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SOBO
(These People)
A NIKKATSU PICTURE
Thousands of people stream out of Japan every year to seek new fields of activity in foreign lands. They are a motley group, hailing from all parts of the country and representing sundry classes and sundry types. The bulk of them are peasants, the rest being a mixture of labourers and pet its bourgeois. Reduced to the last extremity in this country where an over-crowded population renders it extraordinarily difficult to make a living, these emigrants sadly renounce their attachment to their native soil and its people, and set out to settle in strange, faraway lands.
Emigrants going to Brazil undergo a rigorous test, following which they pass the week before sailing time at the receiving station. The receiving station is situated in the uptown section of Kobe, the great seaport of western Japan. Here the emigrants receive instructions on all sorts of subjects with respect to Brazil, such as its language, its geography, its industries, its manners and customs.
The film play under review depicts the life at the emigrant receiving station during the allotted week of preparation in a very realistic fashion. There is practically no plot in the unfolding scenes to speak of, no protagonist that might be called a leading character. It merely succeeds in presenting its cast as a group, bringing out in lively relief the many distinctive types of people that comprise the group. The result is the most unique, the most estimable masterpiece in the cinema of Japan.
The movie is based on the .story by Tatsuzo Ishikawa, the man who received the Akutagawa Award — a literary award which was founded to perpetuate the memory of a famous novelist, the late Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Bunjin Kurata prepared the scenario, and the direction is the work of Hisatora Kumagai. Through this picture Kumagai, hitherto a comparatively unknown director, achieved fame for the first time.
AKIRA IWASAKI
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