Mariko Okada
One of the trio of directors promoted by Shochiku in the early sixties as the “Japanese New Wave,” Kiju Yoshida was arguably the only one of the three to take the term seriously. While Shinoda and Oshima really just wanted to make movies whose topics were outside the usual studio formulae, Yoshida apparently wanted to make Shochiku pictures but in a different way and thus was the last of the three to move into independent production. Though distributed by Nikkatsu, Mizu de kakareta monogatari is very much in the vein of the Shochiku josei-eiga, but told in a “European” manner. Unfortunately, in this case, the “European” skill he seems to have mastered is Antonioni’s ability to make a 2 hour movie feel like it is three or four hours long.
It is difficult to figure out exactly what causes this feeling. The plot certainly ought to be interesting. After all, it is about sex. Shizuo has a tortured relationship with his mother, who has raised him alone since his father died of TB during the war years. Now nearing 30, he is engaged to the lovely and wealthy Yumiko, but even though she throws herself at him constantly, he refuses sex until they are officially married.
Yumiko offers to try out the western bed
Very gradually we learn that Yumiko’s father Hashimoto is the long time lover of Shizuka, Shizuo’s mother, and although it is never stated, the man supporting her and her son as he grew up. As a boy in his early teens, Shizuo overhears his mother admitting to a friend that she may not have been a virgin when she got married, which makes him believe that Hashimoto might actually be his father. Ultimately reassured that Yumiko is not his sister, he goes through with the marriage, but all is not yet sweetness and light. Among other things, his mother’s face keeps appearing on Yumiko’s body when they have sex. Eventually, his obsession with his mother (of which she seems to be oblivious) leads him to ask her to join him in a love-suicide. She refuses, which makes Shizuo realize he really does love his wife, while Shizuka runs away with Hashimoto and then drowns herself after Hashimoto is killed in a car crash.
Told in a straight-line narrative, this should all be kinky enough to hold anyone’s attention, but Yoshida opts for flash-backs and flash-forwards without any particular clues. The age of the child versions of Shizuo help, but after he is an adult, we sometimes do not know if we are before or after he is married, for example. Often, we drop into scenes without any idea where they are, much less when. This, in itself, is not unique to this movie. It has often been habitual for Japanese film-makers to just drop the audience into a scene without the American practice of the establishing shot, but rarely have we seen it taken to such an extreme. And Japanese fashion gives us no clues to the time of each scene — a kimono is a kimono, whatever the year, and Shizuka always wears kimono. A school uniform is a school uniform, which may be clear to Japanese but not to us, which becomes a particular difficulty when Shizuka’s adult friend seduces the young Shizuo, who looks about eleven and before puberty but whose uniform may indicate an older age that makes more sense of the scene.
Mama’s friend seduces the young Shizuo
And a geisha is just a geisha, so we are not at all clear about when the woman hired by Hashimoto to make sure Shizuo is sexually able actually appears in the time line.
Then there is the age question. Shizuo appears to be five to seven when his father died, one of the few clear date points, for the father is in hospital during an air raid. So Shizuo would be around twenty-five when his Yumiko relationship occurs, though at some point someone says twenty-eight. Mariko Okada was barely thirty when the movie was made, and it is a sign of her daring that she willingly agreed to play the mother who should be well into her forties (No American actress would have dared do that.) Yoshida gets around that problem with a line about how young and beautiful Shizuka still looks, but there are many scenes in which the son (Yasunori Irikawa, actually about 25) seems to be older than the mother.
Overall, the movie gives off a conscious “artiness,” full of long cryptic pauses, strange and inexplicable camera movements, a couple of the requisite funeral processions (for whom we are not sure*), and unidentified characters who appear out of nowhere to further confuse the time jumbling. This “artiness” is underlined by the music provided by Sei Ichiyangi, scored for harpsichord, violin, and snare drum and the absolute cliché of what most people think “modern” classical music sounds like — random notes played on random instruments at random times — inserted apparently randomly into the movie.
As in almost all European “art” movies of the sixties, there is a lot of flirtation with female nudity, but here it takes a more traditional Japanese form. The most common female erotic zone in Japanese art and movies was not the breast but the nape of the neck, probably as a result of the nature of the kimono. Once again Okada spends a lot of time in the spa with only her head and shoulders visible and in many other scenes Yoshida’s camera lingers lovingly on her neck and shoulders.
This is perhaps forgivable for a husband in love with his wife, whom he had married only a year before this movie, but it only serves to slow the pace of the movie even more than his long pauses and silent, cryptic scenes.
Yoshida would go on to make better movies as well as some that are even more mannered, though at increasingly widely spaced intervals. It’s hard to know how Japanese audiences took to them, though they almost always received respectful critical attention.
* One seems to be for Shizuo’s father but another (or the same from a different angle) has a child’s doll on the coffin.
