The Living Magoroku (“Ikite iru Magoroku”)
Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita
1943/Japan
Shochiku Company
First viewing/Hulu Plus
[box] “It goes without saying that when survival is threatened, struggles erupt between peoples, and unfortunate wars between nations result.” – Hideki Tojo [/box]
[box] During this period, Japan’s peaceful commercial relations were successively obstructed, primarily by the American rupture of commercial relations, and this was a grave threat to the survival of Japan. — Hideki Tojo[/box]
A propaganda film, and uneven, but with several glimpses of good things to come from this director.
The film begins in the 16th Century with a battle between samurais of Lord Onagi and an invading force in a field of tall grass. Fast forward to 1942 and a teacher is training his students in the art of war on that same field in that same grass. He berates them for showing insufficient zeal and for not knowing enough about their ancestors. The teacher, who can’t wait to go into combat, tells the class that he honors his ancestors and prizes his Magoroku sword that has been handed down to him through the centuries.
A blacksmith has found one of the students’ dropped swords and returns it. When he hears the story about the Magoroku sword, he laughs and assures the teacher it is a fake. The teacher is irate and promises him to show him the sword. We move to the blacksmith’s shop where we meet the current head of the Onagi clan, a whining young man with a cough. A villager approaches him and says that his family’s fallow field (the same one the samurai fought on) should be plowed and planted for the good of the nation. The boy refuses, citing a curse that has condemned all the men in his family to an early death after someone set a hoe to the “sacred field”.
The Onagis also own a Magoroku sword. A young doctor comes to them begging to buy it to honor his father who lost one. The rest of the movie ties up the sword question, the field question, and a Romeo and Juliet type love subplot, to the greater glory of Japan.
The film underlines the prevailing philosophy that the most glorious thing that a man can do is to die honorably on the field of battle. Those left behind need to work non-stop for the greater good of Japan. There are also a couple of comments about using the sword to cut down 10 or 15 American weaklings, etc.
Despite all that, and despite the really ham-handed opening samurai battle and its awful narration, I ended up rather liking this film. The story is actually fairly interesting once you get into it. The acting was first-rate, with some Ozu regulars on for the ride, and some of the shots were quite beautiful. Kinoshita is dynamite on fields of grass, for example. I’m looking forward to seeing how his work develops over the years. This was his first film. He is perhaps most famous for The Battle of Narayama (1958), which I have not yet seen.
