Review: Jubaku

[Aaron Gerow]

Jubaku

Japanese title: Kinyu fushoku retto: Jubaku 
Alternative English title: Spellbound 
Production Company: Asmik Ace Entertainment, Toei 
Release: 18 September 1999 
Length: 114 min. 
Format: 35 mm 
Color: Color 

Staff: 
       Director: Harada Masato 
       Based on the novel by: Takasugi Ryo 
       Photography: Sakamoto Yoshitaka 
       Producers: Hara Masato, Sakagami Jun 

Cast: 
       Kitano Hiroshi: Yakusho Koji 
       Sasaki Hideaki: Nakadai Tatsuya 
       Kitano Kyoko: Fubuki Jun 
       Katayama Akio: Shiina Kippei 
       Wada: Wakamura Mayumi 
       Hisayama Takashi: Sato Kei 
       Nakayama Kohei: Nezu Jinpachi 

Review: 

                                                            Curse of the 
Salaryman

Salaryman movies have been one of the staples of Japanese film fare ever 
since these white-collar employees became the mythical center of both the 
economy and
society of Japan. Yet these films have rarely been the kind of unabashed 
celebration of their heroes that one finds in, say, the treatment of the 
cowboy in many U.S.
Westerns. The image of the salary man is just too bland and unrewarding.

Most of the salaryman movies have in fact been comedies, as if the only 
way company life can be made interesting is through humor, venting 
frustration against a
corporate hierarchy that swallows up the individual and prevents change. 
>From the Crazy Cats' "Irresponsible" ("Musekinin") series to the Toho 
"Company President"
("Shacho") films, most have poked fun at the bosses and their rules, but, 
with the rare exception of the delightfully poisonous early 
"Irresponsible" movies, rarely to the
extent of criticizing the institution all together. Reassuring the 
down-hearted and lowly salaryman viewer seems to be their main goal.

For better or for worse, that is also true of Harada Masato's salaryman 
epic, Jubaku, which professes to aim to exorcise the curse ("jubaku") of 
corruption that has
hampered corporate Japan. But while well-made, the film ends up just 
trying to hearten us with images of people who have the good of the 
company and Japan at heart.

The story is something out of today's newspapers. The arrest of a sokaiya 
(gangsters who demand enormous sums from companies in exchange for 
"peace" at
stockholders' meetings) exposes the fact that a major financial 
institution, the Asahi Central Bank, has been been funneling money to the 
yakuza for years. Company
higher-ups try to downplay the incident, but a vigorous press and 
prosecution prompt a raid of the bank and the first of several arrests.

Feeling that this was not the kind of bank they were taught to support, 
four middle-level salarymen, led by Kitano Hiroshi (Yakusho Koji), decide 
to take action and
convince the board to appoint a reformer as the new president and, in 
order to restore public confidence, create an internal investigative team 
to get to the bottom of the
illegal payments. 

Their efforts, however, are thwarted both from within, by the former bank 
chairman, Sasaki Hideakai (Nakadai Tatsuya) - who happens to be Kitano's 
father-in-law - and
without, by the yakuza who have been cut off by the bank's reforms. 
Suicides and mob hits result, but a revelation of the truth and a 
dramatic stockholder's meeting
ultimately spell victory for the cause of good.

Jubaku has an epic feel to it, and not only because of the large cast. 
There is a theatrical sense to the narrative, with the stage being Hibiya 
Park, the public space
around which the film's three main actors--the bank, the press, and the 
prosecutors--have their offices and in which they often meet. Like a good 
epic, it is also
accompanied by music, both on the soundtrack and with the musicians who 
always seem to be playing in the park.

The epic feel is intentional on Harada's part because the film's primary 
model is The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Sasaki and those in 
the upper echelons of
the bank are emperor-like figures in a state of degeneracy, patterning 
themselves off of Rome, as Harada makes clear in the set design, with 
baroque offices lined with
red marble and a company statue that is none other than the wolf suckling 
the twins, Romulus and Remus, who founded Rome.

This strategy is both effective and meaningful, but as is the problem 
with much of Harada's work, it can be a bit too obvious. The bank elites 
are visually distinguished by
decor, a predominant use of reds, and rather uncomfortable wide-angle 
shots. Kitano and his associates are, by contrast, shot in normal spaces, 
with normal lenses,
and are surrounded by greener, more earthy colors. Harada, a director 
with Hollywood experience, makes it clear who we are to side with, almost 
to the point that we
say, "All right, we get it already!"

This easy-to-understand structure also tends to make the movie's moral 
universe simple. Given the ease to which the bosses - who were doing the 
illegal deals to
begin with - cooperate with Kitano's investigation, the only ones who end 
up looking immoral in this moral tale are Sasaki and the yakuza. Company 
employees, it
seems, are essentially good people who have just been cursed. But without 
a consideration of how institutions overwhelm individuals, or how 
salaryman culture itself
may be to blame, the curse seems a bit too hollow and easy to break.

With Kamikaze Taxi (1995) and Bounce koGALS (1997) under his belt, Harada 
is too good a director and the 1990s too complex a world for this to be 
Mr. Smith
Goes to Hibiya. There are clouds hovering around the edges of the film. 
In fact, the pleasure of watching Harada's work is often in those moments 
of complex
eccentricity like in the use of the pictures of Mao on the walls of the 
investigative team's office. Unlike Tsukamoto Shinya's Gemini, however, 
another film with a clear
design strategy, those excessive moments don't take over the center of 
the film. And with a movie designed, as the press information says, to 
"give a rallying cry to all
salarymen and OLs," they illustrate a story that does not get to the 
center of corporate Japan's real curse. 

Reviewed by Aaron Gerow 

Originally appeared in The Daily Yomiuri, 23 September 1999, p. 9 

 Copyright 1999: The Daily Yomiuri and Aaron Gerow