Sanshiro Sugata, Part Two

I have seen every Akira Kurosawa movie available on VHS or DVD and this is the first "bad" one among them. In fact, I will be so bold as to say I doubt he really directed it. His name is on the credits but I don't see a shred of him in the work. No environmentally framed shots, no contrasts of light and dark, no horizon dividing the frames. He must have done this one with a week of shooting time or a budget of 50 Yen. The comical fight between the Judo stylist and Karate stylist literally made me laugh out loud. It looked like parody. Nothing like the climatic fight in the first Sugata Sanshiro. Also the subtitles were apparently done by someone in China who could speak a little Japanese and a little English. They use the word "karate" for both karate and judo, and since the main conflict is between the two styles, you'd better pay attention to who's doing the the talking or you'll never follow the plot. The movie just about "braked" me.

Due to its anti-American content, this film was never released in the US. Released in late 1945, in the early days of the American occupation of Japan, the movie has a strong anti-American slant. One of the two parallel plots of the film involves the young judo hero, Chee, and his battle to preserve the sanctity of the Japanese arts against the encroaching, brutish influence of American boxing. Americans are portrayed as a bunch of creeps. Eventually, Chee vanquishes the American champion to the wild cheers of his countrymen. This is by far the most interesting material in the film.

The judo vs boxing plot runs alongside a more pedestrian story: Chee is challenged by the brother of the karate master he vanquished at the finale of the original film. This story is a virtual carbon copy of the original, but with few of the original's charming nuances. The climactic final battle -- which takes place on a snow-covered moutainside -- is a pale imitation of the original's finale, which took place in a field of high grass.

The film also suffers from some of the same choppiness and fuzziness of narrative line that affected the original film, and a few other of Kurosawa's early works. Still, it's an entertaining effort. And it's remarkable as one of only two sequels Kurosawa ever filmed (the other being SANJURO, his follow-up to YOJIMBO). It appears Kurosawa learned from the experience of making SSP2 -- SANJURO is much more different from YOJIMBO than SSP2 is from its original, and a far more effective film than SSP2.

Sanshiro Sugata 2 (1945)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Kurosawa's sequel has Sugata (Susumu Fujita) still growing in the world of judo but outsiders are wanting to make the fighting style a sport and put it up against American boxing. This is a rather strange film but I do think it's better than the original just because of how out there it is. I've read that the government forced Kurosawa into making this and you can tell because that plays a part in the film. American boxing is really looked down upon and fighting as a sport is shown to be evil and this really translates to Kurosawa being unhappy as he was forced to make this just like the characters here are being forced to do something they see as morally wrong. Seeing the different fighting styles mixed up together was pretty fun as was the ending, which takes place during a snow storm. Fujita is a lot better here than he was in the previous film and really delivers a strong performance and makes his character quite memorable with the difficulties that he faces. The film's biggest problem comes in form of some rather choppy storytelling that has the film wonder off from its main goal way too many times and this is certainly true in the final fifteen-minutes before the final showdown. The low-budget nature of the film also shines through in a negative way but I'm sure the fans of the director will want to watch this at least once.

Sugata and Yano have established the dominance of Judo over jujitsu by defeating all comers, but Sugata is not satisfied. Yes, he is the best Judo practitioner in the land, but he is plagued by his victories and is not sleeping.

Judo is also facing competition from boxing and karate. Yes, boxing has come to Japan with the occupation. The anti-American sentiment is strong in this film as the top boxer is a drunken sailor who pick on poor rickshaw drivers until Sugata manages to cool him off - laterally. They will meet again.

Sugata finally comes to terms with who he is and dispatches the boxer in the first round. Now, the karate thugs have been injuring many to get Sugata to fight.

The actual fight is a letdown. It is staged to look almost like those shadow puppets. The calm and cool Sugata is facing a grimacing overly loud competitor.

It should not be a surprise who wins, but there are more demons on the horizon. Five years after this film, I will have arrived. What will happen then? The only distraction was the poor quality of the film. One would hope that a better copy would have survived. Of course, we have to wait until the arrival of Toshiro Mifune before Akira Kurosawa perfects his Samurai films and becomes the great master that he was.

I searched for this film for many years after having seen and loved the original. After living in Japan for a while I came across a Japanese language version.

This movie was a great disappointment to me and I'm sorry to say that Donald Ritchie's observation that Akira did not seem to take this project seriously seems to hold true. It has none of the visual or dramatic impact of the first Sanshiro film leaving only a standard Japanese propaganda film with little in the way of new scenarios,characterization or concepts.

Unfortunately, even for fans like myself of Kurosawa this film is hardly worth watching.