Japan's Everywoman
By
Ed Garea
She
was one of Japan’s most beloved actresses, known for her subtle
portrayals of women torn between family and their own desires, a sort
of Everywoman for a Japan rising from the old feudal age into the
modern world.
Best
known for her films with director Yasuhiro Ozu, it seems at times as
if she worked for no one else, yet her filmography shows she made
more than 100 films during her long career, a career that might have
been even longer were it not for her abrupt retirement at the age of
46.
Setsuko
Hara, known among filmgoers in Japan as “the Eternal Virgin” (due
to the fact she never married) and “the Japanese Garbo,” died on
September 5 in Kamakura, near Tokyo, from pneumonia at the age of 95.
The
Kyodo News Agency announced her death on November 25, stating that
family members had waited until then, as per her last wishes to make
the news of her death public.
Born
Masae Aida in Yokohama on June 17, 1920, Hara dropped out of high
school at age 15 with the encouragement of her brother-in-law,
director Hisatora Kumagai, who promised her that she could find
meaningful work at Nikkatsu Studios.
She
made her movie debut in 1935 in director Tetsu Taguchi’s Tamerau
nakare wakodo yo (Do Not Hesitate, Young Folks) as
Osetsu, but it was her role in Arnold Fanck’s (who first made Leni
Riefenstahl a star) German-Japanese production of Atarashiki
Tsuchi (The New
Earth) that she achieved popularity, playing a pure-hearted
Japanese maiden who, after being rejected by her fiancé,
unsuccessfully attempts to throw herself into an active volcano.
Now
established in the public as the epitome of the Japanese woman in
crisis, she was cast in a number of wartime propaganda films as the
pathetic victim. In films such as The Suicide Troops of the
Watchtower (1942) and Wakai Sensei (1942),
she perfected the role of the pathetic victim.
In
1946, she was cast in Akira Kurosawa’s first postwar film, No
Regrets for Our Youth, as Yukie Yagihara, the privileged daughter
of a leftist university professor. Two suitors, both students of her
father, romantically pursue her. Things turn darker when she decides
to marry Noge (Susumu Fujita), the more radical of the two. They are
arrested in 1941 for treason (as part of the antiwar protest) and
imprisoned. After her release, and Noge’s execution, Yukie exiles
herself to the peasant village where Noge grew up. There she devotes
herself to Noge’s elderly parents, helping them bring in the rice
crop, and also aiding their neighbors, who has previously castigated
the family for producing a traitor.
Two
other immediate postwar films cast her in a new role, that of the
“new “ Japanese woman. She is optimistic, looking forward to a
brighter future, cultured, yet with an eye of cynicism towards the
men in her life. In Kimisaburo Yoshimura’s A Ball at the
Anjo House (1947), she plays the daughter of a cultured
family that was ruined by the war and must give up its mansion and
find a new way to live. In Keisuke Kinoshita’s Here’s to
the Girls (1949), Hara is the daughter of a formerly rich
aristocratic family who is being pawned off as the wife to an uncouth
factory owner.
It
was also in this year that Hara was cast in a film titled Late
Spring. Its director was Yasujiro Ozu, a director who began his
career in the ‘20s as an imitator of the Hollywood style (many of
his films were simply uncredited remakes of Hollywood product). He
refined his style and technique during the ‘30s, and although being
conscripted into the Japanese army and fighting in China, managed to
make his way into the Japanese film and propaganda unit, planning
films he had no intention on finishing and assisting with the
technical duties on a few of the other productions.
During
the postwar period, he put his wartime plans into action, developing
a limited style based partially on his vision and partially on the
dearth of funds available to him. Chained by his studio to plots
already owned and given a stock company of actors (including
Chishu Ryu, Chieko Higashiyama and
Haruko Sugimura) with which to work, Ozu
nevertheless managed to turn out films that were not only highly
praised at the time, but which also became enduring classics. Working
for him could be a trial in itself. A
perfectionist who had to get every scene just right, it was not
unusual for the director to shoot 30 to 40 takes of a long,
dialogue-heavy scene, which placed his stars under more than
normal pressure. Added to this was his preference for shooting his
films during Tokyo’s hot, humid summers made working for him an
even more daunting task. Yet the method bore fruit, for Late
Spring was one such film, and Ozu made a megastar out of
Hara by developing a new character for her. She became the modern
woman with a string filial devotion, a character she would play in
many a later Ozu production.
In Late
Spring, she plays Noriko, a modern woman conflicted
between her own needs and that of caring for her widowed father
(played by Chishu Ryu, with whom she would frequently work in later
films). On one hand, Noriko has the pressures of society, which tells
her to marry and start a family; in the other, there’s the need to
care for her father, who has become a sort of security blanket for
her. Noriko would prefer the security provided by caring for her
father, but it is apparent to everyone, especially to her father,
that she must leave the nest and marry.
In
their next collaboration, Early Summer (1951), Hara
is once again an adult single woman – also named Noriko – living
with her family and pressured to choose a husband. This time,
however, her choice brings consequences, as the income lost by her
departure leaves the family unable to afford the rent on their house.
Nonetheless, everyone on the family campaigns to arrange a marriage,
knowing that remaining single is a social death knell. She surprises
her family in the end when she rejects their choice to marry a
widower with a child and move to a village in the far north.
It
as during this time that Hara began to form her enduring screen
presence as a modern young woman whose outward good manners conceal a
strong inner strength that helps her along pathways often strewn with
difficult outcomes, no matter what the choice. It was also during
this period that she worked with director Mikio Naruse, who helped
her further develop and refine this persona, as Naruse was known for
his complex female leads.
For
his part, Ozu fully appreciated Hara’s versatility and
talent: “Every Japanese actor can play the role of a soldier,
and every Japanese actress can play the role of a prostitute to some
extent,” he said of her in an interview. “However, it is rare to
find an actress who can play the role of a daughter from a good
family.”
Both
star and director peaked professionally in the 1953 drama Tokyo
Story, which has become a highly-ranked regular on film critics’
lists of the greatest movies. As with Ozu films in general, the plot
is superficially simple. However, as the film rolls on we find that
what seems basic at first is only leading to a host of
psychologically complex situations that lie just beneath the quiet
surface.
Tokyo
Story begins simply enough: an elderly couple is traveling
to Tokyo to visit their children. But as the film progresses, we see
that not only are the children too busy to receive them properly, but
that they have also become a burden to their children. The only one
in the family who shows them the tenderness and devotion to which
they are entitled is Noriko (Hara), their daughter-in-law whose
husband was killed in the war. Although Noriko was bullied by the
eldest sister to take the elderly couple off her
hands for a day, she nonetheless takes a day off from work to take
them sightseeing and manages to scrounge up a good dinner at her
modest flat, borrowing sake from her neighbor. She and the couple are
the only sympathetic characters throughout the entire film.
There
is a brilliantly moving scene at the end after the mother has passed
away. Noriko is sitting at the family home with the youngest
daughter, Kyoko (Kyoko Kagawa), who is sharply criticizing her
siblings for their lack of devotion and respect. She turns to Noriko
and asks, “Isn’t life disappointing?” To which Noriko tersely
responds, “Yes. It is.”
Her
work with director Naruse includes an extraordinary film
titled Repast (1951) in which she is the wife of an
Osaka stockbroker and discovers to her horror that he is sexually
involved with his niece. She leaves him and returns to Tokyo, where
she grew up, only to find it has become an alien and traumatized
place. In 1954, she and Naruse made The Sound of the
Mountain, based on Nobel Laureate Yasunari Kawabata’s acclaimed
novel.
By
this time, Hara’s character seemed to be set in stone, although
there were some exceptions, such as Kurosawa’s adaptation of
Dostoevsky’s The Idiot (1951). Here she went
radically against type as the love interest of the title character
and an aristocrat played by Toshiro Mifune. Although her performance
was excellent, playing the part of a sexual temptress with a natural
coolness, the film was not well received by both critics and the
public, and Hara returned to the characters audiences expected her to
play.
Yet
there was room to maneuver. In Ozu’s 1957 drama, Tokyo
Twilight (his last black-and-white film), she was a proud
young woman who summons the courage to leave her abusive and
alcoholic husband, an option unthinkable to the typical Japanese
wife, although in the end she returns resolved to make the marriage
work.
In
her last two films with Ozu, Late Autumn (1960) and
the End of Summer (1961), Hara inverted her
character from Late Spring and Early Summer.
In Late Autumn, she is now the widowed parent of a grown
daughter who does not to leave her to get married and start a family.
But, as the parent, she knows that her daughter has to live her own
life, despite the situation, and summoning considerable
self-sacrifice, insists on her daughter leaving the nest.
In The
End of Summer (1961), Hara reverses her role in Tokyo
Story as the widowed daughter-in-law. Although older, she
contemplates remarriage, with her family attempting to decide to whom
she will be betrothed. She, however, insists on the right to choose
her own partner, and the battle between desires and devotions rages
on.
Her
last role was as Riku in Hiroshi
Inagaki’s 1962 actioner, Chushingura (47
Samurai), a retelling of the classic
story of the 47 ronin, 18th-century samurai bent on avenging their
slain leader.
It’s
said that Ozu’s death from cancer in 1963 was a major factor in
Hara’s sudden retirement. She went on record as saying that she did
not enjoy acting and only did so to support her large, extended
family. She moved to a small house
in Kamakura (ironically where Ozu lived and where so many of his
films were set), and was never seen again in public.
Any
and all attempts to lure back into the spotlight were coldly
rebuffed. A relative would turn away any reporter who visited in
hopes of an interview with a terse, “She’s
here and in good health,” and “She doesn’t give any
interviews.” In 1992, a reporter with Yomiuri
Shimbun actually managed a
brief telephone conversation with the reclusive star. She told him,
“I was not the only star shining, back then, everyone was shining.”
When
a documentary on Ozu was made, there was some thought she would show
up at the premiere, but as happened at his funeral, she declined to
attend.
When
Setsuko Hara retired, to many Japanese fans, it was as if they had
part of their souls ripped away. She meant that much. I feel the same
way; she was an extraordinary actress and personality. But to
paraphrase Bogart, “We’ll always have Tokyo Story.”
A very interesting biography
ReplyDeleteThank you, Mark.
DeleteEd, who wrote this, did extensive research on Hara as she was a very private person after leaving cinema more than 50 years ago.
Hi, You might be interested in a book entitled "Noriko Smiling" by Adam Mars Jones, published by nottinghilleditions.com in 2011. A long essay, 239 small pages, on Late Spring. Regards, John Lelliott.
ReplyDelete