cod roe
Keiji
Hasebe, Kon Ichikawa and Natto Wado (writers, based on the fiction by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki), Kon Ichiwawa
(director) Kagi (“The Key,” in the
west described as Odd Obession) /
1959
Kon
Ichikawa ’s 1959 film, based on Japanese fiction
writer’s Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s The Key
falls into the cracks of so many genres that it is difficult to know where to
begin to describe it. It is, overall, a kind of murder mystery overlaid by a
romance, not just a daughter / suitor affair but a mother / daughter’s
boyfriend affair, a story of an old man’s delusions and his attempts to stave ff
death through his own voyeuristic proclivities, a tract of correct society’s
inability to perceive the truth, and story of extreme jealously on many of the
characters’ parts. It’s also, unequivocally, the story of a cultured man’s
destiny in a society which does not truly appreciate poetry and art.
And then it gets more complex when you
include sexual incompetence (an issue seldom discussed in Japanese culture of
the day—or in the US during the same period for that fact) and add in a bit of psychological
incest. And then, of course, we must face the issue of the good young doctor’s
manipulation of the family for his own financial gain, which also links it,
tangentially, to Billy Wilder’s Double
Indemnity of a decade earlier. And that’s just the beginning.
American critics seem to focus in on the
fact that the elderly “hero” of this tale, Kenji Kenmochi (Ganjirō Nakamura) is
obsessed (as the Western title shouts) with his lack of sexual prowess. In this
pre-Viagra period one might have thought that the movie was simply arguing for
this elderly man to get one more hard-on with his quite beautiful wife, Ikuko
Kenmochi (Marchiko Kyō). Yet, it is truly represents all aspects of old age
that haunt this elderly gent: he can no longer remember telephone numbers,
names, etc. In short, it is not only his sexual condition, but his growing
dementia that haunts the work. And that fact creates a kind of darkly comic
aura to the film, as he increasingly plots his wife’s encounters with the
handsome young doctor Kimura (Tatsuya Nakadai). The ambitious young man has
long been the boyfriend of Kenji’s plainer daughter, Toshiko (Junko Kano), and
has even had a rendezvous with her in Osaka—evidently a popular sexual retreat
of the day. But now, with the excuse of the cod roe he brings the family from
his home, he enters increasingly the world of the Kenmochis, discovering that
the much younger wife to be quite charming, she, in turn, suddenly turning from
the highly obedient world in which she has suffered, to be able to laugh and
even charm the younger man.
Even darker, Kenji not only encourages
the relationship between his wife and the young man but uses it as a way to
excite himself sexually, attempting—after their meetings—to be reunited with
his supposedly “erring” wife. Throughout most of the film, Ichikawa does not
let us know about any sexual picadilloes, of which they are seemingly innocent.
But it is through his imagination that the old man now lives, and that
discharges a contagion over the entire family, as the daughter and their
housekeeper Hana (Tanie Kitabayashi) begin to suspect the worst of Ikuko. They
are both convinced that she is now trying to “murder” the old man through
sexual excitation, without realizing that it is he himself, suffering from high
blood-pressure and numerous other psychological and physical pathologies, who
is determined to keep up some kind of sexual contact.
In the closeted world of the Kenmochi
household no one seems to perceive that it is Ikuko herself who is in danger,
forced to drink alcohol by her husband, after which she falls into real (or,
perhaps, we can never know for sure) afflictions, usually ending with her
having passed out in a hot bathtub.
It is only when she finally admits to her
husband that she has been privately seeing the young doctor—although intensely
denying any sexual activity—that her husband is sexually aroused once more,
attempting to have sex with his wife but nearly dying of a stroke in the
process. Of course, both onlookers, daughter and cook, once more presume the
worst of Ikuko, imagining that she has attempted to kill him.
Both the original story and Ichikawa turn
this into a truly darker tale when we realize that Ikuko and Kimura have
perhaps actually been having a sexual relationship when she offers him the key
to the house, telling him when everyone else will be asleep or out. It is the
sound of Kimura’s footsteps as he arrives that betrays both nurse and her
elderly husband that he has returned to have sex with Ikuko. And when Kenji
awakens from his coma, the first thing he attempts to relate are the words
“F-O-O-T,” representing the “footsteps” he has heard in the night.
When Kenji finally does die, his wife
seems almost joyous, celebrating with a small dinner with Kimura and her
daughter, while Kimura, by this time—perceiving the true poverty of the
household, who survived primarily on Kenji’s art dealings and poetry
involvements (none of them truly representing any wealth)—begins to truly
regret his involvement with the family.
The daughter, Toshiko, attempts to poison
the couple through a pesticide she injects into the tea. It doesn’t work, since
Hana has already transferred that poison to another container, which she pours
upon the salad.
Despite all of the plot development, an
essential aspect of this film, Ichikawa balances the inner turmoil of his
characters with the rhythmic patterns of nature, the trees and reeds blowing in
the wind, the corrugated rooves of houses, the very stones, covered with
leaves, on which Kimura walks to get to his mistress, even the trams (which he
shoots from underneath) that take these characters on their journeys. When
Kenji falls into his coma, he sees his own wife as a vision of the desert, with
layers of endless waves of sand.
Despite the perverse and intense desires
of his figures, Ichikawa reveals that patterns are still at the heart of their
behaviors. There was perhaps no more docile and obedient wife than Ikuko or a politer
and more respectful suitor than Kimura. These are not monsters, but simply
sexual beings caught up in the process of living. Kenji simply cannot accept
the fact that he will soon be no longer be part of that process, just as
Toshiko cannot accept that in her bitterness she has been left behind.
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