Jirō Kawate | 福壽草 (Sono ichi - Hana monogatari: Fukujusō) (The Scent of Pheasant’s Eye) / 1935 [in Japanese only]

a time before gender

by Douglas Messerli

 

Raizō Hagino, Jirō Kawate, and Nobuko Yoshiya (screenplay), Jirō Kawate (director) 福壽草 (Sono ichi - Hana monogatari: Fukujusō) (The Scent of Pheasant’s Eye) / 1935 [in Japanese only]

 

Jirō Kawate’s 1935 film The Scent of Pheasant’s Eye, which is taken from Nobuko Yoshiya’s fiction 花物語 (Tales of Flowers) (1916-1924), is available only in Japanese, so I have relied almost entirely upon commentary by Antti Alanen (from 2013) and Aaron Gerow, both of whom relate the plot, although only briefly, and comment on its lesbian content.

      As Alanen summarizes the film’s source material: “The 52 stories of romantic female friendships [in Tales of Flowers] were very popular with female students of the day.  Yoshiya was a prolific and commercially successful writer who is considered a pioneer in lesbian literature.  Her same-sex (dosei-ai) romances were considered acceptable because they depicted lesbianism as a phase on the road to a culturally acceptable heterosexual marriage.

      The “Pheasant’s Eye” of the English title is a flower “Adonis ramose,” a fairly rare yellow bloom found mostly in central and northern Japan.

      The plot is summarized as follows:

      

“The Scent of Pheasant’s Eye tells the story of a high school girl called Kaoru Sakamoto (Naomi Egawa) who falls in love with her sister-in-law Miyoko. Her crush actually develops before she has even met her brother’s new wife.  It is an arranged marriage and the "sisters" only meet on the wedding day. A romantic young girl, Kaoru and her friends are the kind of girls who would be likely to read Nobuko Yoshiya’s novels and fantasize about their ideal romantic partner. As the friendship blossoms between Kaoru and Miyoko, Kaoru grows jealous of any affection Miyoko shows Kaoru’s brother. 

 

    Kaoru’s schoolmates and family act as foils for her moody behaviour. The drama of any romance is kept light with comedic moments such as the slapstick scene where the two young ladies are being photographed together in nature and the photographer falls into the water. The physical comedy in the film shows the influence of the American silent greats like Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd.  

     The lesbian love affair is suggested via the female gaze and evocative mise-en-scène, but no direct dialogue. Miyoko is equally flirtatious with her husband as she is with his sister, causing the latter to indulge in jealous temper tantrums.”    

     Critic Johan Nordström adds: “Fukujuso is a compelling melodrama that surprises with its potent homoeroticism, especially considering its year of production."

     Aaron Gerow argues that “after reading the short story [that his finds Fukujuso] is bolder if not more “queer” in its depiction of same-sex relationships than its source. The original story, published in Shojo gaho in 1916, is written in exquisite and considerably polite Japanese, and presents the tale of Kaoru, a teenage girl who lost her mother at an early age and is so delighted she will be getting an “older sister” (onesama). It is hard for her to understand this woman is entering the household as the wife of her older brother.”

     He continues, “What struck me as most significant about its difference was the film's depiction of Kaoru’s love for Miyoko. In the novel, Kaoru is in some ways the epitome of the shojo, or young adolescent woman, which thinkers ranging from Otsuka Eiji to John Treat have theorized as a sort of third sex, a gender not confined to the male-female patriarchal dyad, as if living the time before sexual difference is recognized. Kaoru in the original story is so pure that she just cannot understand why the servants are calling the older sister ‘Mrs.’ (okusama)—as if she cannot comprehend that such a relationship between a man and a woman exists. The narration augments this by tying its perspective to that of Kaoru, and never suggesting the marriage until Kaoru starts hearing the word ‘okusama.’ 

     In the film, however, Kaoru is aware of the marriage from the start, and the film makes sure we are as well. Yet her reaction is still strong if not stronger over losing this “sister” to a man: she rips up a photo of the couple and runs out of the house when her brother asserts his position. It is as if Kaoru is less the shojo than a mature woman who loves Miyoko with full knowledge of sexual difference. For added spice, the film shows Miyoko passing her wedding ring to Kaoru on her deathbed.”

      Alanen is particularly impressed with Kawate’s cinematography: “The unusual framings of dialogue and action seem fresh and innovative for the time.  By the mid-1930s in the USA, the classical Hollywood style had largely been standardized and this film would have broken all those rules. It seems surprising that this film has remained hidden from international scholarship for decades. The cinematographer is Asakazu Nakai (中井朝一, 1901-88), who went on to become a frequent collaborator of Akira Kurosawa.”

      All are puzzled that this film has not received more attention both in Japan and, in particular, in Europe and US.

 

Los Angeles, September 19, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2023).