Chijo / On This Earth

Kozaburo Yoshimura: 地上 / Chijo / On This Earth (JP 1957). Keizo Kawasaki (Tokio), Hitomi Nozoe (Wakako Yoshikura), Hiroshi Kawaguchi (Heiichiro Okawa). Photo © Kadokawa.

地上 / [Su questa terra] / In Revolt / На этой земле. 

    JP 1957. Prod.: Daiei. 

    Director: Kozaburo Yoshimura. Sog.: dal romanzo omonimo (1918) di Seijiro Shimada. Scen.: Kaneto Shindo. F.: Yoshihisa Nakagawa. Scgf.: Shigeo Mano. Mus.: Akira Ifukube. Int.: Hiroshi Kawaguchi (Heiichiro Okawa), Hitomi Nozoe (Wakako Yoshikura), Kinuyo Tanaka (Omitsu), Kyoko Kagawa (Fukuyo), Keizo Kawasaki (Tokio), Shin Saburi (Ichiro Amano), Yosuke Irie (Fukai), Masaya Tsukida (Yoshida), Keiko Ando (Michiko). 

    Col. 98 min. In Japanese.

    Not released in Finland.

    35 mm print from NFAJ National Film Archive of Japan

    Courtesy of Kadokawa

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2024: Kozaburo Yoshimura, Undercurrents of Modernity

    Viewed at Jolly Cinema, 26 June 2024

Alexander Jacoby e Johan Nordström (Il Cinema Ritrovato catalogue 2024): " Set in the Taisho period (1912-26), this unjustly neglected film tells the story of a boy who finds a new political awareness after his mother is forced to take a job in a geisha house to pay his tuition fees. It was based on a novel by Seijiro Shimada (1899-1930), who achieved teenage celebrity on publishing the first episode of Chijo in 1918. The book won praise from established writers such as Rashomon author Ryunosuke Akutagawa, and became a bestseller. Shimada’s mental health deteriorated after a notorious love affair, and he was confined to a mental hospital, where he died aged 31. "

" Shimada’s socialist principles accorded with those of screenwriter Kaneto Shindo, whose script highlights class and labour issues. Accordingly, this is one of Yoshimura’s most explicitly political films. Set in the city of Kanazawa (a so-called “little Kyoto”), and sharing with Itsuwareru seiso a focus on the geisha, it is a kind of pendant to Yoshimura’s Kyoto-mono. Like Kyoto, Kanazawa had escaped serious damage during World War II, and cinematographer Yoshihisa Nakagawa provides a striking record in colour of the beauty of the city before its modernisation. "

" “Kinema Junpo” critic Seizo Okada celebrated the film’s colour, coherence and precise depiction of customs, while complaining that parts of the film were “too superficial and light”. He asserted that Yoshimura’s “too smooth style will have to be deliberately and consciously roughened, so that […] he can forcefully dig deeper into the tumour of humanity”. He suggested the that film evoked “the sentiments of [Yoshimura’s] lost youth”, and remarked on the contrast between the realistic presentation of the middle-aged Tokyo financier played by Shin Saburi (1909-82) and the more romanticised depiction of the young lovers, played by Hiroshi Kawaguchi (1936-87) and Hitomi Nozoe (1937-95). These two performers had co-starred earlier in the same year in Yasuzo Masumura’s proto-New Wave film Kuchizuke (Kisses), and their presence lends an air of modernity and freshness to Yoshimura’s drama. " Alexander Jacoby e Johan Nordström (Il Cinema Ritrovato catalogue 2024)

AA: I reveal the inadequacy of my knowledge of  Japanese cinema by confessing that I had never before seen such an explicit Japan drama of political struggle from pre-Oshima years. After the screening, I asked Messrs. Jacoby & Nordström about this, and they assured there are others. 

For me, Chijo is a revelation of the fighting spirit in Japanese society. The closest thing for me might be the films in Mizoguchi's post-WWII feminist cycle starring Kinuyo Tanaka, such as The Victory of Women, The Love of Sumako the Actress and Flame of My Love. 

In the context of Bologna's Yoshimura tribute, Chijo stands out as a tale of violent class struggle with an epic dimension. At the same time it is a tender, sensitive and elegiac account of young love in what might be called the Romeo and Juliet lineage. The story takes place during the era of Emperor Taisho remembered for its liberal movement.

The Mizoguchi connection is evoked in the story of the mother Omitsu, interpreted by Kinuyo Tanaka. To finance the education of her son Heiichiro (Hiroshi Kawaguchi), she accepts a live-in job in a geisha house - not as a geisha, but as a seamstress.

At school, a shy and tentative attraction develops between Heiichiro and Wakako (Hitomi Nozoe), first via furtive glances and love letters. The young woman, as these things often go, is the bolder partner.

Heiichiro's former classmate is now a worker, and when a strike breaks out in the factory, Heiichiro helps him with supplies. Wakako's father is the factory owner. When Heiichiro's solidarity is exposed, he is expelled from school, and Tatsuzo, Wakako's father (Masao Shimizu) forbids her to meet Heiichiro.

The geisha house in Chijo is seen from an unusual angle. In their live-in home, Heiichiro gets to witness scenes no child should see. An orphan girl, the young virgin Fuyuko (Kyoko Kagawa) is offered to a rich businessman. Fuyuko registers Heiichiro's compassionate presence, and an unrequited love is awakened.

The epic sequence of the strike and its brutal, bloody repression first by the police and then by the military bears comparison with classics from the history of the cinema, all the way to Intolerance (US 1916), inspired by the Ludlow bloodbath of 1914 - the very years of the Taisho period.

The finale is extraordinary. Omitsu has sacrificed everything for her son, but now Heiichiro leaves Kanazawa for Tokyo to start a new life. The farewells from the loved ones are heart-breaking. There is an arranged marriage for Wakako, as her mother has just informed her. The orphan Fuyuko has been sold as a kept woman, "I was bought".

The train leaves for Tokyo. Fuyuko runs to see Heiichiro but just barely misses it. She falls on the tracks in sweat and tears.

Visually, Chijo is rewarding. The sense of place in historic Kanazawa is vivid. The romantic moments are set in pastoral milieux. The strike sequence is bold and direct. It was a privilege to view Chijo in 35 mm. It is a colour film, and colour is meaningful in every way, from the sunflowers in the beginning to the bloodshed in the strike sequence. I hope Chijo will be restored in an equally distinguished way as Yoru no kawa.