Shimizu Hiroshi; silent films of the 1930s

Shimizu is an important Japanese film-maker, though he has been overshadowed by other film-makers like Mizoguchi Kenji and Ozu Yasujiro. Both of these film-makers admired Shimizu;

“Ozu and I create films through hard work, but Shimizu is a genius.” a quotation by Mizoguchi Kenji.

“A friend and contemporary at Shochiku of Ozu Yasujiro, Shimizu was one of Japanese cinema’s most individual talents, and seems at last to be receiving the recognition for his subtle, spontaneous technique, and humanity of his oeuvre.” (Alexander Jacoby in A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors).

Despite Alex’s final note of optimism the films of Shimizu remain very difficult to see. A four title box set by Criterion seems to have been withdrawn. So it is both laudable and exciting that the Museum of the Moving Image in New York together with the Japan Society is offering a substantial retrospective throughout most of May. I was fortunate in being able to attend the opening weekend which included four silent films.

MOMI is screening the films that Shimizu made for the Shochiku studio between 1931 and 1941. Shochiku, initially a theatrical concern, moved into film in 1920 and continues to this day. It was noted for using western-style techniques, as in the films made in Hollywood. In the silent era Japanese film was dominated by the Benshi, a narrator who stood alongside the screen improvising dialogue, commentary and even sound effects. Shochiku was an early studio to use onscreen titles, making Benshi style commentary redundant. It was partly because of the pressure from Benshi to retain their function that Japanese film continued producing silent titles up to the mid-1930s.

As with other film-makers a number of Shimizu’s early films are lost. The retrospective opened with a two part silent film from 1931 and 1932.

The Opening shot

Seven Seas Part 1– Virginity Chapter / Nanatsu no umi: Zenpen: Shojo hen, 72 minutes

The film opens with a distinctive framing; a reverse show of a young woman, dressed in modern style, and standing in the rear door of a final train carriage. She, a Lady, is a minor character but catches the attention of Takehiko, the elder son of the wealthy Yagibashi family. Takehiko shares derogatory comments about the young woman because of her modern style and disregard of traditional values; but he is also attracted. Later the Yagibashi family throw a garden party for the returning Takehiko. Here we meet a number of key characters. Sone Yumie (Kawasaki Hiroko) is engaged to a younger son Yuzuru (Egawa Ureo); her father is a retired civil servant and she has two younger sisters. Also at the party is Ayako (Murase Sachiko) who works as a reporter on a newspaper and is also in love with Yuzuru.

Events following the garden party disrupts the lives of all these characters. The actual event, involving a rape, is treated with great circumspection; though comments by  a Benshi may have made the action clearer. The Yagibashi family use their wealth to protect their interests. Yumie’s family suffers a death and the severe illness of one sister. Yumie emerges as  a strong willed young woman though adhering to traditional values. Thus by the end of Part 1 she is destined to marry Takehiko rather than Yuzuru who leaves home and becomes independent.

Seven Seas Party 2 – Chastity Chapter / Nanatsu no umi: Kōhen: Teisō hen, 82 minutes

The second film focuses on Yumie’s married life with Takehiko. She crafts revenge on Takehiko and exploits the Yagibashi wealth to care for her ill sister. Yuzuru makes good as a writer and translator. And the Yagibashi family’s wealth and status fail to protect them when another son sells an exposé to the newspapers, causing the family public shame. Yumie and Yuzuru are finally able to find happiness together. However, Ayako is rather left out in the cold and in a slightly odd plotting discovers an absent father and leaves with him for the USA.

The two films run for 154 minutes in total. Both offer a complex plot and a fairly large cast of characters. The films were adapted by Noda Kogo from a novel by Maki Itsuma, [also known as Hasegawa Kaitaro). The cinematography is by Sasaki Taro who also worked on other films by Shimizu. The film has some distinctive stylistic tropes that were common in the silent films of Shimizu. There are some fine tracking shots; and in particular sequence set in a mountain rest home there are a series of pans and cuts across a hillside ending  by a lake where we see the inverted reflection of a couple, then broken as the man throws a stone in the water. The style is naturalistic and the mise en scène uses sets and costumes to define the differences between the two families.

The cast are mainly experienced players at the Shochiku studio and are all fine in their characterisations. And the young Takemine Hideko appears as the youngest sister in the Sone family. One of the conflicts in the film is between the traditional and the modern, emphasised in a number of ways including in the dress of the female characters. Thus in one sequence Ayako tells Yuzuru of her love for him, dressed not in her usual western style but in a traditional kimono. Meanwhile Yumie usually wears traditional style dress but in one scene after her marriage confronting Takehiko she is dressed in expensive westerns style clothes.

The main conflict in the film is between the wealthy Yagibashi family, corrupted by their wealth, and Yumie and her family, less affluent but more moral. This relates the film to the ‘social tendency’ titles of the period, where class conflict took centre stage, sometimes with a Marxist influence.

This provided a fine opening to the programme. Whilst the plotting was at time challenging the tone and style of the film made this a pleasure to view.

A Hero of Tokyo / Tôkyô no eiyû, 1935, 63 minutes

The title of this film refers to a male character but the central character is a mother, Nemoto Haruko (Yoshikawa Mitsuko). The film is part of a genre of  haha-mono (mother story). A widow with two children she marries a widower, Nemoto Kaichi (Iwata Yûkichi), who also has a young son. Nemoto is involved in a Manchuria-Mongolia gold mining venture. Shortly after the marriage the company is exposed as a fraud and Nemoto disappears. Haruko is left to bring up her own two children, Hideo (Yokoyama Jun as the young boy) and Kayoko (Ichimura Mitsuko as the young girl), and her new stepson Kanichi (Aoki Tomio as the young boy) all alone. In order to support the family she takes a job as a hostess. The job of hostess and of a geisha shaded over into prostitution and in this period suffered from moral disapproval. This point is made when Haruko and her family, after bailiffs take possession of the home and furniture,  move into a block of flats and we hear the local women gossiping and claiming she is

“different from our sort.”

Haruko keeps her work secret from the children.

Twelve years later the children are grown up. Kanichi (Fujii Mitsugi) is a newspaper reporter; he appears to be married but the wife is a minor character. Hideo (Mitsui Kôji) and his sister Kayoko (Kuwano Michiko) find their lives disrupted when Haruko’s work becomes public knowledge. This leads to both leaving home and only Kanichi remains supporting Haruko. Then the father re-appears involved in another mining scam. This leads to tragic consequences but Kanichi’s actions lead his role as a ‘hero’.

The film demonstrates the way that Shimizu handles the contemporary society and its issues. Alex Jacoby comments;

“His characters are almost always those who are alienated from the mainstream of society, whether by personal situation (poverty, family breakdown), profession (his men are often artists; his women hostesses or prostitutes), …”

In this Shimizu’s films parallel those of a contemporary, Naruse Mikio.

This film, like others, also offers a critical sub-text. The scams of the father reference Manchuria, which in this period Japan invaded and where they set up a puppet government. Alex comments,

“the father is, metaphorically, a representative of the militarists and of the business interests that colluded with them…”

I could not see a writers credit so it seems that this is very much down to the director; he was known to improvise with his production teams. Some of his films did not have a formal script but more a story line which he could change and vary as filming progressed.

The cinematography is by Nomura Hiroshi who worked on a number of Shimizu films in this period. And the film displays stylistic tropes which feature in several of these. One distinctive trope appears in the opening the film. We see a shot of a number of boys sitting on large pipes alongside a railway line. Several dissolves gradually reduce the number of boys to only one, the young Kanichi. In another shot with all the boys present they tease Kanichi because his father comes home later than theirs. Kanichi replies that this is because his father is more successful in business. The comment is repeated later in the film with a touch of humour; the mother arriving home late the stepson asks if she has been promoted.

Shimizu also has a tendency to open scenes with people’s feet in close-up. Late in the film this is seen in a scene following a criminal act and the arrival of police. These distinctive techniques contribute to Shimizu’s reputation as a stylist. He has a great sense of mise en scène; one nice touch in the film is when we see the young boys drawing each other and then the drawings appear later in the film as family dissensions disrupt the earlier relations.

This was Shimizu’s final silent film and it had a music track recorded on a Tsuchihashi sound system, though Shochiku went on to develop their own sound system.

Henry, Sunako and Masumi

Japanese Girls at the Harbour / Minato no Nihon musume, 1933, 78 minutes

This is an early masterpiece by Shimizu. In the notes for the Criterion Eclipse discs Michael Koresky writes

“with its delicate social commentary, rendered in minute gestures and precise mise-en-scene, is a perfect example of his naturalistic yet symbolic technique, as well as a proper introduction to his abiding interest in life’s outliers'”

The film is set in the port city of Yokohama and an early title identifies ‘The Foreign Settlement’ as the setting. Yokohama was one of the ports forced open by U.S. gunboat diplomacy in mid-C19th; Britain joined in and the developing city acquired a protected compound and even a servicing commercial sex district. The extra-territorial position ended in 1899 but it seems that the city retained an openness to western influences and imports.

The two Japanese girls are Sunako (Oikawa Michiko) and Dora (Innoue Ichiko), close friends who attend a European-style school and appear to live in a dormitory at a convent, [though we do not see any nuns). We first see the girls in a cliff-top viewpoint as a liner sails away. Here they meet Henry (Egawa Ureo), who rides a Harley-Davidson motor cycle, and is admired by both young women. However, it is Sunako who is his girlfriend and the two ride off together leaving Dora alone. Later we, and Dora, discover that he is connected to a group of likely petty criminals, [‘those hoodlums’] but also that he has another older girlfriend, Yōko (Sawa Ranko). Learning of this leads to a confrontation between Sunako and Henry and Yōko in the church [likely Catholic] alongside the dormitory. The result of this is that Sunako leaves Yokohama and seems to wander through several cities. We find her again in Kobe, another once extra-territorial port. Here she works as a geisha in a bar- i.e. a prostitute. Her fellow geisha is Masumi (Aizome Yumeko) and Sunako also has a sort of camp follower, Miura (Tatsuo Saitō Tatsuo), an itinerant painter who constantly paints portraits of Sunako. Masumi prompts Sunako to accompany her back to Yokohama to work in a bar run by Harada ( Nanjō Yasuo). Here Henry has married Dora and Sunako’s return creates a disruption in their lives and a turning point in hers.

This melodrama is finely presented and the cast convince in often emotional sequences. As Michael Koresky noted Shimizu frequently uses location filming and there are many fine exteriors in the film. The cosmopolitan air of the cities is captured; nearly all the characters wear western style clothes; the exception is Sunako when she becomes a bar hostess and dresses in a traditional kimono. The casting reinforces this sense: Oikawa Michiko was born to Christian parents, her film career was cut tragically short at the age of 29: both Innoue Ichiko (half-Dutch) and Egawa Ureo (partly of German descent)have something of an Eurasian look. And the motor cycle, the liners and the cars we see on a quayside, all betray strong western influences.

The mise en scène and the cinematography have numerous examples of Shimizu’s distinctive stylistic tropes. There are two fine tracking shots along the cars on the Yokohama quay where a ball is held. The use of dissolves to place and displace characters are really effective; frequently we see a shot of a character caught perhaps in a doorway; the following dissolve presents the same doorway with the character vanished. The most notable technique, and likely very rare for the period, occurs at the dramatic confrontation in the church; a series of jump cuts first ‘zoom’ in on a character then reverse out again. And later in the film a repeat series accompanies a moment of dramatic recognition.

The camera often places characters in doorways or through windows and with deep staging. And one memorable set where Sunako resides uses blocking of objects and bars to comment on the scene and the characters within. Props also become significant. In the home of Dora and Henry we see at one point a ball of wool which entangles characters; a little later the passing of a skein of wool comments on characters responses. Shimizu also uses cutaways to emphasise the emotional content of a scene. Thus, we watch a scene as someone dies and the several cutaway shots present an exterior with rain and a flower perched in a slot near the window of the room where they lie.

The titles and sub-titles of the print are distinctive. Titles that comment or provide information are in the Japanese equivalent of upper case: titles presenting dialogue use inverted commas with a capital and then all lower-case. The sub-titles in English follow this but without the inverted commas.

Shimizu’s films have parallels with those of Naruse Mikio, especially in the use of characters outside or excluded from respectable society. In Naruse the resolution is often downbeat, though with heroines determined to ‘soldier on’. Shimizu’s resolution tend to be more hopeful.

Note, plot information.

In Japanese Girls at the Harbour the resolution is an example found in Michael Walker’s research and analysis’s of  Endings in the Cinema  (palgrave macmillan 2020). Under ‘Water – Ship and Boat Departures’, he notes,

“At the end, Sunako asks Miura to throw his two remaining paintings of her into the harbour – which he does. The liner then leave, and much emphasis is given to the severing of the streamers connecting the passengers on the ship to the people on the key seeing them off. Only after the liner is sailing away do the film’s other couple, Dora and Henry, arrive. They join Harada, Sunako’s ex-pimp, who is still observing the liner; he tells them, a little mockingly, ‘they sent you their regards’. Their lateness is a reflection of their ambivalence towards Sunako, who at one point, jeopardised their marital happiness. After Harada has left, the couple continue to stand and observe the liner, but the film actually ends with images which stress the threshold and, in the distance, the departing liner: a shot from the beach, then shots from the quayside as torn streamers blow in the wind. The shots no longer include characters, and with each one the liner is further away; finally it is gone. The last shot is one of Miura’s painting of Sunako floating in the water.

Although the emphasis here is on the ship’s departure itself, the final image carries another intimation. Sunako’s portrait floating in the harbour suggests that a part of her will remain in Japan. “

The sequence of shots take on added resonance as the film opens with a departing liner and the cutting of streamers from shop to quay. Sunako’s destination is not stated, and whilst she and Miura are on an ocean going liner she is still dressed in traditional Japanese garb. I should add that it is Henry, as much as Sunako, who threatens the marital order. He is one of those rather weak and ineffectual males often found in melodrama, where as Dora and Sunako are stronger characters.

I have been fortunate to see this film twice on 35mm. Even on second viewing I was discovering fresh resonances among the characters and fresh stylistic tropes and the way they illuminate characters. I find this a genuine classic of Japanese film.

Seven Seas and this film were accompanied on an electric piano by Matsumura Makia who received well deserved applause. She is a frequent accompanist for silent film around New York. She has a fine lyrical style. Her accompaniments contributed to both the emotions and the pleasures of these films.

A number of actors and craft people turn up in several of the Shimizu films screened here. All were working at the Shochiku Studio in this period, so there is the familiarity and shared experience that one finds in a classical studio model. Clearly the studios long-running success over a century rests to a degree to the quality of its productions in these founding decades.

The films were accompanied by printed notes for each title available before the screenings and introduced by Choi Edo, Assistant Curator of Film at MOMI and Alexander Fee, the Film Programmer at the Japan Society. I have noted some of their comments alongside individual titles. Both provided helpful information and drew out some of the developing aspects of Shimizu’s early film career.

The Museum of the Moving Image is sited in the old Astoria Studio in Queens’ Borough.  It has a permanent exhibitions on the production side of the industry and one dedicated to the work of Jim Henson. There are also frequent temporary exhibitions and a small book shop with some interesting titles. There are two film auditoriums; the larger Redstone, seats over 250 people and is a large airy space. The projection box, which look spacious can handle 16mm, 35mm and 70 mm prints, plus digital files; [Century JJ 35/70mm projectors and a Elmo LX-2200 for 16mm]. At weekend there are regular screenings of films, both contemporary and classic, including silent films. All, bar Forget Love for Now, of the retrospective prints were screened in Redstone auditorium. One of the practices I have found and enjoyed elsewhere in the USA is the audience expressing appreciation for the projectionists. So we applauded Carolyn Funk, who handled the sometimes delicate and worn prints very well. And Rebecca Fiore, Manager of Visitor Experience, kindly handled all our questions. The prints themselves mainly came from the National Film Archive of Japan; all provided with English sub-titles. The curators explained that the prints are not restorations but surviving ones at Shochiku, so they were limited to single screenings of each title. They are also destined for a further programme screening on the U.S. West Coast. Hopefully the studio will produce new prints and possibly proper restorations.

I was able to discuss the films with my friend Bob Mastrangelo, who made some helpful observations. He contributes the annual obituary article for Sight and Sound.  He remembered including a couple of the long-lived cast members in earlier years. The retrospective also included 35mm prints of sound films made at Shochiku. A second part of the retrospective is at the Japan Society venue and feature Shimizu’s post-war work including what is perhaps his most famous title, Children of the Beehive / Hachi no su no kodomotachi (1948, which I was fortunate to see at an edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato. A number of his surviving silent films were shown at the 2010 edition of Le Giornate de Cinema Muto. And the BFI South Bank had  a major retrospective in 1988. I was really happy to have caught even some of these memorable films. If any titles by Shimizu happen near any readers I strongly recommend them. If one of the 35mm prints happens than they are very fortunate.

Quotations from the English subtitles on prints.

Sources of material in the Film Programme Notes.

“Hiroshi Shimizu: A Hero of His Time” by Alexander Jacoby on Senses of Cinema, July 2004.

Notes on the now deleted Eclipse Criterion Box set by Michael Koresky, Travels with Hiroshi Shimizu, 2009.

“Hiroshi Shimizu – Silent Master of the Japanese Ethos” by William M. Drew, Midnight Eye, April 15, 2004.