Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 1959


Thus Another Day

Buy Thus Another Day now from Amazon

First, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.

Wikipedia article


{{Infobox film

| name = Thus Another Day

| image = File:Thus_Another_Day_Poster.jpg

| image_size =

| caption = Two-color release poster

| director = Keisuke Kinoshita

| producer = Sadao Hosoya

| writer = Keisuke Kinoshita

| cinematography = Hiroyuki Kusuda

| editing = Yoshi Sugihara

| music = Chuji Kinoshita

| distributor = Shochiku

| released =

| runtime = 74 minutes

| country = Japan

| language = Japanese

}}

is a 1959 color Japanese film directed by Keisuke Kinoshita.

Plot



Facing financial difficulties, young couple Shichi and Yasuko Sat rent their suburban home to his boss over the summer. While Shichi rooms with a friend, Yasuko and their son Kazuo stay with her family in a troubled resort community, where visiting yakuza and their underlings threaten and injure her brothers, a cab driver and an aspiring singer. She befriends a depressed war veteran whose estranged wife is pressured by the yakuza to become their moll after a sudden tragedy, leading to a climactic confrontation. The couple returns to their home, where Yasuko copes with her renewed desperation at life's futility.

Production



The role of Shusuke Takemura, the veteran befriended by Yasuko, was played by Kabuki actor Kanzabur Nakamura XVII, whose four-year-old son Kankur (later Kanzabur Nakamura XVIII) played Kazuo, sharing screen credit with the popular stars who played his parents, Teiji Takahashiwho died in an automobile accident shortly after the film's releaseand Yoshiko Kuga.

The senior Nakamura received the only solo screen credit among the cast members. His wife Tomoe was played by Murasaki Fujima, a star of Japanese dance who appeared in many postwar films, and the yakuza who menace her were played by familiar performers Rentar Mikuni and Kji Mitsui. One-time Shochiku leading man Shji Sano has a cameo as an executive whose vacationing wife is entertained off-screen by Shichi. Takahiro Tamura, who had a large role in the director's 'The Eternal Rainbow' the year before, is barely onscreen as Yasuko's older brother Tetsuo.

Kinoshita capitalized on the singing career of Kazuya Kosaka in casting him as Yasuko's younger brother Gor, whose proud decision not to aspire to a higher class or calling seems influenced by his kinship with the fatalistic Takemura. Gor's romantic interest, Noriko, is played by Mie Fuji, making her film debut after being discovered by Kinoshita's brother Chuji, who wrote the film's score; Fuji would appear in one more Kinoshita film before joining Toho, who changed her name to Yko Fujiyama and cast her in several comedy, science-fiction, and youth-oriented films until her retirement to start a family in the late 1960s.'Modern Movie', August 1962, pp. 122-125.

One of Kinoshita's shortest features, 'Thus Another Day' has multiple plot threads that some modern critics believe overcomplicate the storyline. The film's brisk pace includes many cinematic ellipses that either withhold information for later revelationsuch as the identity of the driver who transports the yakuza to their vacation homeor permit viewers to imagine sequences that arent explicitly shown, such as the fate of Shusuke and Tomoe's daughter; his confrontation with the yakuza who have cuckolded him; and the two visits of Shichi to the executive's wife.

Kinoshita filmed much of 'Thus Another Day' on location in both Tokyo and the resort area of Karuizawa, which features prominently in the boating and waterfront talent show scenes.

Themes



While the theme of postwar desperation in the Japanese family ethos is familiar in films by directors like Yasujir Ozu (who also favored plot ellipses), Kinoshita's movies were generally more hopeful in tone than 'Thus Another Day'. The depiction of Shusuke's PTSD is paralleled with Yasuko's depression over her struggle to survive in a consumerist society with a husband driven to succeed within the salaryman culture. Kinoshita's linkage of the two characters, combined with the threats and physical injury endured by the film's two extended family units, suggests a postwar Japanese middle class facing an uncertain and troubled future.

The poem from which the movie's English title derives could be interpreted as a blithe directive to live a carefree life, but as recited by Shusuke Takemura it instead underscores the film's theme of life's futility:

'Yesterday was just another day,'


'Thus another day today.'


'Why should I feel uneasy?'


'Why worry about tomorrow?'

Cast



* Yoshiko Kuga as Yasuko Sat

* Teiji Takahashi as Shichi Sat

* Kanzabur Nakamura XVII as Shusuke Takemura

* Murasaki Fujima as Tomoe Takemura

* Rentar Mikuni as Kenz Akada

* Kji Mitsui as Man A (Akada's crony)

* Takahiro Tamura as Tetsuo Mori

* Kazuya Kosaka as Gor Mori

* Mie Fuji (later known as Yko Fujiyama) as Noriko

* Toshiko Kobayashi as Haruko Mori

* Shji Sano as Managing Director

* Kanzabur Nakamura XVIII as Kazuo Sat (billed as Kankur Nakamura)

Availability



Though the film has not been released on disc in the United States, it was one of the inaugural films available in Spring 2019 for streaming on The Criterion Channel.

References




Buy Thus Another Day now from Amazon

<-- Return to movies from 1959



This work is released under CC-BY-SA. Some or all of this content attributed to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1098020708.