This is the first post in a series that's already been running for a while. I'm not sure if I'll lever loop back and cover the films we've already watched, but you can see the full list on Letterboxd, and I'll make sure to fill in a bit of context if I ever reference back to anything.
This week's film!
JAPAN SINKS (1973)
aka TIDAL WAVE
aka THE SUBMERGENCE OF JAPAN
What is it?
Sakyo Komatsu was a young journalist and stand up comedy writer who shifted into writing science fiction stories in 1961 at age 30. Two years later, he debuted the first of 18 novels in a career that lasted till 2006, during which he became one of the biggest and most successful mainstream science fiction writers in Japan. And much of that is thanks to the novel Japan Sinks. Written after 9 years of research, Komatsu was already shopping the manuscript around to studios for a couple years before its 1973 publication. Daiei almost picked it up in the hopes of staving off their impeding collapse, and even prematurely announced the acquisition before it had actually gone through. Instead, they fell, and the rights were scored by Toho.
Like The Last War in 1961, Toho and the team at Tsuburaya Productions saw this as an opportunity to take the miniature effects they'd been mastering and developing, and use them to tell a real world horror disaster free from the dismissive criticism that comes with the rubber monsters (which we love, don't get me wrong). With the passing of Eiji Tsuburaya, Teruyoshi Nakano took over as the primary director of the team, and had already been experimenting with new pyrotechnics and designs, with some incredible new styles in Son of Godzilla and Godzilla vs Hedorah. Here, Toho also threw at him the largest budget for a film in Japan at the time, a whopping 2 billion yen, which unfortunately meant shorting the costs and rushing the productions of the prior two Godzilla films so all the focus could be funneled here.
The screenplay was written by Shinobu Hashimoto, rightfully considered one of the greatest screenwriters in the cinema of Japan, if not the world. With Kurosawa, this man co-wrote Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, and half a dozen more. On his own, he wrote Harakiri, Sword of Doom, Samurai Rebellion, and dozens of others. This is one of the gods of the field, and I lit up when I saw his name in the credits.
For direction, they went with Shiro Moritani, who started as an assistant under Kurosawa. Sadly, most of his films are unknown and largely unavailable to western audiences, but I see works like Bullet Wound, Mount Hakkoda, and Kaiko are big, hard-hitting Toho dramas, widely praised and awarded at the time. Sadly, his career was cut short when he died at 53 in1984.
With an experienced cinematographer, Hiroshi Mirai (Illusion of Blood, Sword of Doom), joined by a rookie who's since become a legend of his own, Daisaku Kimura (Virus, Railroad Man), and a score by Kurosawa regular Masaru Sato, Toho producer Tomoyuki Tanaka and his son Osamu spared no expense in bringing this to the screen. It paid off, becoming the highest grossing film in Japan at 5.3 billion yen. And because it was released on December 26th, it became the number one film for not only 1973, but also 1974.
In May 1975, Roger Corman's New World released the film in US theaters under the name Tidal Wave, but he unfortunately hacked the 143 minute runtime down to just 81 minutes, which includes seven minutes of newly shot footage. Despite this, it became a bit of success in the US as well, grossing 3 million dollars.
The legacy of this film in Japan can't be denied. Toho tried like hell to replicate the success over the next 10 years (Prophecies of Nostradamus, Deathquake), attempting to strike lightning in a bottle twice (and often recycle the disaster footage) with little success before they decided to reboot their effects films with a new Godzilla. Having more success was author Komatsu, as this not only launched a wave of adaptations of his novels (ESPy, Tokyo Blackout), but even led to his directorial debut (Sayonara Jupiter)! Japan Sinks was also followed by a tv series, a 2006 remake, a 2020 anime, and in 2006, his final novel was a sequel co-written with Koshu Tani, which explored the social ripples in the wake of this world shaking event.
What's it about?
Japan Sinks is quite literally about the sinking of Japan. After an island goes missing, a crew of scientists discover evidence that a massive trench is widening along the fault on which Japan rests. Initially fearing it'll lead to an increase in earthquakes and volcanic activity, the true horror gradually dawns on them that their very country will soon cease to exist.
Over the course of several years, we follow a sprawling cast of characters, but our main focus is on four. Professor Tadokoro (Keiju Kobayashi) is the lead scientist increasingly descending into despair as the full reality of the situation unfolds, and all he can do is work out how much time is left. Onodera Toshi (Hiroshi "Kamen Rider" Fujioka) is the brash young mariner who's love is literally torn away by the disaster, who fights until the very end to get her back. Mr. Watari (Shogo Shimada) is an aging millionaire, a blend of old traditions and modern business, who funds research when governments won't, and plans to die with his country after saving as many of its young as he can. And Prime Minister Yamamoto (Tetsuro Tamba) a blustering politician who got where he is on the weight of his family name, who now has to rise to the responsibility of representing and caring for the people of a country which is about to collapse.
Should you check it out?
Absolutely!
Like The Last War, this is a masterpiece that a lot more people need to see and discuss, and it's a damn shame it's largely unavailable to do so. Moritani is masterful at how he paces the heavy runtime, allowing his performers to play out the full revelations and emotions of this horrific event, punctuated by explosions of disaster, then meditation upon the loss and consequence. He even opens with a silent time lapse showing the formation of Japan in the evolution of Earth's surface, followed by an extended montage of everyday life in the heart of a thriving population, letting us see the full scale of what is about to unfold.
To the film's credit, while it's sold on the disaster, those scenes of destruction make up a very small amount of the actual runtime, with more spent on the bureacratic red tape of getting politicians to accept the science they're being astounded with, then amping it to a global level as Japan has to literally beg the world for help. As with the novel, the heart of this story is about the wake of the disaster, the question of what to do with the people who are able to be evacuated, and the cultural disconnect this brings of people asking what it will mean to be Japanese when Japan is no longer there. My one criticism is that it's a very dude focussed story, very heavily driven by the social patriarchy of the time. While the conflicts faced by a billionaire, a scientist, and a prime minister are very real and compelling, it could go a little further beyond them. Granted, I believe this is what the 1974 tv series, which was shot alongside the film, was meant to expand on, but that sadly lacks available subtitles and does leave gaps in the focus of the film. Even Onodera's love interest, Abe Reiko (singer Ayumi Ishida), is only briefly featured with moments that touch on a grand, untold journey of survival she's been through, as our focus is more on the grimacing determination of Onodera and his tight jeans. I love Hiroshi Fujioka, he's charismatic and energetic as hell, but there are times where he feels like the lead of a more typical 70s action film who kinda wandered onto the wrong set of a philosophical character drama.
But these are all minor quibbles, as the film beautifully captures the horror and exhaustion, the desperation to save as many as they can while being haunted by the amount they couldn't. There's great scenes at the UN with a confusion of languages piled atop one another as you're always relying on a translation instead of what's actually said. And meetings with other countries that all have their own considerations and motivations on what resources they're willing to give up, or what uses they'll put to the refugees they take in. There's a haunting shot of a line of people stumbling through smoke under a red sky hazing over a rising sun. There's handheld shots following people racing through burning, collapsing alleys with no exit in site. There's thousands pounding at the doors of a capital begging to be let in, even as the politicians inside are casting terrified glimpses at the shaking and splitting ceilings which could give at any moment. There's the mansion covered in ash. The crowd pierced by raining glass. The boats trying to flee, directly into an oncoming tidal wave. One of the most haunting is Onodera walking down a crowded street at night, knowing things this populace doesn't as the people he passes are superimposed under the image of their imagined but likely fates as he finally collapses into tears before confused onlookers.
And those miniatures. Oh my god the miniatures. While I've always been iffy on the rubber monster suits of this era, I've never had a bad word to say about the elaborate intricacies of these amazing dioramas, and the ways they'd realistically destroy them with precisely modified fire and water, first under the brilliance of Tsuburaya, and now under the equally skilled Nakano. There's such a scale to watching an entire city ripped to pieces, blended beautifully with rear screen crowds, real volcanic footage, and even shots where the actors are on set with the miniatures before them for scaled long shots of their perspective. An hour in is when we get the collapse of Tokyo, and it just goes on and on, continuing to escalate, never fogetting the people on the streets or cutting into structures as we see the families being destroyed, consumed by their very homes. And then the fires spread, cutting off any hope of rescue, with fire departments unable to find working hoses or streets they can traverse, and choppers making an attempt to drop fire retardant bombs only to realize they're furthering the destruction and taking more lives. As it goes along, we see floods rip through the mountains and scour communities. Entire towns slough away as the ground beneath slides into the waters. The most amazing are satellite views as, from the silence of space, we see the explosions and rifts happening far below, cutting from the dying people to a literal god's eye cast upon them.
I wish we had more disaster movies like this. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the roller coaster disaster porn, cheesy ensembles, and heroic survival, but not enough carry the weight of a true apocalypse, which then also has to grapple with what comes in the apocalypse's wake. Sadly, Sakano's sequel novel has never been translated, nor has it even been the subject of a film, but even the brisk synopses I can find are compelling as it explores a dawning ice age as a result from this massive volcanic surge of ash into the atmosphere, even as the refugees fight to survive in a world that now blames them for it. That sounds like a damned compelling concept, and I wish we could have it adapted on this level and with this skill.
So yeah, absolutely check out Japan Sinks. Avoid the US cut known as Tidal Wave. Lorne Greene is professional and charming in his new footage as the US rep at the UN, but everything else has been hacked to absolute pieces, turning the philosophical drama into just another popcorn flick. There's also a Hong Kong dvd release that has subtitles, but also has 30 minutes cut out. Alas, the only resource to see this in full, with subs and a widescreen print, is through alternative means online. That shouldn't be the case with a classic like this, especially one that's been the subject of modern, large-scale remakes by a studio that's still thriving. Where's the Criterion or Arrow release? Why has it been ignored and swept aside? From what I hear, there isn't even a good remaster available in Japan. I really don't understand why a massively successful film which was a major cultural milestone at the time would just be ignored like this.
What's next?
GODZILLA VS MECHAGODZILLA (1974)
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