9TH KYOTO HISTORICA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
A GENRE MASTER FINALLY GETS HIS TRIBUTE
Venue(s): The Museum of KyotoOctober 28 (Sat) to November 5 (Sun), 2017
Language: Historica Special and Historica Focus films except "Lumière!": Japanese with English subtitles
Official website: historica-kyoto.com
Theater website: www.bunpaku.or.jp/en/info/access/
Tariff: Most screenings: General:￥1,300
Advance tickets: Most screenings: ¥1,100: Pia P-Code: 557-416. Details: http://t.pia.jp/ [Pコード：557-511]
Talk event: Check on the site: http://historica-kyoto.com/guest/
Title: 第9回 京都ヒストリカ国際映画祭 (9TH KYOTO HISTORICA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL)
Director Tai Kato (1916-1985) remains largely unknown in the West, despite his many popular jidaigeki and yakuza films.
From October 28 to November 5, seven of Kato's pictures with English subtitles will be screened at the 9th Kyoto Historica International Film Festival. This is a great chance for foreign fans of Japanese cinema to sample some of this director’s masterful pieces.
Director: Tai Kato
In a long career, primarily with the Toei studio, Kato directed some 50 films and wrote another 40 screenplays. What set his films apart most were his use of perspective, framing and color.
Kato often filmed from close to floor height, this unique perspective changing the way we view the action and environment, adding tension to the dramatic effect. He would also feature closely composed shots of the actors' faces and even seemingly mundane things like a foot alighting from a buggy, and juxtapose these intimate glimpses with long shots full of motion and energy.
Some scenes were shot with sparse color, almost appearing like black and white, contrasting with scenes featuring brilliant color and breathtaking movement. In his Red Peony Gambler (Hibotan Bakuto) series, starring Junko Fuji as the heroine, she was often lit with Rembrandt lighting, adding an ethereal beauty to her close-ups.
In all his movies, the director depicts the human struggle in a moving and compassionate way. In fact, it seems as if his theme is always humanity, in all its frailty and shortcomings. Whether the characters are thieves, gangsters or ninja, the audience roots for them regardless of their shortcomings. There is an almost voyeuristic quality to his films, which draws the eye and pulls viewers deeper into the story.
Here’s a brief overview of six of the films being shown.
IN SEARCH OF MOTHER (1962)
Chutaro (Kinnosuke Nakamura) plays a selfless gangster with a soft heart. Though a yakuza, he gives an old lady some money and buys her some sake, listening to her tale in hopes that she is his estranged mother. She tells him about Ohama, whose story appears to match his own. Chutaro goes to her unannounced but is rebuked because she thinks he’s just another beggar after her money. Their dramatic encounter is beautifully captured with a panning shot beginning on one side and moves around the pair as the tension builds.
In Search of Mother, 瞼の母
Director: Tai Kato, 1962, 83 min ©Toei Company, Ltd.
This gritty tearjerker is a great introduction to the emotional complexity common in Kato’s films.
SASUKE AND HIS COMEDIANS (1963)
Though perhaps best known for his yakuza movies, Kato also directed or wrote the screenplay for 5 ninja films. Invariably comical, Sasuke and the Sanada Ten Braves, as they’re often known, are the most popular characters in Japanese ninja films, with their story being the subject of nearly 70 ninja movies.
Sasuke and his Comedians, 真田風雲録
Director: Tai Kato, 1963, 100 min ©Toei Company, Ltd.
Following the carnage of war, we come upon a band of orphan misfits who scavenge the bodies of fallen samurai, and have a chance encounter with Monkey Jump Sasuke (Kinnosuke Yorozuya), a ninja with the ability to read people's minds. Okiri (Misako Watanabe), the only female and leader of the group, falls immediately in love with Sasuke, but he doubts her true heart.
A brave yet carefree samurai general, Yukimura Sanada, asks them to join his forces to fight for what they believe in individually, and that even if they lose they might die heroes. Moved by his ideology, Sasuke and the now grownup orphans decide to join with Sanada and become his Ten Braves. There are some psychedelic scenes of the ninja band fighting with the enemy and a few song-and-dance numbers, giving the film a surreal quality that helps blunt its barely masked social commentary on the turbulent 1960s Japan.
The ending shot of Sasuke walking in a barren field with mountains in the background, starting with a wide over-the-shoulder view then moving around to his side and finally front as it pans out and rises above him, is exquisitely framed and is the same technique Kato used in the reunion scene from In Search of Mother but on a greater scale.
BLOOD OF REVENGE (1965)
This film has a unique opening shot, capturing the taiko drums of a festival from above, then close-ups of an assassin's crazed glare followed by the feet of festival participants, creating a tension that reaches a crescendo when the assassin stabs the Kiyatatsu Clan boss from behind. The boss’ grief-stricken son Haruo (Masahiko Tsukawa), goes drinking and the underboss Asajiro Kikuchi (Koji Tsuruta) searches for him. Haruo encounters a geisha, Hatsue (Junko Fuji), who wants to visit her dying father in Okayama and he pays for her trip, although she’s involved with one of the rival clan bosses.
Blood of Revenge, 明治侠客伝 三代目襲名
Director: Tai Kato, 1965, 90 min ©Toei Company, Ltd.
Kikuchi moves the gangster side of the family to Kobe, leaving Haruo to start afresh as the leader of their straight enterprises. With Kikuchi gone, it isn't long until Hoshino and his henchmen encroach on the naive Haruo's turf. Kikuchi is forced to return back to Osaka after another murder. The chase scene on railroad tracks at the end of the film is suspenseful and enchantingly filmed, really drawing the audience into the drama.
TOKIJIRO OF KUTSUKAKE: LONE YAKUZA (1966)
This is a famous yakuza story that has been retold in film no fewer than eight times from as far back as 1929. It opens on a bridge with Asakichi (Kiyoshi Atsumi) practicing his formal yakuza greeting (jingi) while his companion Tokijiro (Kinnosuke Nakamura) listens. Asakichi soon gets involved with a fight amongst gangsters and is killed. A distraught Tokijiro leaves town, in a scene shot in front of an amazing waterfall with flowers and a commemorative tablet to Asakichi.
Tokijiro of Kutsukake: Lone Yakuza, 沓掛時次郎 遊侠一匹
Director: Tai Kato, 1966, 90 min ©Toei Company, Ltd
He befriends a mother, Okinu (Kyoko Ikeuchi), and her son Tarokichi, and they travel together. A boss whom Tokijiro owes a favor asks him to kill their rival, Sanzo, which he reluctantly does. He promises the dying Sanzo that he will look after his wife and son for him, only then realizing that this man was the husband of the woman he had just traveled with.
This bizarre turn of affairs results in Tokijiro traveling the countryside with a makeshift family, in attempts to do the right thing. However, Okinu falls sick and must wait till the next spring before she can travel. Throughout his struggle to look after Okinu, Tokijiro is forced to choose between trying to lead a good life and returning to the yakuza world to make ends meet. He decides to fight one last time to get the medicine that will save Okinu's life and the close-ups of his face while he's fighting and her lying on her sickbed shot from above are seamlessly intertwined into the drama of the scene.
RED PEONY GAMBLER: FLOWER CARDS MATCH (1969)
The third in Red Peony series, this one features a lot of train imagery. It seems the director had an affinity for tracks, paths and roads, that somehow bind the fates of the characters together. The gambling heroine Oryu (Junko Fuji) saves a blind girl Okimi from getting hit by a train. Moving to Nagoya, she learns there is a cheating imposter Red Peony in town.
Red Peony Gambler: Flower Cards Match, 緋牡丹博徒 花札勝負
Director: Tai Kato, 1969, 98 min ©Toei Company, Ltd.
All the gangs, led by Oryu’s patron Nishinomaru, are planning to hold a gambling party. However, the rival boss Kimbara wants to take control of the ceremony and their turf. Nishinomaru’s son Jiro returns from Tokyo because his betrothed Yae is being forced to marry Kimbara's politician friend.
Oryu discovers that the fake Red Peony is Otoki, whose daughter she had saved at the beginning of the film. She had been cheating in order to buy medicine. Their emotional discussion is finely directed, and the tension and beauty of the moment are crystallized in a close-up shot where she burns Otoki’s fake cards.
The love-struck Jiro makes a bet he can’t cover, and Oryu has to return with a vast sum by midnight the next night in order to save him. She bumps into Shogo Hanaoka (the great Ken Takakura) on the road. Despite her haste, she loans him an umbrella to keep off the snow. The close-up of their hands on the umbrella, shot under a train overpass, foretells that their fates are connected.
After a robbery, Oryu goes to settle the score, and we see she can handle a sword or a knife, as well as fight unarmed, with the best of them.
RED PEONY: ORYU'S RETURN (1970)
Oryu has been searching for Okimi, the girl she had helped save from blindness in the third installment in the series. Meanwhile, she loses to gambler Tsunejiro Aoyama (the legendary Bunta Sugawara), who is fascinated by her. He tells Oryu the lost girl might be in the Teppokyu troupe in Asakusa. She goes to Tokyo and moves in with the Teppokyu troupe, whose theater is the target of thieves as well as a rival boss, Masagoro Samezuno. They catch the thieves and are about to administer justice when Oryu realizes that the girl is actually Okimi.
Red Peony: Oryu's Return, 緋牡丹博徒 お竜参上
Director: Tai Kato, 1970, 100 min ©Toei Company, Ltd.
Their emotional reunion results in the Teppokyu boss adopting her as a daughter and Ginji, a goodhearted young yakuza in the Samezuno gang, asking for her hand in marriage. However, the Samezuno will stop at nothing, including murder, to take over the theater. Oryu must navigate this underworld while trying to protect Okimi and the theater.
The Museum of Kyoto
By Mance Thompson
— Mance Thompson is a Tokyo-based American photographer and the world’s leading authority on Japanese ninja movies.
Director Tai Kato (1916-1985) remains largely unknown in the West, despite his many popular jidaigeki and yakuza films.
From October 28 to November 5, seven of Kato's pictures with English subtitles will be screened at the 9th Kyoto Historica International Film Festival. This is a great chance for foreign fans of Japanese cinema to sample some of this director’s masterful pieces.
Director: Tai Kato
In a long career, primarily with the Toei studio, Kato directed some 50 films and wrote another 40 screenplays. What set his films apart most were his use of perspective, framing and color.
Kato often filmed from close to floor height, this unique perspective changing the way we view the action and environment, adding tension to the dramatic effect. He would also feature closely composed shots of the actors' faces and even seemingly mundane things like a foot alighting from a buggy, and juxtapose these intimate glimpses with long shots full of motion and energy.
Some scenes were shot with sparse color, almost appearing like black and white, contrasting with scenes featuring brilliant color and breathtaking movement. In his Red Peony Gambler (Hibotan Bakuto) series, starring Junko Fuji as the heroine, she was often lit with Rembrandt lighting, adding an ethereal beauty to her close-ups.
In all his movies, the director depicts the human struggle in a moving and compassionate way. In fact, it seems as if his theme is always humanity, in all its frailty and shortcomings. Whether the characters are thieves, gangsters or ninja, the audience roots for them regardless of their shortcomings. There is an almost voyeuristic quality to his films, which draws the eye and pulls viewers deeper into the story.
Here’s a brief overview of six of the films being shown.
IN SEARCH OF MOTHER (1962)
Chutaro (Kinnosuke Nakamura) plays a selfless gangster with a soft heart. Though a yakuza, he gives an old lady some money and buys her some sake, listening to her tale in hopes that she is his estranged mother. She tells him about Ohama, whose story appears to match his own. Chutaro goes to her unannounced but is rebuked because she thinks he’s just another beggar after her money. Their dramatic encounter is beautifully captured with a panning shot beginning on one side and moves around the pair as the tension builds.
In Search of Mother, 瞼の母
Director: Tai Kato, 1962, 83 min ©Toei Company, Ltd.
This gritty tearjerker is a great introduction to the emotional complexity common in Kato’s films.
SASUKE AND HIS COMEDIANS (1963)
Though perhaps best known for his yakuza movies, Kato also directed or wrote the screenplay for 5 ninja films. Invariably comical, Sasuke and the Sanada Ten Braves, as they’re often known, are the most popular characters in Japanese ninja films, with their story being the subject of nearly 70 ninja movies.
Sasuke and his Comedians, 真田風雲録
Director: Tai Kato, 1963, 100 min ©Toei Company, Ltd.
Following the carnage of war, we come upon a band of orphan misfits who scavenge the bodies of fallen samurai, and have a chance encounter with Monkey Jump Sasuke (Kinnosuke Yorozuya), a ninja with the ability to read people's minds. Okiri (Misako Watanabe), the only female and leader of the group, falls immediately in love with Sasuke, but he doubts her true heart.
A brave yet carefree samurai general, Yukimura Sanada, asks them to join his forces to fight for what they believe in individually, and that even if they lose they might die heroes. Moved by his ideology, Sasuke and the now grownup orphans decide to join with Sanada and become his Ten Braves. There are some psychedelic scenes of the ninja band fighting with the enemy and a few song-and-dance numbers, giving the film a surreal quality that helps blunt its barely masked social commentary on the turbulent 1960s Japan.
The ending shot of Sasuke walking in a barren field with mountains in the background, starting with a wide over-the-shoulder view then moving around to his side and finally front as it pans out and rises above him, is exquisitely framed and is the same technique Kato used in the reunion scene from In Search of Mother but on a greater scale.
BLOOD OF REVENGE (1965)
This film has a unique opening shot, capturing the taiko drums of a festival from above, then close-ups of an assassin's crazed glare followed by the feet of festival participants, creating a tension that reaches a crescendo when the assassin stabs the Kiyatatsu Clan boss from behind. The boss’ grief-stricken son Haruo (Masahiko Tsukawa), goes drinking and the underboss Asajiro Kikuchi (Koji Tsuruta) searches for him. Haruo encounters a geisha, Hatsue (Junko Fuji), who wants to visit her dying father in Okayama and he pays for her trip, although she’s involved with one of the rival clan bosses.
Blood of Revenge, 明治侠客伝 三代目襲名
Director: Tai Kato, 1965, 90 min ©Toei Company, Ltd.
Kikuchi moves the gangster side of the family to Kobe, leaving Haruo to start afresh as the leader of their straight enterprises. With Kikuchi gone, it isn't long until Hoshino and his henchmen encroach on the naive Haruo's turf. Kikuchi is forced to return back to Osaka after another murder. The chase scene on railroad tracks at the end of the film is suspenseful and enchantingly filmed, really drawing the audience into the drama.
TOKIJIRO OF KUTSUKAKE: LONE YAKUZA (1966)
This is a famous yakuza story that has been retold in film no fewer than eight times from as far back as 1929. It opens on a bridge with Asakichi (Kiyoshi Atsumi) practicing his formal yakuza greeting (jingi) while his companion Tokijiro (Kinnosuke Nakamura) listens. Asakichi soon gets involved with a fight amongst gangsters and is killed. A distraught Tokijiro leaves town, in a scene shot in front of an amazing waterfall with flowers and a commemorative tablet to Asakichi.
Tokijiro of Kutsukake: Lone Yakuza, 沓掛時次郎 遊侠一匹
Director: Tai Kato, 1966, 90 min ©Toei Company, Ltd
He befriends a mother, Okinu (Kyoko Ikeuchi), and her son Tarokichi, and they travel together. A boss whom Tokijiro owes a favor asks him to kill their rival, Sanzo, which he reluctantly does. He promises the dying Sanzo that he will look after his wife and son for him, only then realizing that this man was the husband of the woman he had just traveled with.
This bizarre turn of affairs results in Tokijiro traveling the countryside with a makeshift family, in attempts to do the right thing. However, Okinu falls sick and must wait till the next spring before she can travel. Throughout his struggle to look after Okinu, Tokijiro is forced to choose between trying to lead a good life and returning to the yakuza world to make ends meet. He decides to fight one last time to get the medicine that will save Okinu's life and the close-ups of his face while he's fighting and her lying on her sickbed shot from above are seamlessly intertwined into the drama of the scene.
RED PEONY GAMBLER: FLOWER CARDS MATCH (1969)
The third in Red Peony series, this one features a lot of train imagery. It seems the director had an affinity for tracks, paths and roads, that somehow bind the fates of the characters together. The gambling heroine Oryu (Junko Fuji) saves a blind girl Okimi from getting hit by a train. Moving to Nagoya, she learns there is a cheating imposter Red Peony in town.
Red Peony Gambler: Flower Cards Match, 緋牡丹博徒 花札勝負
Director: Tai Kato, 1969, 98 min ©Toei Company, Ltd.
All the gangs, led by Oryu’s patron Nishinomaru, are planning to hold a gambling party. However, the rival boss Kimbara wants to take control of the ceremony and their turf. Nishinomaru’s son Jiro returns from Tokyo because his betrothed Yae is being forced to marry Kimbara's politician friend.
Oryu discovers that the fake Red Peony is Otoki, whose daughter she had saved at the beginning of the film. She had been cheating in order to buy medicine. Their emotional discussion is finely directed, and the tension and beauty of the moment are crystallized in a close-up shot where she burns Otoki’s fake cards.
The love-struck Jiro makes a bet he can’t cover, and Oryu has to return with a vast sum by midnight the next night in order to save him. She bumps into Shogo Hanaoka (the great Ken Takakura) on the road. Despite her haste, she loans him an umbrella to keep off the snow. The close-up of their hands on the umbrella, shot under a train overpass, foretells that their fates are connected.
After a robbery, Oryu goes to settle the score, and we see she can handle a sword or a knife, as well as fight unarmed, with the best of them.
RED PEONY: ORYU'S RETURN (1970)
Oryu has been searching for Okimi, the girl she had helped save from blindness in the third installment in the series. Meanwhile, she loses to gambler Tsunejiro Aoyama (the legendary Bunta Sugawara), who is fascinated by her. He tells Oryu the lost girl might be in the Teppokyu troupe in Asakusa. She goes to Tokyo and moves in with the Teppokyu troupe, whose theater is the target of thieves as well as a rival boss, Masagoro Samezuno. They catch the thieves and are about to administer justice when Oryu realizes that the girl is actually Okimi.
Red Peony: Oryu's Return, 緋牡丹博徒 お竜参上
Director: Tai Kato, 1970, 100 min ©Toei Company, Ltd.
Their emotional reunion results in the Teppokyu boss adopting her as a daughter and Ginji, a goodhearted young yakuza in the Samezuno gang, asking for her hand in marriage. However, the Samezuno will stop at nothing, including murder, to take over the theater. Oryu must navigate this underworld while trying to protect Okimi and the theater.
The Museum of Kyoto
By Mance Thompson
— Mance Thompson is a Tokyo-based American photographer and the world’s leading authority on Japanese ninja movies.
Please be sure to check with the theater before going.