Naniwa no koi no monogatari (Chikamatsu’s Love in Osaka). 1959. Japan. Directed by Tomu Uchida. Screenplay by Masahige Narusawa. With Kinnosuke Nakamura, Ineko Arima, Chiezo Kataoka, Kinuyo Tanaka. In Japanese; English subtitles. 105 min.
Eighteenth-century playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon has been called the Shakespeare of Japan, and this adaptation of his tragic love-suicide kabuki play The Courier for Hell is one of Uchida’s most engrossing dramas. Chikamatsu’s original story has Chubei, the adopted son of an Osakan courier, falling head over heels for the prostitute Umegawa, who incites Chubei to steal increasingly large sums of money until the couple is forced to retreat to the mountains. Narusawa’s script idiosyncratically casts Chikamatsu as a character in the drama, which grows increasingly self-referential as Chikamatsu, initially an observer taking inspiration for his writing from the events he views, begins to intervene. Kinnosuke Nakamura, who plays Chubei, was one of the most popular male leads in Japan during the 1950s.