#Ranko Hanai

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Films Watched in 2023: 120. 姿三四郎/Sanshiro Sugata (1943) - Dir. Akira Kurosawa

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Now watching:

[thekimonogallery]

Yamada Isuzu in "Fighting Tobi", 1939, with Ranko Hanai

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Masayuki Mori in Love Letter (Kinuyo Tanaka, 1953)

Cast: Masayuki Mori, Juzo Dosan, Yoshiko Kuga, Jukichi Uno, Kyoko Kagawa, Shizue Natsukawa, Kinuyo Tanaka, Chieko Seki, Ranko Hanai, Chieko Nakakita, Keisuke Kinoshita. Screenplay: Keisuke Kinoshita, based on a novel by Fumio Niwa. Cinematography: Hiroshi Suzuki. Art direction: Seigo Shindo. Film editing: Toshio Goto. Music: Ichiro Saito. 

[may8chan]

Sanshiro Sugata - Akira Kurosawa 1943

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Ginza Cosmetics / Ginza keshō (1951, Mikio Naruse)

銀座化粧　（成瀬巳喜男）

12/6/20

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Sanshiro Sugata | Akira Kurosawa | 1943

Yoshio Kosugi, Susumu Fujita, Ranko Hanai, et al.

[imasallstars]

THE IDOLM@STER CINDERELLA GIRLS 7thLIVE TOUR Special 3chord♪

Further information regarding the「THE IDOLM@STER CINDERELLA GIRLS 7thLIVE TOUR Special 3chord♪」7th Live has been announced! The cast list for Glowing Rock! occurring in Kyocera Dome on the 15th and 16th of February 2020 has been released!

Ayaka Ohashi ( Uzuki Shimamura ), Ayaka Asai ( Mirei Hayasaka ), Mayumi Kaneko ( Rina Fujimoto ), Kaoru Sakura ( Chitose Kurosaki ), Risa Sekiguchi ( Chiyo Shirayuki ), Natsumi Takamori ( Miku Maekawa ), Ricca Tachibana ( Sae Kobayakawa ), Atsumi Tanezaki ( Kyoko Igarashi ), Minami Tsuda ( Miho Kohinata ), Hiyori Nitta ( Karin Domyoji ), Yui Makino ( Mayu Sakuma ), Marie Miyake ( Nana Abe )

Ayaka Fukuhara ( Rin Shibuya ), Shiki Aoki ( Asuka Ninomiya ), Ruriko Aoki ( Riina Tada ), Maaya Uchida ( Ranko Kanzaki ), Chiyo Ousaki ( Koume Shirasaka ), Misa Kayama ( Tamami Wakiyama ), Amina Sato ( Arisu Tachibana ), Aya Suzaki ( Minami Nitta ), Haruka Chisuga ( Ryo Matsunaga ), Nao Touyama ( Mizuki Kawashima ), Mai Fuchigami ( Karen Hojo ), Eriko Matsui ( Nao Kamiya ), Tomo Muranaka ( Aki Yamato ), Ru Thing ( Syuko Shiomi ), Mina Nakazawa ( Yukimi Sajo )

Sayuri Hara ( Mio Honda ), Masumi Tazawa ( Ayame Hamaguchi ), Miharu Hanai ( Tomoe Murakami ), Yuko Hara ( Takumi Mukai ), Satsumi Matsuda ( Syoko Hoshi ), Seena Hoshiki ( Riamu Yumemi )

more information will be announced when released.

[chikuwaq]

Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo / 山中貞雄 - 丹下左膳餘話 百萬兩の壺(1935) (by eiganihon)

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Japanese actress Ranko Hanai , early 1930s

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Japanese actress Ranko Hanai, 1930s

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Japanese actress Ranko Hanai, late 1930s

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Ryunosuke Tsukigata and Susumu Fujita in Sanshiro Sugata (Akira Kurosawa, 1943) Cast: Susumu Fujita, Denjiro Okochi, Yukiko Todoroki, Ryunosuke Tsukigata, Takashi Shimura, Ranko Hanai, Sugisaki Aoyama, Ichiro Sugai, Yoshio Kusugi, Kokuten Kodo. Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa, based on a novel by Tsuneo Tomita. Cinematography: Akira Mimura. Art direction: Masao Tozuka. Film editing: Toshio Goto, Akira Kurosawa. Music: Seiichi Suzuki. You know the plot: A talented, cocky young newcomer takes on the old pros and gets his ass kicked, but he learns self-discipline and becomes a winner. You've seen it played out with young doctors, lawyers, musicians -- it's even the plot of Wagner's Die Meistersinger -- and others challenging the established traditions. But mostly it's the plot for what seems to be about half of the sports movies ever made, including Akira Kurosawa's first feature, Sanshiro Sugata. It's also a film about the conflict between rival martial arts disciplines, jujitsu and judo, but fortunately you don't need to know much about the nature of the conflict to follow the film. From what I gather from reading the Wikipedia entry on judo, the founder of that discipline, Jigoro Kano, wanted to give jujitsu a philosophical underpinning that would put an emphasis on self-improvement for the betterment of society, and he called it judo because "do," like the Chinese "tao," means road or path. Kano's renaming was meant to shift the emphasis from physical skill to spiritual purpose. In Kurosawa's film, young Sanshiro (Susumu Fujita) comes to town wanting to find someone to teach him jujitsu, and signs up with a teacher who accepts a challenge from the judo master Shogoro Yano (Denjiro Okochi) -- the name is an obvious twist on "Jigoro Kano." Sanshiro watches as not only the teacher but all of the other members of his dojo are defeated -- in fact, tossed into the river -- by Yano. Whereupon Sanshiro becomes a follower of Yano's, but has to undergo some defeats and a cold night spent in a muddy pond before he gets the idea of what judo is all about. The film was not a big hit with the wartime Japanese censors, who wanted more aggression and less philosophy in their movies, so 17 minutes were cut from it, never to be seen again. In the currently available print, the missing material is summarized on title cards, but what's left is more than enough to show that Kurosawa arrived on the scene as a full-blown master director. His camera direction is superb, and he knows how to tell a story visually. For example, when Sanshiro joins up with Yano, he kicks off his geta, his wooden clogs, so he can pull Yano's rickshaw more efficiently. Kurosawa cuts to a passage-of-time montage in which we see one of the abandoned geta lying in the road, then in a mud puddle, covered with snow, then tossed aside as spring comes. The film's crucial scene is a showdown between Sanshiro and his jujitsu rival, Higaki (Ryunosuke Tsukigata),  in a field of tall grasses, swept by wind with rushing clouds overhead; it's a spectacular effect, even if the battle turns out to be a bit anticlimactic. However much the censors may have disliked it, audiences were enthusiastic enough that Kurosawa was persuaded to make a sequel.

Sanshiro Sugata, Part Two (Akira Kurosawa, 1945) 

Cast:  Susumu Fujita, Denjiro Okochi, Ryunosuke Tsukigata, Akitake Kono, Yukiko Todoroki, Soji Kiyokawa, Masayuki Mori, Kokuten Kodo, Osman Yusuf, Roy James. Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa, based on a novel by Tsuneo Tomita. Cinematography: Takeo Ito. Production design: Kazuo Kubo. Film editing: Akira Kurosawa. Music: Seiichi Suzuki. 

Patched together from what aging film stock could be gathered during the end-of-war shortages in Japan, and interrupted during its filming by bombing raids, Sanshiro Sugata, Part Two was a labor imposed on the writer-director by the studio, Toho, and Kurosawa's lack of enthusiasm for the project shows. The story is routine: Sanshiro has helped judo triumph over jujitsu as the primary Japanese martial art, but he has gone into retreat for several years, honing his spirituality. But one day he comes across an American sailor (Osman Yusuf) beating up a rickshaw driver -- a job he once took on himself -- and thrashes the bully. This brings him to the attention of a promoter who wants to stage a fight between the judo master and an American boxer named William Lister (Roy James). Eventually, after another fighter is beaten to a pulp by Lister, Sanshiro gives in and thrashes Lister, giving the prize money to the fighter who had been beaten. Meanwhile, his old opponent, Gennosuke Higaki (Ryunosuke Tsukigata), whom he defeated at the end of the first film, warns him that his brothers, Tesshin (also Tsukigata) and Genzaburo Higaki (Akitake Kono), are out to revenge themselves for Gennosuke's defeat. They are masters of karate, which originated on Okinawa and was just making its way into mainland Japan at the time when the film is set, the late 19th century. Gennosuke gives Sanshiro a scroll depicting the basics of karate to help him in the eventual fight with the brothers. Naturally, the film concludes with a fight between Sanshiro and Tesshin -- the other brother is recovering from an epileptic seizure -- that takes place in the snow, an echo of the fight in the original film with Gennosuke in a windswept field of tall grasses. This battle is the only part of the film that shows much commitment on the part of Kurosawa, who insisted that the principals fight barefoot in the snow, not without many complaints from the actors. Unfortunately, the poor film stock, unable to provide shades of gray, turns much of this fight into a battle of silhouetted figures. Much has been made of the propaganda in the film, particularly the portrayal of the hapless American sailor and boxer, but Kurosawa, no lover of the imperial regime, manages to shift the film's emphasis to the fearsomely wild Higaki brothers. 

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Setsuko Hara and Ken Uehara in Repast (Mikio Naruse, 1951) Cast: Setsuko Hara, Ken Uehara, Yukiko Shimazaki, Yoko Sugi, Akiko Kazami, Haruko Sugimura, Ranko Hanai, Hiroshi Nihon'yanagi, Keiju Kobayashi. Screenplay: Toshiro Ide, Sumie Tanaka, Yasunari Kawabata, based on a novel by Fumiko Hayashi. Cinematography: Masao Tamai. Art direction: Satoru Chuko. Music: Fumio Hayasaka. Repast is one of those beautifully layered films by Mikio Naruse that defy simplistic judgments about the characters. Superficially, it's a story about a failing marriage that tempts you to take sides: Michiyo (Setsuko Hara) and Hatsunosuke (Ken Uehara) have been married long enough that the tenderness has rubbed off of the relationship, and they have no children to provide a distraction from the routine of living together. She suffers the tedium and toil of keeping house, and he comes home from his salaryman's job in an office tired and frustrated. They are scraping by financially, and live in a less than desirable neighborhood. Initially the focus seems to be on the woman's lot -- she's the one we see doing all the lonely work of managing the house, whereas he at least has the opportunity to get out and fraternize with his fellow office workers. And when his lively young niece, Satoko (Yukiko Shimazaki), comes to visit -- actually to escape from family pressure to settle down and get married -- Michiyo finds herself slaving for both her husband and his niece. Eventually, things come to a head and Michiyo goes to Tokyo, taking Satoko back to her parents and leaving Hatsunosuke to fend for himself, which he doesn't do a particularly good job of. But Naruse is careful to let us see his side of things as well, and when Michiyo returns to him -- after making a few steps toward finding a job and leaving him permanently -- it's possible to see this as not a defeat for her so much as an acknowledgement that some remnants of their original affection remain and that she has decided to try to build a more equitable relationship on them. The performances of Setsuko Hara and Ken Uehara, who starred in several other films for Naruse, have that lived-in quality necessary for such a muted and ambivalent conclusion.

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Kinuyo Tanaka in Ginza Cosmetics (Mikio Naruse, 1951)

Cast: Kinuyo Tanaka, Ranko Hanai, Yuji Hori, Kyoko Kagawa, Eijiro Yanagi, Eijiro Tono, Yoshihiro Nishikubo, Haruo Tanaka. Screenplay: Matsuo Kishi, based on a novel by Tomoichiro Inoue. Cinematography: Akira Mimura. Art direction: Takashi Kono. Film editing: Hidetoshi Kasama. Music: Seiichi Suzuki. 

I'm not entirely sure what the title, Ginza Cosmetics, means. But I think it has something to do with putting on a good face when things are troubled inside. That applies to the protagonist, Yukiko (the great Kinuyo Tanaka), a bar hostess struggling to raise her young son, Haruo (Yoshihiro Nishikubo), and at the same time trying to keep the bar she works in from going out of business. But it also applies to the Ginza itself, the bustling shopping and entertainment district of Tokyo. At one point, Yukiko is showing a young man from the country around the city, and points out how much of the area he finds oppressively noisy and crowded had been leveled during the war: The Ginza itself has put on a new face, hiding its scars. Mikio Naruse's film is an account of several days in Yukiko's life, a character study without melodrama. She has a few moments of crisis: Haruo, who is usually a quiet and studious child who looks after himself (with the aid of a few neighbors) while Yukiko goes to work, once wanders off for a few hours, to her distress. And she is almost raped by an old acquaintance whom she goes to in search of money to help the bar's owner from having to sell it. There's also some tension among the women who work in the bar when the marriageable young man from the country comes to visit one of them. At the end, life goes on without the usual narrative resolution, and if you're like me you feel you've had a privileged glimpse into another world and another life. 

[thekimonogallery]

An image of  "Ranko Hanai" from the magazine article of the May special magazine "Movie No Tomo" published in 1935 . Ranko Hanai (1918-1961) was born in Osaka and first staged as a child in 1923 (Taisho 12) .In 1928 (Showa 3) she joined Kamo Matsutakeshita and made a movie debut in the name of Reiko Shimizu, 1931 (Showa 6).