‘A Story Written With Water’, is a 1965 family drama directed by Japanese New Wave luminary Kiju Yoshida in 1965. Here from the always reliable Radiance Films is a reissue of the picture, with a handsome Hi-Def transfer in a single pressing of 3000 copies.

The film is concerned with the convoluted relationships between young salaryman Shizuo (Yasunori Inkawa), his mother Shizuka (Mariko Okada), Shizuo’s superior and Shizuka’s lover Denzo (Isao Yamagata) and his daughter and Shizuo’s fiancée Yumiko (Ruriko Asaka).  Shizuo’s attitude toward his upcoming marriage becomes conflicted when his suspicion that Shizuka and Denzo had an affair when Shizuo’s father Takao (Shin Kishida) was invalided is confirmed by his mother.  This gives rise in his mind to the worrying notion that he and his future wife may be half-brother and half-sister.  There are also already disturbing elements to the characters’ existing relationships that are largely unspoken.

In her interesting video interview on the disk extras author and Japanese film scholar Jennifer Coates discusses Yoshida’s general approach to directing and storytelling, an ‘anti-auteurist’ approach which tries to avoid audience manipulation by taking the director out of the picture and allowing the viewers enough leeway to create their own interpretation.  How successful Yoshida is in accomplishing this in the case of ‘A Story Written with Water’ is moot.  What the film most certainly is, is a powerful, spare and elegantly presented human drama. 

The word that comes up most often in descriptions of the film’s plot is incest, specifically mother-son incest.  This is a surprisingly common theme in mainstream cinema with well-known titles like ‘Spanking the Monkey’ (1994) and ‘Savage Grace’ (2007).  This is misleading in the case of ‘A Story Written with Water’ as any such desires, as far as we know, remain unconsummated.  Incestuous desire may be implied in Shizuo’s overly protective attitude to his mother although there are also other plausible reasons for his concern.  Shizuka continues a decades-long affair with Denzo that began when her husband was still alive and the son’s resentment is compounded by the possibility that his real father is the man he feels is exploiting his family more for reasons of power and arrogance rather than authentic affection.  

As a narrative film ‘A Story Written with Water’ succeeds very well.  The story is tragic and human and the characters well realized.  Without nudity or explicitness sexual passion is convincingly conveyed.  Denzo the suave patriarch and his spirited charming daughter, Yumiko seem to possess more life than the movie’s leads who perhaps by dint of their loaded and enigmatic relationship come over somewhat as ciphers.  This is not such a bad thing given that the brooding, handsome Inkawa and the beautiful self-contained Okada, Yoshida’s real-life wife, are wonderful movie types.

Yoshida’s ‘anti-auteurism’ seems to be an attempt at a purer form of social realism, the attempt at holding up a mirror to life/society.  He even wrote a monograph about Yasujiro Ozu, the great Japanese realist director.  Both men’s work has parallels with the Italian neo-realist movement.  However some of the most memorable images in ‘Water’ are striking visual effects which are purely formalist such as the motif of Shizuka’s distinctive parasol or the original, sometimes overwrought elipses between the son’s current life and his experiences as a child.  One effect, a 360-degree pan during a passionate clinch between Shizuka and Denzo evokes an almost identical shot in ‘Vertigo’ (1958) by the auteur’s auteur, Alfred Hitchcock.

Yoshida’s intention of trying to remove himself from the film can only be judged relatively successful.  It is true that the degree to which Shizuka and Shizuo’s relationship is seen as founded on unspoken incestuous desire will vary from viewer to viewer.  However the movie is not mysterious and some of the director’s other decisions, such as criticizing patriarchal Japanese society through the character of Denzo are clear.  This is an engrossing, dramatic and poetic film and well worth the viewer’s time. 

The Radiance disk boasts the previously mentioned interview with Jennifer Coates, a new interview with Mariko Okada and a short archival interview with Kiju Yoshida himself.

This is another excellent reissue from Radiance Films of this unfairly neglected mid-60s Japanese family drama. With a handsome HD scan, and a small but worthy selection of extras