The Careful Face

The owner of a bar finds her normal, relatively pleasant life slowly pulling her towards her ultimate fate in 1951's Ginza Cosmetics (銀座化粧). The English title makes it sound like it's about a cosmetics department in a department store yet it is a literal translation. Funny old thing, language is. Anyway, Kinuya Tanaka stars as a widowed mother trying to maintain good relationships in the community while financially keeping her head above water. Directed by Mikio Naruse, it's another of his many brilliant films that quietly but undeniably reveal the tragedies of normal life.

Yukiko (Tanaka) runs a bar and acts as a hostess along with several women working for her. The job of such hostesses in Japan extends to maintaining friendships with patrons. When we meet Yukiko, she's in her room, applying her makeup, while a nervous man offers his profuse thanks. But just as we're thinking she may have slept with him for money, he asks if he can borrow some money from her.

She's caught between a rock and a hard place. Maintaining good relationships is integral to maintaining a good reputation, and maintaining a good reputation is essential for the success fo her business. She nearly faces disaster in a later scene when she can't resist crying, "Thief!" when she spots a man who didn't pay his bill at the bar. Immediately she clearly regrets it and, after taking his money, tries to quietly flee while he tries to make a scene amid the gathering crowd.

Yukiko is forced to rely on the hope that she'll meet a truly generous man who's willing to support her and her son. It's a little similar to Naruse's later film, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. Ginza Cosmetics is not quite as complex or emotionally effective but it's still a good little slice of quiet despair. Ranko Hanai and Kyoko Kagawa are very good in supporting roles.

Ginza Cosmetics is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1671

Without a dwarf, the princess couldn't sleep.
Resorts denied a pleasure sun from home.
Enormous mice construct a tiny meep.
Construction starts to forge the mighty dome.
Assorted guys were making trouble glow.
Collective bugs could save a glowing rock.
Descendants shrink before they start to grow.
Enlargement changed around the magic clock.
To sate the angry turtle cookies came.
Bereft of paper ones the twos were cut.
Decisions split to make a wing the same.
Humongous shoes approached the wearer's butt.
Repeating circles turn us back in time.
Below the deck she hears the warning chime.

The Tangled Webs of Debt and Adultery

The problems in loveless marriages may come to a head in surprisingly complicated circumstances. But life is reliably complicated, as we can see in 1954's Chikamatsu Story (近松物語). Based on an 18th century story by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, this is part of a series of Kenji Mizoguchi films of the 1950s that criticised Japanese society. In this case, he takes aim at the taboo against adultery, and he delivers his argument effectively. Though, unlike issues he confronted in his other films, like prostitution and feminism, I think he was likely preaching to the choir.

Mohei (Kazuo Hasegawa) works for a wealthy scroll maker in Kyoto called Ishun (Eitaro Shindo). Ishun presides over a vast household of apprentices and servants and he provides all the official calendars for Edo and Kyoto. It's Mohei who bears most of the labour, forced to work day and night despite being sick with a cold.

Meanwhile, Ishun's beautiful wife, Osan (Kyoko Kagawa), is having some embarrassing financial trouble. Her brother has appropriated some deposited funds to pay off a loan and now needs to borrow money from his sister. Ishun is too hard-hearted to help her so she goes to Mohei.

While this drama is unfolding, Ishun is trying to seduce a servant girl called Otama (Yoko Minamida) whom he has been raping repeatedly, sneaking into her room at night. She's traumatised and can't think of accepting Ishun's offer of a private house to become his official mistress. Also, she happens to be in love with Mohei.

This movie can't be called a melodrama because all of these circumstances are plausible, so when all these stormclouds clash at just the right moment, it's an effectively horrific tragedy. It ends up with Mohei and Osan on the run together, fugitives accused of adultery when the only real crimes that have been committed are Ishun's selfish actions.

Once again, Kyoko Kagawa, who's renowned for her work in Mizoguchi's Sansho the Bailiff, delivers a terrific performance. Chikamatsu Story is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1650

The warmth of velvet cooled behind the fence.
A future past was blown above the flame.
A quiv'ring string declared the air was tense.
The woods at night would never sound the same.
Important teas could break the hardest tin.
A game of cards destroyed a sense of pace.
The number nine accounts for more than ten.
A counting duck could save the human race.
A many pointed hand was half at fault.
The ancient map was missing half the roads.
We took the dancing clowns with heaps of salt.
A student said the moon was holding toads.
The cloud of cotton eats a human eye.
The guiltless snow became a cherry pie.

The Upbeat Life of Constant Apprehension

I see a few people have claimed that 1952's Mother (おかあさん) is upbeat for a Mikio Naruse movie. I guess the music is a little more whimsical and there are a few amusing moments earlier in the film but it's still the kind of desperate tale of common economic woes that Naruse excelled at. This "upbeat" Naruse movie has two deaths during the course of the story and many of the relationships and desperate circumstances we see are due to deaths that occurred before the narrative begins. There is a definite charm to this one, though, with Kinuyo Tanaka in the title role and especially due to Kyoko Kagawa as her eldest daughter.

Kagawa, better known for her roles in Sansho the Bailiff and Tokyo Story, is usually pretty somber but here she gets to be a vivacious and petulant teenager with pigtails. She narrates the film, fondly describing her self-sacrificing and tireless little mother.

Toshiko (Kagawa) has an older brother at the start of the film who escapes from a sanatorium to die at home, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, begging their mother (Tanaka) to sleep beside him one last time. Toshiko has another sibling, a little girl named Chako, and their cousin, a little boy named Tetsu, stays with them. His father was killed in World War II and his mother, Noriko (Nakabe Chieko), is unable to care for him as she struggles to find a career of her own. But when financial trouble deepens for the film's subject household, they're forced to take seriously an offer from a neighbouring family to adopt Chako.

Tanaka's husband runs the family business, a laundry, and, when he falls ill, his friend played by Daisuke Kato shows up to help out.

Like most of Naruse's films, the story is an endless give and take of tension as new misfortunes or sudden small strokes of luck create a delicate balance. In this case, whether or not the characters come out ahead by the end is open to your interpretation, and obviously many feel that they do. I would argue the film actually ends under a cloud of doom, though. But your mileage may vary.

Mother is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1466

A thousand steps were taken past the coin.
The longest mollusc shrank to fit a ball.
A smiling idol jumped from out the loin.
We hung a folded picture 'long the wall.
Suspicions start as salmon jump to mouths.
The busy forest glowed with simple songs.
The '80s synth ascends as Heaven bows.
The sleeping fish was laid between the prongs.
The shifting crowd produced an extra star.
A total six dismissed the leading rank.
They're lining glass across the lacquered bar.
Let's carry cakes to feed the money bank.
The snug and tiny flee before the spray.
The smug and smarmy flea adored the clay.