A contemporary of both Keisuke Kinoshita and Akira Kurosawa, Kon Ichikawa (1915-2008) would make his directorial debut in the immediate post-war period. His undying love for the American comedy technique and his successful application of it to Japanese subjects earned him a reputation as Japan's answer to Frank Capra. Ironic comedies that focused on the frustrations of the ordinary working stiff - would serve as fodder for the director and his veritable stock-in trade, but in hindsight, it can be seen that his concern was already for the outsider, the one who elects to tune out and drop out of organized society and even oppose it.
As the director's technique matured, the vision would darken - many were nonplussed when the director released Biruma no tategoto The Burmese Harp (1956) - including the Japanese. It would hasten Ichikawa's reputation in the Western world and would indeed garner a nod from the Academy in the year 1957. In 1956, his Shokei No Heyea (Punishment Room) with its grisly rape scene, was to give the Japanese public a deeper insight into the darker side of the filmmaker's imagination. But whereas Punishment Room fitted a cycle of films that were popular at the time, concerning the topic of juvenile delinquency, The Burmese Harp was such a stark and haunting work, it owed little allegiance to any such category.
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| I can harp on about this one - the inimitable The Burmese Harp (1956) |
The hero of The Burmese Harp - Mizushima, portrayed by Shoji Yasui- is an army scout in a Japanese unit who plays his instrument with the motive of admonishing his fellow comrades when they are in danger of being ambushed. When the war ends, Mizushima on his own volition, continues the vocation he now knows to be his - to bury or burn the thousands of the Japanese dead he has encompassed on his journeyings. Refusing repatriation, he wanders and scours the devastated countryside, disguised as a monk, he grows obsessed with his grim task, showing that an individual can make a stand against war's futility.
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| One of the many pensive moments in 1958's Enjo |
In Enjo (Conflagration,1958), the hero Mizoguchi (Raizo Ichikawa) is an acolyte in a glorious temple in the breathtaking Kyoto who becomes increasingly oppressed by the sordidness of the human life around him; his harridan mother, the indecorous head of the temple, the climate of an American-occupied Japan. Yet there is nothing on natural earth that could equal the beauty of the temple, which so enmeshes the acolyte that he wishes to destroy it.
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| Another of the director's 'Sgt Pepper's' moments with the acclaimed Nobi (1959) |
The year 1959 would prove a particularly creative one for the prolific auteur. He achieved two works of startling individuality. Nobi (Fires on the Plain,1959) and Kogi (The Key,1959) which was also released as Odd Obsessions. With the exception of the caretaker, each of the Machiavellian characters in the eccentric household of Koji is consumed by and obsessed with sex - and sex, moreover, of a seamy order. In Koji's message - sex is seen as congruous with that of death and corruption; a mordantly oppressive slickness prevails; the viewer has no other choice but to be the voyeur in this den of iniquity. Perhaps the microcosm of depraved life is meant to suggest, by its extension, that the whole of modern society is rotten and ripe for extinction.
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| Papa San plays Mama San in An Actor's Revenge (1963) |
The other film of the same period, although polar opposite in subject matter, would give testament to the message. Fires on the Plain must rank as one of the most devastating war films ever produced. Astonishingly bold in its conception and its deliberate grinding snail's pace. It pushes its depiction of tragic human folly to the very brink of grisly farce. The film's evocative presentation of the complete degradation that war engenders shows cannibalism as the ultimate denigration of the human condition, yet within the potential of the common man when hell-bent on his survival
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| Ichikawa on the set aka The 1964 Summer Games of Tokyo |
Ichikawa found a more receptive audience with his stylish film An Actor's Revenge, whose hero is a female impersonator on a pilgrimage for self-identification. The eminent actor Kazuo Hasegawa here plays a dual role as a female impersonator in the Kabuki theater and a small-time gangster determined to avenge his cruel and unloving parents.
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| The director had one of the most unique voices of Japanese Cinema (on the set of Conflagaration) |
Tokyo Olympiad (1965) regarded the events of 1964's Olympics that were held in Japan's capital city and it would find the director yet again at odds with his producers A far cry from Leni Riefenstahl's lyrical celebration of the athletes in Berlin's earlier Games, Ichikawa concentrated on the personal concerns of the contenders and spectators. The producers however, had in mind a more joyous reportage of the Games with a mite less emphasis on the pain, strain and anguish. They naturally changed their minds once the film proved to be one of Japan's biggest moneyspinners to date.