Souls on the Road

Souls on the Road (Rojō no Reikon), directed by Minoru Murata and released in 1921, is one of Japan’s best remembered silent films and considered among the first steps towards a distinctly Japanese cinematic culture.

When his career as a violinist ends in disgrace as he collapses on stage in the capital, Koichiro returns to his mountain village on foot with his wife and daughter. At a crossroads in a snowy forest on the way, they're accosted by a pair of recently released convicts. The men, one lame and the other tubercular, both dejected and desperate, attempt to rob the weary family, but seeing how badly in shape they are offer them a chunk of bread instead, before limping off in another direction.

Koichiro arrives at the village on Christmas Eve but is soon rejected by his father. The ex-cons are discovered by the master of another house who, presumably, has caught them trying to sneak inside someplace to escape the winter storm that's coming. At rifle point, he forces the men to take turns beating each other with a switch.

The violinist’s daughter has a fever, but Koichiro's father shows no mercy, kicking the lot of them out into the inclement weather. They shelter in a barn while a boisterous party kicks off in a house that has been quite immoderately decorated for Christmas. The joy of the revelers, streamers hanging around their heads as they dance, is shown in stark contrast to the misery of the now febrile and fading wife and daughter, whose heads appear wreathed by strands of cold, limp hay.

Towards the end, a young boy and girl, the former loyal and hardworking throughout the film and the latter naïvely self-indulgent and frivolous, come to a spot in the woods where a body has been found in the snow. For a fleeting moment the character of each—both static up until then—is interrupted by a pondering of what if's. What if the master of the house had shown mercy? What if the father had shown compassion? A Maxim Gorky quote about compassion and missed opportunity follows to end the film.

Souls on the Road is visually compelling in its storytelling and in the emotions of characters, the rural setting and way of life, and the mix of traditional and foreign clothing. We can see the frenzy of the storm and ghostlike visions which fade in and out and, surprisingly, Santa Claus as well. Laced with sentimentality but not gushing with it, as Japanese films tend to do, Murata gives us a fairly straight telling of the shepherd’s lost sheep, here the prodigal son and the marginalized, and dips it in the inhumanity of the unmerciful and those who turn a blind eye.

Santa Claus appearance in Souls on the Road (1921)

Onibaba

Onibaba (鬼婆, 1964) is a Japanese horror film directed by Kaneto Shindo. Set during the aftermath of a fourteenth century civil war near Kyoto, the story focuses on two (nameless) women who kill soldiers for their weapons and gear. They live in a hut surrounded by a seemingly boundless and inescapable sea of tall grass. There’s a deep hole in there too, which is where they drop their stripped victims before trading the booty for millet and the occasional fowl.

When the slovenly Hachi comes back from the war, he’s without Kishi. Kishi was the young woman’s husband and old woman’s son, but he was killed trying to steal food from a bunch of fed-up farmers. Hachi takes a liking to the young woman, and the old woman tries to put a stop to the grimy affaire de coeur that ensues between this bumpkin pair. She fears that if she can’t end it, then the hard-working young girl will take off for good, leaving her to fend for herself and to likely starve. Solution... Wear a devil mask, hide out in the grass at night, and scare the bejeezus out of the girl whenever she slinks off to lay Hachi. And this works fine till the old woman finds herself out in the pouring rain one night and the mask becomes ruinously affixed to her face.

This is a horror film, but not because anything in it is actually supernatural. We always know it’s the baba pretending to be the oni, that it’s not a real devil. What's unsettling is the photography, especially the shots of the never-ending grass they live in, and the hole, which for the first half of the film appears to be bottomless (unfortunately the narrative didn’t allow for it to be that way). Also the poverty and ignorance of the characters is disturbing and a horror in itself. All in all, I thought it was a good film, and memorable, but not one of the Japanese greats of the genre.

The Burmese Harp

The Burmese Harp (1956) (ビルマの竪琴) is a Japanese anti-war film directed by Kon Ichikawa and based on a novel for children (same name) by Michio Takeyama. It starts off at the end of WWII with a group of weary Japanese soldiers traversing the Burmese landscape. One plays a harp (saung), to which the others sing. They come to a village where the locals welcome them with food and a roof to rest under. After the meal, the locals quietly slip away, and the Japanese realize that British and Indian soldiers in the forest have surrounded them. The Japanese sing a song, to make the Brits believe they're not on to them, but then the Brits join in and for a while sing along with them, and the Japanese soon learn the war has ended.

Private Mizushima (the harpist) is sent on a mission to convince another Japanese battalion to put down their weapons and peacefully leave the hillside cave where they've been holed up. He fails when the commander decides Mizushima must be lying or it's some trick of the enemy; after all, the Japanese would never surrender. The Brits resume their bombardment, and Mizushima is left for dead on the gravelly hill.

Captain Inouye and the rest of Mizushima's battalion have been taken to a camp in Mudon for prisoners, and before long come to believe that their dear Mizushima perished on his mission. But then while crossing a bridge over a river they pass a man who, although dressed like a Burmese monk, looks very much like their lost comrade. Could this be Mizushima?

The film is very good storytelling and beautifully shot. Ichikawa remade the film in color in the 80s, and apparently he wanted to shoot the original in color too but ultimately decided against it due to concerns about lugging the camera equipment in and out of certain shooting locations in Burma. Much of the film was shot in Japan, but the scenes in Burma stand out for their magnitude and cultural significance and must be among the earliest filmed there. It was nominated for an Academy Award in the "Best Foreign Language Film" category for 1957. It was also one of the first Japanese post-war films with a pacifist theme. Although the film doesn't touch on Japanese war atrocities in the region (it's been argued that Ichikawa wouldn't have been aware of those events at the time of filming), it does depict Japan's new post-war spirit, with the Buddhist ideal of altruism the main substance underlying the narrative.