Isuzu Yamada sings folk songs and Kazuo Hasegawa accompanies him on the shamisen. They are very popular performers. Backstage, they quarrel constantly about how to play and sing, usually instigated by Yamada. Heihachirô Ôkawa proposes to Miss Hasegawa, and she accepts him, but then there's a scene in which the leads confess their love for each other. They decide to get married after they open their own theater. When Yamada discovers that Miss Hasegawa has borrowed money from Ôkawa, he accuses her of being the other man's mistress. They break up the act, she marries Ôkawa, and Yamada tries a solo act and goes to drink and playing small towns.
Even though I am fascinated by the wealth of fine Japanese film makers from 1929 through the middle 1960s -- and Mikio Naruse, the director of this movie, is one of them -- I still struggle to understand the details of Japanese culture: the warbling, non-western singing, the shamisen (which I think of as a Japanese banjo), and the vaudeville-circuit-like life of these performers, With this sort of rough translation, I can understand the story, and it's nice to see this Japanese equivalent of a plot of many an American musical, with its cultural differences in that the story ends with sacrifice instead of happiness. That's the Japanese style of a satisfactory ending, far different from the Hollywood style, in which the boy and girl get together for the big production number at the end, followed by a happily-ever-after marriage.
Even though I am fascinated by the wealth of fine Japanese film makers from 1929 through the middle 1960s -- and Mikio Naruse, the director of this movie, is one of them -- I still struggle to understand the details of Japanese culture: the warbling, non-western singing, the shamisen (which I think of as a Japanese banjo), and the vaudeville-circuit-like life of these performers, With this sort of rough translation, I can understand the story, and it's nice to see this Japanese equivalent of a plot of many an American musical, with its cultural differences in that the story ends with sacrifice instead of happiness. That's the Japanese style of a satisfactory ending, far different from the Hollywood style, in which the boy and girl get together for the big production number at the end, followed by a happily-ever-after marriage.