Legend of the Irresponsible Hero II: 2 Irresponsible 2 Heroic

I greet you again today with news of new subtitles! I was not planning on making another post for Legend of the Irresponsible Hero (I already wrote one with less detail a few years back), but once I started subtitling the movie I found that there was, in fact, still enough to talk about to justify a new post.

We'll start with a little production history.

A Little Production History

Production on this one was touch-and-go. The film was originally slated for a March release, but during filming, in January of 1964, Hitoshi Ueki was hospitalized for about a month due to overwork. (Unsurprising; I'm not sure how all seven of these guys were not constantly either overworked or ending up with broken ankles from all their stunts). The film was eventually released in the middle of July on a double bill with Hiromichi Horikawa's Brand of Evil. 

According to Keiko Awaji's audio commentary, the Hong Kong location shooting was done at the same time as the shooting for the previous film Crazy Cats Go To Hong Kong. There is something kind of weird going on with some of the location footage, specifically the external location shots done in Macau; the bottom of the frame is occasionally blurry in some shots, and the film stock seems different. I'm wondering if post-production was especially rushed, because that's not the only film oddity here; a good number of the cuts in this movie are noticeably very messy and have visible artifacting along the bottom of the screen.

Example of blurry frame...

 

...and messy cut. And these are both from the HD remaster, which if anything makes the sloppy cut job even more obvious.

This was director Toshio Sugie's last time with the Cats, which is too bad; his entries in the series are some of the most outlandish and spectacular. Sugie had worked for Toho since its PCL days and was very versatile, contributing entries to many of Toho's big series: the President series, the Young Guy series, their lesser-known Rakugo Guy films, and the Crazy series, of course.

Music is a huge part of these Crazy Cats movies, obviously. The two people responsible for creating the film's soundtrack were Hiroaki Hagiwara (music) and Shigeru Tsukada (lyrics). Hagiwara was involved with Crazy Cats in some way or another even before the band was in its final form: he was initially a member of the band's predecessor Hajime Hana and the Cuban Cats, but left to focus on composing music. He continued to write for the band up to his death, including writing Hitoshi Ueki's big hit Suudara-bushi. In addition to that, though, he also wrote for other singers, one of whom just so happened to be Yoshiko Otowa, Akihiko Hirata's younger sister. Listen to Ramen Girl in Love here.¹

I think you should also know this about him:

In the waiting room at Hakodate Port, Hagiwara was reading the newspaper. Soon [Hitoshi] Ueki noticed a strange smell and took a closer look, seeing that Hagiwara's coat was touching the stove, and a faint wisp of smoke was rising from it. "[Y]ou should move a little further away," Ueki warned, but Hagiwara only gave a half-hearted reply and continued reading the newspaper. Soon the coat began to burn, so Ueki said, "Your coat is on fire," but Hagiwara replied, "I know," and continued reading the newspaper.

Fly Pan Am: International Distribution

Legend of the Irresponsible Hero opened at the Toho La Brea on September 23rd, 1966 under the title It's a Bet, and was shown as a double feature with Dark the Mountain Snow, a now-mostly-forgotten Hideko Takamine picture directed by Zenzō Matsuyama. Just a few weeks prior, the Toho La Brea had also shown Boss of Pick-Pocket Bay on a double-bill with Campus A-Go-Go. The movie continued to kick around until October and was then never shown theatrically again, as far as I can determine. I have not found any indication that the movie had any theatrical screenings outside of Japan and the United States.

Crazy Cats were not unknown outside of Japan at this time, but were certainly not a household name; places like Hawai'i and Los Angeles that had a large nisei and sansei population and theaters that showed Japanese films would have been familiar with them. In fact, 1966 could probably be considered the height of the Cats' international stardom, as they actually made a visit to Toho's Honolulu theater in July of that year.

Although this section is for international distribution, I do want to at least mention briefly that when the film was aired on television in Japan in 2019, previews introduced Hirata's character with the subtitle "The Man Who Killed Godzilla and Zetton".

...Zetton? Really? Zetton? I mean... technically, I guess?

Image credit @kortoku on Twitter

Don't Have A Macau, Man: Geographic Context and Gambling

As of 1964, Macau was still a Portuguese territory. Japan (surprisingly) did not occupy the island during the second World War aside from installing "government advisors", and it was actually the United States who were responsible for really the only direct military action that occurred during the war, when they bombed the island after learning that the colonial government had plans to sell fuel to Japan. Portugal relinquished control over Macau to China in 1974 as a "Portuguese territory under Chinese administration" and finally agreed to hand over the colony entirely by 1999.

(You will notice in the opening credits that the Hong Kong actors have "Cathay Organization" written in parentheses next to their names. That is these folks. I do not know if Cathay had any stake in the actual production of the film or if their involvement was limited strictly to providing actors.)

Now is the part of the post where I talk about gambling, which had been legal in Macau since the 1850s. This is skippable, since I don't think there's any part of the movie that will be completely ruined if you don't have context for the game that's being played, but I had to learn this, so dammit, now you do, too. Here's a quick run-down of all the games played in Legend of the Irresponsible Hero.

Sic Bo

Also known as "big and small", this is an uneven game of chance that essentially involves betting on the outcome of a dice roll. It's commonly played in casinos across Asia but has spread internationally. You can read more about it on its English Wikipedia page here. As one would expect, we only see Ueki's character win at sic bo, specifically with a triple match, which according to Wikipedia has a 215-to-1 chance of happening, and he does it twice.

Oicho-kabu

Ueda and Hanaki play a quick round of oicho-kabu in Hanaki's apartment in loving memory of Hanaki's mustache. You can read about oicho-kabu on Wikipedia here; it is from this game that we get the word "yakuza", but oddly enough the name of the game itself is derived from the Portuguese for "eight end" (oito cabo). Oicho-kabu can also be played with a hanafuda deck, which is mentioned in the film's theme song ("cherry blossom and moon over the mountain, plum and pine" are all hanafuda cards).

Mahjongg

You already know what mahjongg is.

In the cold open of Legend of the Irresponsible Hero, Ueda wins with a "Big Three Dragons" hand, which jisho.org defines as a "winning hand consisting of pungs or kongs of each of the three types of dragon tiles​". This means that Ueda held three-of-a-kinds (or four-of-a-kinds) of each of the three dragon "suits". To tell you the truth, I am never more miserable while subtitling a movie than I am when people are playing mahjongg. Fortunately, it doesn't show up in the movie any more after the opening.

Chō-han

You most likely also know what chō-han is if you've seen even one yakuza film, ever, at any point in your life. Incredibly simple: two dice go into a cup, the cup is shaken, players bet on whether the dice will be even (cho) or odd (han). And yet, the amount of onscreen bloodshed that has resulted from such a rudimentary game...

Ueda and Zhang play three rounds of cho-han against each other at the end of the film, although Zhang cheats... kind of? I don't think there's really any way to cheat at cho-han unless you play with loaded dice, since it's pure chance, but he does take advantage of his opponent's weakness. Read about chō-han on Wikipedia's very short and sweet page for it here.

Rōkyoku LARPing: Historical Background

A memorial stone erected by Torazo Hirozawa, originator of "Torazo-bushi" whom we met in our Boss of Pick-Pocket Bay / Crazy Violence at Shimizu Harbor post.

It is a relatively major recurring joke in Irresponsible Hero that Hanaki and Ueda think their situation is just like the famed "Brawl at Koujinyama", and they invoke the story as motivation and justification for their adventures in Macau (much to the chagrin of their long-suffering significant others). This is obviously familiar ground for Japanese viewers, but it is as obscure or even more so than much of the Shimizu Jirocho lore we discussed in our post about the same would be to non-Japanese viewers. (Actually, this IS Shimizu Jirocho lore, just a kind of side-story. The Shimizu Jirocho Cinematic Universe, if you will.)

The "Brawl at Koujinyama" refers to a turf war that took place on April 6th and 8th, 1866, at what is now the site of Koujinyama Kannon-ji temple in Suzuka City. It began as a dispute between two gamblers, Nagakichi of Kanbe and Annotoku (the nickname of Tokujiro Anou), the latter of whom was a local yakuza boss who had seized territory - including a gambling den, hence the relevance in Irresponsible Hero - as his own. The conflict escalated when Jirocho of Shimizu himself got involved after hearing of the death of his sworn brother Nikichi Kira. Jirocho supposedly raised 480 men against Annotoku's side; the battle ended in an apology and an eventual peace agreement, which was finalized in 1869. Among the combatants and serving as something of a mediator was Jirocho's man Omasa, played by Hirata in both Crazy Cats Shimizu films.

Nikichi Kira, who both Hanaki and Ueda seem to want to be, became sort of a folk hero after his death by gunshot wound(!) at the age of 28 during the battle at Koujinyama. Nagakichi of Kanbe, Chen Shumei's counterpart according to Hanaki, was an underling of Annotoku until his adopted son got into a fight and his house was set on fire by Annotoku's men. Nagakichi survived the conflict.

This battle, while historical, has been embellished over the years (as has Jirocho) through its telling by kōdan and rōkyoku performers. This kind of thing was experiencing a resurgence in the mid-1960s, which may explain both its inclusion in Legend of the Irresponsible Hero and the impetus behind the two Shimizu films.

"Have You Spotted Any Suckers?": Translation Notes

I actually do not have much else to say in the way of translation notes; much of the context I feel is necessary to fully understand the film's historical references has already been explained above. The only thing I really want to mention is that the long musical number in the middle of the film is sung in the format of a specific type of traditional counting song where the opening verse of each stanza begins with a number ("one", "two", etc; or in Japanese "hitotsu", "futatsu", etc) and then the verse that follows begins with the same kana as the initial number. I found that there was no way to make this work in English without compromising the translation itself, so I had to settle for using the same letter to begin the first two verses.

I guess I should also mention that I did not translate the Chinese dialogue directly at all; I translated it from the on-screen Japanese subtitles, which from experience are not always quite accurate, but, also from experience, it is an absolute fool's errand for a non-Chinese speaker (myself) to attempt to translate Chinese phonetically. (I did transcribe the English dialogue by ear as opposed to using the Japanese subtitles, because allegedly I do speak English.)

Without much else to say that I haven't already covered, we're going to wrap this one up right about here. If at one point this concluding section was longer and filled out with an embarrassing nerd rant that I thought was a great idea to post on the internet at 2 in the morning, then that's for me to know and you never to find out. Otherwise I'll say ciao for now, and I'll also say that I think we have some cause to celebrate, because with this, every Crazy Cats movie Hirata guest-starred in is now subtitled save for Fantasy Heaven and that one is not far behind, trust me.

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1 Me hearing Kei Tani say "Don't cry, little sister" in Legend of the Irresponsible Hero: "OMG, is he referencing Yoshiko Otowa's 1953 King Records A-side duet with Toshiro Oumi, 'Don't Cry, Little Sister'?!"

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.

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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.

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^{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.}

じゃじゃ馬ならし / Jajauma narashi / Taming an Unruly Girl (1966)

Release date: June 22nd, 1966

Studio: Toho

Director: Toshio Sugie

Cast: Tadao Takashima, Junko Ikeuchi, Mie Hama, Mitsuko Kusabue, Ichirō Arashima, Tatsuyoshi Ehara, Akihiko Hirata et al

Availability: No known theater screenings. No home media release, but digitized copies of the film possibly exist.

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"Akihiko Hirata only ever got typecast in very serious scientist-type roles."

Choosing what to write about on here is more or less arbitrary, with some exceptions: I try to avoid very popular subjects unless I have something interesting to say about them (I was originally going to have a "no Godzilla" rule, look how that turned out) and I try not to write about war movies because I don't want to get canceled. But for this, the decision to write about it was very simple and arose from circumstances outside of my control: 

I had a dream about it.

My subconscious mind picked a bit of a tough one. There's not too much information about this movie out there, and the difficulty of looking it up on the internet is compounded by the fact that "Jajauma narashi" also happens to be the Japanese title of The Taming of the Shrew, so a simple Google search brings you all information related to any time The Taming of the Shrew has ever been mentioned in a  Japanese-language context. ("Jajauma" is an expression that literally means "restless horse" and is used figuratively to refer to a person who's restless or unmanageable, especially a woman.)

That being said, though... in the process of doing research on this one, I began to draw the conclusion that it was solidly within the "prints of this probably do not exist anymore" category. But then I found something incredible: footage. Someone out there is hanging onto a copy of this movie. Whether it'll ever see the light of day or not remains up to the person who has it, but we can hope. (That Twitter handle sounds very familiar to me, I think we've seen them on the blog before - they may be somebody like @packy1954 who somehow has access to every Toho movie ever made.)

But even an obscure movie needs marketing: lobby cards and posters were produced to advertise the film, many of which still exist and are or have been up for auction. All of the lobby cards share one thing in common; they're very colorful, very mod, very 1960s. That gives us an idea of what the film itself looked like, even if the actual full movie is at present nowhere to be found on home media or streaming.

This one isn’t up for auction anymore because I bought it and now it’s in my house.

The film was adapted from a literary work, although not The Taming of the Shrew; Maruo Shioda's Ijiwaru nyobo sojuho ("A Cruel Wife's Management Ways") provided the source material. Going off of the Kinema Junpo synopsis, it sounds like this is a salaryman comedy about hard-working husbands who are very annoyed by their wives asking for those pesky things women always want (basic attention and stability). At only 66 minutes in runtime, and considering that between its release and today it has fallen into essentially total obscurity, I'm going to hazard a guess that Toho didn't really intend for this to be one of 1966's big blockbusters.

Hirata seems to have played a coworker of Tadao Takashima's character, who was passed over for a promotion in favor of Takashima (or perhaps Takashima just happened to be promoted first, the synopsis isn't very clear). At some point in the film he ends up in a traffic accident (oh no, not Get 'em All again) although the details of that are also not spelled out in the synopsis. He has to have been important enough to end up on one of the lobby cards shown above, but I'm not sure what all he does in the film as he isn't one of the central characters.

I genuinely think maybe 2 people have seen this thing in the past 60 years. There are no reviews on Kinenote or Filmarks and one person has logged it as "seen" on eiga.com. It doesn't look like it's ever been screened in a theater past its initial release. Upon its debut, it played on a double-bill with a Keiju Kobayashi vehicle called The Stranger Within a Woman (Onna no nakani iru tan'nin). Basically, it just kind of seems like Toho needed a second movie for a double bill and immediately forgot it existed after it had done its duty.

That's it for today, thank you for reading if you've gotten this far.

大学のお姐ちゃん / Daigaku no oneechan / 3 Dolls in College (1959)

Release date: March 3, 1959

Director: Toshio Sugie

Studio: Toho

Cast: Reiko Dan, Sonomi Nakajima, Noriko Shigeyama, Akira Takarada, Akira Kubo, Yoko Tsukasa, Yosuke Natsuki, Tatsuyoshi Ehara, Akihiko Hirata et al.

Availability: 35mm English-subtitled print held at BAMFA. VHS release and infrequent television broadcasts/theater screenings. Now available on archive.org.

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Remember when I said at the end of my "Rainbowman in Hawai'i" post that this had a VHS release and that I had saved searches for it? And, to my friends in real life, remember when I swore I would get my hands on it if it ever came up for sale again? Well... I did, and it wasn't cheap.

Some background information: The Onee-chan ("Sisters") series were films starring Reiko Dan, Sonomi Nakajima, and Noriko Shigeyama as a trio of girl friends nicknamed Punch, Pinch, and Sench (this sounds better in the Japanese pronunciation, trust me). These films were made in the late 1950s and were part of a trend of movies that depicted spunky young people doing spunky young people things. Eight films were made in total from 1959 to 1963; 3 Dolls in College was the first of them. This film is of further interest because apparently it was the first Japanese film to be fully dubbed into English. I find this hard to believe and am still searching for anything that would refute it, simply because it seems unlikely to me that such an obscure, forgotten film would lay claim to that fairly distinguished title, but it does seem to be the case. In any event, this Neocities page has more information on the film's stateside release, and in the interest of keeping this intro short since this post will be image-heavy, I'll leave you that instead of explaining it myself.

In March I started to write about this movie but ultimately abandoned and never published it because there was just not enough information out there (especially about Hirata's role in the film) to fill out an interesting post. But, as I said, I did learn that there was a home media release, and began watching carefully to see if it would come up for sale. As it turns out, I only had to wait three months, and now we can all experience this one for ourselves.

The picture quality is... not very nice. At all. Which is ironic, considering the actual tape arrived in such pristine quality it looked like it had been manufactured yesterday, and the seller even opened it up to put some bubble wrap between the tape and the case to keep it from jostling around.

Shigeko (Shigeyama), Mitsuko (Nakajima) and Toshiko (Dan) are students in French at Nichinan University. The opening scene sees them all in French class falling asleep and not concentrating; they're dressed anime protagonist-style, in bright colors that distinguish them from the drab clothes and uniforms of all the other students.

Their three nicknames don't seem to be fully developed yet; Dan's character is called "Tonch" in this first film and neither of the other two are referred to with anything but their real names. Mitsuko borrows some money from Toshiko so she can go on a date, and in return Mitsuko lends Toshiko her great big fur coat. Rumiko Sasa, who I liked in University Bandits, plays Mitsuko's younger sister Sumiko. 

Toshiko in turn lends the coat to Kiriko (Toki Shiozawa), a waitress at a club. This will turn out to have been a bad idea, but 2,000 yen is 2,000 yen. (I mean, not today it ain't.) Kiriko's important because she's got a yakuza boyfriend and that yakuza boyfriend is Hirata's character Iwafune. So now we've got Mitsuko, Shigeko, Kiriko, Iwafune and Mitsuko's date Hitamaro (played by Haruya Katō, who I am also quite fond of) in the same club together. Mitsuko literally bumps into Kiriko while her and boyfie are jitterbugging.

Shigeyama was a professional dancer in real life and she's really talented, so it's nice to see her show off.

I am having just the worst time taking screenshots of this thing because the motion blur on this old VHS is so bad. I'm not even getting great screenshots of Hirata since he's wearing his yakuza shades most of the time. He's also slapping somebody every few seconds. He's in full-on bad boy mode here, I don't think I've ever seen him play this archetype except perhaps in some of the Ankokugai films.

Aww, not his other eye.

Mitsuko and Kiriko get into a fight that everybody else gets dragged into. Akira Kubo's character Ōkubo (yeah) happens to be passing by and intervenes. Ōkubo and Iwafune get into a brawl and the police arrive. Officer Ichirō Arashima interviews the involved parties about the loan of the coat, who punched who, who's a student where, and whatnot, but not too much seems to come of it. Next we see the three dolls they're cheating in French class.

Shigeko swallows the evidence but it's too late, they all get caught and are expelled from the class, meanwhile master cheater Maehara (Tatsuyoshi Ehara) in the seat behind them was a much cooler cat about it. Maehara is a classmate of the three friends and is involved with real estate, and as we will see later, he not only cheats on tests but is a scammer as well. Each of the girls will eventually gain a boyfriend along the way, and at around the thirty-minute mark these relationships have begun to gel: Ōkubo with Mitsuko, Yosuke Natsuki's character "Lucky" Nakagi with Shigeko, and Maehara with Toshiko/Tonch.

The girls' next scheme is to ply their French teacher with alcohol so he won't fail them all out of his class. They go to his home in Kamakura, but they are greeted by noted ikemen Akira Takarada's character Takada (...yeah), who explains that the teacher is ill with a heart issue. They offer their alcohol as planned but the teacher rejects it, since he's sick, and Takada returns it to the girls. They decide to go to a Hinamatsuri party instead.

Sonomi Nakajima sings the film's theme song and I would not have guessed she had a set of pipes on her. She has the squeakiest speaking voice you've ever heard, but in real life, she was a professional singer. Mitsuko and Ōkubo dance for a bit at the party but he ditches her to go eat tiny sandwiches.

There's also this weird-looking dog.

It is at this party that Maehara gets Toshiko to agree to a shady real estate contract while she's a little drunk. The party spills over into the same club where everybody got into a wee tiff earlier and Shigeko finds her boyfriend with another girl. Ōkubo is kind of the only honest guy here, but like, he also got so hungry at the party that he ate dog food (and this after the tiny sandwiches!), so I think he's a bit on the himbo side.

All three girls have decided at this point to drop out of school. They're demotivated and, except for Mitsuko and Ōkubo, are having boyfriend trouble. But when Takada turns up as the substitute French teacher, they forget all about their plans to quit. How could anyone maintain their resolve to drop out of college while sitting in a class where Akira Takarada is singing chansons?

Girls go to college to get more knowledge, yes, but also to ogle Akira Takarada.

Unfortunately, there's one of him and three of them. Each of the girls thinks they're being sneaky by going over to visit him, but they all run into each other at his house, and have all bought him the same necktie. While waiting for Takada to come home they have a boob size competition; I did not take screenshots of this. Alas, as it turns out, Takada has a fiance named Michiko (Yoko Tsukasa). Michiko also bought him the same necktie.

Then the movie wraps up pretty abruptly. Despite the relationship and money issues, the film concludes on a high note, at a party for the previous French teacher with all the girls and their boyfriends in attendance, plus Takada and his fiance. Ōkubo has won the boxing championship and is wasshoi'd in on the shoulders of every oheya actor Toho could muster. Nakajima sings us out with "Ginza Burabura", an incredibly bouncy song about being a young lady strolling around Ginza, with a melody that reminds me of "Frosty the Snowman" for some reason.

I gotta admit I found this one a bit boring around the edges, probably because I expected it to be a straight comedy and it's not, it's mostly a drama with three spunky main characters who get into typical modern young woman situations (or what was imagined to be such in the 1950s). It's another walk-on role for Hirata, but the Nakajima/Dan/Shigeyama trio is great here. I can only imagine that they get better as the series goes on, but unfortunately the other films are very obscure as well.

無責任遊侠伝 / Musekinin yuukyoden / It's A Bet (aka Legend of the Irresponsible Hero) (1964)

Release date: July 11, 1964

Director: Toshio Sugie

Studio: Toho

Cast: Hitoshi Ueki, Hajime Hana, Kei Tani, Hiroshi Inuzuka, Eitaro Ishibashi, Senri Sakurai, Shin Yasuda, Mie Hama, Keiko Awaji, Ichirō Arashima, Akihiko Hirata, George Ruiker, Bokuzen Hidari, Ikio Sawamura, Hideyo Amamoto et al.

Availability: Available on Amazon Prime Japan and on DVD; no release outside of Japan.

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Today we're going to look at the earliest Crazy Cats film that Hirata had a role in. With this, I've now covered all of his entries in the series. He certainly did get a range of roles to play over these five films: same yakuza twice, nefarious guy, nefarious guy with goatee, and different nefarious guy with goatee.

This movie was shot on location in Macau, along with the previous film Crazy Cats Go To Hong Kong, released in December of 1963. According to audio commentary from Keiko Awaji, both films were shot simultaneously. The film was Toshio Sugie's last time directing a Crazy Cats production, and he also has a little cameo - I didn't spot him, but he was one of the spectators during a horse betting scene.

As per Stuart Galbraith, the film was released stateside with subtitles. Galbraith doesn't have specifics about the release, but I've found a newspaper ad that indicates the film was playing on a double bill at the Toho La Brea as of September 30, 1966.

Alright, let's roll. No subtitles for this one so I will be trying my level best.

Hitoshi Ueki plays a gambler, as he often does, and the film as a whole is about gambling, as it often is. There is a running gag in some Crazy Cats films where the characters have names that incorporate kanji from the actors' actual names, and this is maybe the baldest example of that: Ueki's character is named Hitoshi Ueda. The film opens with a montage of him cleaning up at various games and giving a cheeky "sorry!" to all bystanders.

The groom is played by Haruya Katō, one of my favorite "hey it's that guy"s.

Ueda works at a hotel where a wedding is taking place and when he overhears two guests - one of whom is Hanaki, a managing director of a company called Awa Trading, played by Hajime Hana - idly taking bets for fun, he can't help but join in. They bet on the bride's shoe size, so Ueda makes some excuse to steal one of her heels. They bet on her waist and hip size, and Ueda tries to measure her, but this doesn't go as smoothly as stealing her shoe and he is thrown out. An argument ensues with Hanaki, and Kei Tani's character Chen Shumei enters the scene, watching them from behind a nearby parked car. 

Hanaki and Ueda start betting on more random stuff: which car will move first when the light turns green, whether the passenger of a cab is a man or a woman, whether the number of sweet potatoes a street vendor has in his cart is odd or even, et cetera. After a while of this, Chen confronts Ueda and tries to get him to come to Macau, "the Monaco of the East", for reasons I'm not entirely clear on. Ueda has, since prior to the start of the film, been romantically involved with Mie Hama's character Kaneko Izumi, who likes him, although she wants him to get a real job.

Oh no, they got Ichirō Arishima in old-age makeup again. He is the president of Awa Trading. Kaneko is trying to get Ueda to work for the company as well (she is a secretary of some kind) but that life just isn't for him. But Kaneko is determined to get him to straighten out. Along with Hanaki and the president, she schemes to somehow use Ueda's #1 weakness against him: he is horribly allergic to dogs. (This seems like a lot of information for Kaneko to know about Ueda considering they've only been together for about two minutes of screen time, but that's movies for you.)

I don't know why that worked, but it worked, and now Ueda is working for Awa Trading and bothering the office ladies.

Bin Furuya sighting.

Here Ueda is handing out bra fillers to all the women in the office.

Here we also see Toru Yuri who is a "triple crown" winner: he has been in movies with Akihiko Hirata, and was in the Comedy Trio TV series with Yoshiko Otowa as well as the theatrical Comedy Trio movie directed by Yoshiki Onoda, meaning that he worked with all three Onoda siblings at some point or another. (This is rarer than you might think due to the five-studio agreement.)

Ueda doesn't take easily to the office life. He starts betting with himself on whether the next number on the sheets he's looking over will be even or odd. Ueda, my guy, I think you might need to see somebody about that. Hanaki takes him back to his own place and shows him that he has many fancy things, all in twos because he wants to marry the president's daughter Keiko (Keiko Awaji).

He might be allergic to dogs, but he can share the screen with Wan-san just fine.

Masaya Nihei sighting. We almost have a whole episode of Ultraman in here.

It's around this time that the plot device which will ultimately lead Ueda to Macau comes in. Awa Shoji is trying to close a deal with a wealthy client named Mr. Heckel (George Luiker, who we previously saw in Harikiri Shachō). A lot of rival companies are also competing for Heckel's business, so Awa Shoji enlists Ueda to help. He and Shin Yasuda's character Suzuki go to the airport to wait for Heckel, and Chen shows up as well to pick up his younger sister Shu Gyoku (Bai Bing). While the line of guys from rival companies is turned away at the door, Ueda and Suzuki use one of those window-washing hoist things to crank their way up to Heckel's window. In his hotel room, Heckel is doing business with Hirata's character, Zhang Tengyoku, who is speaking the hell out of some English. He asks Heckel if he's found "any suckers" - this is our first inkling that Heckel is a fraud. 

Ueda was brought in precisely because Heckel dai suki gambling. They get to betting matchsticks for card games. Things get too heated for the hotel room and they go to a restaurant to continue the game. Heckel tries to get Ueda to go to Texas, but this isn't Texas Free-For-All, so that won't happen. Drunk and hopped up on gambling, Heckel agrees to conduct business in Japan through Awa Trading.

It's taken 40+ minutes, but we now get our first real musical number. It's good fun.

His shirt says "musekinin" ("irresponsible").

The fun doesn't last, though. Awa Trading finds out Heckel is a fake and that he turned tail back to Macau as soon as he received the money that his contract with the company promised. Ueda kinda gets fired, but hey, he didn't like the job in the first place. He meets back up with Chen and Shu Gyoku and it turns out that Zhang had apparently tried to take over the gambling house that Chen owned. Ueda gambled his way into this situation, now he's going to gamble his way out: almost an hour into the movie, we're finally going to Macau.

The way Ueki just doesn't react whatsoever to getting whacked in the head got a laugh out of me.

The gang is now all here: Senri Sakurai and Eitaro Ishibashi play Sakura and Ando, two dorks who meet the Awa Trading contingent on the ground in Macau. Hanaki tries to keep everyone focused while Chen shows them all into a gambling house where every Toho White Guy is hanging out in the background.

Ueda eventually runs into Heckel looking not so great at a bar while he's trying to order something cold from Ikio Sawamura who isn't wearing a shirt. They tie him up back at their hotel room and Zhang enters the scene with a small retinue of goons. I'm really loving this role and it seems like Hirata was having fun with it too. Love to see him be the smarmy cool-guy villain. 

Hideyo Amamoto is here too but doesn't have any lines.

Zhang has been the mastermind behind whatever Heckel was doing; Heckel was just a pawn to get money into Zhang's syndicate. I don't know if I should be making a note of this or not but, uh, we also get to see Zhang in the shower. The shot comes out of nowhere, is not contextually necessary, lasts for a decent amount of time and feels like nothing if not fanservice.

I run a classy establishment here at guzareshirei dot blogspot dot com.

...Anyway, Keiko and Kaneko fly to Macau to make sure the boys aren't getting into trouble (they are). I'm having a little trouble comprehending Japanese or even English at this point, but fortunately the plot is almost through. Zhang and his guys challenge Ueda and his guys to a final dice game. It's good old cho-han, nothing complicated, but a good movie can make cho-han one of the most nerve-wracking games you'll ever see. 

Zhang plays dirty, of course, and brings in a dog to make Ueda freak out. At this point Hiroshi Inuzuka's character Inukai realizes (with help from Zhang's traitorous girlfriend) that Zhang is not who he says he is; he is actually a Japanese soldier who deserted on the front lines and... decided to go scam people instead, I guess?

Despite the attempted sabotage with the dog, Ueda of course wins the game, and the money taken from Heckel's bogus contract and the deed to the gambling house are returned to their rightful owners.

In fairness I'm not even sure that's a dog; it looks like a feather duster, maybe

Great movie! This was pretty early on in the Crazy Cats series, and this particular film lacks a lot of the character that would come to define their later movies, but it's really fun as just a regular comedy. I was expecting a lot more out of the on-location filming, but every Macau scene is confined to roughly the last half-hour of the film, so it feels very scaled-down. The whole thing feels much more like an Ueki solo vehicle than an ensemble Crazy Cats film. But in any case I had a good time with this one and may or may not be rewatching it at some point.