Yukinojo Henge Henge an Actor’S Revenge

الوادي Al-wadi 철원기행 Cheol won gi haeng בן זקן Ben Zaken フタバから遠く離れて第二部 Futaba kara toku hanarete dainibu ダリー・マルサン Dari Marusan ثمانية وعشرون ليﻻً وبيت من الشعر Thamaniat wa ushrun laylan wa bayt min al-sheir Чайки Chaiki مادرِ قلبْ امتی Madare ghalb atomi 水の声を聞く Mizu no koe o kiku מכיוון היער Me’kivun ha’yaar המכה השמונים ואחת Ha'makah ha'shmonim ve'ahat 炎上 Enjo おとうと Ototo © Kadokawa Corporation 雪之丞変化 Yukinojo henge henge An Actor’s Revenge Kon Ichikawa Producer Hiroaki Fujii, Tomio Takamori. Production company Under Kon Ichikawa’s direction, this remake of a 1935 film by Teinosuke Kinu- Daiei Film (Kioto, Japan). Director Kon Ichikawa. Screenplay gasa becomes a fascinating visual spectacle, which simultaneously marks Daisuke Ito, Teinosuke Kinugasa, Natto Wada. Director of the 300th film appearance of actor Kazuo Hawegawa. Staged with haunt- photography Setsuo Kobayashi. Licht Kenichi Okamoto. ing elegance, the film tells the story of Yukinojo, a performer of women’s Production design Yoshinobu Nishioka. Costume Yoshio Ueno. roles in Kabuki theatre in the nineteenth century, who is obsessed with Sound Iwao Otani. Music Yasushi Akutagawa, Masao Yagi. avenging the death of his parents. While acting in a touring production, Restoration/director Masahiro Miyajima. Restoration/sound he looks into the audience and sees the three men who drove his parents Mototsugu Hayashi. to suicide 20 years before. With cunning, intrigue and the help of one of Cast Kazuo Hasegawa (Yukinojo / Yamitaro), Fujiko Yamamoto the three’s daughter, who has fallen in love with him, he sets about de- (Ohatsu), Ayako Wakao (Namiji), Eiji Funakoshi (Hyouma stroying their lives. Kadokura), Shintaro Katsu (Shimanuke Houin), Raizo Ichikawa Ichikawa plays around with illusion and reality and weaves them into a de- (Hirutaro), Ganjiro Nakamura (Sansahi Dobe), Chusha Ichikawa lirious widescreen work full of vivid colours. The action remains within the (Kikunojo Nakamura), Narutoshi Hayashi (Mukuinu), Eijiro stylised stage setting; the boundaries between on- and offstage become Yanagi (Hiromiya). blurred and repeatedly flow into one another. The soundtrack also draws on the same stylistic blend of tradition and modernity, moving effortlessly DCP, colour. 114 min. Japanese. between Japanese classical music and suggestive jazz. World sales Kadokawa Corporation Annette Lingg berlinale forum 2015 1 An old favorite story based on a novel by Mikami (1891–1944) done light and shadow set in motion – that is this film’s form. Ichikawa as a breathtaking avant-garde experiment, made to celebrate star lets these three spaces of performance and movement blend into actor Kazuo Hasegawa’s 300th film appearance. Ichikawa had him each other, sets them in relation to each other, and carries into play the same double role – kabuki actor of female roles Yukinojo them his figures and the stories that connect them. and small-time gangster Yamitaro – that he had played in Teino- The centre, which, however, does not govern all the figures and re- suke Kinugasa’s 1935 version of the same story. lationships, is the story of the actor’s revenge. Three merchants Audie Book: Japanese Film Directors, Tokyo, New York 1978 once drove his parents to their deaths in Nagasaki; they encounter each other again in Edo. As a famous actor of women’s roles in the Kabuki theatre, he is the star of the stage and manages to enter Wide-screen photography and Kabuki his enemy’s house because the latter’s beautiful, sickly daughter desires him. She is the Shogun’s mistress and has fallen in love It is only in very recent years that either Ichikawa or Kobayashi with the actor. But, as an effeminised man, Yukinojo remains an gained production freedom and thus one finds in their work films artificial character in real life. which they might not have undertaken had they had a free choice. There are subplots with minor characters, like the thieving cou- Not that either of them has been cowed by this experience, Ichika- ple hunting for wallets, first in the theatre and then in a never wa least of all, (…) It is even reported that the film Yukinojo henge precisely locatable outside; or the actor’s former competitor, of was affectionately known in the business as ‘Ichikawa’s revenge’. bad character. Swords flash through the blackness, which is much Together with his wife Natto Wada, who has written all his scripts, more the black of the screen than of the night, while robes flutter and the two great old men of Japanese cinema, Daisuke Ito and on the sound track. The camera is freed of the imperative of re- Teinosuke Kinugasa, he reshaped the whole script, making a vir- alistic cinema that commands the constant creation of order and tue of necessity. To be more exact, he took the old melodrama and a comprehensive view. Here it can fall in love with the sight of a worked it into a masterpiece. The casting of the long-popular mat- red gemstone, give itself up to the filmed surface of the water, or inée idol, Kazuo Hasegawa, as an onnagata of the Kabuki theatre lose itself to the night. Kon Ichikawa regards cinema as composi- opposite one of the most popular and beautiful young stars, Ayako tion, as a dance among the media. The picture is always an artifi- Wakao, resulted in the disturbing sight of a man playing a woman cial product like the Kabuki actor, who remains far removed from making love to a woman less than half his age. The frisson derived naturalness even in real life. Genuine is artificiality, nothing else. from this is nothing to the startling effects that Ichikawa managed Ekkehard Knörer to squeeze out of the wide-screen photography. Location shooting www.jump-cut.de/backlist-yukinojosrache.html is happily mixed with the most obvious stage sets derived from the Kabuki. It was as if someone had suddenly discovered colour and the tricks of the camera all over again. One is left with memories of Kon Ichikawa was born in 1915 in Ujiya- brilliant sword play in the near dark from a ‘woman’ who never takes mada (now Ise) in the prefecture of Mie, on male attributes even when slaying, a rope stretching off into the Japan. He spent much of his childhood dark to lasso a fleeing enemy suddenly going taut and pointing off drawing and painting. Ichikawa has named into nothing as it finds its mark. For sheer magic it has hardly been the Disney cartoon series Silly Symphonies surpassed yet at its heart there is a story of a lone search for reason as one of the most important influences on along a road paved with doubts. Ichikawa must have enjoyed him- his artistic development. In 1933, he began self making the film, to judge by the result; Daiei, the production Corporation Kadokawa © working as an assistant in the animation company, were less happy since the film lost money. department of a film studio. He became Richard N. Tucker: Japan: Film Image, London 1973 an assistant director for feature films in 1935. He made his first short animated film,Musume dojoji / A Girl at Dojo Temple, in 1945. Ichikawa then directed numerous feature films and documenta- Genuine is artificiality ries, many of which were based on screenplays by his wife, Natto Wada. He started his own production company in 1973. In 2000, he Yukinojo henge is a film set in the theatre and, as soon as it leaves received the Berlinale Camera award. Kon Ichikawa died in 2008. the theatre, in a reality modelled in equal parts on the seemingly mutually exclusive spatial laws of theatre and film. Immediately after its beginning, which situates the action on a stage, it opens Films its gaze to the distance. The fake snow is genuine, from one edit 1945: Musume Dojoji / A Girl at Dojo Temple (short film). 1948:Ha - to the next. The tree is genuine; the world is genuine. As genuine na hiraku / A Flower Blooms. 1949: Ningen moyu / Human Patterns. as the world of film in the studio can be, when an artist of surfaces 1950: Ginza Sanshiro / Sanshiro of Ginza. 1951: Ieraishan / Nightshade and master of two-dimensionality like Kon Ichikawa stages it. But Flower. 1952: Wakai hito / Young People. 1953: Pu-san / Mr Pu. 1953: the distance has no depth; a thin white rope floats in the black- Aoiro Kakumei / The Blue Revolution. 1953: Seishun Zenigata Hei- ness of a breath-taking battle scene like a white brushstroke on ji / The Youth of Heiji Zenigata. 1954: Okuman choja / A Billionaire. a black canvas. Often moving to the side with one of the figures, 1955: Kokoro / The Heart. 1956: Biruma no tategoto / The Burmese the camera collides with walls that block any deeper view. The film Harp (Berlinale Retrospektive 1990). 1956: Shokei no heya / Pun- dashes through many media, because cinema seldom comes this ishment Room. 1957: Tohoku no zummutachi / The Men from Tohoku. close to abstract painting; in these moments, only a thread ties 1958: Enjo / Conflagration (Berlinale Forum 2015). 1959: Kagi / The the picture to the story, whose logic it at least seems to serve. Key. 1960: Ototo / Her Brother (Berlinale Forum 2015). 1961: Kuroi The stage as a circumscribed space, the broadness of the canvas as junin no onna / Ten Dark Women. 1963: Yukinojo henge / An Actor’s a flat, spreading space and the painterly chiaroscuro of the play of Revenge (Berlinale Retrospektive 1993 / Berlinale Forum 2015). berlinale forum 2015 2 1964: Tokyo orimpikku / Tokyo Olympiad. 1968: Seishun / Youth. 1973: Matatabi / The Wanderers. 1976: Inugami-ke no ichizoku / The Inu- gami Family. 1977: Gokumonto / Island of Hell. 1978: Hinotori / The Phoenix. 1980: Koto / Ancient City.

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