We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
HIKOROKU OINI WARAU (Hikoroku Laughs Heartily)
A P. C. L. Production
This picture was adapted to the screen from the young and talented playwright Juro Miyoshi’s drama, the author himself doing the scenario, and was produced by Sotoji Kimura, who directed “Ani Imoto” (Brother and Sister).
Hikoroku is an old man who leads an impoverished life in Shinjuku, a busy, thriving quarter of Tokyo. In his youth, at the close of the nineteenth century, he had been a member of the “Jiyu-To”, a radical political party that had been organized with the birth of bourgeois democracy in Japan, where feudalistic ideas had up to then held sway. But that was forty years ago. Now everything is different. The times have chang' ed completely, capitalism of a colossal magnitude has risen to power, the “Jiyu-To” has long since vanished from the scene with not a vestige of its former influence remaining, and Hikoroku — the young fighter of old — conducts a shabby billiard room, ekeing out a wretched existence with his daughter Miru, a dancer in a cheap musical comedy showhouse. Even now his passion for justice and freedom which Hikoroku had been wont to feel in his youth surges within him from time to time. Thus, when the small merchants in his neighbourhood are driven to ruin by department stores with huge capital resources and ordered in the end to vacate their places of business, he cannot forbear looking on in silence. He stands up boldly for his neighbours, challenges the gangsters whom the capitalists are using as tools, and insists upon his rights in a dignified manner. But the cruel, gigantic cogwheel of the capitalist setup moves down relentlessly upon this aged and helpless little man and threatens to crush him.
At this point his son Hikoichi, who had left home several years ago and been missing ever since, returns and saves him from his peril. He then takes his father and his sister Miru to his own home, having already established himself as a fine worker. Old Hikoroku is thus defeated in his last battle, but he has found a peaceful retreat amid the warm affection of his own flesh and blood, and permits himself the luxury of a smile of contentment.
The role of Hikoroku is played by Musei Tokugawa, who was once famous as a “movie interpreter” but who is a complete amateur in so far as acting is concerned; and he gives a good account of himself.
Akira Iwasak1
Most of the early silent films of Japan had no subtitles, and it was the movie interpreter’s” peculiar function to stand beside the screen, not only to explain the play as the picture was reeled off, but to carry on the entire dialogue, mimicing the voices of the characters, both male and female.
26