復讐浄瑠璃坂 / Fukushu jorurizaka / Revenge at Joruri Slope pt. I + II [1955]

Release date: December 11th and December 21st, 1955

Director: Kyotaro Namiki & Buntaro Futagawa

Studio: Produced by Takarazuka, released by Toho

Cast: Kanjuro Arashi, Denjiro Okochi, Senjaku Nakamura, Ryotaro Oki, Chikage Ogi, Tamao Nakamura, Akihiko Hirata et al.

Availability: VHS releases. Infrequent theater screenings. No other home media or streaming availability.

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Today in the "I wish these were more accessible" department, let's look at a duology of films with a cast full of jidaigeki heavy-hitters that have somehow not had a decent home media release in the past 70 years. The first film was subtitled "Ambush at Onibushi Pass" [Onibushi-toge shougeki], the second was subtitled "Bloody Battle at Dawn" [Akatsuki no kessen].

These films are based on an actual historical event, which I'll only give the broad strokes of here since I'm not terribly familiar with it. An argument broke out during a memorial service for Tadamasa Okudaira, former lord of the Utsunomiya domain, on March 2nd, 1668, between members of separate branches of the Okudaira clan, supposedly in response to one of them being late to the service. One man was killed, and in response not only his killer but also his killer's family were punished, stripped of their stipends, and some sent into exile, including a 12-year-old boy. The boy, Genpachi, drew popular support, and some members of the Okudaira clan abandoned their posts and became ronin in service of revenge against the murderer. Ultimately, a group of 42 ronin raided the mansion where the murderer, Hayato Okudaira, was hiding. This occurred 30 years before the more famous Ako Roshi incident, popularized across the world as Chushingura or some variation on the title "47 Ronin".

The story was disseminated widely throughout the country (which is why it should probably be taken with a grain of salt) in various contemporary publications, and was also adapted into plays and other forms of storytelling, including, eventually, this set of two films by Toho that we're going to look at today.

Jorurizaka in 2017. Credit to Tokuzo Edomura.

Kyotaro Namiki also directed Kurama Tengu Goyo-to ihen, a favorite of mine which we looked at quite a while ago (it's the one with Dr. Serizawa in it). Aside from that, his career doesn't seem to have produced much in the way of hits; he worked with Kanjūrō Arashi's production company on many occasions as well as Shōzō Makino's, and was active from 1929 to 1960. The two Joruri Slope movies were actually co-directed by him and Buntaro Futakawa, brother of Eisuke Takizawa, who did another dear favorite of mine, Tetsuwan namida ari. Futakawa was 56 at the time, and retired after directing these two films, dying only nine years later. Namiki, on the other hand, lived to be 99, and wrote a little bit after retiring from filmmaking.

A few other names from the staff: the original work was written by Sanjugo Naoki, a man of many pen names who also knew Masahiro Makino, and it was adapted to the screen by Ryo Takei and Rokuhei Susukita, two people who do not have Wikipedia pages. Takei has writing credits for many things we're familiar with here, such as the two Tea-Picker's Song of Goodbye films and Wharf with the Weeping Girl. Susukita worked for over 50 years and wrote a whole hell of a lot of things, but these movies are the only ones he wrote for that are relevant to our interests.

Speaking of writing, there was also a manga adaptation of these films which I unfortunately can't find any pictures of besides a Mandarake listing.

Hirata plays a character named Kyubei Okudaira. He is on Hayato's side, and is one of Chikage Ogi's character Kikuno's three brothers. He gets killed in the second film. That is about all I can tell you. We have three press sheets featuring his character:

Hirata's character on the left-hand side, third from top

We love grainy photos here. Hirata's character is fourth from left in the row of portraits, recognizable by his chonmage and because Toho's in-house portrait artist/s was (were?) pretty consistent in the way they drew him.

I swear that at some point I saw a larger version of this image and could make out that Hirata is on the very bottom right.

Fortunately, though, we don't have to rely entirely on grainy pictures of press sheets. The last time a VHS tape of the first film was sold at auction, the seller decided to take screencaps of nearly the entire movie and include them in the auction photos, so we do have some actual stills featuring Kyubei as well. (The full listing in case for some odd reason you have a desire to see other parts of the movie.)

As for screenings, both of these films have played, like every other Japanese movie ever made, at Laputa Asagaya. They have also been aired on pay-per-view TV at least once in 2021. I don't have a lot to go off of in terms of critical reception, but one reviewer felt very strongly that bad character writing made the second part take a sharp downturn and essentially ruined the rest of the film. Another reviewer calls the films "fairly entertaining".

That, unfortunately, is kind of it. It's surprising there isn't more out there about these, considering that they do have a physical release. The tapes seem to be quite rare, but rest assured that if they ever do come up for auction again, no matter how expensive, I'll be getting my hands on them.

鞍馬天狗 御用盗異変 / Kurama Tengu Goyō-tō Ihen / Kurama Tengu Official Thief Incident (1956)

Release date: March 13, 1956

Director: Kyōtarō Namiki
Studio: Toho
Cast: Kanjūrō Arashi, Takamaru Sasaki, Ryōtarō Oki, Shinobu Araki, Chikage Ōgi, Tomoko Matsushima, Mitsugu Terashima, Isao Yamagata, Akihiko Hirata et al.
Availability: No known online streaming, no known recent screenings. A DVD can be purchased from YesAsia or other proxy sites.

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This seems to be a fairly obscure film: no ratings on IMDb, no Letterboxd page, no Wikipedia page (Japanese or otherwise), no one has logged it on eiga.com. I'm dipping into my own personal DVD collection for this one - which means screenshots! (As always, all images are copyright Toho, I own nothing but the disc.) Also, the DVD came with a booklet with some lovely posters I've never seen on the internet, here's one of them.

If you're reading this blog, I'm willing to bet you're the kind of person who already knows what Kurama Tengu is. I can't possibly cover the whole breadth of the series (franchise? story? phenomenon?) here, but in short, “Kurama Tengu” is the title character (he does have a real name, but in this review I'm going to refer to him as Kurama Tengu, since most characters in the film do) of a series of books written by Jirō Osoragi, adapted into many films over many years, starting in the early 1920s.

Kanjūrō Arashi is probably the most widely known actor to take up the title role, and the first film starring him (Kurama Tengu: Kyōfu Jidai, or Frightful Era of Kurama Tengu, released in 1928) set an example for jidaigeki to come, with its energetic swordfighting and charismatic lead. Arashi is not the first, last, or only actor to play this role, however, and even during his tenure, other films with other actors in the lead were being produced. The film we're looking at today is the second-to-last to feature him.

My DVD did not come with English subtitles, but it did come with Japanese subtitles, so I was able to watch the whole thing with my phone pointed at the screen to translate.

The plot concerns the actions of a group of "Official Thieves", sanctioned by the Satsuma clan to raise distrust in the Shogunate among the citizenry. They run riot in Edo, but are internally divided between those who believe they should stick to their mission and those who are using their status as an excuse to have their way with women and generally go wild without constraints. Kurama Tengu goes to the head of the clan to explain that this plan to hurt the government is only hurting the common people, and asks him to stop his men from causing such havoc. We then divert for a moment to some of the Satsuma goons catching a wayward boy, who escapes - but will become relevant later - and then the scene changes to a worker at an inn finding a murder victim wearing a tengu mask in one of his rooms. The murder victim is revealed to be a samurai of some importance named Amakusa. (Not that Amakusa.)

The boy from earlier - Sugisaku - is known to Tengu, who talks about regretting leaving Sugisaku in Kyoto during a time of upheaval, which makes me feel like there's plot from a previous film that I'm missing out on. Whatever the case, at the same time as Tengu is investigating the murder and trying to figure out what to do about the Official Thieves, Sugisaku is looking for Tengu and trying to find his way back to Edo. He ends up being taken in by a woman named Otaki... and this is where Hirata's character, Irie, comes in.

Irie is... a very dedicated scientist who's invented something for a good cause that could be used for evil, and he's afraid of it falling into the wrong hands... hmm... somehow this sounds really familiar, but I can't place it... anyway, the Shogunate gets wind of this and wants to use it to destroy the Satsuma clan and their thieves. Meanwhile, Sugisaku takes up with a group of other street children whose families were killed by the Satsuma clan's thieves.

I had to do a double-take because I thought Sugisaku's dragon hood was a Mechagodzilla mask before I remembered this movie came out in 1956.

Tengu's got a target on his back: people close to him keep turning up murdered, all wearing tengu masks. He meets with Irie, who initially thinks he's the one who stole his research and used it for the murders, but they come to an understanding. Otaki, however, still believes Tengu is a killer, and goes after him with a pistol. We learn that her vendetta against the Satsuma clan's thieves is because she was kidnapped by them after witnessing them kill her father. She confesses all this to Irie, and the two of them separate to work out their feelings, Irie going back to his house and being so distraught that he's caught unawares by the Satsuma men, who kidnap him.

Tengu, now knowing Irie's stolen "medicine" is in the hands of the Satsuma clan, has Saikuniya, their leader, take him to where he's hiding it... but it's been stolen once again. I should mention there's been somebody else in a tengu mask lurking around in the background for all this time, and Tengu confronts them and unmasks them to find that it's a woman with a grudge against him for killing her husband in self-defense. (At this point I am thinking this movie has a lot to do with previous films I haven't seen.) She admits she's the one who stole the medicine in an attempt to finally kill Kurama Tengu.

Lord, this was worth the $40 and the four weeks it took to get to me.

In the final act, Tengu quickly wraps things up by freeing Irie from the palanquin the clan had been using to bring him to whatever fate they had in store for him. Fighting off a whole host of bad guys, Irie returns to his secret lab, and... you guessed it, burns it all and takes his own life, leaving nothing of his research left to be misused by evildoers. Really not reminded of anything here, nothing at all, not even slightly. Tengu puts down the official thief plot and rides off - not quite into the sunset - while Sugisaku and his new friends call after him.

This was a really fun movie. I was afraid it was going to be mostly about Sugisaku and his gang of street urchins, but there's not too much of that; the plot moves along at a steady pace and doesn't branch off into different paths so often as to become tedious. I liked what I saw of Kurama Tengu as a character: he fights for the common people and is very open about it, even saying he'd use his sword against the Shogunate were it ever to do anything that would endanger the people. He seems to be a hero who fights not for any specific faction but for the force of good as a whole.

And I have to say this is a REAL treat for Akihiko Hirata fans. This was an unusually dynamic role for him and it's really fun to see him be the "damsel in distress" (thankfully his girlfriend is packing heat). It's also extremely funny that he is basically playing Ye Olde Serizawa here. This is another film that makes me really, really wish I wasn't seemingly the only person outside of Japan with an interest in this kind of thing. More people should watch this.