Tsuruhachi and Tsurujiro (1938)

Tsuruhachi and Tsurujiro provides a Japanese version of an American standard in the thirties and forties, the backstage musical.

While being thoroughly Japanese in appearance, it hits all the standard points of the backstage musical. They are a successful performing team, but He constantly corrects her performances. She gets a marriage offer from a very nice man, but decides to stay with Him. For a while, things go well, and then He starts nagging again and they start the bickering until She leaves for good and marries the nice man. His career nose-dives but their old teacher convinces Her to return so they can “play the Palace,” in effect, in some kind of major production in Tokyo. They are once again a Great Success, but unlike the American versions of the story line, when they immediately start bickering again, she leaves for good.

This being Japan, they are not a song and dance team. He sings, or perhaps narrates poetry, while she accompanies on the shamisen. To foreign eyes and ears, it is impossible to judge how good they actually are, so we have to take it as a given that they are a great team. We see little of the other numbers in their shows, only brief glimpses of a magician and a puppeteer, so we don’t know if they are in the top line circuit or the bottom. It takes a while to realize that we are even in the world of the backstage musical.

Everything is underplayed by American standards for the same plot line. No one even raises their voice in the arguments and there are certainly no slamming doors or thrown crockery.  Presumably, this is set in the thirties, for there are electric footlights and a very brief shot of the pair sitting side by side on a trolley. Otherwise, in dress, music, and surroundings, we might believe the westerners had never arrived.

Because we have no big numbers or big fights, the overall effect is more bland than subtle. Because we are utterly dependent on the subtitles, it is impossible to know if their verbal exchanges are witty or merely repetitious.

Because it was directed by Mikio Naruse, it may have some interest for film historians, but in general it looks like Naruse was basically phoning it in. And of course there is some interest in that we get to see a young Isuzu Yamada and Kazuo Hasegawa at their most beautiful, when Hasegawa in particular was establishing his stardom as a movie idol that would continue for another several decades.

Its setting makes it a curiosity of sorts, because this traditional performers’ world is almost unknown to foreigners. But for precisely that reason, it provides no toeholds for the non-Japanese viewer. We can grasp what is happening as we watch, but we can understand almost nothing beyond the basic plot itself.

The images posted on IMDB are crisp and clear, suggesting production stills, but I could only find a YouTube version, which is quite muddy, further contributing to my inability to grasp whatever subtleties might have been there.  For someone fully immersed in traditional Japanese performance and music, this might be a fascinating film, but otherwise, it provides more frustration than entertainment or satisfaction.

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