この恋！五千万円 / Kono koi! gosanmanen / This Love Costs ¥5,000

Release date: January 3rd, 1954

Director: Kozo Saeki

Studio: Toho

Cast: Junzaburo Ban, Tony Tani, Aiko Mimasu, Akemi Negishi, Shinobu Asaji, Kingoro Yanagiya, Toshiko Tsubouchi, Akihiko Hirata, Norihei Miki et al

Availability: One confirmed television broadcast; no known theater screenings. No home media release.

____

It's Valentine's Day where I am in the U.S.! Let's talk about ❤️ love ❤️

...or, at least, a movie with "love" in the title.

When I look really quickly at this poster I sometimes think Tony Tani looks like Kenji Sahara here.

This movie has always stood out to me from the rest of Hirata's filmography because for some reason it is almost impossible to verify that he was in it. If you look at his Japanese Wikipedia page, it's right there with everything else, simple as. But Wikipedia is the only website that lists him as part of the cast. Kinenote? Nope. Allcinema? Nope. Filmarks? Nope. The almighty Miyata Gyaos Geocities site? Nope. Eiga.com? Nope. Hell, the actual posters from the film? Nope!

Eagle-eyed viewers may be able to see, however, that the poster does list an Onoda: Isamu Onoda, an extremely prolific lyricist/screenwriter/playwright who also acted a little. Because of his prevalence in the film industry, we have talked about his work a few times on here, but despite his surname he is apparently entirely unrelated to our man. By "acted a little" I do mean "a little": as an actor, he has just three credits to his name, including this film.

I think the reason for Hirata's role getting omitted so frequently is pretty simple: it was probably vanishingly small. His Wikipedia page lists his character's name as simply "Policeman" (keiji). Yes, I know "Keiji" is also a given name, but the kanji used to spell this character's name cannot be used to spell the name "Keiji". So, basically, I would imagine that he was "Cop #2" in the background of a random scene, or something like that.

Still from No Response from Car 33 for illustrative purposes.

To run quickly through some people who were in the movie before we move on: the film was directed by Kozo Saeki, who began his career in the silent era; written by Toshio Yasumi, who got his start at PCL as a screenwriter at around the same time; and adapted from an audio drama by the extremely prolific Kazuo Kikuta. The cast includes many people who we've seen frequently here, including comedians Tony Tani, Kingoro Yanagiya, and Norihei Miki. If I may get my amateur film scholar hat on, this particular period of Japanese cinema has always fascinated me because it feels like such a turning point for the industry as a whole: directors and writers who began their careers in the silent era and watched the birth of cinema itself were now working with a new generation of actors who had never grown up without it. It felt like film and older mediums such as stage plays and rakugo could coexist equally side-by-side, at least for a little while.

He's not even in the realm of having his name on posters for this one.

While we can't find Hirata on the film's Eirin (Japan's MPAA, basically) page, we can find out who had a vested interest in its production. The film was sponsored by Mie Prefectural Tourism Federation, Ise Shima National Park Association, Watarukano Tourism Association, Mie Kotsu Co., Ltd., and Kinki Nippon Railway.

I have confirmed one television broadcast of the film, which is always, always what we want to hear, because (modern) television broadcasts mean that someone, somewhere has digitized the film, and if someone has digitized it, then we don't need to worry about any physical prints rotting away in a warehouse somewhere. As per a defunct message board related to the kabuki bookstore Kobikido Shoten, the film was broadcast sometime in October 2000; unfortunately, I'm not sure on what station. The poster does not include their opinion on this film in specific, but lists it as part of what they call a solid lineup.

Speaking of screenings and broadcasts, I had a hunch that this was probably a "B" picture on a double bill due to its obscurity, and it turns out I was right: the film screened alongside Jirocho Sangokushi pt. 7, directed by Masahiro Makino.

Some promo stills exist:

Tony Tani and Akemi Negishi (hey, that's Noguchi's girl).

So, that's basically it. We can say that a digitized version of the movie may exist somewhere (if television network reorganizations over the years haven't led to it being lost at some point), but that's essentially it. I cannot find record of a single theater screening outside of its original run. I'm really curious about just how small Hirata's role in the film was, but unfortunately it seems like my chances of finding out are slim to none.

断崖の決闘 / Dangai no ketto / Duel at the Precipice (aka Kill the Killer!) [1961]

Release date: June 27th, 1961

Director: Kozo Saeki
Studio: Takarazuka Motion Picture Co., distributed by Toho
Cast: Yosuke Natsuki, Tadao Nakamaru, Kumi Mizuno, Tatsuya Mihashi, Keiko Awaji, Akihiko Hirata, Michiyo Tamaki, Tetsuro Tamba et al.
Availability: No home media or streaming release.

____

The film we're looking at today was included in the 1962 edition of Toho Films, Toho's catalogue of releases that were available for licensing and distribution to international markets. Something interesting to point out is that while international cuts of Japanese films often shave down the run time, whatever Toho did to the English version of this film actually extended it - the original was 77 minutes, the version distributed by Toho International was 85. Added B-roll, perhaps? Unfortunately, we probably won't ever know.

The production crew of this film is largely unknown to us Toho fans, since this was produced by Takarazuka (even though the catalogue says "Produced by Toho Co., Ltd"... hmmm). Director Kozo Saeki helmed a lot of the very popular Ekimae films that ran alongside the President series for a number of years throughout the 1960s, but he actually got his start as a director during the silent film era, and was never exclusive to Toho, working for many different studios throughout his ultimately quite short life (he died in 1972 at the age of 60). In fact, the Ekimae series were not technically Toho productions: they were produced by Tokyo Eiga, a subsidiary of Toho. They certainly earned Toho a good deal of cash, though.

If we're familiar with anybody on the production side of this film, it would probably be Riichirō Manabe, a prolific composer who did the soundtrack for - among other things, but most notable to us - Godzilla vs. Hedorah and Godzilla vs. Megalon.

Now, let's look at how Toho sold the film to English-speaking markets.

Hirata's character is named Otaki but the copy-writer for the catalogue seems to have mis-transliterated it as "Otake". Otaki is the boss of a drug ring and sounds like a generally nefarious person according to other synopses, but was not the main villain and eventually had a change of heart, handing over a list of the drug dealers he worked with to one of the good guys just before dying.

long poster is long

Now, just because a movie was included in that Toho Films catalogue doesn't necessarily mean that it was picked up for distribution. In fact, I can't find any record of Kill the Killer! playing in U.S. theaters, nor any stateside mention of the film under any other name. (I did find out during my research that Dobunezumi Sakusen got a U.S. release, which is kind of insane.)

So, unfortunately I don't have any English-language newspaper blurbs to show. Japanese reviewers imply that Saeki, who worked primarily in comedies, may not have been the ideal director for the film - adding in comical touches that didn't fit the storyline - and that perhaps Senkichi Taniguchi would have been better (give the man a break, though, he was already directing about a bazillion movies for Toho per year). Read a more extensive review from my friend (not really my friend, but I like their reviews and they always put "-sama" after Hirata's name) over here.

As for screenings within Japan, the film played in theaters in 2019 and was broadcast on television in 2021. So not terribly obscure, but definitely not available for anybody to watch any time they want. It's a shame that this never got picked up for stateside distribution, because a lot of Toho's early '60s crime films did manage to stick around after being exported and are readily obtainable today - The Last Gunfight, Merciless Trap, Big Shots Die at Dawn, et cetera. This could have been one of them if only a few theater owners had been interested enough to license it.