[KineJapan] greatest cast in a film I never heard of until now!

Fri Jan 26 06:32:45 EST 2024

"Hidden treasures of Japan’s Golden Age"

I'm always up for curating that. The only difficulty is, narrowing it down!

ALEX

On Fri, 26 Jan 2024 at 12:31, Roger Macy via KineJapan <
kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:

> Thank you, María José.
>
> Sadly, I have not seen a single film by Hisamatsu.
>
> Keiko McDonald gives a few pages in ‘From Book to Screen’ to Hisamatsu’s
> treatment of some other women writers during this period (pp55-9).
>
> Time for a travelling retrospective, ‘Hidden treasures of Japan’s Golden
> Age’ ??
>
> Roger
>
>
> On Friday, 26 January 2024 at 04:36:04 GMT, Maria Jose Gonzalez via
> KineJapan <kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:
>
>
> In recent years this film has been shown several times at retrospectives
> related to any of the numerous and famous cast.
> I even have the 台本 somewhere in my collection.
> I first saw it in the Takarazuka Film Festival many years ago and then
> twice more.
> There is an incredible amount of films from that period relatively or
> completely unknown abroad, some of them truly interesting, as the Shintoho
> Cinema Nostalgia DVD series has been proving.
> The film is based on the autobiography of Mita Tsuneko, the first female
> warden of a prison in Japan who worked to improve the treatment and
> rehabilitation of female prisoners in Wakayama's Women Prison as part of
> GHQ's efforts to allow more women into the management of prisons.
> The book was published in 1955, just one year before Hisamatsu's work.
> Kinuyo Tanaka plays a somehow subdued warden. It's easy to get the
> impression that Toho wanted to put as many famous faces on the poster as
> possible as a reclaim. This was her fourth film that year (out of a total
> of six!) and somehow, as far as I can recall, that shows. Even Hara gives
> the same impression.
> The weight and interest of the film really falls onto the prisoners, each
> with very difficult backgrounds and criminal records. There are some good
> performances overall, some over the top.
> Sadly, the ending reflects once more that the only socially acceptable
> salvation for these women is marriage.
>
>
>
>
> María José González Muñoz
> Kwansei Gakuin University
> Center for International Education and Cooperation (CIEC)
> Nishinomiya, Japan
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Friday, 26 January 2024 at 11:59:06 AM GMT+9, Shane Robinson via
> KineJapan <kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:
>
>
> Really interesting reading about that film, I found quite a few stills and
> pamphlets on sites like Yahoo Auctions Japan. It was shown on the Japanese
> Movie Channel in April 2017 (
> https://x.com/nihoneiga/status/851698881108824064). I'm not familiar with
> him, but a Twitter user by the name of Ken Shimomura seems to have
> information that the prints were "junked" by Toho (
> https://x.com/Shimo_x2/status/1622444741093883904). This seems to be
> their area of expertise, so while I wouldn't take it as fact, it seems like
> reliable information. Does anybody know this person?
>
> On Thu, Jan 25, 2024 at 7:42 PM <kinejapan-request at mailman.yale.edu>
> wrote:
>
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> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. greatest cast in a film I never heard of until now!
>       (Desser, David M)
>    2. Re: greatest cast in a film I never heard of until now!
>       (Gerow Aaron)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2024 23:22:14 +0000
> From: "Desser, David M" <desser at illinois.edu>
> To: Japanese Cinema Discussion Forum <kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu>
> Subject: [KineJapan] greatest cast in a film I never heard of until
>         now!
> Message-ID:
>         <
> SJ0PR11MB4912313F39541101B9B69ABFAD7A2 at SJ0PR11MB4912.namprd11.prod.outlook.com
> >
>
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>
> Has anyone heard of, let alone seen, the following film? It has one of the
> greatest casts in all of Japanese film history, I guess!
>
>
> Joshu to tomo ni (Hisamatsu Seiji, 1956)
>
> with:
>
> Hara Setsuko
>
> Tanaka Kinuyo
>
> Kogure Michiyo
>
> Kagawa Kyoko
>
> Kuga Yoshiko
>
> Okada Mariko
>
> Awaji Keiko
>
> Yoko Tani (a forgotten figure of film history!)
>
>
> David Desser
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> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2024 19:41:51 -0500
> From: Gerow Aaron <aaron.gerow at yale.edu>
> To: Japanese Cinema Discussion Forum <kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu>
> Subject: Re: [KineJapan] greatest cast in a film I never heard of
>         until now!
> Message-ID: <6C1EF29F-9E84-4DD8-B651-EE85E81A29CE at yale.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Wow, a women?s prison film with Tanaka Kinuyo as the warden and Kuga
> Yoshiko (who in real life was the daughter of a marquis) as a prisoner!
>
> I haven?t seen it, but it doesn?t seem to be easy to find. The NFAJ does
> not have it and it is not out on DVD. SkyPerfect doesn't seemed to have
> shown it. But it has been screened at a rep house before:
>
>
> https://www.shogakukan.co.jp/jinbocho-theater/program/women_list.html#movie09
>
> Aaron Gerow
>
> > 1/25/24 ??6:22?Desser, David M via KineJapan <kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu
> >????:
> >
> > Has anyone heard of, let alone seen, the following film? It has one of
> the greatest casts in all of Japanese film history, I guess!
> >
> > Joshu to tomo ni (Hisamatsu Seiji, 1956)
> > with:
> > Hara Setsuko
> > Tanaka Kinuyo
> > Kogure Michiyo
> > Kagawa Kyoko
> > Kuga Yoshiko
> > Okada Mariko
> > Awaji Keiko
> > Yoko Tani (a forgotten figure of film history!)
> >
> > David Desser
> > _______________________________________________
> > KineJapan mailing list
> > KineJapan at mailman.yale.edu <mailto:KineJapan at mailman.yale.edu>
> > https://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/kinejapan <
> https://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/kinejapan>
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