Late Chrysanthemums (1954)

Details are blurred, and lost in time and translation. This is an attempt to excavate the remains of such details.

Betrayal

According to Daniel Richie, Mikio Naruse once said, “From the earliest age, I have thought that the world we live in betrays us; this thought still remains with me” [1]. With films such as Repast (めし, 1951), Lightning (稲妻, 1952), Floating Clouds (浮雲, 1955), and Yearning (乱れる, 1964), he became known for his women’s films, contemplating the conditions of women in pre- and post-war Japanese society. His films are often described using adjectives like passive, bleak, strangely distanced, and Hobbesian, and nouns such as resignation, pessimism, disappointment, and tragedy. However, his films are not tragic in the sense of Classical Theatre or Kabuki. If a character dies in his film, the death itself is not necessarily tragic. As in the finale of Yearning, it is the gaze of bewilderment and the opaque void of emotion that arrive too late. His tragedies are unconditionally numb.

In Late Chrysanthemums (晩菊, 1954), the tragedy is particularly nuanced. It confirms what we already know: the world we live in betrays us. Four middle-aged women experience the melancholic passage of aging—children grow up and move on, old love never returns. It’s not that their children or their old lover have betrayed them. They are simply who they are. But these women feel betrayed… by the world they live in.

Based on three short stories by Fumiko Hayashi, Late Chrysanthemums revolves around four women who were geishas in Manchuria during the war years and are now living unglamorously in postwar Tokyo. Kin (Haruko Sugimura) is the most prosperous of the group, lending small amounts of money to others, managing apartments, and dabbling in real estate. She is fed up with men and prefers to live alone with a young deaf servant, Shizuko (Haruna Kaburaki) in a two-story house, probably somewhere around the Hongo area. On the other hand, Tamae (Chikako Hosokawa) and Tomi (Yuko Mochizuki), who share the small house, struggle to make ends meet. They both lost their husbands a long time ago but managed to raise their children. Tamae lives with her lazy, twenty-something son, Kiyoshi (Hiroshi Koizumi), who is jobless and dating a woman Tamae doesn’t approve of. Tomi’s daughter, Sachiko (Ineko Arima), works in a mahjong parlor. Nobu (Sadako Sawamura) runs a small bar (Oden-ya) with her husband. Tamae, Tomi, and Nobu all have outstanding debts to Kin, so naturally, they all despise her while counting on her mercy.

Late Chrysanthemums is sometimes called ‘plotless,’ but it depicts events that make small dents in the characters’ lives. In Kin’s story line, her old ‘customers’ show up to see her. First, Seki (Bontaro Miake) wanders into her neighborhood looking for her. He was the officer who once tried to commit double suicide with Kin in Manchuria. He was arrested for attempted murder and spent years in prison. Now free, he just wants to see her again… to ask for money. Kin makes it clear that he isn’t welcome and that she wouldn’t spare him a cent, let alone a dime. Then another man from her past, Tabe (Ken Uehara), sends her a letter announcing that he’s visiting. This is a different story for Kin. During the war, he was a young, dashing Navy officer stationed in Hiroshima, and Kin was crazy about him. Upon reading his letter, she becomes restless, hoping for the rekindling of an old flame. Of course, the world betrays her.

Meanwhile, Tamae and Tomi both experience inevitable passage of aging: letting their children go. Kiyoshi, who has been behaving like a slacker, suddenly announces he is going to take a job in Hokkaido. Tamae, though shocked by the idea that her son will be gone to such a faraway place, accepts the fate in the end. Sachiko also decides to move on to a new life. She packs up her things and announces she is going to marry her boyfriend. That night, Tamae and Tomi drink sake together deeper into the night.

Among the Naruse films, Late Chrysanthemums was one of the first to gain international recognition. According to New York Times [2], it received theatrical engagements in New York’s Film Forum 1, after the first Naruse retrospectives in the Museum of Modern Art and the Japan House in 1985 (the second year of the two-year retrospectives) [3]. J. Hoberman of Village Voice said, “far less romantic than Mildred Pierce,” referring to the Michael Curtiz-Joan Crawford 1945 film noir classic, and added, “Joan Crawford might have risen up in fury, but because this is Naruse, the film reaches its climax with the impulsive burning of an old snapshot and ends simply with Kin looking for something in her pocket that is no longer there [4 pp.118-121]”. Carrie Rickey, making a reference to the Japanese traditional emakimono (illustrated scroll) described it as “less like a conventional film than a scroll painting [5]”. And Jay Carr of The Boston Globe commented, “It’s not the plot that provides the impact in Naruse’s film, though; it’s the elegance and economy with which emotions are conveyed by each of these spirited women [6]”. Many of the critics use the word details: ‘life on the back streets in luminous details,’ ‘filled with minimal but telling detail,’ or ’ while these may be small details with no direct relevance to the narrative, they indicate the ways in which Japanese modernity has absorbed and incorporated elements of an older way of life [7 p.275]’. But these details – how do we interpret them in the context of this story today?

Although Late Chrysanthemums has been quite popular among cinephiles, it still carries some elements of ‘foreignness’ for non-Japanese audiences. Now, it has even become ‘foreign’ to Japanese viewers, as it was made 70 years ago. And the film was intended for mature audiences back then, meaning the cultural background the film assumes is much older than that. Shigehiko Harumi, a prominent Japanese film critic, once pointed out that the Japanese audience today could only guess the hidden meaning of Kin’s mannerisms [8]. This is so true. I don’t understand many of the small details depicted in the film. But there are things we could decipher a little bit. What I am going to show you is about things lost in time, in translation, and among translations.

A Small Glass Bottle

It turns out Tabe wanted to see Kin… to ask for money. Kin didn’t realize until it was a little too late. He was already in her living room, had already consumed a fair amount of whiskey he brought with him (to pep himself up), and then declared he needed some money … like 400,000 yen. Adjusted for inflation, that’s at least 8,000,000 yen, or 50,000 dollar today. Naturally, Kin refused.

Now completely calm, Kin wanted to get rid of Tabe. She tersely advised him to go home, but Tabe insisted on staying at her place overnight until he gets what he wanted. The reunion went sour, and Kin started feel uneasy, because she wasn’t sure what Tabe was capable of. At one point, Kin took out a bottle of something from the shelf behind her, picked up one tablet, and swallowed it. Since it was a swift movement, not so many people may notice it. I certainly didn’t notice it during the first viewing. I mean, I didn’t take the time to reflect on the meaning of that action. It was probably the third or forth viewing when I noticed it, but even then, I didn’t think much of it.

When I read the original novelette, I was almost shocked by the revelation.

Tabe took up the tongs of the brazier. For a moment, the skin between his eyebrows crawled with terrible anger. A shadow, toward which he was drawn by a riddle, made him grip the tongs hard. A throbbing that was like lightening hit his pulse. He was stirred up by that pulse. Kin, with uncertain, uneasy eyes, stared at his hands. She felt as if she were looking at a double exposure, as if the scene had taken place before in her life. “You’ve had too much to drink. It’s all right if you stay the night.” Tabe, told that he could stay, abruptly drew back the hand holding the tongs. Absolutely drunk, he staggered off to the privy. Kin, getting a presentiment from the look of Tabe from behind, laughed contemptuously to herself. People’s feelings had changed utterly because of this war. Taking a philopon drop from the tea shelf, she quickly drank it down. There was still a third of the shiskey left. She would make him drink it, so he would sleep like mud, and send him away tomorrow. She alone could not sleep.

A Late Chrysanthemum (novel) [9]

‘Philopon’ was the trade name registered by Dai-Nihon Pharmaceutical for methamphetamine. Yes, it’s what they call ‘speed.’ Actually, if you look closer at the scene in the film, the bottle Kin was holding had the distinctive shape of the Philopon bottle, suggesting it was indeed ‘philopon’ she was taking.

Methamphetamine was the drug of World War II. Nazi Germany distributed it to the soldiers to keep them awake during the Blitzkrieg. The drug was extremely popular in Japan, where it was first discovered in 1888, and the wartime government actually encouraged its use among soldiers and industry workers. When the war was over, the enormous stockpile of the drug became a liability to the pharmaceutical companies, and they just simply dumped it on the black market. That’s how Japan became the first country to experience a ‘speed epidemic’ in late forties to early fifties [10 pp.70-72], [11 pp.140-141]. It was estimated that over one million people were addicted, and there were many more casual users. It was listed as a controlled substance in 1951. However, the epidemic just kept spreading and peaked in 1954, the year the film Late Chrysanthemums was released. I should note that when Fumiko Hayashi published a novelette “A Late Chrysanthemum” in 1948, people still could buy philopon over the counter.

Then, what does this mean? How does this small action, only a few seconds long in the film, affect the course of this story?

Late Chrysanthemums (1954) Kin takes ‘speed’. See the small bottle Kin was holding.

The Philopon bottle Yahoo Auction

It means she is afraid. She is not just afraid of Tabe being nasty. She is actually afraid of her life. She is afraid that Tabe might assault her, in fact try to kill her, to get what he wants … money. She needs to stay awake all night, she will not sleep a wink until Tabe leaves the house in the morning. She must be ready if something happens. And she wants him drunk, drunk like mud, inebriated to oblivion, and sleep deep and heavy until the sun goes up, so he would not, and could not, physically assault her during the night. By showing her taking methamphetamine precisely at that point, the film explicitly reveals her hidden fear.

In the original novelette, Tabe’s dark thoughts and Kin’s fear are implicitly described. It is clear Tabe was harboring hideous dark thoughts. He “took up the tongs of the brazier” and gripped “the tongs hard,” because of “terrible anger” and “a shadow.” To the English-speaking readers, the word ‘tongs’ may evoke an image of a plier-like tool used by blacksmiths, but Japanese tongs (called ‘hibashi’) are indeed sharp, piercing objects, similar to long icepicks. Looking at his tense body language, Kin told him he could stay, but she took methamphetamine and thought to herself, “she would make him drink it, so he would sleep like mud, and send him away tomorrow. she alone could not sleep.”

In the film Late Chrysanthemums, there is the Kin’s monologue as a voice-over narration that roughly corresponds to these inner thoughts described in the novel. Naruse timed the phrase “I shouldn’t sleep tonight” to Kin’s quick movement of taking the drug. Sugimura beautifully plays Kin, throwing subdued but distinctively contemptuous smile on Tabe. Because her fear is hidden behind that smile, it may escape the vast majority of the audience today, especially the male audience. I thought the voice-over narration rather awkward, but knowing the intricate interplay of Tabe’s dark thoughts and Kin’s fear, I now understand what Naruse wanted to punctuate.

Later in the film, Kin is shown sleeping next to her deaf servant. Actually, she is not sleeping. She is wide awake. Probably the drug is working, and also fear is working. During my first viewing, I thought she was contemplating her misguided hope and regretting the time passed, silently in the darkness. Of course there are some of these elements, but the presence of the Philopon bottle in the earlier scene adds more complexity.

I believe the Japanese movie audience back in 1954 probably noticed the shape of the bottle, and knew she took the Philopon. I believe it was meant to be noticed. In that sense, to the contemporary audience, the storytelling must have had much more nuanced and complex shades, in terms of fear, implied but eminent male violence, an undercurrent of the war, and sense of loss. The scene bridges to the earlier scene of ominous conversation between Kin and Seki. Seki left Kin’s house with a sinister dissatisfaction on his face. Later, we learn the police arrested Seki for breaking-in during the night. Did Seki come back during the night with the intention to break in Kin’s house but, seeing some guy drinking with her, decided to raid some other house?

Yes, it’s only a small glass bottle, it’s shown only in several frames of the film, but it has a profound impact on the whole story.

Oden

Nobu’s husband, of Asian descent but clearly not Japanese, takes orders from his wife in a way no Japanese man would do.

Catherine Russell [7 p.276]

I’m sorry, but I have to disagree strongly. There is no evidence that Nobu’s husband (his name is Sentaro) is not Japanese. In fact, there is more evidence to suggest he is Japanese. There is no accent in his speech that suggests he is from overseas (in 20th century Japanese popular cinema, the filmmakers, whether intentionally or unintentionally, often emphasized or caricatured foreign accents when depicting characters of foreign origin). His name, Sentaro, strongly suggests he is indeed Japanese (again, in 20th-century Japanese cinema, the character of a foreign origin had a non-Japanese name to signal their nationality to the audience). Nobu and Sentaro run “Oden-ya (Oden-bar),” serving Oden, a typical hot Japanese dish. This strongly suggests they are from the Tokyo area. In the 1950s, it was very rare for foreigners to prepare such a traditional Japanese food in a shop, and for Japanese customers to accept it.

The reasoning Russell cites for her argument is interesting, though: “Nobu’s husband … takes orders from his wife in a way no Japanese man would do.” If you are studying Japanese cinema and want to analyze it with gender criticism in mind, please keep this in mind: Japanese cinema often depicted Japanese men as being submissive to their wives. This is one of the significant gender psychological traps in Japanese culture: the representation of a reversed power hierarchy in domestic gender relationships to hide and preserve traditional gender role, male hierarchy, and sexual perversion.

The best example of this is the title character played by Hisaya Morishige in Toho’s Company President comedy series (『社長』シリーズ, 1956 – 1970, 33 films in total). Morishige plays the CEO of a fairly large company. In public, he is commanding and bossy, behaving authoritatively while flirting with beautiful women. In private, he is very wealthy, lives in a huge, modern Western-style house, but can’t talk back to his wife. Literally, he is under her thumb. He often uses keigo (Japanese honorifics) when addressing his wife. His character is the epitome of a husband under the wife’s hip (尻に敷かれた夫) or a kyo-sai-ka (恐妻家, a guy who is afraid of his wife), both of which mean “a husband taking orders from his wife.” These characters were so prevalent in Japanese comedies, and people loved the Company President movie series. After all, there were 33 films made under this banner, with several more spin-offs.

But remember, this archetype was created by men. By reversing the male-dominant gender hierarchy in domestic situations, they tried to create the illusion of gender balance. Morishige’s character in the Company President series was indeed an extreme exaggeration, but there were a variety of depictions of similar characters with differing degrees of exaggeration. Interestingly, you may find these archetypes in opposite ends of the social strata: the very rich (as in the Company President series) or the very poor (as in, for example, ‘Nendo no omen’ yori: kaachan(粘土のお面より かあちゃん, 1960)). And in the case of Sentaro in Late Chrysanthemums, Naruse’s approach and Sonosuke Sawamura’s acting were quite subtle and delicate, carefully avoiding comedic overtones. His character is more or less a ‘good’ husband – not a typical Naruse male: ‘no good womanizer,’ ‘hopeless miser,’ or ‘businessman with questionable morality.’ Now, that is interesting and something worth pondering.

Lost In/Among Translations

While drinking sake with Tomi, Tamae, rather suddenly, recites the poetry.

Even if you live a peaceful life with a good man,

even if you live an honorable life,

we all die sooner or later.

Life is just a dream.

No matter what you see in life.

Criterion Collection Subtitles

Even if you lived your life peacefully with a good person,

even if you lived a glorious and successful life,

after all, we are all going off to the long voyage,

all is but a passing dream, no matter what you saw in your life

Literal Translation Tamae
in Late Chrysanthemums (1954)

Then, she recites another one.

Men walk down an endless road of vanity called life.

Everyone must take that road on a trip of no return.

Criterion Collection Subtitles

We all just walk this road to eternity and disappear,

Once you are on the road, you will never, never come back.

Literal Translation Tamae
in Late Chrysanthemums (1954)

To these, Tomi says “You’re acting like intellectual,” and recites back her own favorite.

Life is but an empty dream.

Criterion Collection Subtitles

The New Year Pine Tree Decoration is just another milestone to the Other World.

Literal Translation Tomi
in Late Chrysanthemums (1954)

As Russell points out, the stanzas Tamae recites are from Rubaiyat, and the uta Tomi recites is attributed to Sojun Ikkyu (1394 – 1481) [7 pp.422-423]. Some critics took notice of these sources and remarked that knowledge of the classical Persian literature suggests Tamae’s rather high education, while reciting the folk figure like Ikkyu is fitting to down-to-earth Tomi.

I have added the additional ‘literal translations’ to the Criterion subtitles to show that some nuances are lost in the subtitles. As you know, subtitle translators need to consider how long the text will be displayed during the course of the movie and sometimes must make bold editorial choices (truncation and rewording) to make them work. So, this is not a criticism of the translated subtitles. In fact, they are pretty good, making the verses concise but still conveying the overall atmosphere so well. It is just one of those things that occur so frequently in appreciating ‘foreign’ cinema.

But as I said earlier, the world shown in this film is also becoming ‘foreign’ to us Japanese. We really don’t recognize these recitations, especially Tamae’s Rubaiyat. We don’t know what that means, why Tamae knows these poems, and where these came from.

As it turned out, the answers to these questions are much, much more complicated than I had anticipated. First, I would like to discuss the Rubaiyat in the original Hayashi’s novel, and then go on to these stanzas in the film.

The Novel

The film Late Chrysanthemums is based on three short stories by Fumiko Hayashi; “A Late Chrysanthemum (晩菊, published in 1948),” “Narcissus (水仙, published in 1949),” and “White Heron (白鷺, published in 1949)”. The three characters in the film roughly follow the three stories respectively: Kin’s story is from “A Late Chrysanthemum,” Tamae’s story with her son is based on “Narcissus,” and the basic premise of Tomi’s story with her daughter is from “White Heron”. All stories are set in the time of the publication, just after the World War II, circa 1948 to 1949. The reference to Rubaiyat appears in “White Heron”. In this novel, Tomi tells her daughter who is going to marry the day after, the story of her life and the men in her life. Around the time of the Mukden Incident (1931), Tomi was a young, beautiful ‘female companion’ in the prestigious ryotei (a sort of an amalgam of a nightclub and a restaurant) in Akasaka, Tokyo. One of the clientele, named Saito, was interested in Tomi and invited her to his home on her day off. Saito was a classical pianist who had studied in Paris and apparently quite well off. During her visit, Saito recited the stanzas from the poetry book in his library.

In the meantime, Saito took out a small book and started to read aloud.

Even if you lived your life peacefully with a good person,
even if you lived a glorious and successful life,
after all, we are all going off to the long voyage,
all is but a passing dream, no matter what you saw in your life

We all just walk this road to eternity and disappear,
There is no one who comes back and gives us an answer to the mystery.
Be careful, do not leave something behind in this Tavern,
Once you are on the road, you will never, never come back.

“How about that, huh? This is like, ‘the world we live in is like this’. Isn’t it cool?” he said.

“It reminds me of the prose ‘The New Year Pine Tree Decoration is just another milestone to the Other World.’ Even the Westerners think like us Japanese,” I said.

White Heron
Fumiko Hayashi

As you can see, the book Saito holding in his hand was Rubaiyat (translated to Japanese). This means that Tomi, 17 years old at the time, learned this stanza from Saito in 1931, when Japan started the war in China, and recited it to her daughter in circa 1949, after Japan’s defeat in the World War II. The readers assume she had learned it by heart and remembered it all through those years of turmoil and destruction.

But there is one big problem. Saito recited the Japanese version of Rubaiyat translated by Ryosaku Ogawa precisely to the letter. However, this particular Japanese translation of Rubaiyat did not exist in 1931. It was published in 1948, a year before “White Heron” was published.

The history of Japanese translation of Rubaiyat is extremely complicated. Before the World War II, there were many Japanese translations of Rubaiyat, but most of them were translated from Edward FitzGerald’s English translation. During the war years, Ryosaku Ogawa began translating from the original Persian version edited by Sādegh Hedāyat, and published it in 1948. The Ogawa’s translation was considered the most authentic version of the celebrated Middle Eastern classic literature and was admired by the literary-mind public.

Naturally, we suspect that, in “White Heron,” Hayashi anachronistically cited the stanzas from the Ogawa’s book, which had just been published one year earlier.

Timeline for Late Chrysanthemums The Ogawa edition of “Rubaiyat” was published 17 years after Saito had cited it in “White Heron”

In the novel, this scene with Saito appears as Tomi tells the story to her daughter. It occurs in 1949. Then, I wonder: how is it likely for Tomi to recite the prose which she heard only once almost two decades ago? Not only she could recite it, but could recite it correctly to the letter. How is that likely? I would rather imagine a different scenario: she remembers this romantic afternoon with Saito quite affectionally, but only thing she remembers about the book is that it was Rubaiyat. After the war, in 1948 or 1949, she finds a book of Rubaiyat – and it happens to be the new Japanese translation by Ogawa – in a small bookstore. She buys the book, and whenever she has time, she opens it and reads the poetry, line by line, stanza by stanza. Now she knows them by heart, and this new translation is embedded in her memory with Saito. Of course, this is just a possibility, but I believe this scenario offers more room for interpretation than discussing her education .

The Film

The film was released in 1954. Now, it is Tamae who recites the Rubaiyat, not Tomi. There is no explanation as to where it came from, there is nothing to suggest how she came to know this poetry, as in the case of Tomi in the novel, or how she came to memorize the 1948 version of the Japanese translation. Does this indicate she received higher education in her youth? Not necessarily. It just means Tamae somehow familiarized herself with the Japanese translation of Rubaiyat sometime after 1948. She might have bought the book and liked it. She might have found the book on her son’s small desk, and loved it. One thing for certain is she learned it in the past 5 years or so.

Because Tomi says “You’re acting like intellectual,” some viewers may assume Tamae must have received a high education when she was young. She might have, but the point is that she came to love this poetry after she had fallen on hard times. And you may find the parallel in the scene where Kin plays the shamisen. The culture they embrace is not in the realm of nostalgia; they are with them and still relevant. It’s just that Naruse expressed it so subtly that we are not aware of it.

Final Thoughts

I studied only a couple of details here, but even just handful of these details would bring us on the different focus planes from those of the conventional readings of the film. And I believe there is more we can explore: sounds of neighborhood, like what Russell called “a musical theme of clacking sticks … (suggesting) an offscreen source of an itinerant musician” (I believe this sounds like a hyoshigi used in the ritual of what we call the New Religion); Kin’s business of ice before the makeup; the layout of Kin’s house; and the small design features on the shoji in her room, and so on… These details, which must have brought more richness and depth to the story for contemporary audiences, but are lost to us because of the passage of time, the fading of the art, and the missed opportunity.

As you know, every artifact can tell us more than it appears.

References

[1]^ D. Richie, “Japanese Cinema – Film Style And National Character.” Garden City , New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1971.

[2]^ V. Canby, “FILM: ’CHRYSANTHEMUMS’,” The New York Times: C, p. 16, Nov. 27, 1985. Available: https://www.nytimes.com/1985/11/27/movies/film-chrysanthemums.html

[3]^ “Mikio Naruse: A Master of the Japanese Cinema Opens at Moma September 23,” The Museum of Modern Art Department of Film, Sep. 1985, Available: https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/6228/releases/MOMA_1985_0082_79.pdf

[4]^ D. Lim, Ed., “The Village Voice Film Guide: 50 Years of Movies from Classics to Cult Hits.” Turner Publishing Company, 2010. Available: https://books.google.com?id=doDuEAAAQBAJ

[5]^ C. Rickey, “Film: 4 Geishas in Search of New Lives,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia, p. 48, May 03, 1986.

[6]^ J. Carr, “Rare Spirit Fills ’Late Chrysanthemums’,” The Boston Globe, Boston, p. 32, Mar. 07, 1986.

[7]^ C. Russell, “The Cinema of Naruse Mikio: Women and Japanese Modernity,” Illustrated edition. Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2008.

[8]^ H. Shigehiko, “Naruse Mikio in the Hong Kong International Film Festival,” Lumiere, vol. 11, pp. 37–41, Mar. 20, 1988.

[9]^ Lane Dunlop, “A Late Chrysanthemum: Twenty-One Stories from the Japanese.” San Francisco : North Point Press, 1986.

[10]^ M. Joseph, “Speed: Its History and Lore.” London : Carlton Books, 2000.

[11]^ E. A. Moore, “The Amphetamine Debate: The Use of Adderall, Ritalin, and Related Drugs for Behavior Modification, Neuroenhancement, and Anti-Aging Purposes.” Jefferson, N.C. : McFarland & Co., 2011.