But Mifune acted in 166 other films (some for TV), and in them, too, he perfected his man-of-action persona, whether within the samurai code of conduct or with rough-and-ready types from the lower orders. Few have circulated outside Japan. But Hiroshi Inagaki's Moshuto, the Rickshaw Man (1958) with Mifune took the top prize at the Venice Film Festival. Inagaki made more samurai and period films than Kurosawa, and won an Oscar® for the first film in his samurai trilogy starring Mifune, Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto (1954).
The Japanese title of Moshuto, the Rickshaw Man translates as The Life of Matsu the Untamed. It's a remake of Inagaki's 1943 version of the film about a lowly Moshuto, the Rickshaw Man in Japan in 1905 after Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War. Mifune's Matsu is gruff and boisterous, and no stranger to drink, but after he's summoned to bear a sick boy to a hospital, his life changes. The boy's army lieutenant father, impressed that the driver would take no money for this errand of mercy, invites him to dinner. They bond across their respective classes. When the father dies shortly afterward, his distraught widow (Hideko Takamine) asks Matsu to teach her fearful, sickly son to be a man.
He does, largely by example. He keeps an eye on the boy and in one disarming scene he stops his rickshaw in mid-trip, irate customer jabbering indignantly away, to help the boy, Toshio (Kenji Kasahara), untangle his kite. To the cautious boy he brings life and spontaneity. When Toshio is ashamed to let Matsu see him crying, Matsu replies by telling him that he once cried, too. If Inagaki's first film was filmed in black and white, presumably with simpler production values, this remake for Toho Studios is a big-budget affair - widescreen (2.35-1 aspect ratio) and in Tohoscope (softer, more pastel-like than Technicolor). Many of the scenes are outdoors and Inagaki obviously gave thought to filling his big canvas.
Much of the time he does it with communal gatherings - parades, concerts, celebrations, fireworks. These launch two of the film's memorable scenes. When Toshio, his mother and Matsu attend an athletic event, it's announced that there will be a 1500-meter race, open to all. The boy urges Matsu to enter. The collegiate athletic types look askance at the coarse-grained Matsu. When the starting gun is fired, he's last. But he's not a Moshuto, the Rickshaw Man for nothing. He locks into a steady pace and passes the others as they get winded. The boy, having been shown the difference between long-distance running and sprinting, is delirious with joy.
Later, during an autumn festival procession with a float carrying a huge kodo drum, Matsu hops aboard, politely asks the musicians if he can give it a go, and wows everybody with his virtuosic drumming of a revered old song. Sure, Matsu shows Toshio how to fight, and even helps him rout a band of bullies. But although he's as macho as they come, Matsu realizes the importance of the larger life lessons he must impart if he's to keep his promise to the widow and, except for going AWOL for the occasional binge, he takes his task seriously. You can see why the role appealed to Mifune - he's a tough guy, but a diamond in the rough, with a noble soul.
He loses it from time to time, and gets a good beating from an irascible old man who turns out to be a general and an expert swordsman. But unruly as he gets, Matsu doesn't really need taming - just purpose. He is, as one character observes, a vehement man. But he's no rebel. This is brought out early on when he nearly causes a riot in a theater by cooking a pot of garlic soup in his parterre seat after a slight at the box office. Soup, chairs, bodies go flying. But Matsu docilely kowtows to an official called in to resolve the conflict. We remember his unquestioning acceptance of Japan's rigid social class system toward the end. Time passes - Inagaki overdoes the device of spinning rickshaw wheels to denote the passage of time, punctuating Matsu's days and weeks and years at his day job and his extracurricular task. Inevitably, the film ends with the wheels slowing toward motionlessness. We haven't seen so many spinning wheels since Leni Riefenstahl's strikingly filmed and edited documentary on the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
The spinning wheels at times seem to stand for the film itself, despite Mifune's heroic ability to energize it. Inagaki is a skilled craftsman, but often he gives us journeyman- level stuff, competent but, except for the footrace and drum sequences, uninspired. Perhaps a scene near the end ought to be included among the highlights, too. When Toshio, now grown, asks his mother to tell Matsu not to call him "kid" anymore because his friends laugh at him, the hurt expression Mifune puts on Matsu's face is exactly the kind of telling gesture, conveying felt knowledge, in which the film is often deficient.
Often, Moshuto, the Rickshaw Man seems over-produced, smothering in its budget, all breadth and not enough depth. Still, there isn't a facet of Matsu that Mifune doesn't give us, including the soap opera ending when, after Toshio is seen off on the train taking him away to college, Matsu must confront the feelings he has developed for the widow and face the social wall between them. It makes for a maudlin rather than a noble ending, but Mifune makes sure we're in no doubt about the scrappy Matsu's larger-than-life heart. He always filled the space in which he was framed, wide or not, here included.
Producer: Tomoyuki Tanaka
Director: Hiroshi Inagaki
Screenplay: Hiroshi Inagaki, Mansaku Itami (writers); Shunsaku Iwashita (story)
Cinematography: Kazuo Yamada
Music: Ikuma Dan
Film Editing: Yoshitami Kuroiwa
Cast: Toshirô Mifune (Matsugoro), Hideko Takamine (Yoshiko Yoshioka), Hiroshi Akutagawa (Capt. Kotaro Yoshioka), Chishû Ryû (Shigezo Yuki), Chôko Iida (Otora (innkeeper)), Haruo Tanaka (Kumakichi), Jun Tatara (Theatre employee), Kenji Kasahara (Toshio Yoshioka), Kaoru Matsumoto (Young Toshio), Nobuo Nakamura (Yoshiko's brother).
C-103m.
by Jay Carr
