“The Thick-Walled Room” is a fascinating film by Masaki Kobayashi and as an earlier work, he would go so much further in a film like “The Human Condition” over a decade later. But a film such as “The Thick-Walled Room”, goes to show how bold he was to stand up against social and political orders. A rebellious early film for Masaki Kobayashi and a fitting film to be included in “Eclipse Series 38: Masaki Kobayashi Against the System”!
Image courtesy of © 1956 Shochiku Co. Ltd. © 2013 All Rights Reserved.
TITLE:Â The Thick-Walled Room (as part of the Eclipse Series 38: Masaki Kobayashi Against the System)
YEAR OF FILM: 1956
DURATION: 110 Minutes
DVD INFORMATION: Black and White, 1:33:1 Aspect Ratio, Monaural, Japanese with English subtitles
COMPANY: Janus Films/The Criterion Collection
RELEASED: April 16, 2013
Directed by Masaki Kobayashi
Written by Kobo Abe
Music by Chuji Kinoshita
Cinematography by Hiroyuki Kusuda
Starring:
Ko Mishima
Torahiko Hamada
Keiko Kishi
Toshiko Kobayashi
Eitaro Ozawa
Even early on in his directing career, Masaki Kobayashi didn’t shy away from controversy. Among the first Japanese films to deal directly with the scars of World War II, this drama about a group of rank-and-file Japanese soldiers jailed for crimes against humanity was adapted from the diaries of real prisoners. Because of its potentially inflammatory content, the film was shelved by the studio for three years before being released.
When it comes to Japanese cinema, when Masaki Kobayashi’s name comes up, one will remember the filmmaker for being a pacifist but taking on films that criticized his country’s social and political orders.
Best known for his trilogy of films titled “The Human Condition” (1959-1961), a trilogy on the effects of World War II on a Japanese pacifist and socialist, Kobayashi is also known for his films “Harakiri” (1962, which won the Jury Prize at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival) and “Kwaidan ” (1964, which won the Special Jury Prize at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival and received a “Best Foreign Language Film” Academy Award nomination).
But prior to these cinematic masterpiece, Kobayashi showed a rebellious side in his earlier films from the ’50s. To best showcase his earlier work, The Criterion Collection has put together four of his earlier films in an Eclipse Series set titled “Eclipse Series 38: Masaki Kobayashi Against the System”.
Included are the following three films from the ’50s and one from the ’60s : “The Thick-Walled Room” (“Kabe atsuki heya”, 1953), “I Will Buy You” (“Anata Kaimasu”, 1956), “Black River” (“Kuroi kawa”, 1957) and “The Inheritance” (“Karami-Ai”, 1964).
Back in 1941, Kobayashi became an apprentice director for Shochiku Studios. But he was immediately drafted into the army and sent to Manchuria. As a pacifist, he would do all he can to refuse promotion to a rank higher than a private and also spent time as a prisoner of war.
This would have an influence in his third film made in 1953 titled “Kabe atsuki heya” (“The Thick-Walled room”) in which he wanted to create a post-war film in regards to war criminals, rank-and-file military men who acted on orders and have been imprisoned and are treated cruelly by the American occupying force.
The film is based on the diaries of real-life prisoners and how the low-ranking soldiers are treated and the psychological anguish they endured in the prison.
Although the film was created after American occupation of Japan ended in 1952, the Japanese government feared that it would offend the U.S. and demanded the film to be cut or withheld. Kobayashi would not cut the film but the film was shelved and released three years later, in 1956.
“The Thick-Walled Room” focuses on six former B and C class soldiers held inside a thick-walled room. Tired of having to break rocks, the group sits in their cells reading letters (from family members who are shamed of their kin being war criminal or loved ones who have no idea what has happened to them) and remembering their life when they were free men or life as a soldier.
For Yamashita, he remembers how his group was helped by a villager and fed. But Yamashita receives orders from his commanding officer to kill the villager despite how much the villager has helped their group. And this memory continues to haunt them.
The film then transitions to the war between North and South Korea and how the Americans are involved. Yokota receives word that he is being visited by a guest in prison and it’s his brother, a journalist. His brother asks him how his cell mates are doing and Yokota describes how he thought life in prison would make things much more spiritual but it became the opposite. People became more vulgar.
He describes how one guy keeps imagining that he has a store, another keeps talking about intimate details of his wife, but for the most part, everyone has gone for the worse. Yokota’s brother tells him that they aren’t guilty for their crimes (as they were just following orders), but Yokota tells him that he has begun to think differently. War is evil but no one opposed the war. But Yokota’s brother tells him that those who started the war are at fault. The conglomerates, the military and their minions. And those who led the war got light sentences, while the B and C-class soldiers received the heavier sentences.
The film then shows Yokota’s past as a soldier and how he was a foreign language translator. And how a foreign prisoner of war was caught stealing and under orders, Yokota was forced to whip a foreign man, who screamed for help in front of Yokota. The foreign man ends up dying and Yokota would be responsible for taking the body to the crematorium but where he met a girl that he fell in love with.
But as other men have their own past and some who have their own inner personal demons to contend with, when Yokota’s brother publishes an article that may jeopardize the release of the group. But for the Japanese that are imprisoned, will their lives be the same after they are released?
VIDEO:
“The Thick-Walled Room” is presented in black and white (1:33:1 Aspect Ratio). Considering the film is 60-years-old, while some frames of the film had suffered damage overtime, and features white/black specks, they are not the type that hurts your viewing of the film.  The film looks very good for its age, no signs of excessive digital noise reduction and maintains a good amount of detail.
It’s also important for people to remember that Eclipse Series films do not get the remastering and restoration that goes into a Criterion Collection release, but is presented on DVD the best possible way it can. And for the most part, the picture quality is as good as what one can expect from a DVD release.
AUDIO & SUBTITLES:
“The Thick-Walled Room” is presented in Japanese monaural with English subtitles. Dialogue is clear and heard no significant clicks, pops or humming through the entire film.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
Eclipse Series releases do not come with special features but included in the insert is a background on Kobayashi and the information about the film and why Shochiku was worried about “The Thick-Walled Room”.
Masaki Kobayashi’s “The Thick-Walled Room” is thought-provoking and bold.
Considering the film was one of the first to be made after World War II about Japanese soldiers after the war, his film confronts the harsh realities of life for war criminals but also confronting the reality that those who made the decisions of war, those who ordered the soldiers to do the things they did were not punished as badly as them.
But also the harsh reality that life for these war criminals would no longer be the same after they leave prison, even if it’s for a day of mourning.
Their life for many of these war criminals have been stripped and during American occupation, because of the atrocities that some of the soldiers had committed, they weren’t going to receive any special treatment.
“The Thick-Walled Room” was not about coming up with solutions. Yamashita is a man who was forced by his commanding officer to kill an innocent man that too them in and fed them and to make things worse, his friend makes up a lie that he is responsible for killing innocent people to steal their food and earning him more time in jail.  And among the soldiers featured, he is the one that has suffered the most.  And you wonder what will happen if released from jail, so he can go back to his family to mourn his mother’s death for a day. Will he seek revenge against the former friend who lied? Will he run away, so he can never return back to prison? How will life be for this man outside of prison? Or is life much better for him if he goes back to prison?
Yokota is the complex character of the film. During the war, he was a translator who did not want to fight. But with a rotten superior officer, he was forced to do things he never wanted to do.
He is a man who also tries to understand who is at fault for the war. Was it the soldiers? Was it the people who commanded them? Is this harsh prison sentence created for them to repent? He struggles with how life has changed for him and his fellow soldiers.
But he really wants to repent or at least contribute while in prison.
While the portrayals of the Japanese are well-done, there are things that are important to point out. In Japan, there was a lot of propaganda during World War II that Americans and other allies had mistreated and tortured Japanese prisoner of war. There were major incidents that things did happen such as a soldier sending a Japanese skull back home or a letter opener carved from Japanese bone. But also those who did surrender being killed to death by soldiers. Of course, American military said these actions were based on rumors. But true or false, it did make Japanese feel that they should die by fighting back than surrender and be stuck in a prison where they would be tortured. It is known that in some areas, Japanese POW’s treatment were terrible, especially those who surrendered to the Soviet forces as these POW’s.
We do see how in the film, Japanese POW’s were used for propaganda and to spread rumors around the prison. We do see POW’s who wish they can kill themselves but also the shame that many feel about surrendering and not dying.
While Kobayashi probably could have been more polemic with this film, the film was more about how these men have changed from being soldiers to prisoners that feel there is no life for them. Anything that literally made them happy, has been stripped away. Honor for their family, love for their wives or girlfriends, all they know is the cell they sleep in, the hard labor that they occasionally have to do and being around other Japanese who feel shamed, or dealing with the atrocities they had committed, these things weigh heavily on their mind and some can suppress it and try to repent, other just want to end their miserable life.
“The Thick-Walled Room” is a fascinating film by Masaki Kobayashi and as an earlier work, he would go so much further in a film like “The Human Condition” over a decade later. But a film such as “The Thick-Walled Room”, goes to show how bold he was to stand up against social and political orders.
A rebellious early film for Masaki Kobayashi and a fitting film to be included in “Eclipse Series 38: Masaki Kobayashi Against the System”!