Name: Yukinojô henge: Kaiketsu-hen
Genre: Drama
Released: 1936-01-15
Duration: 1 h 51 min
Cast: Kazuo Hasegawa, Tokusaburō Arashi, Kokuten Kōdō

Director Teinosuke Kinugasa's extraordinary 1936 YUKINOKO HENGE/ An ACTOR'S REVENGE is legendary, largely through the 'sixties remake where star Kazuo Hasagawa repeats his lead character thirty years later. The original is however hardly ever seen in English language markets. This is partly because regretably the three feature-length-part film now only survives as a single 97 minute condensation. Though near incomprehensible, this presumably-highlights-edition is filled with extraordinary scenes, like the opening where Hasagawa's onnagata female impersonator's palanquin is diverted in the darkness by assassins advancing on it with samurai swords, while the delicate passenger is unfazed and, in a action sequence created in the editing, dIspatches the footpads - a scene more convincing than the speeded up kendo fight shown later.

Plot has Hasagawa as the child of a couple driven to suicide by the collusion of a team of Edo notables. Now grown and bent on revenge, he has become a Kabuki star while simultaneously mastering sword skills. The lead is just about plausibly desirable to all the film's women, including his archenemy's daughter. The actor also appears as a rooftop scaling thief. The two characters have a split-screen conversation at one point.

The action keeps on switching between a stage performance and the events it dramatises, complete with Hasegawa burning the evil rice merchant's warehouse, ruining him (compare SANJURO) or the theatre scene where he appears in devil make-up to predict the heavies' doom, before the false ceiling trap crashes down around him. The exposition continues in song at one point and there are half a dozen parallel plots that it is now completely impossible to follow in a single viewing. Design, performance and editing within sequences are all mastercrafted. Even without knowing the Japanese production made parallel with it, this combination of serial, Florentine narrative, and Zorro appears pretty much unique for its day.

As well as again playing the lead character in the 1963 Kon Ichikawa version, Hasegawa would continue to team with director Kinugasa, notably in the then widely distributed 1954 JIGOKUMON/ Gate of Hell. Both star and director were inexplicably overlooked in the fifties assessment of Japanese film, which funneled down to Blessed Trinity directors Kurosawa, Ozu and Mizoguchi.

Probably once a great film and still a fascinating one, YUKINOKO HENGE manages the extraordinary feat of continually switching its style and content, while always remaining superior. The loss of its complete version may be compared to the fate of GREED.

Japanese cinema is celebrated for its refined minimalist dramas and avant-garde experimentation; it also introduced popular genres like jidaigeki (samurai epics), kaiju, and anime. Across both high art and mass entertainment, it often explores morality, impermanence, and the pressures of modern life.

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The drama genre is a broad category that features stories portraying human experiences, emotions, conflicts, and relationships in a realistic and emotionally impactful way. Dramas delve into the complexities of human life, often exploring themes of love, loss, morality, societal issues, personal growth, with the aim to evoke an emotional response from the audience by presenting relatable and thought-provoking stories.

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Yukinojô henge: Kaiketsu-hen

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