Our Marriage (Masahiro Shinoda, 1961)
Noriko Maki and Chieko Baisho in Our Marriage
Cast: Noriko Maki, Chieko Baisho, Shin'ichiro Mikami, Isao Kimura, Eijiro Tono, Sadako Sawamura. Screenplay: Zenzo Matsuyama, Masahiro Shinoda. Cinematography: Masao Kosugi. Art direction: Chiyoo Umeda. Film editing: Yoshi Sugihara. Music: Naozumi Yamamoto.
Masahiro Shinoda’s Our Marriage is a simple, elegantly made film, scarcely over an hour long, about two sisters and the pressures on women to get married. Shinoda focuses on social and economic change in the role of women in a society in which upward mobility is becoming possible and desirable. Keiko (Noriko Maki) and Saeko (Chieko Baisho) are office workers in a factory, the daughters of a man struggling to make ends meet by harvesting seaweed. His job has become more difficult because of industrial pollution, and his wife sometimes has to borrow money from the daughters to pay bills. So the parents begin looking for a husband for 22-year-old Keiko. The father wants her to marry a widower nearing 30, but another man, Matsumoto (Isao Kimura), also shows interest in her. The parents disapprove of Matsumoto because he traded in the black market in the postwar years, but he has since cleaned up his act. The complication is that Keiko has met a handsome young factory worker, Komakura (Shin'ichiro Mikami). Saeko, who has a secret crush on Komakura, wants Keiko to marry him, and Keiko is certainly not averse to the idea except that Komakura doesn’t make much money. Things work themselves out after some family drama. But a cultural difference may mar the film for American viewers: The music arranger has chosen the tune of the old spiritual “Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore” as the film’s main theme. Anyone who grew up singing it around a campfire, or knows the recorded versions by Pete Seeger and Harry Belafonte, is going to have a hard time reconciling the music with the story.
