Inugami Family / Inugami-ke no ichizoku (1976)

The family waits for the will to be read.

The Inugami Family is an incredibly complicated murder mystery with more than enough red herrings, false identities, and twists within twists to satisfy almost any mystery fan. We could stop there, but the movie was more significant than most mystery films for a number of reasons.

It was immensely popular, which brought Kon Ichikawa back to fictional film-making at a time when the other post-war giants were all having trouble finding work. Depending on your point of view, this was a mixed blessing, since most of his movies in the next decade were mysteries featuring the same detective, Kosuke Kindaichi played by the same actor Koji Ishizaki. However, he brought to the film a sense of playfulness missing from most mysteries.

Most of this playfulness revolves around Kindaichi. The invention of the popular novelist Seishi Yokomizo, Kindaichi  had appeared in numerous earlier movies, including a version of The Inugami Family with Chiezo Kataoka in 1954. Though Ishizaki was in his early thirties, here he seems much younger, as if he is just starting his career as a detective. As common in private detective fiction, the policeman in charge of the investigation is a buffoon, but Kindaichi often seems as lost as the policeman and only manages to show his brilliance in the final solution. From his first appearance to his hurried final exit escaping a farewell party (and a young woman who intends to run away with him), he is constantly on the move, often running.

The most useful description is that he is scruffy, a man who constantly litters the floor with his dandruff or sand dragged in on his bare feet. He is no Sherlock Holmes, but he is no Inspector Clouseau either.

The movie marks the return to a major role for Mieko Takamine, a fine actress who had had an up and down career from the pre-war beauty of Masseurs and a Woman to Naruse’s typical wife of the early fifties before the studio connected him with Hideko Takamine (no relation), with some later high points such as her Gertrude in Castle of Flames spaced among a lot of supporting roles. During the sixties, those supporting roles had become more rare and smaller, so it is a pleasure to see her emerge from the wilderness. Here she is Matsuko, the ambitious mother of a son who returns from the war totally disfigured but who, if she works things right, will inherit the vast wealth of the old man whose death starts the movie. She gets to pull out all the stops, reminding us that she could hold her own among the great Japanese actresses of her time.

Many of Yokomizo’s stories had included elements of the horror story within its mysteries, and this is no exception. We have the mysterious (and huge) servant who seems until the final scene to be unable to speak and who appears and disappears mysteriously into the shadow. We have not one but two men who constantly mask their face; one of these is so disfigured that he wears a rubber mask that covers his entire head, providing a horror frisson to all his scenes, especially as he too refuses to speak.

One character is beheaded and his head placed on a manikin. And of course there is a damsel in distress, kidnapped and locked away in a dark cabin. We’re not quite in the same territory as The Circular Staircase or The Bat, but similar elements lurk in the background. Ichikawa is aware of these horror elements, but lets them appear without trying to manufacture artificial shocks.

The story is set in 1947, so the young men returning from the war to aggrieved parents provides a bit more emotional grounding than in most murder mysteries. (However, there is no explanation of why or how the other two adult grandsons somehow escaped war duty, or precisely what Kindaichi was doing in the war years). There are references to rationing and food shortages, and Kindaichi even pays his hotel bill with rice because he has no food coupons for his meals (a hint of his own contact with the black market). Family secrets are uncovered, such as the rich man’s use of bribery to allow him to get rich by distributing opium through his drug company and the fact that the adopted daughter is really the old man’s grand-daughter by yet another woman (we know of five). His sexual profligacy while refusing to marry is revealed to have been because his true love was actually another man. Nevertheless, the beautiful color photography and the massive mansion of the Inugami removes the sting of these shortages that we saw in movies actually made during the Occupation years.

One other significant point should be mentioned: this was the first production of Kadokawa Eiga, a company originally formed to film works published by Kadokawa Books. That may explain why it was shot in standard ratio rather than widescreen. (The wide-screen trailer on YouTube is from Ichikawa’s own remake of 2006, not the original.) If no theatrical distributor could be found, the format would have made it suitable for a television broadcast, but fortunately Toho decided to distribute it, leading to not only a series of Ichikawa’s Kindaichi films but the start of the most successful production company to emerge in Japan after the collapse of the old studio system.

At 2½ hours, it is long for a movie mystery, but Ichikawa’s light and inventive touch and the casual performance of Kindaichi keeps it flowing smoothly to the traditional Agatha Christie conclusion when all the suspects have been gathered together to hear the detective reveal what really happened.