Two Classic Japanese Films

Last night I watched two classic Japanese films which I had rented from Netflix on DVD.

NO REGRETS FOR OUR YOUTH

No Regrets for Our Youth (Waga seishun ni kuinashi) (1946) was written and directed by the great Japanese director Akira Kirosawa.  It was totally remarkable to me that a film of this quality could be made and produced in 1946 in the immediate aftermath of World War II.

The film is based upon a real life incident involving a left wing activist who passed secrets to the Soviet Union and was executed for treason.  

Professor Yagihara, his daughter Yukie, and student Noge

As the film opens in 1933, Professor Yagihara has been fired from his position by the government for opposing the fascist militarist government of Japan.  The professor's students at Kyoto University protest his firing until they are suppressed by the police.  The professor's daughter Yukie (Setsuko Hara) falls in love with Noge, her father's best student.  Noge (Susumu Fujita) refuses to back down and continues to protest for academic freedom.  Noge is arrested by the police and serves time in prison.

Another of Yagihara's students, Itokawa (Akitake Kono), is also attracted to Yukie.  Itokawa abandons his anti-fascist activism and becomes a prosecuting attorney for the fascist government.  Itokawa secures Noge's release from prison and brings Noge to Professor Yagihara's house to show Yukie that Noge is a beaten man who is now conforming to what is expected of him by the government.  Yukie is extremely disillusioned and leaves home and moves to Tokyo on her own to find herself.

In Tokyo, Yukie takes a series of menial jobs to support herself.  One day, she runs into Itokawa who tells her that Noge is working in a government office in Tokyo.  Yukie goes to Noge's office but runs out before seeing Noge.  Day after day, Yukie goes and stands in front of Noge's office building.  One day, Noge comes out of the building while Yukie is standing in front of the doors.

Yukie and Noge enjoy what little time for happiness they have as a couple

and pledge that they have "No regrets."

Noge tells Yukie that he is secretly working against the government and that it is probably only a matter of time before he will be arrested.  Yukie marries Noge and is determined to be as happy as they can in whatever time they have left.  One day, Noge is arrested.  Yukie has just prepared a romantic dinner for Noge.  Instead of Noge, however, Itokawa and the police raid the apartment and arrest Yukie.

Yukie serves time in prison as the wife a traitor

Yukie is heavily interrogated and mistreated in prison but tells the authorities nothing.  Eventually, Itokawa arranges to have Yukie released to the custody of her parents.  Professor Yagihara volunteers to defend Noge in court but is told that Noge has "accidentally" died in prison.  

Yukie meets Noge's parents

Noge had shown Yukie a photograph of his parents, two poor farmers in a small village.  Noge tells Yukie that he has brought much shame upon his parents by quitting the university and being arrested and serving time in prison.

Yukie (Setsuko Hara) suffers for the sins of the Japanese nation.

After Noge's death, Yukie carries Noge's ashes home to his parents.  Noge's parents are being persecuted by the other villagers because their son is viewed as a spy and a traitor.  Thinking that she is just there to mock them, Noge's parents reject Yukie.   In order to redeem the memory of her husband, Yukie helps Noge's mother do the back breaking work to plant their rice crop.  The other villagers, however, destroy the rice crop during the night.  

The Noge family's rice crop is destroyed by angry villagers

After the war, Professor Yagahara is reinstated, and Noge is revered by the Japanese people for his anti-war activism.  Yukie's mother begs her to stay in Kyoto, but Yukie determines to return to the rice fields and live with the peasants.  She hopes to be a social activist among the farmers and to help the lot of peasant women.  At the end of the film, Yukie is hitch hiking home to Noge's village and is picked up by a farm truck.  As the widow of the now revered Noge, the other villagers on the back of the truck are seen bowing to Yukie.

Akira Kurosawa

I have never seen a bad film which was directed by Kurosawa.  No Regrets for Our Youth is a beautiful film.  Although it is somewhat melodramatic at times, it is, nevertheless powerful and emotionally hard hitting.  The film is well shot and edited and stands head and shoulders right along with his later masterpieces like The Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Red Beard and High and Low.  Five out of Five chrysanthemums.

WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Onna ga kaidan o noboru toki) (1960) is a drama directed by Mikio Naruse.

Keiko (Hideko Takamine), a young widow, works as a bar girl, entertaining men in the Ginza district of Tokyo.   The other bar girls and the men who patronize the bar refer to Keiko as "Mama."  As Mama is getting older, she dreams of being able to break out of the bar girl lifestyle.  

Mama discovers that there are only two ways out of the bar girl life.  Either find a husband or become the mistress of a wealthy patron who will supply the money to buy her own bar.  Mama has kept herself pure and not gone to bed with any of the bar patrons for the five years that she has been working as a bar girl.  It turns out that when Mama's husband died, she put a letter in the box with his ashes and pledged to never love another man.

Keiko (Hideko Takamine) and Yuri

Keiko's mother and brother are living off of her and constantly demanding money.  Keiko's brother has embezzled money from his former employer and is about to be sent to prison unless he pays it back.  He also has a sick child who needs medical treatment.  Keiko is unable to save any money to break out of the bar girl life because of the financial demands put upon her by her family.  Another bar girl, Yuri, has opened up her own bar and taken away most of Mama's customers.  It turns out that Yuri is mortgaged to the hilt and cannot pay her bills. Yuri tries to fake a suicide attempt to get her creditors to give her more time, but mixes sleeping pills with too much alcohol and it kills her.  Mama is devastated.

Entertaining the Gentlemen

A wealthy married businessman offers to buy Mama her own bar if she will agree to become his mistress.  Mama rejects this offer, which is eventually taken up by a young bar girl whom Keiko has taken under her wing.  Mama is smitten by another man who tells her that he is a factory owner, and proposes marriage to her.  After Keiko accepts, she is called by his real wife who tells her that the man is not only married, but he does not own a factory and is not wealthy.

Keiko mourns the death of her husband

Becoming drunk, Keiko goes out with a wealthy banker who takes advantage of her and forces himself on her at her apartment.  The next morning, he tells Mama that he has been transferred from Tokyo to Osaka and gives her 100,000 yen worth of stock to pay her.  Feeling betrayed, and not wanting to take money for sex, Keiko meets the banker, Fujisaki, at the train station and returns the stock to Fujisaki's wife.  

Keiko and Kamastsu

Keiko's bar manager, Komatsu reveals that he has been in love with Mama for years but never approached her after he found out from the Shinto priest that she had pledged never to love another man.  Devastated that she has broken her pledge and slept with Fujisaki, Komatsu slaps Keiko before proposing marriage and promising to help Keiko run her own bar.  Keiko says that a marriage like that would never last.  After being rejected by Mama, Komatsu quits his job.  The last scene of the movie shows Mama going up the stairs to the bar, pretending to be happy to entertain the men.

This is a well made and well acted drama.  Hideko Takmine has the sort of subdued beauty of an Audrey Hepburn and her acting is natural and convincing.  The Criterion Collection DVD that I watched has an interview with Tatsuya Nakadai, who played Komatsu, and a commentary by film scholar Donald Richie.  Five out of Five bottles of saki.   

Director Mikio Naruse