Toho's Salaryman Comedies of the 1950s and '60s

Many American fans of Toho movies may not be aware of it, but much of what kept the studio afloat during the 1950s and '60s (and even later, although the appeal fizzled out towards the 1970s) consisted of light comedy films about office workers. Perhaps the most significant series during that time was the President [Shachō] series, starring Hisaya Morishige as Okanda, an irreverent company president, Keiju Kobayashi as Suyama, his practical-minded secretary, and a semi-regular cast of tertiary characters including Frankie Sakai, Daisuke Katō, Asami Kuji, Norihei Miki, Yoko Tsukasa, Ichirō Arashima, and more. The series ran for 33 films between 1956 and 1970, with an additional six films that are considered adjacent to the series itself. The majority of entries were directed by the same two people: Shue Matsubayashi and Toshio Sugie. Nobuo Aoyagi, Yasuki Chiba and Kunio Watanabe helmed early entries, but after Salaryman Chushingura, directorial duties were traded off between Sugie and Matsubayashi for the rest of the series' run. There's never really been a huge push to export this kind of film outside of Japan, as far as I know.

The President series was not, of course, the only set of salaryman films Toho produced. The much shorter Diary of a Successful Salaryman [Sarariiman shusse taikoki] series - which we'll look at in a bit - starred Keiju Kobayashi in the president role. Kobayashi also appeared with Morishige in the Third-Class Executive [Santōjūyaku] trilogy early in the 1950s. Honestly, if you want a list of salaryman comedies, just look at Kobayashi's filmography - these types of role were his bread and butter.

The scope of our current examination of these works is necessarily going to be quite narrow (as in, we're only going to be covering the ones that Akihiko Hirata was in, which should be obvious considering that this is, in fact, an Akihiko Hirata fansite), but it's worth bringing in some other titles to provide context. Now that we have that out of the way, though, we're going to look at everything in Hirata's filmography that could merit being called a "salaryman comedy". All English titles used in this article are unofficial, and are sourced from Galbraith’s Toho Studios Story.

My last note before we begin is that I am limiting this list to salaryman comedies, specifically - we'd be here all day if I just went through all the films Hirata had a role in that took place partially or mostly in an office (Young Challengers, one or two Crazy Cats movies, The Luckiest Day, Structure of Hate, et cetera).

Fighting President [Harikiri Shachō], 1956, dir. Kunio Watanabe

I covered this one a while ago. It is the third entry in the series and the only one to be directed by Watanabe, and also marks the introduction of Asami Kuji as a regular cast member, playing Okanda's wife. Until early 2021 it was not available on home media.

Very loosely, the film is about Okanda coming up with various schemes to improve sales for his bicycle company. Okanda's personality gets in the way of socializing with potential benefactors, and he ends up holding a "Miss Cycle" contest to promote his company, which lands him in trouble with his new wife. Suyama, simultaneously, has some light relationship troubles. Hirata's appearance in the film consists entirely of one scene (unless you count a photo of him that is seen earlier) and he is quite literally only there to look pretty. He's brought in as a potential romantic rival standing in the way of Suyama and the girl he's trying to court.

Employee With the Secret Savings and the Autocrat President - Employee With the Secret Savings Fights Bravely [Hesokuri shain to wanman shachō - Hesokuri shain kantosu], 1956, dir. Motoyoshi Oda

These two have some tokusatsu appeal - Motoyoshi Oda made Godzilla Raids Again! This film stars Norihei Miki, Kingoro Yanagiya, Yasuko Nakata, Gen Funahashi and Hiroshi Koizumi, and the plot seems to revolve around "a drug that makes you hate alcohol". This one and its sequel were adapted from a book by Ichiro Kitamachi, who was a prolific and multi-award-winning novelist during the 1940s and '50s.

Hesokuri shachō was the name of the first film in the President series, released in early 1956, and Kitamachi released Hesokuri shain in 1957, but the two have nothing to do with each other. This film was part of a duology, the second of which we'll cover next, and ran for only 53 minutes - but the second was even shorter, clocking in at just 46 minutes. We have just exactly one still from the film courtesy of Laputa Asagaya, who screened it at some point in 2007, and it's grainy and small, but it's the kind of picture we want. 

There must have been other screenings or broadcasts since then, as the film's only review on Filmarks is from 2024; although I suppose it is plausible that somebody who saw it in 2007 decided "hey, let me review that salaryman comedy I saw seventeen years ago". You can find another short review from someone who watched it at Laputa here.

Employee With the Secret Savings and the Autocrat Company President - The Autocrat President's Pure Heart [Hesokuri shain to wanman shachō - Wanman shachō junjo su], 1956, dir. Motoyoshi Oda

The second part in the duology, released a week after the first, features all the same actors. Hirata seems to have had somewhat of a more important role in this second film, and we can get an idea of what his character was like: spoiled and not very nice, apparently; a torrid relationship wherein Hirata's character Oda continues to make unwanted advances towards Yasuko Nakata's character Masako takes up a large part of the plot. Koizumi and Hirata's characters get into a physical fight at one point, and ultimately Nakata ends up with Funahashi's character, who is named Onoda, so, really, she went from one Onoda to the next.

One reviewer suggests that Yanagiya not fitting the image of a company president was the reason why the series ended after two films, but I'm not sure if that implies that this was an attempt by Toho to get a series off the ground or if it's just speculation (these films lack a Wikipedia page). For this one we have a Toho News pamphlet, a poster, and a press photo, but none of them feature Hirata's character, despite him playing what essentially sounds like the main antagonist role, if a salaryman comedy can be said to have antagonists. Read a review here; I can't determine what screening this reviewer saw.

Speaking of screenings, I have confirmed that this movie was actually re-screened at the now-closed Yurakuza theater two years after its release as part of a Tanabata festival in the town of Musashi-Kosugi. The H-Man was part of that lineup as well. I have read that there's a picture inside this book of the Fuse Line Theater (the Lion-za at the time) displaying a marquee for this film, but I haven't seen it.

Props to Motoyoshi Oda, it's a bold move to direct a movie in which the most unlikeable character shares your surname.

Diary of a Successful Salaryman - Conclusion - Bridegroom Manager No. 1 [Sarariiman shusse taikoki - kanketsuhen - Hanamuko-bucho No. 1], 1960, dir. Masanori Kakei

The fifth and final film in the Successful Salaryman series is also the only one that Hirata appeared in. Other stars include Keiju Kobayashi, Reiko Dan, Ikio Sawamura, Daisuke Katō, Ichirō Arashima, Arihiro Fujimura and Mickey Curtis. We have one poster, featuring some guys in brownface (the film involves the sale of a new car model to Iraq) and our man, who looks vaguely like Tatsuya Nakadai here for some reason. I believe this film was shown alongside Daughters, Wives and a Mother, which does actually have Tatsuya Nakadai in it. We can watch a very cringey two and a half minute clip of the film here, but honestly I wouldn't recommend it. If nothing else it at least proves that this movie has been digitized at some point.

By far the most interesting thing about this movie is that the grandchild of Linda Beech, the white woman pictured on the poster above, posted on Reddit thirteen years ago hoping to connect with someone who could help them find more information about her. I'm unsure if this person's search was successful, but since Beech doesn't have a Wikipedia page, it's nice to hear a little more about her.

Executive Candidate No. 1 [Jūyaku koho-sei NO. 1], 1962, dir. Kengo Furusawa

That headshot of Hirata is actually not from the film and is one of his "official" Toho portraits.

According to Wikipedia, this is a Momotaro adaptation centered around salary workers. Wikipedia also notes that because the film was released immediately before Furusawa's far more famous work Irresponsible Age of Japan, its theater run lasted only one week, and it fell into obscurity. Stars include Tadao Takashima, Mie Hama, Hiroshi Sugi, Ureo Egawa (Dr. Ichinotani from Ultra Q), Yumi Shirakawa and Akira Oizumi. I can't say much about this one but we do at least have some nice posters. I suppose Hirata must have had a decent role considering he is on both of them.

Money is Most Important [Banji okane], 1964, dir. Shue Matsubayashi

This is the hand gesture for "money".

I stole this from somebody's blog so I have no idea who the person highlighted in yellow is, but you can see Hirata (in hat, to the left of Kyu Sakamoto) in the front row.

The film was adapted from a novel by Keita Genji by the prolific screenwriter Toshiro Ide and headlined by popular singer Kyu Sakamoto of "Sukiyaki" fame. Watch two minutes of retro Japan B-roll from the film here. Reviews indicate that this was a very fun and light-hearted movie but, surprisingly, Sakamoto doesn't sing at any point, and plays a comedy-relief-type character. It doesn't seem like this one is too obscure, but still, it doesn't have any home media release.

Hirata plays Sakamoto's rival, a manipulative billionaire "in his forties" who tries to use his money to win over the woman Sakamoto loves. Other stars include Yuriko Hoshi, Ichirō Arashima, Mie Hama, Junzaburo Ban, Chieko Naniwa and Ikio Sawamura. You know, I'm realizing that a lot of Hirata's roles in these films fit into a character archetype that can broadly be defined as "Mr. Steal Your Girl".

Anyway, Money is Most Important is the sole film on our list that got a U.S. release with subtitles, which was almost certainly thanks to Kyu Sakamoto's worldwide popularity. It first played during late April 1965 for what I think was a fairly short run at the Mamo theater in Hilo, Hawaii, and was hyped as "a gay comedy with a cast of popular funsters". In a surprise turn, this was not the last time the film was seen stateside in the '60s: the next year, in March of 1966, it played on a double-bill at the Pioneer Theater in Salt Lake City, Utah. This is, therefore, probably the closest connection we will ever be able to establish between Akihiko Hirata and Mormonism.

Greenhorn Salaryman: Youth Belongs to Us! [Botchan shain - seishun wa ore no monoda!], 1967, dir. Takeshi Matsumori

Thanks to a Noriko Takahashi fansite, we have some pictures from this otherwise fairly obscure film, and the knowledge that a print has been digitized. As far as I understand it, the word "Botchan" entered common parlance after its use as the title of a novel by Natsume Sōseki, and came to refer to a young boy innocent of the ways of the world - so, "greenhorn", basically. Other stars of this film include Tadao Takashima, Yosuke Natsuki, Mie Hama, Yoshiko Toyoura, Yu Fujiki, Jun Tazaki, Ichirō Arashima and Ikio Sawamura. Hirata plays Iwaki, a secretary.

Takashima had previously starred in a series of "Botchan" films for Shintoho, and his appearance as a friend of Natsuki's character in this film led a lot of people to believe that it was a revival of that series. This was also a duology, but we're only looking at the first film here; from what I've heard, the second was mostly a rehash of the first. This particular film was adapted from the novel Botchan shain, also by Keita Genji.

That's just about it for salaryman comedies. Hirata had a tendency to get cast in just one or two random parts of a long-running series (or a sequel but not the first film, et cetera), so this list should not be taken as representative of salaryman comedies as a whole, but hey, at least I admit my biases. Despite their popularity during their initial release, these are some very obscure films today - as far as I'm aware, a total of one film from this list has any kind of home media release at all. As we've seen, though, they're not all totally lost, with digitized prints in existence that could potentially end up on YouTube at some point.

Original 1953 Tetsuwan Namida Ari Poster

That's it. That's the post. Look at it.

No you don't want to know how much money I spent on this. You really do not.

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.

Crazy Big Explosion II: 2 Crazy 2 Explosion

A friend of mine is hosting a screening of Crazy Big Explosion that will be, as far as I can tell, its first screening on U.S. soil! (Boogie on down to Flicker Bar on May 14th if you're local.) I wrote about this movie a year and change ago, but I want to revisit it so that I can talk about its background some more. I also just found out that Ayumi Ishida passed away in March of this year, so this is a good time to write about this film again.

I spent several hours searching newspapers from areas with theaters that showed Japanese films to determine if the film got a U.S. release at all. I looked through several months of theater ads in the Hawaii Times and can say with fair certainty that the film did not play at the Toyo, Kokusai or Nippon theaters. I tend to pay special attention to Hawaii Times because the archives are not searchable and do not have OCR, meaning they will contain things that you can't find with a text search. In any case, no dice. However, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin briefly mentions the film in July of 1969 in a column about news in the Japanese film industry.

As far as I can tell, that is the singular mention of the film in print anywhere in the U.S. during its initial Japanese theater run. I am honestly very surprised; a good many Crazy Cats movies did get U.S. showings.

Continuing on the topic of English-language publications, this film got a brief mention in Stuart Galbraith's article on Crazy Cats. Galbraith doesn't seem to have been aware that Hirata was in the film but does mention him elsewhere, again, very briefly, referring to him as "the tormented scientist in Godzilla, King of the Monsters!" which is about as much as you could expect any American in 1998 to know about him.

Some very wacky English translations of film titles going on in this article

The film was also mentioned under yet another weird English title in the academic publication Persistently Postwar: Media and the Politics of Memory in Japan, in the chapter entitled Collective Remorse for the Past: Japanese Film and TV Representations of the 1960s Student Movement by Katsuyuki Hidaka.

I have no earthly idea where the author got the title "A Romp by Crazy Cats" from and this is the only time I've ever seen it referred to as such

We in America might not readily recognize this movie, but in Japan it's not obscure at all: I've found multiple instances of people on Twitter retweeting news stories about explosions caused by someone lighting a cigarette near a gas leak with clips from this movie.

Double-billed with Shachō enmachō

As I said in my original post, you can get a physical copy of this with English subtitles if you know where to look. I own the Japanese DVD release, which, like all Toho's Crazy Cats DVDs, comes with a nice booklet. Here are scans of the booklet, along with a translation of the introduction, which was written by one Hiroyuki Suzuki. There are a few things in the introduction that require more explanation and context so I've included some footnotes at the bottom of the post.

I didn't edit these scans, it's just in black and white

"On July 21st, 1969, Apollo 11 successfully landed, and Commander Armstrong and his crew became the first humans to set foot on the moon. Everyone was glued to their TVs hoping to catch a glimpse of this historic moment. This film, which was released three months earlier during Golden Week in the spring, was billed as an "Ultra Apollo Comedy" in the trailer, where the Crazy gang finally went into space.

This film made full use of special effects for the first time since Crazy Big Adventure (1965). Screenwriter Yasuo Tanami also took on the role of producer from this film onwards. This was because Watanabe Productions was making great strides at the moment, and president Shin Watanabe was no longer able to directly participate in film production. In Crazy Big Adventure, the "god of special effects", Eiji Tsuburaya, served as special effects director, but this time, the special effects director is Teruyoshi Nakano, who was an assistant director at Tsuburaya Productions. After this film, Nakano served as special effects director on many films, including the Godzilla series in the 1970s and Japan Sinks (1973). Nakano played an active role as the leading figure in Toho special effects after the death of Eiji Tsuburaya. Nakano himself talks about interesting anecdotes, such as his interactions with director Kengo Furusawa, in the audio commentary. 

This was Furusawa's 12th Crazy Cats film. The previous two year's Crazy Cats films, which were released during Golden Week, were single-feature films shot overseas, but from this year onwards, they were reverted to the usual double-feature format. This film was shown alongside The Drifters! All Assault, starring Watanabe Productions' band The Drifters, which seemed to be a work symbolizing the changing of generations, but the popularity of Crazy Cats had not yet waned. During filming, it was not possible to coordinate the schedules of all the band members, so some scenes that had been in the script were cut. The only Crazy movie Furusawa made after this was Japan's #1 Yakuza Man (1970), starring Hitoshi Ueki, meaning that Crazy Big Explosion was the last Furusawa film to feature all the members of Crazy Cats. Furusawa left the rest to director Takashi Tsuboshima.

Looking at the cast, the supporting cast includes eccentric actor Arihiro Fujimura as the Chief Cabinet Secretary and Mikky Yasukawa as the university professor, and while the unique characters leave a strong impression, it's especially nice to see Toru Yuri in good health. His role as the building manager, who appears singing the then-popular "365 Steps March", is superb. Furusawa especially liked to use Yuri, and he is one of the most indispensable supporting actors in Crazy Cats movies next to Akira Hitomi. He appeared as early as the first Toho Crazy Cats movie, Irresponsible Age of Japan (1962), and was then a semi-regular. From the president of a client company to a security guard, he plays a wide variety of roles in each film.

Akihiko Hirata, Andrew Hughes, and Nadao Kirino, who play the executives of the secret society GIB, are familiar faces from Toho's special effects films. It is interesting to see the fusion of Crazy Cats movies and special effects films, not only in terms of technique but also in terms of casting. Andrew Hughes is a Turkish[-born Australian] actor who has appeared in many Crazy Cats films, playing roles that include Hitler in Crazy Big Adventure, Kid Gold in Mexican Free-For-All (1967), Monsieur Zivaco (1967) and I'll Be Fooled (1971).

Ayumi Ishida, who sang "Love is a Gentle Breeze" in the Hibiya Cinema District, was at the height of her popularity when her "Blue Light Yokohama", released at the end of 1968, became a big hit just after the New Year. This was the B-side for the next song, "Walking in the Tears", and it is truly a masterpiece. Her performances in the Toho films Where Are You Going? starring Yuzo Kayama and Typhoon and Pomegranate starring Yuriko Hoshi (both 1967) are memorable. Both films were youth stories based on original novels by Yōjirō Ishizaka.

Perhaps due to the director's preference, Kiyoko Mizuzenji's songs stand out, but at the time, other female singers were also prominent: Carmen Maki's "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child", Kahoru Senga's "Midnight Guitar", Keiko Fuji's "Shinjuku Woman", and so on. When you look at the hit songs lined up together like this, you can see the social climate of the time. The Record Award was also given to Naomi Sara's decadent "If You're Happy, That's All That Matters".

The somewhat broken worldview of this film seems to reflect the atmosphere of the era as the '60s changed to the '70s. Popular phrases such as "Happa fumifumi"¹ and "Oh! Moretsu"² that were born from commercials were also prominent but full of emptiness. It was also symbolic that Hajime Hana, dressed as a hippie, delivered the line "Ah, Tamegoro! What a surprise!"³ on Geba Geba 90 Minutes!! on Nippon Television, which began in the fall of that year. Meanwhile, in 1970, the year after the Osaka Expo, the Crazy Cats celebrated the 15th anniversary of their formation."

credit to @1955_crazycats on twitter

I'm going to cut off this infodump here, but I've saved one of my favorite finds for last: an artist on pixiv has basically cornered the market on awesome Crazy Cats fanart, including a drawing of one of the song-and-dance scenes from this film. Take a look at this fanart of Senri Sakurai and Kei Tani and Hitoshi Ueki if he was in Pokemon.

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1 "Happa fumifumi" was a phrase from a commercial for a Pilot brand fountain pen that featured the poet Kyosen Ōhashi using the pen to compose tanka. "Happa fumifumi" is a shortened version of the full phrase used by Ōhashi, the meaning of which is unknown since Ōhashi apparently ad-libbed it on set. One commentator speculated that the author's intended meaning was - I'm pasting this directly from a machine translation, so it sounds awkward - "If you take off the short cap, you can write sentences quickly and smoothly." Tanka don't translate well.

2 "Oh! Moretsu" is a phrase from a commercial for Maruzen motor oil. The commercial became very famous for featuring a model named Rosa Ogawa having her miniskirt blown up a la Marilyn Monroe by the wind from a passing car as she says the catchphrase "Oh! Moretsu!". ("Moretsu" was a slang term at the time that meant something like "fierce/furious/too much/radical".) There was uproar at the time about how "raunchy" the commercial was, but it certainly garnered brand recognition.

3 "Ah, Tamegoro! What a surprise!" is a gag that Hajime Hana performed on the long (very long)-running variety show Geba Geba 90 Minutes!! The name "Tamegoro" refers to a character from a traditional folk song about Jirocho of Shimizu. The gag involved Hana, dressed as a hippie, being surprised to see the newest modern TV set; it was intended to create a contrast between the old (the hippie) and the new (the TV). I do not know exactly what this phrase means but considering it comes from a folk song I would guess it serves to further reinforce Hana's character as being stuck in the past in contrast with the hot new TV.