Bakumatsu taiyôden (1957)

• Year: 1957
• Released: 14 Jul 1957
• Country: Japan
• Adwords: 3 wins
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050162/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bakumatsu_taiyoden
• Metacritics:
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: Japanese
• MPA Rating: Not Rated
• Genre: Comedy, Drama
• Runtime: 110 min
• Writer: Hisashi Yamanouchi, Yûzô Kawashima, Shôhei Imamura
• Director: Yûzô Kawashima
• Cast: Furankî Sakai, Sachiko Hidari, Yôko Minamida
• Keywords: samurai, prostitute, brothel, grifter, bakumatsu,

7.3/10

Bakumatsu taiyôden Storyline

Set in the last few years of the shogun’s rule, this period/ensemble movie depicts the lives of the young and the restless at a whorehouse. The protagonist is Saheiji, a resourceful, witty free spirit. It’s 1862, 6 years before the Shogun turned his political power over to the Emperor. Penniless Saheiji splashes out at a famous Shinagawa whorehouse. He’s forced to stay on at the whorehouse to repay his debt. At first Saheiji is regarded as an unwelcome guest who never leaves but it turns out he is not just a poor grifter. None of the whorehouse’s guests, hosts, servants and attending ladies are innocent but they are pragmatic schemers. Saheiji soon endears himself to them all and solves many whorehouse disputes with his wit. But it is slowly revealed that the seemingly perfect Saheiji is suffering from tuberculosis and his future is uncertain…—Nikkatsu

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Bakumatsu taiyôden Movie Reviews

A much loved film in its native country and surely worth a watch.

Not the easiest film for a non Japanese to follow and certainly not an easy one to review. I see I am the first to make any sort of attempt. There is always some difficulty with period films from Japan because we on the outside seem to have so little knowledge of that history and are immediately at a disadvantage. There is another difficult when it comes to comedy. So much Japanese humour seems to be derived from word play (as in England) and unfortunately if you are relying upon a subtitle translation inevitably there is going to be a problem with the subtlety being ‘lost in translation’. Another obstacle for modern western viewers is what I tend to refer to as the crazy slapstick tendency. It happens in Chinese as well as Japanese films and again does not always translate well to others. I think this is made more difficult here because the lead was a well known funny man and much of what he does will have been funny through familiarity. Despite all that, the film is well shot, everything happens at a frantic pace, there are no ponderous or slow passages but you do have to try and remember who is who. Another difficulty for western views but I shall not be expanding upon that. A much loved film in its native country and surely worth a watch.

Movements

I have rarely had so toweringly high expectations for a film as I had for Kawashima Yûzô’s “Bakumatsu taiyôden” (1957). So high that I knew this wouldn’t be a good thing unless I exerted to utmost patience. Most often great films loaded with too much (false, misguided) expectation from the part of this particular viewer tend to disappoint on first viewing and only grow in the mind to be fully appreciated later, sometimes years after.

But what a hoot this film is! The first expository reel where Kawashima puts all the plates spinning is breathtakingly relentless. Doing comedy right so it’s funny enough but doesn’t lose steam is as difficult as it gets. The best comedy, in my mind, injects the whole world and how that world functions with a sense of the askew, after which basically anything can happen, even when on face value what is seen appears “normal”. The comedy then arises spontaneously as the characters interact with the world, the narrative sometimes ebbing towards drama, sometimes flowing towards bursts of comedy.

This ebb and flow is acutely present in the film. It’s a riotously funny film in dialogue, gesture and movement, and it has a free-flowing spirit. But why it works for me as well as it does is because it’s full of fleshed out characters, much like Yamanaka’s “Ninjô kami fûsen” (1938), which not only makes the comedy more bittersweet, but also gives it gravity. Not “gravity” in the sense of ‘seriousness or solemnity of manner’, really, but more like a central point from which it gushes. “Gravity” in the sense of purpose and home. For me the most effective form of comedy is the one that allows the viewer to see oneself in the characters’ stead. It’s us whom things are done to, and who get to experience that catharsis that might or might not come. I haven’t seen any other films by Kawashima so I can’t credit him as much as he probably deserves, but this sense of humanity is strong in Imamura’s films, and it’s here, too. It might sound like the mother of clichés (which in itself sounds awfully soppy) but when one cares about the characters, their comings and goings don’t have to amount to much for the viewer to like and relate them, no matter how different in likeness, manner, ambition. In short, these characters feel like real people who are playing in constant role-play.

Of course it helps how cunningly Kawashima connects all this to then-modern times. The narrator towards the beginning says the film is not about modern Shinagawa and the changes to prostitution, then proceeding to tell us what we need to know about the period (it’s set in the second year of the Bunkyu Era, in 1862, six years before the fall of the Shogun) but then keeps reminding us of the parallels constantly (Imamura’s “Buta to gunkan”, 1961, actually plays a similarly delicious game of irony with us in its opening credits). Kawashima even had in mind to have Frankie Sakai’s Inokori, or the Grifter, to not only escape down the road in the very end, but to burst out of the studio. Without going to such lengths, the point is still very well taken. Kawashima uses visuals counterpoint (marching procession/praying to Buddha; “beautiful sea view”/dead dog in the water, people dumping their trash at the docks) to absolutely great effect.

There’s a very interesting remark made by Fujimoto Giichi concerning Kawashima’s working methods, quoted by Frederick Veith in the essay “Bakumatsu taiyô-den” (available in the booklet of the Region B Blu-ray released in the Masters of Cinema series): “First he would visualize everyone’s movements in the film by drawing lines on a plan of the set. Only then did he think about their characters and situation. But it was more important to him to determine what kind of places people were moving in and out of, rather than what they actually did in them.” I think you can see this in the film, and it’s very enjoyable. I’ve now seen this twice, spending some time with this notion the second time.

At this writing there are only 143 votes for this film. Hopefully people get to see this now that it’s available in a handsome edition.

The moon in the last days of the Shogunate.

Waiting at home most of the day for repair men to arrive (who never did turn up!) I decided to watch a 2 hour film. Recently viewing Mikio Naruse’s magnificent Untamed Woman (1957),I picked up a Masters of Cinema 1957 Japanese title afterwards, and today decided it was time to witness the end of the Shogunate.

View on the film:

Presenting a title loved in Japan but largely unknown in The West,Masters of Cinema present a great transfer, with the picture retaining a film grain, the soundtrack being clear,and the subtitles being easy to follow.

Released the year that the Japanese government took a hard line on prostitution and other vices, co-writer/(with Hisashi Yamanouchi and Shôhei Imamura) director Yûzô Kawashima & cinematographer Kuratarô Takamura take the viewer on a tour of the 19th century Shogunate-era brothel with magnetic fluidity,pulling the doors open for the camera to zip pass, and winding tracking shots along the maze of corridors within the building. Holding Saheiji at the brothel with a mountain of debt, Kawashima has Saheiji pay back with a criss-crossing comedic relish from the odd jobs of pointing a prostitute towards a new life on by a sea edge, and attempting to handle a group of samurai.

Created as part of the studios Nikkatsu sun-tribe/teenager genre/ output, the writers deliver a sharply allegorical edge, over the samurai group being frustrated with the treaties that the Shogunate region had signed with the US, taping into protests taking place in Japan over the post-WWII treaties (a “Free Japan” sword is shown on screen.) Thankfully not letting the title be weighed down by politics,the writers allow the movie to blossom with a wicked comedic wit, playfully spun by the prostitutes using all their enticing charms to leave clients empty handed and waiting. Threading the whole tale together,Furankî Sakai gives a dazzling performance as Saheiji, with Sakai keeping Saheiji’s physical comedy exchanges flow with a rapid-fire zest, and a charming, breezy manner for the smooth comedic word-play of witnessing the last days of the Shogunate.