by Mehdi Achouche
Watching “Night River” (also known with the better title of “Undercurrent”), you understand why director Kozaburo Yoshimura (1911-2000) has so often been compared to Kenji Mizoguchi – although that has often been at Yoshimura’s expense. Both delivered post-war melodramas often centering on strong, independent-minded female characters being repressed by their families and the social order. Yoshimura (who started as Ozu’s assistant director) even took over from Mizoguchi after the latter’s death and directed “An Osaka Story” in 1957. The year before, he made “Night River”, penned by feminist screenwriter (and frequent Naruse collaborator) Sumie Tanaka, and adapted from a novel by Hisao Sawano. The story is set in Kyoto and can be seen as part of an informal set of melodramas that Yoshimura directed in the 1950s. These films follow the lives of hard-working women in a rapidly modernizing post-war Kyoto, including the powerful “Clothes of Deception” (1951), “Sisters of Nishijin” (1952) and “A Woman’s Uphill Struggle” (1960).
Here the story revolves around Kiwa Funaki, who is almost thirty but still single and still living at home. She works with her father, a professional dyer who specializes in the traditional technique of roketsu dyeing. But she is also a hard-working artist and fledgling businesswoman who designs her own kimonos and tries hard to establish her business. Her family plans to marry her off in a pre-arranged marriage, and although concupiscent men would love to make her their mistress, Kiwa falls in love instead with a married university professor.
Although the developing love story with the professor (played by an always solid Ken Uehara) is central to the narrative, it is perhaps the least appealing aspect of “Night River”. Instead, the opening scene establishes the theme that Yoshimura was keen on: in his traditional, cramped workshop, Kiwa’s father argues with his young apprentice who has had enough of the thankless labor and is complaining this is an old-fashioned job with no future. Invoking the new constitution and labor rights, he wants to go work in a new electric factory, which provokes the old, tradition-bound master’s ire. Kiwa soon enters the room and is filmed between the two men, gently trying to find a compromise between tradition and modernity.
This is what Kiwa tries to do in her own work, designing kimonos with bold motifs inspired by both the Kyoto scenery and Western art. Kimonos are supposedly going extinct, as several characters remark during the film. That includes a Japanese woman dressed like the caricature of a Western lady and who patronizes a Western-style café (a recurring joke consists in seeing the waiter propose a dizzying array of coffees – mocha, Viennese, Brazilian, etc. – to confused customers). But Kiwa is certain her artistic fusion – “Picasso Sogetsu style?”, a Kimono shopkeeper exclaims bemusedly – can bridge the gap between Eastern and Western sensibilities. She also designs Western ties with Japanese prints, which will be the opportunity for the film to combine this theme of harmonious fusion with its main love story, as the university professor is offered one of Kiwa’s ties and immediately attracts her attention.
Not only does Kiwa visit contemporary art exhibitions, she also likes visiting Kyoto’s many temples, and is very forward with this man who immediately catches her eye during one such visit. While he is reserved and non-committal, she makes rather open advances, audaciously asking him if it troubles him to be seen walking with her. She will not allow him or any man to pay the bill at a restaurant, while she is the one presenting him with gifts, reversing the traditional order of things. It is never clear what attracts her so much in this rather bland man, except that he is both a man of science and a sensei, a forward-looking man and a master who she can respect. It is a difficult balance for the film to show her seducing this man without coming across as calculating or coarse, and Yoshimura succeeds remarkably well in this respect.
This is also thanks to actress Fujiko Yamamoto (famous for her role in “Equinox Flower”), who is outstanding as strong, thoughtful Kiwa, a woman whose modest but confident smile is enough to make you understand she is very much aware of what is going on around her. She is not the kind of young girl naïve enough to be manipulated and cheated on, but at the same time she never appears as manipulative or cynical herself.
Formally, Yoshimura and cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa (who worked repeatedly with Kurosawa and especially Mizogushi) make beautiful use of color photography – a first for Yoshimura. The dye work by Kiwa and her father is the opportunity to see her evolve among bright-red drapes hanging at the workshop, enhanced by the 4K digital restored version made available internationally early in 2023. Sparkling yellows, blues and reds symbolize her passion, hope and longing for personal independence and artistic fulfillment. The most beautiful scene also makes great use of lighting, as the couple sits in a darkened hotel room with only the street lighting illuminating the room from outside. This is where Yoshimura’s talent for atmosphere is most pregnant, as the couple’s silhouettes face each other in the semi-darkness and only the sound of rain can be heard, filling in for all that is left unsaid by the two lovers. On a big screen, this scene is simply mesmerizing.
It can only be hoped that other Yoshimura films will be as carefully restored in the future, allowing more cinephiles to discover the work of a great, understated and underestimated director.
