#Kumeko Urabe

[byneddiedingo]

Twenty-Four Eyes (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1954)

Cast: Hideko Takamine, Chishu Ryu, Takahiro Tamura, Yumeji Tsukioka, Toshiko Kobayashi, Toshio Takahara, Shizue Natsukawa, Kumeko Urabe. Screenplay: Keisuke Kinoshita, based on a novel by Sakae Tsuboi. Cinematography: Hiroshi Kusuda. Art direction: Kimihiko Nakamura. Film editing: Yoshi Sugihara. Music: Chuji Kinoshita.

One of the most unabashedly sentimental movies you'll ever see, Twenty-Four Eyes may also be one of the most effective anti-war movies, without presenting bloody scenes of people being killed and maimed. Hideko Takamine plays Oishi, a young teacher who begins her career in 1928 on Shodo Island in the Inland Sea of Japan, teaching a first-grade class of 12 -- six boys and six girls -- the 24 eyes of the film's title. We follow her life, and through her point of view the lives (and some deaths) of her first pupils, for the next 18 years, as the world and the war encroach upon a peaceful, pastoral setting. Where Kinoshita's Morning for the Osone Family (1946) was claustrophobic in its presentation of life during wartime, Twenty-Four Eyes shows how the entrapment of people by war can occur in a place where there are no visible signs of the conflict. The natural setting remains undisturbed. No planes fly overhead, no bombs are dropped on the village, but the menace of war threatens the minds and hearts of the most vulnerable: the children Oishi teaches. The most chilling scenes are the ones in which young men are sent off to the war, as flag-waving crowds sing bloodthirsty tributes to the glory of dying in battle for their country. Kinoshita and cinematographer Hiroshi Kusuda reinforce the bitter irony by their restraint. They don't darken the atmosphere: It's the same lovely natural setting. Only the human beings in it have changed. I have to admit to feeling the movie is overlong, and that Kinoshita ladles on the pathos a bit too heavily. The cast weeps floods of tears, and the soundtrack features not only the Japanese folk songs that the children learn but also some old-fashioned Western parlor songs: "Annie Laurie," "The Last Rose of Summer," "Home, Sweet Home," "Auld Lang Syne," and, most curiously, "What a Friend We Have in Jesus."  But repress the cynic or the realist, and you may find it moving, too.

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Urabe Kumeko 浦辺粂子 (1902-1989) - Japan - 1925

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

Inazuma (Mikio Naruse, 1952)

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Somewhere Beneath the Wide Sky / Kono hiroi sora no dokoka ni (1954, Masaki Kobayashi)

この広い空のどこかに　（小林正樹）

1/10/22

[earlysummer1951]

EARLY SPRING ‘早春, Sōshun’ (1956) dir. Yasujirō Ozu

[thekimonogallery]

Urabe Kumeko (1902-1989), likely late 1920s

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“Rue de la Honte” de Kenji Mizoguchi (1956) - d'après le roman éponyme de Yoshiko Shibaki - avec Ayako Wakao, Machiko Kyō, Aiko Mimasu, Michiyo Kogure, Hiroko Machida, Kumeko Urabe et Yasuko Kawakami, juillet 2021.

[jailhouse41]

Lobby card for Kyofu No Taiketsu (恐怖の対決), 1958, directed by Tsururo Iwama (岩間鶴夫) and starring Kumeko Urabe (浦辺粂子) and Minoru Oki (大木実).

[byneddiedingo]

Yosuke Irie and Aiko Mimasu in Street of Shame (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1956) Cast: Machiko Kyo, Ayako Wakao, Michiyo Kogure, Aiko Mimasu, Hiroko Machida, Kenji Sugawara, Kumeko Urabe, Yosuke Irie, Sadako Sawamura, Eitaro Shindo, Yasuko Kawakami. Screenplay: Masahige Narusawa, based on a novel by Yoshiko Shibaki. Cinematography: Kazuo Miyagawa. Production design: Hisao Ichikawa, Hiroshi Mizutani. Film editing: Kanji Suganuma. Music: Toshiro Mayuzumi. In his last film, Kenji Mizoguchi returned to one of his most frequent settings, the world of prostitution. The English-language title, Street of Shame, is slightly more exploitative than the Japanese, Akasen Chitai, which means "red-light district," although even that one is inevitably freighted with sensationalism. But Mizoguchi is hardly shaming the women we would call today, in a not entirely successful attempt at neutralizing the stigma, "sex workers." He wants us to understand who they are and why they pursue their occupation. He focuses on five women in the brothel known as "Dreamland," each of whom has dreams of her own, even if the most fundamental dream is that of survival in a world of exploitation and corruption. In the end, some of them triumph, some are crushed, and some stoically continue in a routine they can't rise above. Mizoguchi punctuates their stories with news of the ongoing debate in the Japanese parliament over the abolition of prostitution, which actually took effect after the film was released. At the film's end, we see a new young woman, fresh from the country, timidly taking her place in Dreamland, calling out in a weak and nervous voice for the clients who prowl the street. It's a heartbreaking moment, particularly since she has been given the job as a replacement for one of the women who suffered a nervous breakdown after being rejected by her son, ashamed of his mother's work. But Mizoguchi is no sentimentalist, and Street of Shame is not a conventional "message movie." Instead, it's a richly ironic and keen-eyed look at a fact of life: Sexual desire is universal, and as long as it exists, there will be those who take advantage of it.

[earlysummer1951]

EARLY SPRING ‘早春, Sōshun’ (1956) dir. Yasujirō Ozu

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Lightning - Mikio Naruse - 1952

Kumeko Urabe, Chieko Murata, Mitsuko Miura

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Masami Taura and Akira Ishihama in Somewhere Beneath the Wide Sky (Masaki Kobayashi, 1954) Cast: Keiji Sada, Yoshiko Kuga, Hideko Takamine, Akira Ishihama, Minoru Oki, Toshiko Kobayashi, Masami Taura, Kumeko Urabe, Chieko Nakakita,  Shin'ichi Himori, Ryohei Uchida. Screenplay: Yoshiko Kusuda. Cinematography: Toshiyasu Morita. Art direction: Kazue Hirataka. Film editing: Yoshi Sugihara. Music: Chuji Kinoshita, Somewhere Beneath the Wide Sky* is a reminder that Masaki Kobayashi began his career as an assistant to Keisuke Kinoshita. It not only employed Kinoshita's brother Chuji as composer of the score, along with the director's usual film editor, Yoshi Sugihara, it also displays one of Kinoshita's usual domestic drama themes: the conflict of tradition and modernity as several generations of a family try to work out a way of living together in postwar Japan. And it shares some of Kinoshita's sentimentality in the developments of its plot. In tone and theme, Somewhere Beneath the Wide Sky could not be more different from the film Kobayashi made just before it: the harsh, fierce The Thick-Walled Room, which was made in 1953 but which the studio withheld from release until 1956. For that matter, it's not much like Kobayashi's bleak slum drama Black River (1956) or his unsparing three-part antiwar epic The Human Condition (1959-1961). Kobayashi would find his way out of the genteel trap that Somewhere Beneath the Wide Sky represents. Which is not to say that he didn't make a pleasant, thoroughly enjoyable film in which everyone seems to find themselves on the right path by the time the plot works itself out. Ryochi (Keiji Sada) and Hiroko (Yoshiko Kuga), who run the family liquor store, have married for love, which alienates his stepmother, who would have preferred an arranged marriage. Abetted by Ryochi's depressed, self-loathing sister, Yasuko (Hideko Takamine),  the stepmother constantly finds fault with Hiroko. Eventually, however, everyone makes peace, thanks in large part to Ryochi's steadfast good nature in defense of his wife and to Yasuko's unexpectedly finding love and a new purpose in life. The feel-good elements of the film are not quite so convincing as the harsher parts, but the performances -- especially that of Takamine in a cast-against-type role -- are persuasive. *The Criterion Channel title is a translation of the Japanese title Kono hiroi sora no dokoka ni. IMDb gives it as Somewhere Under the Broad Sky, and I've also seen it referred to as Somewhere Beneath the Vast Heavens.

[byneddiedingo]

Ryo Ikebe and Keiko Kishi in Early Spring (Yasujiro Ozu, 1958)

Cast: Chikage Iwashima, Ryo Ikebe, Teiji Takahashi, Keiko Kishi, Chishu Ryu, So Yamamura, Takako Fujima, Masami Taura, Haruko Sugimura, Kumeko Urabe, Kuniko Miyake, Eijiro Tono. Screenplay: Kogo Noda, Yasujiro Ozu. Cinematography: Yuharu Atsuta. Production design: Tatsuo Hamada. Film editing: Yoshiyasu Hamamura. Music: Takanobu Saito.

Early Spring is a film pregnant with significant themes: the dreariness of corporate office work, the nostalgia for wartime adventure and camaraderie, the tension between tradition and modernization, but none them are allowed to overwhelm the simple human story it tells. Shoji Sugiyama (Ryo Ikebe), a "salaryman" for a fire-brick manufacturing company, and his wife, Masako (Chikage Awashima), are have grown apart after the death of a child: He throws himself into his work, into concern over the illness of a friend, into after-hours drinking with old war buddies, and finally into a brief affair with a young woman (Keiko Kishi) he has met on the commuter train. She's called "Goldfish" because of her large eyes, and she's a rather giddy and flirtatious woman who likes to pal around with the guys. After Shoji and Goldfish are seen together on a weekend hike put together by some of their co-workers -- Masako, who is reserved and rather traditional in manner, declined to accompany him -- gossip begins to spread. Eventually it comes back to Masako, and after several incidents -- he spends the night with Goldfish and claims he was with his sick friend, he forgets to observe the anniversary of the death of their son, and he brings home two very drunk war buddies -- she leaves him. Meanwhile, Shoji has been offered a transfer to a manufacturing branch of his company in a distant city where he will have to spend three years in the hope that he can return to Tokyo and a promotion. He accepts the offer, and at the end Masako joins him, thinking they can work things out. At the conclusion they watch a train go by and reflect that Tokyo -- as symbolic for them as Moscow is for Chekhov's three sisters -- is only three hours away. Characteristically, Ozu and co-screenwriter Kogo Noda tell this story in a strictly linear fashion. Another director might have been tempted to insert expository flashbacks to, for example, the death of the child. But by letting the story play out as it happens -- beginning with a "typical" day in the life of the Sugiyamas -- Ozu builds a special kind of intimacy with his characters, as we gather the clues to their behavior and sometimes their relationships along the way. This intimacy is reinforced by Ozu's signature low-angle camera, in which we build our acquaintance with the characters from the ground up, as it were.