The Substance of Paper

Reading about Japanese nationalism and talking to people who long for a pre-World War II Japan, I've naturally found myself thinking of Yamanaka Sadao, the influential filmmaker whose career was cut short when he died in Manchuria in 1938. This was shortly after his final film, Humanity and Paper Balloons (人情紙風船) was released, which is now one of only three of his movies that survive. So I watched it again last night.

The film follows two protagonists, an impoverished samurai named Unno (Kawarazaki Chojuro) and a hairdresser named Shinza (Nakamura Kanemon) who aspires to be a gangster. The two men struggle to better their lives against a system designed to suppress them both.

One thing's for sure, Yamanaka was a genius at economical storytelling. The film begins with a suicide, another samurai whom we never meet. People complain that the man chose a day with such nice weather to kill himself, inconveniencing people from the neighbourhood who can't leave due to the investigation of the death. The man hanged himself and a few people argue that as a samurai he ought to have committed seppuku. Another man points out that the dead man had no sword, that the weapon seen strapped to his side was made of bamboo. It's a splashy introduction that swiftly brings us into the film's preoccupations with identity, tradition, and appearance versus reality.

Unno does have a sword to strap to his side but little else to proclaim his status as a samurai. Throughout the film, he tries, politely but persistently, to make contact with a wealthy and influential local named Mouri, who owes his career to Unno's father. While custom might insist that Mouri owes Unno, the reality of business and social life in the area means that Unno is a nuisance to Mouri and Mouri's acquaintance dispatches yakuza to deal with him as such.

The same group of yakuza are after Shinza, the film's other protagonist, who's been holding unauthorised gambling parties on their turf. Nakamura, the actor who plays Shinza, gives a magnetic performance and with his charisma you can see him easily becoming a leader in his own right. He also has a knack for making friends and the film doesn't have to be too explicit in showing us that Shinza really could become a rival for the local yakuza boss.

But this is a world in which the polite ideals of merit and goodwill earning positions of esteem and fortune are but a veneer. The reality is one of the strong preying on the weak and both Shinza and Unno are too good natured to survive in it. The way Yamanaka reinforces this idea in manifold ways is amazing. The film is in fact mostly a comedy. There's an amusing supporting character who seems to be blind, at least he's regarded as such. There are many little jokes that belie this, as when Shinza says one yakuza has a head like a winter melon and the "blind" man laughs and says it's so true. But truth has little cache in this world.

Humanity and Paper Balloons is available on The Criterion Channel.