TRAVELLING ACTORS (JAPAN/1940/MIKIO NARUSE)

Hyoroku and Senpei are two actors whose ‘big break’ comes in the form of a role as the front and back halves of a horse in a baffling pantomime production. Despite the relative unimportance of their role, the two men are desperate to prove their mettle, discussing their trade as if they were revered professionals and showing off to geishas. When their theatre manager books in a live horse in their place for a performance in a rural area, the show becomes a bigger hit than expected, and the actors are informed that they will soon be replaced. Beaten at their own game by an animal, the men are left to fight a battle for their self-esteem.

Sharing the same playful but sincere comedy as Mikio Naruse’s earlier Wife, Be Like A Rose! , Travelling Actors is a gentle meditation on serious issues. Though ostensibly a comedy, it is clear that Naruse has a motive in championing these hack actors over the locally conscripted soldiers. The men’s role as the horse appears to consist simply of resisting the instruction of the owner, an act tirelessly portrayed performance after performance. This by extension is Naruse’s own conscientious objection, and an attempt to underline the importance on the arts in reflecting a nation’s status. Naruse occasionally throws in a shot of the men’s legs, as if to remind us that this is all the audience sees of them, whereas of course we as a film audience witness much more. A minor treat.

SINCERITY (JAPAN/1939/MIKIO NARUSE)

A subtly complex story about class values in Japan, Sincerity concerns the friendship of two schoolgirls from different backgrounds. Nobuko lives with her parents in a lavish, state-of-the-art house where she is given what she wants, while Tomiko shares a very modest house with her seamstress mother Tsutako, the father figure noticeably absent. When Nobuko gets a middling report card, her mother consults the teacher who advises her to take after Tsutako’s style of raising a child. As the teacher continues his favouritism towards Tomiko, Nobuko’s father loses his temper and before long, a devastating secret is revealed that could destroy both families.

At little over an hour, it’s not the most memorable of films and is unlikely to ever sit amongst Japanese classics, but Sincerity is nonetheless an interesting slice of drama with a timeless social dilemma at its heart. All of the characters in Sincerity are given a fair amount of screentime as the problem here affects everyone. Intimate close-ups, as in Naruse’s earlier Avalanche, echo the intensity of emotions. Playing against type, the strongest of Naruse’s characters are the two children, Nobuko and Tomiko, whose insistent questioning about the structure of family drive the narrative through its peaks and troughs – in fact, the girls appear to understand a little too much about relationships given their age for the story to be completely convincing. Perhaps most notable about the film is that the war context becomes little more than a plot detail in the context of family values.

MORNING'S TREE-LINED STREET (JAPAN/1936/MIKIO NARUSE)

A young woman named Chiyo boards a taxi to Tokyo, leaving behind her family home in the countryside in favour of finding a job in the city. Following directions scrawled in her diary, she meets up with childhood friend Hisako who, under the new name of Shigeyo, has taken an unappealing job as a bar hostess, confessing that it was the only employment she could find given her rural upbringing. Chiyo heeds her advice, but after an unsuccessful jobhunt, she too finds herself working as a hostess in one of Tokyo’s poorer quarters. Here she learns about the broken dreams and relationships of her colleagues and the obstacles encountered by country girls in the city.

One of three films that Mikio Naruse made with his wife-to-be Sachiko Chiba in 1936, Morning’s Tree-Lined Street came at a time that Naruse began to notice a supposed lapse in the quality of his films, a problem he ascribed partly to his relationship with Chiba. In her role here as Chiyo, Chiba is vulnerable and uninitiated, and her trajectory is largely shaped by the vicarious experiences of the other characters. Though unconstrained by the ideals of home and family usually seen in his films, the film is an oddly personal document, and the elevation in visual creativity, which sees the camera outdoors as often as indoors, suggests a shift in Naruse’s state of mind. An extra scene of Chiyo’s family might have helped illustrated her disillusionment in the city, but the film succeeds elsewhere.

TOCHUKEN KUMOEMON (JAPAN/1936/MIKIO NARUSE)

Tochuken Kumoemon is a renowned actor whose arrogant reputation precedes him. He views the stage as his domain and does not give much consideration to the feelings of his colleagues, a fact that dutiful wife Otsuma knows all too well. She accompanies his theatrical balladry on the shamisen, but this collaboration appears to be the closest the two ever get. Alienated from romantic feelings, Tochuken pursues a young geisha with little consideration for the feelings of his wife or son. Even when Otsuma falls ill, Tochuken refuses to visit under the proviso that it would dismantle their relationship as performers were he to be seen tending to her as a husband.

Tochuken Kumoemon seems to refer to director Mikio Naruse’s own practice, an allegory about keeping one’s feet on the ground in the duplicitious world of theatre. Though not entirely indistinguishable for the audience, the film’s two realities often intertwine, hinting that the viewer is to see the film from Tochuken’s perspective, although he is hardly a sympathetic character. As in Naruse’s later Avalanche, the male lead carries the story, but it is the wife’s sufferance which is intended to resonate with the viewer. Unfortunately, too much effort is expended on profiling Tochuken before the true story begins, and his relationship with his son is scarcely described. There are still strong moments of drama, particularly as Otsuma struggles to get through to her husband, but viewed through the prism of the performer’s ego, they ultimately amount to little true emotion.

WIFE, BE LIKE A ROSE! (JAPAN/1935/MIKIO NARUSE)

Energised by her recent engagement, a spirited young woman named Kimiko decides to seek her father’s approval, with the ulterior motive of reuniting her estranged parents. With the support of her good-humoured uncle, Kimiko travels out to her father’s lowly abode in the countryside, only to discover that he has a family with a former geisha called Oyuki. The shocking discovery uproots Kimiko’s scheme, but she continues with it nonetheless, persuading her father to return to the city where he had brought her up during happier times. The illusion continues to dissolve as Kimiko’s poetess mother takes offence at her ex-husband’s presence, and good intentions are lost in the mix as old wounds are reopened.

The initial impression one gets of Kimiko is that she already has everything she needs in her life and has clearly flown from the nest. Rather than leaving the audience wondering the point of her failed attempt to reconnect her parents, director and writer Mikio Naruse constantly keeps us aware of Kimiko’s position in the family. In the presence of her mother, Kimiko becomes an excitable child, seemingly responsible for keeping her spirits up, and her search for father is more than just a search for the missing piece. As the artificiality in Kimiko’s mission is obvious to everyone but herself, one wonders whether there ought to have been more moments where she reflected on her expectations of the upcoming marriage, but such an immediate connection is perhaps too facile for a master like Naruse.

THREE SISTERS WITH MAIDEN HEARTS (JAPAN/1935/MIKIO NARUSE)

Mikio Naruse’s first sound film, Three Sisters With Maiden Hearts centres on the relationship between three siblings living in a geisha house run by their curmudgeonly mother Hahaoya. Oren is the prodigal older sister, independent-minded but somewhat ignorant in her plans to start a new life with her husband. Osome is the middle sister and the most responsible of the three, playing shamisen in local bars to support their mother. Youngest sister Chieko, a cabaret dancer, seeks little more in life than love and affection, and appears to find it in Aoyama, an older shop owner. It is her choice in life that Hahaoya disapproves of the most, and she spares no consideration for her innocence.

Naruse makes great use of sound to bind together the sisters’ stories, drawing comparisons by use of incidental music and voiceover. At times it is hard to follow the plot, not only for the overlapping storylines, but also because Hahaoya treats all the geishas in the house as her own children. This is perhaps what sets it apart from Naruse’s earlier work, as the family dynamic is corrupted and replaced by a disciplinarian hierarchy which blurs the lines between work and play. There is warmth between the sisters, particularly Osome and Chieko as they worry about Oren’s eventual fate, but the stronger feeling is that of distance. Chieko’s relationship plays out in secret and is made to feel unnatural, and by the end of the film one wonders if she will follow Oren’s path.

NIGHTLY DREAMS (JAPAN/1933/MIKIO NARUSE)

An estranged, unemployed man named Mizuhara is struggling to come to terms with the divorce that stopped him seeing his son Fumio, and thus caused him to lose motivation. In a last-ditch attempt to get the family back together, Mizuhara pays a visit to ex-wife Mitsu, who is quickly irritated by his presence. Mizuhara persists, demanding to see more of Fumio and promising to find work that would mean Mitsu could quit her unsavoury job as a bar hostess. But despite the uplifting prospects of being a family again, Mizuhara sees himself beaten to the floor once again, and one is left to wonder if he’ll ever get back up.

Nightly Dreams is a dark episode in Mikio Naruse’s oeuvre, a blunt portrayal of what low self-esteem and superstition can do to a man. While none of Naruse’s films find universal satisfaction for the characters, the destructive powers in Nightly Dreams eat away at both protagonists and their son, and the world outside becomes a dangerous place. Naruse captures little moments of human vincibility that other directors would have forgotten, using abrupt zooms to give scenes unexpected emotional impact. Although the story arc belongs to Mizuhara, who undergoes more peaks and troughs than anyone else, the film belongs to Mitsu, the strong, passionate female figure so frequently seen in Naruse’s works. The innocence of childhood is not forgotten in this family drama, and Mizuhara’s relationship with Fumio seems more fraternal than paternal. Nightly Dreams is a saddening, quietly powerful film.

APART FROM YOU (JAPAN/1933/MIKIO NARUSE)

Kikue is a geisha who is constantly fraught with worry. Her son Yoshio has fallen in with the wrong crowd at school and is often inclined to bunk off, to the chagrin of his mother. The two have frequent arguments in which both parties question the love of the other. Additionally, a client who had once been obsessed with her appears to be losing interest as he discovers the younger geishas in the house. Kikue’s younger friend and colleague, a more popular geisha named Terugiku, notices the family spat and intervenes by inviting Toshio to join her on a trip to visit her family. Initially grateful for the break, Toshio soon realises Terugiku’s ulterior motive, as her father proves to be an unpleasant man wholly undeserving of his social stature. Toshio determines to learn from the visit, but his attempts to reform himself aren’t without difficulty.

Apart From You feels like any other Mikio Naruse film, asides from the fact that the dramatic camerawork appears to be compensating for the lack of sound. In a peculiar way, the film is stronger for its silence, as we are able to observe the characters’ frustrations purely in their expressions and actions. With just three key characters, Naruse is able to spend time fleshing them out, with Toshio a particularly strong identity in the film. A simple story with a cherishable message at its core, Apart From You is a pleasant drama which stands up to the early silent films of Yasujiro Ozu.

SOUND OF THE MOUNTAIN (JAPAN/1954/MIKIO NARUSE)

Kikuko is a married woman who, despite being beset by problems, always puts on an upbeat façade, particularly when talking to her caring parents-in-law. The biggest issue she faces is her crumbling relationship with husband Shuichi, an officious individual who is cheating on her. Watching Shuichi’s sister interact unenthusiastically with her own children, Kikuko begins to question the virtues of raising a child from an unhappy marriage, and soon accepts that her own fate is as good as doomed. Disappointed by the negligence of his own children, father-in-law Shingo lavishes attention on Kikuko and provides her with succour. The relationship grows stronger than ever, transcending familial boundaries, but Shingo is constantly reminded that, by betraying his own son, he is no better than him.

Based on the eponymous novel by Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata, Sound of the Mountain is a subtle but comprehensive study of a family concerned with expectations and responsibility. The films of director Mikio Naruse often feature women who quietly carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, and Kikuko is a fine example of this, balancing her own wishes and desires with those of her adopted family. Naruse’s film also reflects neatly on themes of death and memory, particularly in the character of Shingo. As he succumbs to old age, Shingo holds on to the fragments of the past that may never resurface, and his romantic feelings for Kikuko echo a former longing he had for his wife’s deceased sister. An elegant family drama.

AVALANCHE (JAPAN/1937/MIKIO NARUSE)

Goro is beginning to doubt his feelings towards his overwhelmingly dutiful wife Fukiko, realising his true love lies in his mistress, Yayoi. Turning it over in his mind, he constantly tries to balance his own desires with ‘the right thing to do’. Yayoi herself begins to have an existential crisis, confiding in her brother than she believes her complicity in this love triangle makes her a cruel person. Fukiko, meanwhile, is oblivious to these complications until the end, when Goro proposes a radical solution to her which elicits some surprising revelations.

Although he considers Fukiko when divulging his love for Yayoi to his father, Goro is only really concerned with his own well-being, meeting with Yayoi to satiate his needs rather than discuss their possible future, leaving her wracked with guilt and uncertainty, all the while betraying Fukiko without a second thought. On occasion, Goro appears to go through these infidelities too automatically, and something is kept from us about what draws him to either woman. Consequently, it is hard to gauge the sincerity of the final denouement, but it’s a relief not to be told everything.

As with many of Mikio Naruse’s films, the drama lies underneath the surface, Goro’s spotless salaryman household belying the mesh of unrealised sentiments and calculated duplicity. Avalanche, then, is perhaps the best name for such a film, evoking the idea that these hidden feelings of love and remorse have built up to such an extent that they can but collapse dramatically under pressure.