AKA The New Road – Volume One: Akemi’s Part
Directed by Gosho Heinosuke (五所平之助)
Written by Gosho Heinosuke and Noda Kōgo (野田高梧)
Story by Kikuchi Hiroshi/Kan (菊池寛)
Cinematography by Ohara Jōji (小原譲治)
Music by Fukuda Yukihiko (福田幸彦) and Shōchiku Ōfuna Orchestra (松竹大船楽団)
Starring:
Tanaka Kinuyo (田中絹代), Kawasaki Hiroko (川崎弘子), Sano Shūji (佐野周二), Uehara Ken (上原謙), Saburi Shin (佐分利信), Saitō Tatsuo (斎藤達雄), Yoshikawa Mitsuko (吉川満子), Takamine Hideko (高峰秀子), Okamura Fumiko (岡村文子), Yamauchi Hikaru (山内光), Ōyama Kenji (大山健二), Ryū Chishū (笠智衆), Tani Reikō (谷麗光), Izumo Yaeko (出雲八重子), Wada Toyoko (和田登代子), Morikawa Masami (森川まさみ), Shinobu Setsuko (忍節子)
Synopsis:
The eldest daughter of a noble family is in love with an aviator while being courted by a fellow aristocrat she thinks is a dullard. This part is told from the perspective of Akemi.
Shortened review by Japanonfilm:
By far the best of Gosho’s pre-war movies to survive, The New Road also takes him into a realm far from the shomin-geki for which he was famous at the time. Set in the world of the genuinely wealthy and westernized, it is a complex and detailed examination of the conflict between the old ideas of the arranged marriage and the new ideas of marriage for love, with one of Kinuyo Tanaka’s finest performances in a long history of fine performances.
Akemi (Tanaka) and Utako (Hiroko Kawasaki) are sisters of marriageable age in the wealthy family of a retired government minister. Utako has fallen in love with Nogami (Shin Saburi), but he is hesitant about asking for permission to marry and anyway is off to Paris for two years to study painting. Akemi has been courted for more than three years by Aoki, a diplomat of whom her father approves, but she regularly rejects any idea of marriage with him, or of marriage of any kind. (Because Tanaka is so tiny, it takes a long time to realize that she is the elder sister.) Then Akemi meets Ippei (Suji Sano) and realizes she has fallen in love. He is a pilot from a distinguished military family whose mother refuses any wedding with Akemi’s family, which for some reason she thinks is inferior. Akemi discovers she is pregnant just as Ippei dies in a plane crash. Thus far, we have a very traditional women’s picture from almost any nation, and this ends Part I of what was originally issued as two separate movies.
The New Road is neither marriage for love nor marriage by arrangement, but marriage for understanding and compatibility that takes a long time to emerge. It is, in fact, what parents hope will occur in the arranged marriage, that as the couple that begins as strangers come to know each other, they will develop a deeper kind of love than romantic passion. Akemi finds that by accident, but she fears that her sister will always be unhappy, if only because she knows Nogami is back in Japan.
During their first year or so of marriage, Akemi and Ryoto have no sex.
He sets up a house for her and the baby. Everyday, he comes home from work, acts the father by changing clothes, playing with the baby, and having dinner, then as night comes changes back into his suit and goes to his family home to sleep. The neighbors think she is his mistress, not his wife. Eventually, Ryoto’s mother comes to see her and as soon as she sees the baby, the Grandmother hormones kick in. She falls immediately in love with the baby and insists that they move into the family home, where Akemi still sleeps in Ippei’s old room but where Grandmother can play with the baby all day.
Throughout all this, Tanaka is absolutely radiant. I can think of no other word to describe her. As the thoroughly modern young woman, she is sleek and slim as a fashion model and those mid thirties fashions, complete with cute little tilted hats, never looked better on anyone in Hollywood. But she has an inner glow that comes through even in the faded prints available.
Tanaka stays in kimono when she and Ryoto are play-acting the married couple, our signal that she is moving toward a more traditional life than before, even though she keeps saying she will find a job and support herself and the baby. To avoid a fight, Mother agrees to tell Father, after which his only outburst is to tear up Akemi’s photos of Ippei, done off-screen. Then, to avoid further anger, Akemi and Father express their feelings through letters to each other, delivered and read aloud by Utako.
Thus the emotional outbursts such a situation would have led to in an American version are completely suppressed in the Japanese approach to the story.
The camera work lacks the fluency of Gosho’s great fifties movies, but then he is interested in character, not beauty. Like those fifties movies, it is a thoughtful movie, a term we don’t often use when talking about movies anywhere, a sincere and deep examination of marriage itself.
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCzyWAU12wA
3 comments
I wondered why Tanaka Kinuyo was one of my mother's favorite actress. She wanted to see the old movies from when she was young in the 1930s. There were theaters that played Japanese movies back in those days. During WW2 Japanese movies were banned in the US.
You're so nice n99 to share so many gems with us 🌏, arrigato gozaimashta 🥰 from France
Arigato 99-kun