AW: Kawashima's Ai no Onimotsu

[Roland Domenig]

"Ai no onimotsu" was the first film Kawashima directed for the Nikkatsu studios after leaving Shochiku. It is about a health minister (played by Yamamura Sô) who, pressed by the opposition parties in parliament, presents a plan for the establishment of a birth control office in order to do something about the increase in population. In his family, however, everyone gets pregnant: his wife (at age 48), his secretarian from his son, his daughter from her fiancé, and even the young girlfriend of his old uncle, who lives at his holiday house in Hakone. 
The film is a satire about the baby-boom of the 1950s and the efforts of the government to implement birth control measures. I wouldn't call it a parody of the haha-mono, which usually centers around the hardships of a mother, although of course there appear several mothers to be in the film. As with many films of Kawashima the focus is less on one or two characters, but rather on the whole ensemble. 
The film is a loose adaptation of André Roussin's play "Lorsque l'enfant paraît" (When the child appears) which was staged in Tokyo by the theatre troupe Bungeiza in December 1953 under the title "Akanbo Shô" and became a huge success. Kawashima couldn't obtain the copyrights for a film adaptation, however, because they were already sold to Michel Boisrond who finished his film in 1956. Kawashima and his scriptwriter Yanagisawa Ruiji were therfore forced to rearrange the story a litte bit and change the dialogues. 
Nikkatsu, by the way, released the film last October in Japan on DVD.


Roland Domenig
Institute of East Asian Studies
University of Vienna




Dear All,
   
  Has anyone seen the 1955 Ai no Onimotsu / Burden of Love, by Yuzo Kawashima. I'm puzzled by a slight discrepancy between what Richie and Anderson say about it and what Kinema Junpo say about it. R & A say that it's a satire on the haha-mono genre, as a family begins to feel the pressures of overpopulation. KJ says that it's about a health minister who advocates birth control, but does not apply the same rules to his/her own family. These two summaries are not strictly incompatible, but have rather different emphasis. I wondered, is this minister in this film a woman? This would explain how it could be a haha-mono parody and a political satire at the same time. Or are the two sources picking up on different aspects of a film with several plot strands? This wouldn't be untypical of Kawashima.
   
  Any clarification will be gratefully appreciated.
  
ALEX



Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com 


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/ms-tnef
Size: 4059 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/kinejapan/attachments/20060516/948807ed/attachment.bin