In short: Case of Umon: One-Eyed Wolf (1959)

aka Umon Torimonocho: Katame no okami

This is one among many movies concerning the adventures of Tokugawa shogunate era constable and master detective Kondo Umon (here played by Ryutaro Otomo). In this particular case, Umon and his annoying comic relief sidekick stumble upon the bodies of half a dozen men hanging from the same tree, which is a curious thing to encounter even in suicide-prone old Japan, so Kondo quickly deduces this is in fact a case of murder. From there, our hero follows leads to a conspiracy to murder the shogun himself. Only one man can save the reign of the cruel tyrant (waitaminute…)!

As expected, this is one of those slightly stiff and often somewhat hokey pieces of jidai geki made in the somewhat conservative style samurai movies were starting to move away from at the end of the 50’s, towards more morally and artistically complex endeavours. So expect rather larger than life melodramatic declamation as main acting style, a rather simple world view, and one-dimensional characters.

That doesn’t mean One-Eyed Wolf isn’t entertaining if you take it for what it is, at least from my historical point in time. It’s the kind of thing that probably was called the Japanese variant of “an entertainment”, perhaps comparable to series hero B-Western, though of course – Japanese studios had their pride and a deep talent pool -  made to a higher visual standard than the adventures of Hopalong Cassidy. This is, after all, a Toei production, and therefore graced with very pretty sets and sound stages of old Edo that just happen to look exactly like the ones I’ve seen in other Toei productions of this type.

If you can cope with the film’s lack of depth – and way too much comic relief, alas – you might just be like me and get to the point where you fall into the natural state of entertainment movies about detectives solving preposterous and needlessly complicated plots can’t help but provide, particularly those that find our detective ending up in one of those typical samurai movie battles of one man cutting through a veritable army of henchmen. Otomo is appropriately heroic, if not very exciting, the rest of the cast is full of faces I know from dozens of other Toei films.

Some of One-Eyed Wolf’s pulpier ideas are pleasantly weird, and director Tadashi Sawashima at the very least keeps things rolling along nicely and dynamically enough. From time to time Sawashima even shows a bit of visual brilliance: the first reveal of the corpses that bring Umon on the case is wonderfully creepy, there are quite a few shots reminding of very atmospheric paintings, and the film’s grand finale is dominated by very unsubtle yet also pretty effective and artful montages of the kind that always make me think “Eisenstein”.

Consequently, Case of Umon: The One-Eyed Wolf won’t be a film to rock anybody’s world, but it’s a nice time nonetheless.

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Kaizoku bahansen (1960)

aka The Pirates

During the Warring States period in Japan. Komen, the son of an influential merchant learns that little of what he thought about his background is actually true when a group of bahansen – far traders and pirates - comes to his home port to take him to become one of their leaders. Komen’s father isn’t his father but a man who assisted the evil Uemondayu in the assassination of his actual father (and mother, but nobody seems to care much about her death) and got a case of conscience afterwards, taking Komen – and quite a bit of treasure too – away from any danger Uemondayu might have posed to the child. Komen’s true father was a captain of the Bahansen, building their once honourable reputation that has been besmirched by many an act of evil and piracy committed by Uemondayu since.

That very same night, our hero’s fake father dies, his sister is separated from Komen – to be soon captured by Uemondayu and his slave-trading men – and the bahansen abduct him. It’ll take quite a bit of whining and acting like a conceited prick for the young man to take on the job of bahansen captain, and even then it’ll take more time until he stops being insufferable, and takes on the traditional job of vengeance and sister-saving.

And there you already have the main problem of Tadashi Sawashima’s Japanese pirate movie, that its hero is an insufferable brat for the first half of its running time, with little recommending him to the role of hero, and much that caused me to want his ass kicked by someone. Because this is not exactly a deep movie, his turn to responsibility, filial duty and a sense of justice isn’t convincing at all, with little explanation given for his emotional change (I suspect the musical number), and few signs of any actual character development going on. But then, at least he stops being completely insufferable, so I’m not going to complain too loudly.

The film’s character work is a bit problematic elsewhere too. Everyone on screen seems desperately in need of some pill or the other to calm them down, what with everybody prone to shouting, screeching, chest-pounding and intense emotional outbursts for no good reason whatsoever; even a bit of rain causes our characters to roll around on a ship’s deck in ecstasy. I’m loathe to imagine what they do when it snows.

Fortunately, I don’t really go into my movies of naval adventure looking for complex characterisation, so it was not all that difficult for me to roll with these aspects of Kaizoku bahansen – with only Komen’s high insufferability actually needing an effort to overlook – and put my eye on the more important things when it comes to the movie life on sea. Namely, scenes of swashbuckling derring-do, exciting miniature ship duels, icky romance, rousing musical numbers (no, wait…), and all kinds of lovely adventure movie stuff. Turns out Japanese pirates (or non-pirates? half-pirates?) like to do all the stuff Errol Flynn enjoyed too, just with different costumes, prettier swords, and a few cultural differences that really don’t change all that much about the resulting film. And while Sawashima isn’t exactly Michael Curtiz on the open seas, he has a fine sense for all that makes this sort of thing exciting, and never lets the film descent into dullness, even at the early days of the plot when all of Komen’s complaining could have brought the whole film down. Plus, how often does one have the opportunity to watch a film with a sequence where a bunch of Japanese people wearing deep blackface pretend to be some sort of “natives” and attack our heroes? Okay, that sort of thing might turn off the sensitive, but for me, that particular sequence of scenes is much too bizarre to be offensive, and much too weird to be boring.

All in all, Kaizoku bahansen turns out to be fun little movie that would be worth watching even without the added bonus of it being a Japanese pirate movie.

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In short: Ninjutsu Gozen-jiai (1957)

aka Torawakamaru the Hoga Ninja

Being a magical ninja ain't easy. If you are Ishikawa Goemon (Nakajiro Tomita) of the (in this film) rather evil Iga clan, you might be able to ride clouds, teleport, jump really high, make yourself invisible and cut down trees via telekinesis, but your annoying son Goroichi (Motoharu Ueki) has missed every lesson in Being Evil School and your henchwomen like Sagiri (Hiroko Sakuramachi) are so fragile in their evilness that having one good deed inflicted upon them will turn them into do-gooders themselves.

Not that the rather good ninja of the Hoga clan (also known as the Koga clan) have it easy. First and foremost, there aren't exactly a lot of them left, and their youngest and brightest Torawakamaru (Sentaro Fushimi) might be able to do all those sexy things Goemon can plus turn into a big toad, but he also has the laughter of an especially ill-mannered goat. And, you know, who wants to turn into a big toad?

When the Iga decide to throw their lot in with Tokugawa, the Hoga obviously side with the Tokugawa's main enemy, the Toyotomi. The groups are fighting about the plans for new-fangled castle fortifications the Toyotomi are planning to build and use all the silly tricks a good ninja knows.

But not even the kidnapping of the adorable/annoying little Toyotomi daughter Nene is enough to end the difficulties. In the end, only a ninja duel between Torawakamaru and the Iga boss of bosses Momochi Sandayu (Ryunosuke Tsukitaga) can decide who will build a fortification and who will be (quite literally) cooked.

The short programmer Ninjutsu Gozen-jiai was conjured up in the same spirit of silliness that would later produce the best Japanese film of all times, The Magic Serpent. Obviously made for children, and containing the important moral lessons that evilness is not genetic, and that fire-breathing snakes look much cooler than big frogs, the film's naive charms are large enough to make it an excellent Sunday morning choice of film for people receptive to its charms, namely me.

There is probably not all that much technical merit to the film (although its director Tadashi Sawashima manages to smuggle in a very beautifully shot swordfight in the rain right at the start of the movie), but it runs along nicely, from time to time stopping for the nauseating children and some painful humor.

Fortunately, there is always some new magical ninja silliness waiting around the next corner - not as much of it as in, say, Taiwanese productions of the next two decades, yet enough to satisfy me.

The final duel (in the clouds, with people changing into various ugly animal suits) is especially satisfying and reminds of the best animal themed Halloween party that never happened in historical Japan.

 

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