原節子 – Sat In Your Lap

Those Who Make Tomorrow

***This Review Contains Spoilers***

During the postwar occupation of Japan from 1945-1952, Japanese films had to be approved by the American occupying forces. This brings about the great paradox regarding No Regrets For Our Youth (わが青春に悔なし/ Waga Seishun ni Kuinashi). How did American authorities approve a film that commemorates a leftist? The film is a clear disavowal of the Japanese military state (authoritarian, fascist, however you may want to describe it) that existed before the Japanese surrender (“The War is Lost, But Freedom is Restored“) and is big in its theme of the glorification of the individual, views far more in line with the American ideology. I can only speculate that the American authorities were willing to overlook the former because of the latter.

Despite its political backdrop (and even some of the overt imagery as seen in the third act), No Regrets For Our Youth has a much greater focus on being a deeply human story. Yukie Yagihara (Setsuko Hara), the daughter of a professor at Kyoto Imperial University, spends a sunny, peaceful day in 1933 with a group of the male alumni on the hills surrounding the city. As they are trying to cross a creek together, Yukie needs help at the end. The gawky and indecisive Itokawa (Akitake Kono) looks on without taking any action, while the confident Ryukichi Noge (Susumu Fujita) strides over to pick her up, much to the annoyance of the timid Itokawa, setting up the film’s love triangle. As they indulge in the whims of carefree youth, little do they know this is the calm before the storm, as gunshots suddenly rage from the university in protest against the suppression of academic freedom.

No Regrets For Our Youth is a film of modest means but largely succeeds in covering the 12-year period of time from 1933 to 1945. Even at this early stage in his career, director Akira Kurosawa’s work was displaying such dynamic use of the camera, especially during the aforementioned excursion to the hills (just how close is the camera to the river’s water in the film’s opening?). In his first post-war film, No Regrets For Our Youth is a massive leap for the director in comparison to his work during the war years (comparing No Regrets For Our Youth to The Most Beautiful from two years earlier is night & day in more ways than one). The film’s first act, however, is its weakest, relying quite heavily on some rather clunky montages to cover student protests at Kyoto Imperial University over academic freedom. Following this, however, the film quickly becomes deeply involving, thanks in no small part to an extraordinary performance by Setsuko Hara, in what is Kurosawa’s only film with a sole female protagonist.

Hara’s performance in No Regrets For Our Youth showcases why she is one of the greatest actresses to ever grace the silver screen. She has the ability to express profound emotion through the simplest gestures and convey so much and so precisely without words. The strongest demonstration of this (and my favourite scene in the movie), is when Yukie and Noge meet again for the first time in years in his Tokyo office. The intensely claustrophobic scene runs seven minutes in length, as Yukie and Noge converse in the empty office building about the nostalgic days of old. With its westernised office setting and intense, drenched shadows, the scene is visually reminiscent of a Hollywood production, with Hara’s striking facial expressions being imprinted onto your psyche, creating a scene I was deeply moved by.

The journey which Yukie takes over the course of the film is what would now be referred to as “finding yourself” (but not in a ridiculous, cliché manner in which someone travels to an eastern land to meet a monk in a cave to gain otherworldly knowledge). This is established through the film’s love triangle between Yukie and polar opposites of the virgin Itokawa and the chad Noge. Yukie is drawn to Noge and his dangerous yet thrilling life as a social activist on the edge of society. On the other hand, she can choose the meek and mild-mannered Itokawa, a man of the system who goes with the flow. Life with him would be stable, safe, but ultimately boring. Noge is not afraid to tell Yukie off and reprimand her for her political illiteracy (“He’s just telling the truth, something you are incapable of doing”) following her professor father (Denjirō Ōkōchi) losing his position due to his opposition to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Following this (and to further hammer the difference between these two men), out of frustration with Noge’s comments, Yukie asks Itokawa to kneel down, to which he obliges, only to then tell him to stop and asks, “What are you doing!?”.

There are indications throughout the early portion of the story that only does Yukie desire a life of excitement but that she also doesn’t fit in with conventional society. In the aforementioned opening scene on the hills surrounding the university, Yukie actually becomes excited by the sounds of the gunshots (“It’s so clear and rhythmic. It makes my heart race!”. Likewise, her mother mentions that in elementary school, she only drew things like aeroplanes and locomotives, suggesting her non-conformist streak outside of traditionally expected roles. Later, to her mother’s approval, Yukie takes up flower arranging; however, she feels that none of her arrangements truly represent how she feels. In one class, frustrated, she disassembles her work and proceeds to throw three petals into a bowl, representing herself, Noge and Itokawa. Additionally, a very strange moment worth mentioning is the editing when Yukie enters a room to get away from her mother while in a state of despair; she stands by the door as 5 different fade-in shots occur over the same frame. Initially, I presumed this was to convey the passing of time, but then the mother is still there on the other side, as if she has been standing there for a comically long period of time.

Yukie later moves to Tokyo, where she meets Noge once again, and the two start a relationship. The character of Noge himself was inspired by the real-life case of Hotzumi Ozaki, the only Japanese person to be hanged for treason against the Japanese state during World War II. The two lovebirds live together in domestic bliss; however, this is quickly cut short when Noge is arrested on charges of espionage. Noge dies in prison, although the film does not state how this happens (I can only guess that he got Epstein’d). Following Noge’s arrest and passing, Yukie becomes more politically enlightened about Japan’s oppressive state, although it could be argued her decisions seem tied more to her love for Noge than to any firm political belief. No Regrets For Our Youth does a very convincing job of showing Yukie’s ageing over the 12-year span. What is shocking, however, especially after becoming accustomed to seeing Hara as a goddess of domesticity in the Ozu films, is her brutalisation when she spends time in prison (also under espionage accusations) and, shortly after, her transformation into a hardened agrarian woman. After Yukie is bailed from prison, instead of returning to live with her parents, she finds the estranged parents of Noge in an unnamed rural village and asks to move in and assist them.

During this portion of the film, Yukie works in the fields, and it is filmed in the manner of a Soviet propaganda film, akin to the works of Alexander Dovzhenko. Just as Soviet cinema shows upward shots of giant figures working the earth, No Regrets For Our Youth employs this same style to give Yukie a heroic stature. Yet despite the cinematographic influence, this portion of the film (even more significantly than the rest of the picture) is about defiance against the collective, with Kurosawa glorifying the individual characters, not the farmers as a collective. Noge’s parents have been ostracised by the rest of the village due to their son’s political activities, with their home being covered in graffiti denouncing them as a house of spies. As a result, Yukie and Noge’s mother (Haruko Sugimura) only work the fields at night, until Yukie defies the onlooking villagers and chooses to work during the day, to the point of physical exhaustion and sickness (in Soviet Russia, you don’t work field, field works you).

“The War is Lost, But Freedom is Restored“, states a title card as the story wraps up in a newly American-occupied Japan. Yukie’s father has his position as professor at the university restored, and the late Noge is venerated. While it feels like things have come full circle back to those peaceful, innocent days on the hills outside Kyoto back in 1933, Yukie is no longer the girl she was back then. The film concludes with Yukie hitching a ride on the back of a truck to participate in an organisation called the Rural Cultural Movement, as a defiant Yukie chooses her own path. No Regrets For Our Youth doesn’t state a reason why Yukie chose to undergo the intense hardship in the village, but I believe it’s not difficult to identify her reasons for doing so: trying to uphold the memory of a lost lover, guilt over a misspent youth, or not having been more active in political movements. Above all, however, I believe this is what was required for Yukie to undergo a metamorphosis, to achieve a quiet, indomitable pride and ultimately to free herself from having no regrets for her youth.

Sometimes It Snows In April

***This Review Contains Spoilers***

For some directors, it can take time before they hit their full stride. Alfred Hitchcock had been directing movies for 25 years prior to directing his most iconic works in the 1950s and ’60s. Correspondingly, Japanese filmmaker, Yasujirō Ozu had been directing for 22 years before he made Late Spring, in my opinion, his magnum opus (although I know others will argue in favour of Tokyo Story) and the beginning of his golden age in which he created a profound series of films about Japanese middle-class domesticity (whereas his work pre-1949 tended to focus more towards poverty-stricken families).

Late Spring is also the first entry of The Noriko Trilogy (alongside Early Summer and Tokyo Story), with all three films starring Setsuko Hara, often named The Eternal Virgin in her country of origin, and it’s not hard to see why. I would defy anyone to watch Late Spring and not fall in love with this capital G Goddess of feminine virtue – with her angelic, shy demeanour emanating a slightly bent over posture alongside a smile that could kill. Late Spring showcases her as an actress of amazing depth and able to convey such deep emotional range in the role of Noriko Somiya. There is somewhat of a contradictory nature to the character of Noriko when it comes to her conservative views. Noriko finds her uncle’s remarrying to be “distasteful” and “impure” and not afraid to say it to his face (albeit in a kindly manner) and can’t bear the idea of her widowed father doing the same thing. Hara is able to portray a character of such saintly purity (it’s even mentioned she does not drink) without it ever becoming sickenly so. Yet contradicting this is the reluctance she holds to get married herself.

The relationship Noriko shares with her widowed father, Shukichi (Chishū Ryū) is both odd and endearing. She is unemployed and takes joy in looking after her old father, acting as a housewife minus any incestuous implications. Details presented in Late Spring are scant about the character’s histories, allowing the viewer to fill in the blanks. I can assume the young woman would be inclined to share this kind of a relationship with her father due to their time during the war. It is mentioned during the course of the film that Noriko endured forced labour during this period and “had to run around to get food on her day off”, and is required to receive regular blood tests as a result. Chishū Ryū on-the-other-hand feels like he was born an old man, made to look older than he was in all three films of The Noriko Trilogy, and convincingly so.

At the age of 27 and still single, Noriko is approaching the “late spring” of her shelf life, reaching the age she would no longer be considered marriageable, but is unwilling to part from the status-quo arrangement she has with her father. Like a number of Ozu films, the story of Late Spring centers around arranged marriage, although anathema to viewers in the west, it does not detract from the universality of his work. A scene that really hits home for me is that in which Noriko’s aunt Masa (Haruko Sugimura) has a talk with Noriko about marrying. We’ve all been there, when an elder tells us to stop what we are doing and sit down to have a serious chat in which we feel uncomfortable but deep down we know they are correct even if one, like Noriko, signifies their objections but later comes to an eventual acceptance. Noriko’s arranged partner, Mr Kumataro Satake (aka Bear Boy), remains an off screen character, with the only detail passed onto the viewer about his physical appearance is that he looks like Gary Cooper, especially around the mouth but not the top half – allowing the viewer to once again fill in the blanks.

On a further personal note, I first watched Late Spring at the age of 28, only 1 year older than the character of Noriko, and despite this being a film about a young Japanese women’s pressure to get married in the years following the war, it still spoke to me on the basis that life is passing you by, that change is an inevitable part of life with the pain and heartache which comes with that must be endured. When Noriko speaks to her father at the end of a trip to Kyoto just before the wedding, she speaks of how “I just want to be with you, like this. I don’t want to go anywhere I’m happy being with you like this.” – Just ensure you have a box of Kleenex handy.

When watching any film of Ozu’s later period, the viewer will immediately be put into a great sense of ease with his trademark use of pillow shots (two or three quiet compositions usually showing an architectural detail, a banner in the wind, a tree or the sky) alongside the ever tranquil music scores. Unique however to the opening pillow shots of a railway station in Late Spring is the quaint, English feel to it, aided by the images of a gentle breeze in the leaves and the sound of birds chirping. If I was shown this opening out of context, I could swear it was neo-realist footage of a quiet, remote part of the English countryside. Likewise, the geometric nature of the interior of Japanese homes along with Ozu’s unique style of composition with use of the so called tatami shot is very pleasing to the eyes. This look into another culture extends to the film’s documentary-like aspects as we are treated to slices of everyday post-war Japanese life from kids playing baseball to the inclusion of a Noh play. The westernization present in Japanese films from this period can come off as a shock for first-time viewers of Japanese cinema such as the sight of Tokyo’s classical European architecture as seen in Late Spring.

The scene in which Noriko and Hattori (Jun Usami) go for a recreational cycle by the seaside is the cinematic encapsulation for the joy of living. A scene bustling with freedom and a lust for life with the sight of a smiling Setsuko Hara with her hair blowing in the wind alongside the quirky, upbeat music which accompanies the scene should be in the pantheon of cinema’s most iconic moments. It also contains the unexpected but memorable inclusion of a Coca-Cola sign featured prominently in the foreground – one of the most memorable pieces of product placement I’ve seen in a film. This sign along with another road sign in English warning that the weight capacity of the bridge the duo are riding over is 30 tons (irrelevant information for the two cyclists but necessary for any military vehicles to pass over) could be interpreted as signs to the otherwise unseen US occupation. Concurrently, I believe it’s not unreasonable to assume that Aya’s (Yumeji Tsukioka) ex-husband of whom she speaks of throughout the course of the film is a US serviceman. Aya refers to him by the name “Ken”, which Shukichi assumes is short for “Kenkichi” however Aya never corrects him. The other significant clue is Aya’s difficulty in sitting in a traditional Japanese manner without her legs getting numb, suggesting she has become more used to the western manner of sitting.

The Wikipedia page for Late Spring is bizarrely long and extremely detailed, more famous films have less in-depth articles – the work of an eager fan perhaps? In my research, I have found Late Spring only received its first home video release in the United States in 1994 and the mass availability of the films from this master of cinema has only become reality within the last decade. Perhaps the discovery of Yasujirō Ozu‘s work in the west outside of film circles has only begun?