Kenji Mizoguchi's 1954 film, "Sansho Dayu" (Sansho the Bailiff), is based upon the well-known 1915 Ogai Mori narrative, which was in turn taken from a folk tale of some antiquity. In all versions, the basic anecdote remains the same, although the tale varies with the teller.
The family of an exiled lord is sold into slavery. The two children are taken from their mother. After many adventures as chattel of the cruel bailiff, the boy escapes (the girl commits suicide) and after yet more hazards is reunited with his dying mother.
Whatever the intentions of the original tale, in Mori's version it is mainly about politics -- the ups and downs of influence. His Meiji-period-like interpretation also included some religion -- a sacred amulet makes the children's branding scars disappear, and at the end the cruel bailiff is not even much punished, since Buddha always forgives. As in everyday politics, things go on as before.
Mizoguchi's version is more humanistic, which suited 1954 post-World War II ideals. Since the children are not branded, the amulet has only a structural reason for surviving (mother recognizes son because he shows it to her), and the whole narrative is skillfully skewed to present what Keiko McDonald in her analysis of the film calls "the theme Mizoguchi labored on for so long: women sacrificed in a world understood as belonging to men."
The differences between the Mori and Mizoguchi versions are shown in Tadao Sato's 1982 study, "Mizoguchi Kenji no Sekai," and this division is made even more explicit in the Cavanaugh/Andrew study under review.
Here, as the preface states, the authors find it fitting that one of them is female, the other male; that one is a student of Japanese culture, the other of European; and that one is devoted to the study of words, the other to cinema. "When superimposed, these backgrounds display in relief the film that stands foregrounded even by the disparity of views."
Cavanaugh finds that the Mori version "is fascinated by Imperial rule," and that it prefigures the 1930s national attempt to reconstruct modern Japan on the framework of a neo-Confucian past though an ideology that sought to maintain the status quo of hierarchical rule.
She notes that the strong antimilitarism of Mizoguchi's film is nowhere in evidence in the 1915 story. In addition, Mori works his material to reinforce "its reassuring ideological purposes" -- an interpretation that pretends that slavery is not uncivilized, that exploitation leaves no scars, and that rectification of hierarchy heals all social wounds.
After all, though the family may have suffered the loss of both father and sister, the brother is politically reinstated, finds his long-lost mother, and they may now resume their aristocratic life.
How different the Mizoguchi version -- which really ought to be called the Yoshikata Yoda version, since Yoda wrote the script, not Mizoguchi. Here the father's political downfall is occasioned by his liberal idealism. He explains to his little boy that all humans are equal in their right to happiness. Such paternal advice might seem unlikely in a Heian aristocrat, but the film was made two years after the U.S. Occupation and its lessons were still audible.
Charges of liberal idealism had been used during World War II to dislodge the more democratic-minded. Thus, the father's political beliefs -- found in neither the original legend nor Mori's version -- could be used to further discredit Japan's wartime leaders and their ambitions.
The conclusions of the two versions are emblematic of their differences. Mori has an ending of near fairy-tale proportions -- a congratulatory conclusion. The Mizoguchi ending is much more clouded. The son may have found his mother, but what then?
In one of those marvelous moments of stasis that stud Mizoguchi movies, the camera slowly backs away from the reunited pair. The sandy beach, the promontory, the sea come into view. And as the camera is gently lifted (crane shot), we see the fisherfolk gathering seaweed. They are ignorant of the drama that has so gripped us, but it is they who will remain while the concerns that so moved us vanish.
One remembers a similar concluding shot in Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai." In it, the retiring camera reveals the rice-planting peasants and one of the remaining samurai spells it out: "It wasn't us that won, it was them." Both this film and "Sansho Dayu" were made in 1954, two years after the end of the Occupation, when some Japanese were beginning to doubt postwar heroics and were returning to a more reasoned view of Japanese life.
This BFI booklet, one of a valuable series, presents "Sansho" in a full and persuasive manner. It is illustrated with excellent frame enlargements taken from, I understand, a DVD version of the film. An ideal way to enjoy this study would be to acquire the film as well. It is available (with English subtitles) on VHS from Home Vision Cinema, 5547 Ravenswood Ave., Chicago, IL 60640-1199. Fax: 1-312-878-8406.
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