SPOTLIGHT: Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well (1960)

Akira Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well (悪い奴ほどよく眠る, Warui Yatsu Hodo Yoku Nemuru) was the director's first semi-independent production away from the studio system constraints of Toho and Shochiku.

While a scathing indictment of the Japanese bureaucracy - complete with its entwined corporate greed and self-serving political maneuverings - that shaped this country's business and social structure following on from the Allied occupation (and the country's economic miracle thereafter), the plot opening here also rings true to contemporary Japan 50 years on.

After police arrive at a wedding to arrest a corporate assistant officer on charges of bribery in a kickback scheme, newspaper clippings tell a background yarn of suspicious construction fees intermingled with free dinners and billions of yen worth of probable bids rigging; the tale then segues into a familiar Japanese casebook study of secretaries and underlings taking the fall for their major corporation bosses.

The Bad Sleep Well - like Ran and Kumonosu-jō (Throne of Blood) - then draws on Shakespeare, in this case the Bard's Hamlet; there are also moments reminiscent of Michael Clayton.

Toshiro Mifune yet again puts in a powerhouse effort as the restrained, focused Koichi Nishi, a young man who manipulates his own elevation to a prominent position within a corrupt company in order to expose the men responsible for his father's death.


Masayuki Mori (the gentle, naive title character in Kurosawa's earlier film The Idiot) here renounces any sympathetic kindling whatsoever as the despotic vice president of the company in focus.

Also on-screen is Kyoko Kagawa, previously with Mifune in Nippon Tanjo (The Birth of Japan, 1959) as well as one of the highlights of Kurosawa's 1957 film Donzoko (The Lower Depths); she also popped up in Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953) and would later appear in the Kurosawa movies Red Beard and High and Low along with the classic kaiju flick Mothra.

Joining them on board a cinematic ride that's as gripping as it is meaningful are Tatsuya Mihashi (whose last role before he passed away - 44 years later, in 2004 - was the kindly, meaningful GP in Casshern) and Kurosawa veteran Takashi Shimura.

Masaru Sato returns on sound track duties; he previously did the score for Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, as well as the later double-act Yojimbo and Sanjuro - and would aurally shine in 1974 on Jun Fukuda's Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla.

His score here is superb.



Viewing DVD thanks to Madman Entertainment Australia
© 1960 Toho Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved

SPOTLIGHT: Scandal (1950)

Another Akira Kurosawa slow-burner released 60 years ago, this is lighter-weight-Kurosawa - which still means quite a chunk of substance.

An indictment of tabloid journalism the year before Billy Wilder’s much more hostile Ace in the Hole and possibly autobiographical in some content, Scandal (醜聞, Shūbun) tells the tale of a chance encounter and a photo taken by a paparazzo at a mountain resort that leads to a fabricated gossip magazine story and resultant legal battle.

Toshiro Mifune plays one of the two innocents caught up in the affair: Honest artist Ichirô Aoye, a debonair type with a penchant for pipe-smoking and motorcycles. Although he plays it straighter here than most of his other roles, it’s a treat to see hints of Mifune's later trademark tics and mannerisms drift into the performance; Aoye may also indeed be the actor's most likable part - if a little straight and bland.

Takashi Shimura, in the role of seemingly dodgy attorney-at-law Hiruta, puts in a performance both seemingly familiar yet at odds with Kenji Watanabe – the painfully humble, barely audible public servant he would play two years later in Kurosawa’s acclaimed Ikiru (To Live).


Here he’s all bluster, ramble and smelly feet, but beneath the verbosity and a struggle with inner demons is a man with a dying daughter who’s his best conscience. The man may have a destitute rooftop office with the pigeons and the laundry, but there is an honest bone in there.

Noriko Sengoku puts in another spot-on performance as Aoye’s life-model and best friend Sumie, while Yoko Katsuragi is ethereal in the role of Hiruta’s daughter Masako.

There are moments reminiscent of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Sidney Lumet's The Verdict, but as with most Kurosawa films this really is its own creature.

Personally, while I enjoyed the experience but I wouldn't go so far as to say that this is one of Kurosawa's stand-out pictures.

Perhaps the weakest link is Yoshiko Yamaguchi, aka Shirley Yamaguchi, who appeared two years later in King Vidor's Japanese War Bride.

In this film she isn’t given much to work with in the role of Miyako Saijo, the other participant in the “scandal” - but at least she gets to sing a lot.



1950 Shochiku Co. Ltd.

SPOTLIGHT: The Quiet Duel (1949)

What can I say? Comparing this Akira Kurosawa-directed film with Drunken Angel, released the previous year (and spotlighted below on Jan. 3rd) is like comparing milk-based food products and soft, white, porous sedimentary rock.

In Shizukanaru Ketto (The Quiet Duel 静かなる決闘) Toshiro Mifune plays the complete antithesis of his wild, downwardly-spiraling gangster from the earlier movie; this time he's the doctor, and a dedicated one at that, who falls victim during the war to one of his own patients: during an operation to save the man's life, he cuts himself and thereby contracts the soldier's syphilis.

Rather than wallow in despair, however, he returns to his father's hospital in Japan after the war, and throws himself into his work - helping those less fortunate with a genial smile and a warm sense of humour, even while breaking up with his fiancee to save her from the risk of also contracting the disease. He also refuses to mention his illness to anyone.

Mifune is superb in the role; he's like the doctor you always wanted to have, perhaps bearing even more humility and kindness because of the desperate phase of his own life.

Takashi Shimura as always shines in the role of Mifune's father, and there're those typical, perfect moments of Kurosawa humour and warmth even amidst some devastating and frustrating drama. The action is minimal and there's not a katana blade in sight, yet this is superb stuff.


But the real revelation here is Noriko Sengoku, the atypical Japanese actress in the prominent supporting role as apprentice nurse Minegishi.

While her earlier role for Kurosawa in Drunken Angel was a pivotal one it was also brief; here she has much more room to move and develops through the movie - from a self-destructive, selfish single mother early on into the feisty, dedicated, supportive head nurse at the conclusion.

Along the way, Sengoku more than holds her own in the company of Mifune and Shimura - so as a footnote it's interesting to note that she's still acting even now - at the age of 87.

This Kurosawa flick is a little difficult to find, but I got mine from the people at Madman in Australia.


Images © 1949 Kadokawa Herlad Pictures Inc.

Toho Studios

Located in a surprisingly wealthy part of Setagaya here in Tokyo is the sprawling home of Toho Studios. Not only is Toho the largest and most famous film studio in Japan, but it’s the owner of one of the more internationally famous film logos, on par for Asian cinema aficionados with MGM’s Technicolor roaring lion.

On location at the studio, you’ll discover a collection of sound-stages, outdoor arenas and warehouses, plus a stream lined with gorgeous cherry blossom trees, all of it originally set up in 1936 by railroad and showbiz entrepeneur, Ichizo Kobayashi.

After pumping out propaganda films during World War 2, Toho overcame a brush with bankruptcy and disfavor with the American occupation forces to unleash a wad of critically successful and internationally-regarded movies by Akira Kurosawa, such as Drunken Angel (see the January 3 entry here), Yojimbo, Ran, and Seven Samurai - a scene from which is now boldly embossed as a huge painted mural across the outer wall of the studio.

It’s at least 10 meters high, and you can’t miss it when you visit the hallowed halls that also saw through films directed by Hiroshi Inagaki (The Birth of Japan), Shiro Moritani (Japan Sinks) and Ishirō Honda (The Mysterians).


In 1954, Honda got together with Toho to skewer the science fiction world when they unveiled the first Gojira movie – better known to you and me as Godzilla – and the studio followed up with over two dozen sequels. The original is still an absolute classic 56 years later and features JapaneseCultureGoNow! fave Takashi Shimura.

I picked up my copy for just ¥980 (about $9) a couple of months ago thanks to the new DeAgostini kaiju classics series. Yum.

While Toho’s star has waned in recent years, the studio continues to produce movies in conjunction with Japanese TV companies like TBS (the Masahiro Nakai/Yukie Nakama WW2 drama, I Want to be a Shellfish, for instance - the one I did the walk-on, gate-pushing MP bit for in the earlier entry here on October 8, 2008).

Toho is better known these days as major playing distributor for smaller production houses like Asmik Ace - the company that unleashed the Ring movies - along with anime studios Production I.G and Studio Ghibli.

SPOTLIGHT: Drunken Angel (1948)

Did I ever confess my love for Madmen?

No, no, not the Emmy and Golden Globe-winnning TV series - I haven't yet had the chance to see it over here in Japan, and anyway that's actually two words, "Mad Men", instead of one.

What I'm gushing about are the real-life people (plural) who helm Madman Entertainment back in my hometown (Melbourne). I call 'em Madmen just to keep myself amused. Stupid pun, I know.

They cover the Australian DVD market with the best in Asian cinema, particularly Japanese (they release something like 99% of all anime there) and I love their work.

Anyway, I'm currently working on a long-winded Akira Kurosawa article and they shot me through a swag of movies I hadn't seen along with others I hadn't watched in far too long, and the box arrived just in time for Christmas.

I know, I know - that sounds weird; living in Japan yet ordering Kurosawa films from Australia. But the fact is that most available Kurosawa DVDs in this country don't come with English subtitles, and my nihongo is nowhere near good enough to carry something as weighty as one of Akira's cinematic tomes.

Yoidore Tenshi (Drunken Angel, 1948) is the Kurosawa film that, rumour had it a little while back, Martin Scorsese wanted to remake around the same time that he re-baked Infernal Affairs.


Credited as the first yakuza gangster movie, Drunken Angel stars the great, somewhat underrated Takashi Shimura as the title character, a frequently sloshed, no-nonsense doctor (Sanada) with a heart buried beneath his gruff exterior.

This is also the first of 16 films that Kurosawa did with actor Toshiro Mifune.

With absolute aplomb, Mifune inhabits his downward-spiraling hoodlum (Matsunaga), a man suffering from tuberculosis and a penchant for the importance of honour - in an industry sorely lacking such values.

Over the course of 90-odd minutes, Mifune is at times charming and suave; at other points there's a scary vitality to his agitated, face-of-impending-doom performance - in particular his manic turn in a drunken dance hall scene (see clip below).



While the film stock may have dated, the style and performances here most certainly have not. There's a contemporary edge to both male leads, in their intriguing relationship, that continues to work 62 years later - and almost 100 years since Kurosawa was born (in March 1910).

The post World War 2 environment around them - this was, after all, just three years after the the cessation of hostilities - is reminiscent of the backdrops in Carol Reed's The Third Man, released the following year: dismembered, dangerous and far from picturesque.

Images © 1948 Toho Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.