categories.

2 I have also found an NYT article referring to Story of Osaka Castle as an "inscrutable horse opera".