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An Actor's Revenge
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Wikipedia article
, also known as 'Revenge of a Kabuki Actor', is a 1963 film directed by Kon Ichikawa. It was produced in Eastmancolor and Daieiscope for Daiei Film.
'An Actor's Revenge' is a remake of the 1935 film of the same title (distributed in English-speaking countries as 'The Revenge of Yukinoj'), which also starred Kazuo Hasegawa. The 1963 remake was Hasegawa's 300th role[http://onfilm.chicagoreader.com/movies/capsules/45_ACTORS_REVENGE Chicago Reader: An Actor's Revenge Reviewed by Jonathan Rosenbaum] as a film actor. The screenplay, written by Ichikawa's wife, Natto Wada, was based on the adaptation by Daisuke It and Teinosuke Kinugasa of a newspaper serial originally written by Otokichi Mikami that was used for the 1935 version. There is an opera, 'An Actor's Revenge', with music by Minoru Miki and libretto by James Kirkup and a 2008 NHK production of the same story, with Yukinoj and Yamitaro played by Hideaki Takizawa.
Plot
Three men Sansai Dobe (Nakamura Ganjir II), Kawaguchiya (Sabur Date) and Hiromiya (Eijir Yanagi) are responsible for the suicide of seven-year-old Yukitars mother and father. Yukitar is adopted and brought up by Kikunoj Nakamura (Chsha Ichikawa), the actor-manager of an Osaka kabuki troupe.
The adult Yukitar (Kazuo Hasegawa) becomes an 'onnagata', a male actor who plays female roles, taking the stage name Yukinoj. Like many of the great 'onnagata', particularly of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, he wears womens clothes and uses the language and mannerisms of a woman offstage as well as on. Twenty years later, in the mid 1830s, the troupe pays a visit to Edo, where the men responsible for his parents deaths now live. Yukinoj brings about their deaths, then, having achieved his goal, and apparently overcome by the death of an innocent woman who was part of his schemes but whom he became fond of, retires from the stage and disappears.
The events are coolly observed and sardonically commented on by the Robin-Hood-like thief Yamitar, also played by Hasegawa.
Title
The Japanese title is 'Yukinoj henge' (). Yukinoj is the stage-name of the central character, who is an 'onnagata' or 'oyama' a male kabuki actor who plays womens roles. Among the senses of 'henge' (whose basic meaning is 'change of form') are 'ghost', 'spectre' and 'apparition'. The title is sometimes rendered 'The Avenging Ghost of Yukinoj'. Yukinoj uses his stage-craft to terrify one of his enemies by creating the illusion of a ghost, but there is no supernatural element in the film.
In the kabuki theatre the word 'henge' has the technical sense of 'costume change'. The type of play called a 'henge-mono' () is a quick-change piece in which the leading actor plays a number of roles and undergoes many on-stage changes of costume. The title thus has as one of its senses 'The Many Guises of Yukinoj'. The usual English title is from a line of dialogue when the character Yamitar, having learned that Yukinoj proposes to take revenge on his enemies by elaborate plots rather than killing them at the first opportunity, says to himself "As you might expect of an actors revenge, its going to be a flamboyant performance" ('Yakusha no katakiuchi dakeatte, kotta mon da': ).
Cast
* Kazuo Hasegawa as Yukinoj Nakamura and Yamitar
* Fujiko Yamamoto as Ohatsu
* Ayako Wakao as Namiji
* Raiz Ichikawa as Hirutar
* Shintar Katsu as Hjin, the escaped convict
* Eiji Funakoshi as Heima Kadokura
* Chsha Ichikawa as Kikunoj Nakamura
* Narutoshi Hayashi as Mukuzu
* Nakamura Ganjir II as Sansai Dobe
* Sabur Date as Kawaguchiya
* Eijir Yanagi as Hiromiya
* Jun Hamamura as Isshsai
* Toshio Chiba as Rnin
* Masayoshi Kikuno as Yukinojs father
* Kichi Mizuhara as Dobes retainer
* Shir tsuji as First Constable
* Tokio Oki as Second Constable
* Michir Minami as First Townsman
* Yutaka Nakamura as Second Townsman
* Chitose Maki as Townswoman
* Eigor Onoe as The Shgun
Production
* Yoshinobu Nishioka - Art director
Narration
The voice-over narration is provided by Tokugawa Musei (), the most famous 'benshi' of the silent era.
References
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