Miss Hanako
                                             
Director:  Masahiro Makino
Year: 1943
Rating: 7.0
A light optimistic Japanese musical with an opening number out of the Busby Berkeley book with a group of women making geometrical patterns with the camera above and then later a number that would have been at home in Babes in Toyland. This was directed by Masahiro Makino who four years earlier had made the classic musical, The Singing Lovebirds. But then you realize the year this film was produced. 1943. In the middle of the war; a war that was beginning to go poorly for Japan. Air raids had begun though they were to get much worse in 1944. But Midway and Guadalcanal were over. But there was clearly a mandate that films had to be positive. One song is about Japan being one big family, unite and united the crowd sings as they march.




Much of the film focuses on the romance between Hanako (Yukiko Tadoroki) and Goro. The sweet loving family wants them to marry as does the community. But slowly the war creeps into the film. They are toasted for getting married and are being told to increase the population, a son please.  Goro's sister shows up and is like lightning. Played by the great Hideko Takamine. She marries an injured soldier, returned from the front and is cheered, all women should marry an injured soldier they are told.



It is not 1943 in the film though. It is 1940, though Japan was already at war in China. The father says "good news" when he reads that the Tripartite Pact has been signed between Germany, Italy and Japan. The neighborhood practices air raid drills with even the old lady carrying buckets of water. And this is a musical and songs often replace spoken dialogue. Some quite tuneful. Then Goro is called up to serve. He gets three Banzai's at work and then from a group of school girls. In retrospect it is so tragic. If this was an American war film, there would have been the dreaded letter to the wife, but not in Japan. Yukiko was married to Makino at the time and would go on to appear in Akira Kurosawa's Sanshiro Sugata I and II.. An enjoyable film from a distance.