'BOBTAIL' REVIEW

Song of the Flower Basket (1937)

The story of HANAKAGO NO UTA (“Song of the Flower Basket”, 花籠の歌, 1937) revolves around a pork-cutlet diner along a cluttered back street of Ginza, Tokyo. Keizo (Reikichi Kawamura), the owner and the master of the diner, and his daughter Yoko (Kinuyo Tanaka) are running a small but successful business. The Chinese chef, Mr. Lee (Shin Tokudaiji), cooks the best pork-cutlet, as they say. Two of the most frequent customers are Ono (Shuji Sano) and Hotta (Chishu Ryu), a pair of rather lazy collage students. The story goes into a wicked spiral when Ono is arrested for a murder of …

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JAPANESE FILMS

Lunchbox and Life Insurance

Michael Koresky explains the word ‘flunky’ from the title of Naruse’s silent film as ‘a loose translation of koshiben, which denotes a low-wage earner who brings his lunch to work’. I think this is excellent translation to capture the essence of the film in a single word. To help us understand how an insurance agent Okabe would have lived back in 1931, I explore a little bit more.

 
JAPANESE FILMS

Ozu Goes to Nanking

I posted some photographs of directors and one young actress from prewar Japanese cinema magazines in the past weeks. Today, I post three daring photographs of Yasujiro Ozu, to commemorate his 110th anniversary. The first photograph is from 1932. This was taken during the shooting of I WAS BORN, BUT … (1932), the film I consider the best among his extant silent works. According to the caption, these two kids had fallen ill during the shooting of the film previous year, and the production had to be stopped. Now, apparently these rascals were feeling better (is that a cigarette?) and …

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