Kiyoshi Nishimura question - Hairpin Circus / Red Target

[Don Brown]

Jasper.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you on this one.

Tokyo Eiga was established in 1952 as a kind of "feeder" company for Toho.
It operated the company's studio in Setagaya (formerly Shinagawa), and
produced mainly comedy films such as the Ekimae series. It was dissolved in
1983 in a corporate reshuffle and became Tokyo Eiga Shinsha, making TV
movies until it was swallowed in a 2004 merger with Toho.

What little of Nishimura's work I've seen makes me want to see more,
especially the dodgy-looking Matsuda Seiko movie he shot partly in New
Zealand. For me "Hairpin Circus" wasn't great apart from the beautifully
trippy end sequence, as it's bogged down by an awfully wooden lead
performance by real-life race driver Misaki Kiyoshi. His "The Creature
Called Man" is fantastic though, with Kayama Yuzo and Tamiya Jiro playing
dapper dueling snipers. It even has a sequence shot on location at Yasukuni
Shrine (!), and a beautifully choreographed slow-motion finale shot in a
hangar at the old Chofu airfield, which just happened to have an actual
Zero fighter leftover from WWII lying around inside (which the filmmakers
used to great effect).

By the way, I wrote the Wikipedia entry, so apologies for any errors and
generally crap writing.

Regards,

Don Brown


2012/2/14 Jasper Sharp <jasper_sharp at hotmail.com>

>  Thank you both for these insights. Very interesting Don that you mention
> it was at the cheaper end of Toho's production roster, although I can
> imagine it was fairly modestly budgeted compared with Okamoto Kihachi's war
> epics of the era, or Gosha Hideo's Panavision jidai-geki. At any rate, the
> film looks wonderful, and I'll have to see it sometime. I'm amazed I've
> never come across the name of Nishimura before, especially as he is
> important enough to warrant his own English-language wikipedia entry, which
> mentions his "arrest in 1987 for secretly using a video camera in a
> public bathhouse for women".
>
> I'm also really interested though in the relationship between Tokyo
> Eiga and Toho - you mention they're a subsidiary Don, any further
> information?
>
> Thanks again!
> jasper
>
>
> My new book, *The **Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema*, is out now
> from Scarecrow Press. <https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780810857957>
>
> Jasper Sharp: Writer & Film Curator Homepage
> http://jaspersharp.com/
>
> Midnight Eye: The Latest and Best in Japanese Cinema
> http://www.midnighteye.com
>
> Zipangu Fest: Japanarchy in the UK
> http://zipangufest.com/
>
>
> ------------------------------
> Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:28:21 +0900
> From: ryuganji at gmail.com
> To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Subject: Re: Kiyoshi Nishimura question - Hairpin Circus / Red Target
>
>
> Hi Jasper,
>
> The liner notes for the Hairpin Circus DVD mention that the Macao Grand
> Prix scenes were "essential for the completion of the film" (perhaps it was
> featured in Itsuki Hiroyuki's serialized novella on which the film was
> based?). Toho were slow to permit the Macao shoot, so with the race
> impending, subsidiary Tokyo Eiga put up provisional funds to make it
> possible. The producers eventually received permission from Toho after the
> scenes were shot. It was made for 45 million yen, which was the lowest
> bracket for a Toho film at the time.
>
> Don Brown
>
> 2012/2/14 Jasper Sharp <jasper_sharp at hotmail.com>
>
>
> Does anyone know anything about the director Kiyoshi Nishimura, more
> specifically, his two films *Red Target* (*Bara no hyoteki*) and *Highway
> Circuit* a.k.a. *Hairpin Circus* (*Heapin saakasu*), both from 1972. It
> seems to me, flicking through the Unijapan catalogues of that year, that
> they were both shot in Hong Kong/Macao, but I'm wandering if this was
> actually the case.
> The reason I ask is that the Unijapan catalogue mentions both were shot in
> Eastman Color, but from this period, almost all of Toho's films were shot
> in Fujicolor (except those such as Shinoda’s *The Scandalous Adventures
> of Buraiken *that were shot in Panavision) - so there must be a reason
> they were shot in Eastmancolor, and if they were shot on location in Hong
> Kong (Shaw Brothers used Eastman Color, for example), this this would sort
> of make sense. Or maybe I'm barking up a completely nonsensical tree here...
>
>
>
>
>
> My new book, *The **Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema*, is out now
> from Scarecrow Press. <https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780810857957>
>
> Jasper Sharp: Writer & Film Curator Homepage
> http://jaspersharp.com/
>
> Midnight Eye: The Latest and Best in Japanese Cinema
> http://www.midnighteye.com
>
> Zipangu Fest: Japanarchy in the UK
> http://zipangufest.com/
>
>
>
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