Sayonara (1957)

Following The Teahouse of the August Moon Marlon Brando remained in Japan (narratively) and appeared in a film that is in many ways a companion to Daniel Mann’s in that it casts its lead in a diagrammatically opposing role. Sayonara concerns a pilot in the Korean War, Lloyd Gruver (Brando), who is repatriated to Japan as he is to work alongside his boss, whose daughter is has long been slated to marry. Once with her their opposing ideas regarding their matrimony and respective attitudes to how they should behave as man and wife (he the model soldier, she the dutiful lady of the house) lead to a break and a burgeoning relationship on Gruver’s part with a Japanese woman, Hana, a dancer in an all-female troupe. Official concerns about GI’s ‘fraternising’ with ‘indigenous’ women fuels suspicion and distrust by both US and Japanese about Gruver and about a Naval soldier named Joe Kelly (played by Red Button) and his marriage to a Japanese woman. 

Directed by Joshua Logan, a filmmaker known primarily for his musicals (South Pacific [1958], Paint your Wagon [1969], among others), Sayanora is replete with traditional theatre on the one hand (Kabuki, Bunraku) and on the other with some almost Busby Berkeley-style numbers by Hana’s troupe of showgirls, named the Matsubayashi Girls. What is interesting about the film is its engagement with themes that are often perceived to have a specifically Japanese import or provenance. Key here is the tension between giri and ninjo: or, between personal desire and inclination on the one hand and social obligation on the other. Hana has essentially been beholden to Matsubayashi after being sold to the group by her father as a child, but Gruver is similarly enmeshed within a rigidly stratified hierarchical institution that delimits his actions and feelings. As such the narrative finds a viable US correlative to this Japanese theme. Gruver’s dilemma mirrors Hana’s, and thus a narrative of import to Japan is discernible here, at least to the extent that the conflicts not only centre on respective reactions to nationally specific themes but in some cases are resolved by means of recourse to actions also deemed (or perceived as) nationally specific. This the film highlights through its numerous theatrical – i.e. musical – scenes, with the notion of almost performing nationhood here extending from the theatre to society (and back to theatre in the Matsubayashi bricolage of modern and traditional dances), and if it remains undeveloped throughout then at least it offers a modicum of meaning that moves beyond Japan as a mere setting for an American narrative.

Brando, not here an altogether comfortable romantic lead, is not stretched or challenged by the melodramatic material. Neither is his seemingly all-consuming love for Hana terribly convincing, their courtship developing rather quickly from distanced fascination to undying love even though the film, at almost two and a half hours in length, is protracted and ponderous. This length is substantiated through sub-plots that frame the central romance, most prominently Kelly’s marriage on the one hand and Gruver’s erstwhile fiancée Eileen’s burgeoning relationship with a Kabuki actor (improbably played by Ricardo Montalban). There is thus a prominence of interracial relations, where one leads to tragedy and the other…well, the other in truth remains somewhat vague. Eileen’s developing romance (more hinted at that shown) remains embryonic in narrative terms, and this vagueness coupled with the casting of a Caucasian actor, rather sanitises any engagement with the politics of miscegenation and certainly does nothing to address any questions of gender in relationships.

There is, however, some thematic interest here. Eileen, as a woman, is strong-willed and not content to remain an army wife, and this coupled with an actor who is famous as an onnagata (female impersonator) offers a sense of interpolated gender roles. Although embryonic and ultimately ebbing away as the narrative progresses, this coupling works alongside the central romance to highlight how actions and attitudes are regulated within rigidly stratified and circumscribed environments. All of this does not exactly make Sayonara a penetrating work, but the engagement with Japan as a discourse and gender equivalence provides meaning to the setting beyond exoticism and Orientalism.

Stopover Tokyo (1957)

Made at 20^th Century Fox and in Japan, perhaps as a means of cashing in on the success of House of Bamboo, this thriller (of sorts) has broad echoes of Sam Fuller’s film. Robert Wagner stars as a US operative on the hunt for a criminal gang in Tokyo, and whilst there developing a tentative relationship with a woman (Joan Collins) who lives and works in Japan, and with the daughter of an informant who is murdered. This is a far less interesting and dramatic work than it could have been had there been any detailed attention paid to the specificities not only of the villains (a featureless collection of Americans operating a spy ring, whose actions and motivations remain vague and undefined) but also to the protagonist himself. Unlike House of Bamboo the sketchy depiction of Wagner’s Mark Fannon (a character from a series of detective novels – Mr. Moto – but one that is altered significantly here) is not tailored to invite meaning and thus cast light on his dramatic antagonist. There is a potentially fascinating, albeit un-developed, thread that sees Collins’ Tina speak to Fannon from point of view of a woman curious about a man’s tastes and desires, thus turning the tables (or at least feigning to do so) on the sense of ‘Othering’ the Japanese that has been problematic in Orientalist Western discourse. However this is raised and generally ignored thereafter.

Director Richard L. Breen was more prolific as a screenwriter than a director. Here, in what is quite an interior film, there are some good widescreen compositions that stress (as The Teahouse of the August Moon, House of Bamboo and Sayonara do) the horizontality of the traditional Japanese home, its sliding shoji screen and typically low frames. Indeed, just as in Sayonara, there is a visual gag here wherein the protagonist blunders through a door and bangs his head. Beyond this there is little dramatic tension, the build-up to what is a particularly lacklustre finale offering no surprises, and in narrative and thematic terms neither leading to nor resolving anything other than the superficial conflicts of Fannon and the spy ring, as personified by Hollywood B film villain du jour Edmond O’ Brien. This exemplifies the rather cursory approach to most of the elements in this picture. It feels hastily put together, rushed through to capitalise on the then-emerging boom for films in and about Japan: a cinematic stopover at a popular destination. It is efficient and workmanlike; nothing more and nothing less. 

The Barbarian and the Geisha (1958)

It was perhaps unsurprising, even inevitable, that director John Huston – used to far-flung locations for films like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Beat the Devil (1953), The African Queen (1951) – would sooner or later find his way to Japan. Here, in what is one of his most critically abused and commercially unsuccessful works, not to mention most difficult productions, John Wayne plays the barbarian of the title. He is US Consul General Harris Townsend, sent to Japan in 1856 in the wake of Commodore Mathew Perry’s excursion to open Japan after centuries of self-imposed isolation. He arrives in the coastal village of Shimoda, only to be met with suspicion, mistrust and apprehension, and his presence stirs up tensions relating to opposing views of Japanese tradition giving way to the uncertain and disruptive vicissitudes of modernity and Westernization.

The eponymous geisha, Okichi (played in her first acting role by Ando Eiko), is a consort and at least ostensibly a spy for officialdom. She is also the narrator, relating how she came to associate with Harris and how their relationship developed. Based loosely on a real historical figure (Harris) the film does creditably in outlining the nature of his mission and the stakes involved – for Japan much more than the US. As such, despite being promoted as an adventure narrative (perhaps unsurprising given Wayne and Huston’s involvement), this is rather a verbose picture. It contains detailed and rounded arguments on both sides, and protracted dialogue scenes where the spectacle of Japanese tradition (such as a large procession to Edo [Tokyo] to meet with the Shogun) forms a positive bulwark against encroachment; and this stands true as the changes that are sought by Wayne’s protagonist remain of personal significance only to the Japanese.

Thus, it is the people of Japan whose lives are at stake, who are primarily, even singularly, affected. We learn little of Harris and there is no real sense that his life or livelihood is on the line; and so though it is the almost-but-not-quite relationship between the Barbarian and the Geisha that ultimately takes centre stage, the aforesaid theme of Japanese social transformation that bubbles just beneath the surface and adds a substance that all but negates the US as an entity with anything to lose (which perhaps contributed to the film’s lack of commercial success). With the great writer/director Kinugasa Teinosuke (Gate of Hell [1953]) credited as script supervisor here, this focus is perhaps not too surprising, both from a Japanese and a female perspective as his work often had recourse to female subjectivity, frequently within genres that were typically dominated by men and male narratives.

Whether Wayne – who clashed with Huston – is well-cast here is eminently arguable. Ostensibly an awkward presence, the film cannily cosies up to, only to subvert, the star’s aggressively masculine, conservative and physical persona, though ultimately little comes of such a tension. There is a serio-comic fight scene in which Wayne summarily dispatches a hulking samurai but is then knocked down and almost out by a tiny figure who is adept at martial arts. Wayne’s is another form of spectacle, one that remains fractious beside the stately, ornate, communal aesthetic of both rural and developing urban Japan. Again, it is an almost-but-not-quite thematic in an almost-but-not-quite film. The Barbarian and the Geisha is more interesting than its reputation suggests, if never quite the film that one hopes it may develop into. 

The Geisha Boy (1958)

The work and especially the onscreen persona of Jerry Lewis had been more or established by the time he made The Geisha Boy, directed by the most significant filmmaker with whom he ever worked – Frank Tashlin. Other than The Sad Sack (1957), which saw him in Morocco as part of the Foreign Legion, his work both with and without Dean Martin had been resolutely American, in both setting and in tone. Here Lewis is a down on his luck magician (not a geisha) booked to tag along with a famous TV star travelling to Japan to entertain US soldiers, wherein he becomes attached to a young boy who has lost his parents and who has become entirely withdrawn. However, this boy laughs at Lewis’ clumsy antics when he causes an accident with said TV star at the airport in Tokyo, and thereafter they become like father and son, and their impending separation that is teased throughout forms the dramatic and emotional crux of the narrative.

The fact that Lewis is uniquely able to make this boy, Mitsuo, laugh, is not probed for the nod (or sop) to Lewis’ international language of comedy that it could satirically have been. Neither, really, is there any sense of a commentary on the aforesaid specificity of Lewis’ exaggerated style. There are, in amongst tenuous platforms for his extended set-piece schtick, some knowing gags about Mount Fuji as a brand (there is a moment when the paramount stars briefly appear around said mountain as Lewis looks touristically on at Japan’s pre-eminent natural symbol), as well as a sly nod to the foreign perception that geisha are equivalent to prostitutes (one such performer who is seen dancing with traditional fans beneath the opening credits ultimately becomes naked – her body concealed by the director’s name). There is also a running joke about bowing that, whilst amusing, develops little over the course of the picture. Thus, none of these features amounts to much in the way of engagement with Japan – indeed the film feels rather cynical in its setting given when it was made – and is suggested for Lewis fans alone. 

My Geisha (1961)

Paul Robaix is French filmmaker, a successful Hollywood director whose professional partnership with his wife Lucy has led to commercial triumph but a sense on his part that he has no autonomous directorial standing. Conceiving a dream to adapt Madame Butterfly in Japan, he leaves his wife behind and flies out to the Land of the Rising Sun. However she follows him and, after a joke in which she dresses as a Geisha, finds herself inadvertently cast as the lead in her husband’s production. She ‘becomes’ Japanese, and unsurprisingly manages to fool everyone around her, much to Paul’s increasing frustration as he struggles with thinking that his wife will visit the set or the premiere and impinge on his artistic individuality and acclaim.

A Paramount production with (yet another) traditional Japanese interior under the opening credits, the fact that the opening shot of My Geisha shows the sign marking the entrance to said studio’s lot suggests a self-reflexivity that is then carried over into the narrative. Robaix ventures to Japan and wants to bypass all those perceived exotic cliches in Western films and capture the ‘real’ country. At the same time he does not see the ‘reality’ of his lead, so taken is he with her apparent freshness as (he believes) a non-professional actress – his Geisha. Truth and illusion (noted by Donald Richie among others to be key themes in Japanese culture) are confused here, as to an extent are the film-with-the film and the actual film as the latter treats Robaix’s desires and achievements entirely seriously. However the idea that there is any reality here to be discovered is problematic. To this end, the extent to which the film explores, or even recognises, some of the complexities of its material is debatable. Certainly the apparent acclaim and success of Robaix’s Madame Butterfly does not fully convince given what we see of the film, which looks ‘different’ only insofar as it was shot on locations –  that in and of themselves bespeak little if any Japanese-ness. Was this the point? Is there a questioning of what is authentically Japanese? The film’s recognition, much less its exploration, of this is certainly vague. And the efficacy of this project vis-à-vis a desired verisimilitude does not seem to look behind orientalist cliches – indeed could well be argued to frustrate some of the imperatives behind the original opera in the first place – and though it raises the spectre of Orientalism and Japan it resolves in a tepid and unsurprising way.   

You Only Live Twice (1967)

After establishing the now-(over) familiar model of the globetrotting, touristic thriller with the series’ third entry Goldfinger (1963), it was perhaps inevitable that James Bond would pay a visit to the Land of the Rising Sun. Indeed, given there is a direct reference to Bond’s academic study of and achievements in Oriental languages, this is an especially apposite location and arena for what was ultimately to be a key film in the franchise in that the hitherto-teased identity of arch-villain and head of SPECTRE Blofeld is here revealed – from the depths of his lair beneath a Japanese volcano. Prior to this, Bond’s mission entails the typical broad espionage as he has to infiltrate a Japanese company to explore tensions relating to incidents that have taken place on US and Russian missions during which astronauts have been ambushed. This riffs openly on the then-ongoing Cold War space race, as SPECTRE plans to instigate a war between America and the Soviet Union, and the presence of Japan from this point of view is telling. It relates to Japan’s presence as a benign world power in an era of reconfigured (post-WWII) geo-politics; and it strategically positions newly minted Japanese economic and corporate might as a problematic entity. 

Elsewhere, notable landmarks are used (Kyoto’s Himeji castle is the comically improbable location for a ‘top secret’ ninja training academy) but to very little dramatic effect, though the idea of what may be represented by Japan at a time of globalisation and post-colonialisation (to which Bond himself was a rearguard reaction) is a nascent theme and tension throughout. Scripted by Roald Dahl (yes, THAT Roald Dahl!) after the author had seen films like the Shinobi series (1962-63) and been inspired by the figure of the ninja, You Only Live Twice is replete with death and rebirth. It begins with the eponymous hero’s apparent death – the point of which is never fully explained or explored – before later going on to detail his cosmetic conversion to a Japanese man so that he can blend in within an isolated community and be able to marry a local girl and survey and infiltrate the surrounding landscape. Beyond living, then, Bond only dies twice here, an interesting pre-emptive spin on the increasing indestructability of the eponymous protagonist, whilst his personal proclivities as regards his incessant womanizing are subject to some pastiche – even if at times in very poor taste – his horror of marrying a Japanese girl with, apparently, ‘a face like a pig’. This is ultimately a film that loses its way amidst the serious and the silly and superfluous, and it is no surprise that it marked an end, albeit temporary, for Connery as Bond (another death and rebirth) prior to the changes inherent in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969).

MacArthur (1977)

Perhaps owing to the Vietnam War Joseph Sargent’s MacArthur, starring Gregory Peck as the wartime general of the title, was a long time in development. However, following the success of a film about another notable WWII general – Patton (1970) – it was logical that a film about an even more famous and controversial wartime figure, General Douglas MacArthur, should be produced. Revered and reviled by different people at different times, the singular path and belligerent insistence on his own methods, even when opposing the US president, is here key to MacArthur’s success and infamy. His time in Japan as SCAP – Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers – is only one section of this film, in effect being bookended by his exploits in the Philippines in the Pacific conflict on the one hand and in Korea during the 1950s Korean War on the other. SCAP was a post he held throughout the US occupation of Japan after WWII, between 1945-1952, and as depicted here he was intent on routing out those who led an otherwise peaceable nation down the wrong road. Although not referenced in the film MacArthur during the occupation referred to Japan as akin to a child who needs only to educated and placed on the correct path in order to prosper (See Ian Buruma’s Inventing Japan for a detailed and concise look at this era of Japanese history). He is firm yet respectful with all concerned in the reconstruction of Japan (including Emperor Hirohito), with the ruins of the country depicted in more than one scene and forming a potent backdrop to ideas both of Allied power and of Japanese devastation, both of which are held in tenuous personification by MacArthur. At the same time the eponymous protagonist rides roughshod over those around him, and though he listens with a weary patience to others he appears tunnel visioned as to how his occupying forces should proceed in their project, the politics and practicalities of which he appears little concerned with. Indeed, they seem mere grist to the mill of the character’s ideological fervour and seeming desire for grander ambitions. 

Typically, then, the contradictions of MacArther’s actions and attitudes are writ large throughout this film. He repeatedly decries war yet appears to need it to bolster his political standing (including running for president in vain) and indeed his legacy, the posterity of his name. For example, he seems almost elated at the outbreak of the Korean conflict as it provides a last chance for an ‘old warrior’ to prove himself; and he doggedly follows a path that runs counter to any and seemingly all advice to the contrary. The fact that these paths are typically successful suggests that the warrior MacArthur is a more potent figure than the politician – how action is more pronounced than reflection. To this end there is also a repeated motif of representing MacArthur. Instructions from photographers on how best to frame him appear twice, whilst scenes depicting newsreels and discussions thereof sporadically pepper the narrative, underlining both the protagonist’s vainglory and the project of the film itself, one that perennially seems to be fretting about the imperative of creating a coherent image of a potentially incoherent figure. It is a tension reflective of Japan in the Western, especially the American, popular consciousness at the time: a little-understood enemy yet one that retained a general interest precisely for this reason, fascination born of fear. It is also once again illustrative of the gulf between facade and reality; and if one would stop short of describing MacArthur as in any way a Japanese film (either in style or narrative), then nonetheless this thematic preoccupation makes it a resonant vehicle for this particular subject.