Tales of Ginza Film Review

This was produced ten years after the war had ended and three years after America had ended its military occupation of Japan, but you would never really know it from this film. There are no bombed out buildings shown, no mentions of the war. There are a group of cute girl orphans but they are adorable and happy with their lot. This is Japan on the rebound. A panoramic view of the country and its people. Multiple slices of life. With a focus on Ginza but side trips to Osaka and the beach. But mainly it stays in Ginza - the department stores that it became famous for, the small shops, the broad avenues and the winding alleyways where all the bars, nightclubs and hostess bars take up cozy space. At night the neon is already a fixture. The occasional rickshaw is spotted but it is big American cars that dominate the roads.

Women still are wearing kimonos but most are in modern dress as well. There are baseball games, beauty contests and fashion shows. In some ways it is a valentine to a part of Japan that they take pride in. The railroad, the station, the bustling stream of people coming and going, consuming. Japan was back. There is an off-screen narrator who gives facts and figures about Ginza. But there is also a dark side to this modernity - criminals, drugs, prostitution, broken-hearted bar girls and a drug den of punks. The war is over but it broke something traditional about Japan and loosened family ties. A great deal of the pleasure of this film is simply the camera taking the area in from above and street level. This was just how it looked 70 years ago. Ginza has of course been built up tremendously since then, but the roots are here.

There is also a story of course but it felt secondary to the city. A few intersecting characters. Koni (Tatsuya Mihashi) runs a flower shop and the film shows how they are delivered from the countryside. He has three of the orphan girls working there and a young man named Jeep (Asao Sana). At night he closes the shop but takes the left-over flowers from bar to bar selling them to men who have a girl in their arms. One day Wakako (Yumeji Tsukioka - Late Spring and married to film director Umetsugu Inoue) walks by and orders some flowers to be delivered and the film shifts to her. She and her mother are on hard times since her husband deserted the family. Her small daughter is being kept by her mother-in-law. She is suspicious that her husband has gotten involved in the world of crime. Her cousin the pretty Yukino (Mie Kitahara) has come from Osaka to live with her and hopefully to get work as a model. The film follows her at times as she goes around to the clubs and enters a beauty contest.

Wakako is sorting through the paintings of her dead father to sell them at an exhibition. She decides to include a painting of her as a teenager by someone who simply signed it GW. She has only vague memories of him but is hoping he comes forward. Koni sees the painting and thinks he knows who painted it but isn't positive and thinks the person is dead. A man comes forward to claim he is GW but he is out for publicity. The film follows him a bit. Another character is a man who is outside of Wakako's home every day painting and Yukino flirts with him.

The film takes a darker turn when Jeep gets involved in drugs and Koni runs around Ginza trying to find him and stop him - this takes him into a drug den where he is attacked by the junkies and crooks. The painter is in the bar as well and soon the police arrive. It all leads to a surprisingly dramatic ending on a rooftop with the Yakuza. The story is built up layer by layer, small episode by small episode with the narrator pitching in from time to time. Director Yûzô Kawashima ties it all together seamlessly until all these plain folks take on character and meaning. It is rather wonderful.