A Fugitive from the Past 
飢餓海峡 「Kiga kaikyou」
Release Date: January 15th, 1965
Duration: 182 mins.
Director: Tomu Uchida
Writer: Naoyuki Suzuki, (Screenplay), Tsutomu Minakami (Original Novel)
Starring: Rentaro Mikuni, Sachiko Hidari, Ken Takakura, Koji Mitsui, Sadako Sawamura, Susumu Fujita,
A Fugitive from the Past, based on a novel by Tsutomu Minakami, is a crime film set in post-war Japan where characters engage in murder and duplicity and find themselves haunted by it as they scramble to make a new life in a nation recovering from its recent wartime history.
The film starts off in Hokkaido with an extraordinary set of sequences:
- After murder is committed, the thieves responsible make a getaway with a sack full of cash and set fire to house as a distraction,
- As the crooks flee by train, a typhoon hits and they detrain and travel by foot to the coast which is where they witness…
- A ferry disaster as the vessel capsizes and emergency services and fishermen rush to rescue passengers.
These events (based on real life¹) are affecting to view due to their kineticism and scope. Scenes happen quickly and are full of people and objects in motion. Rough images and powerful sounds bombard the viewer. People rushing around on foot and in vehicles, multiple crowd scenes of shifting masses of people, a boat tossed around by huge waves, all with the roar of the wind and the crash of water, train whistles and the cries and shouts of people whipped up into a panic.
The fire the crooks set consumes a whole town and the ferry rescue turns into disaster recovery. The three criminals, former inmates of Abashiri Prison, use this chaos as cover for escape as they head across the Tsugaru Strait, heading for Honshu, Japan’s main island, but only one man among the three makes it out of the water alive – Takichi Inukai (Rentaro Mikuni) – while the other two wind up as bodies washed up amidst the ferry wreckage.
A clumsy lumbering giant, Inukai scrambles from the sea with a detective, Yumisaka (Junzaburo Ban), on his trail. A chance encounter with a sex worker named Yae Sugita (Sachiko Hidari) allows him to evade detection. In return for her aid, he leaves her a wad of cash from the loot he carries with him and with it, she pays of her family’s debts and starts a new life in Tokyo.
The film slows down tremendously once Inukai emerges from water (a symbol of rebirth) and it slows down even further as we follow ten years of Yae’s experiences in Tokyo, an out of towner with no history. This makes up the largest chunk of the narrative. Rather than the thriller elements or action one might expect from the opening, what viewers get is a drama chock full of socio-economic details as the characters struggle to live while fate intervenes at crucial moments to lead them to dramatic moments.
Uchida takes his time to paint a landscape ravaged by war. Yae’s various situations, the environments she exists in, and the people she meets or passes help convey an atmosphere rich with details of the suffering experienced by people following the war.
Locations are row houses amidst rubble and shacks masquerading as bars. Amidst this, pan-pan girls are leered at by GIs and police perform round-ups. Posters exhort people to pay taxes for democracy or give information on repatriation of people from China. Yakuza battle for black markets. The dirt and the grime are constant and through it all is a defiant Yae who continues sex work while holding Inukai’s generosity in her heart. She is surviving and thriving until fate reconnects her with someone from the past who might know about her benefactor.
At first, Yae’s experiences feel like a tangent from the crime story but it is crucial. It is really evocative with its depictions of working-class struggle and impoverishment in a way similar to Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963) or the monologue in the scene of the patriarch reminding his swindling family of the stinking poverty they survived in The Graceful Brute (1962) and so the world building lends weight to the themes of generosity and survival in the film. It explains motivations. Thus, Yae’s behaviour in such an environment may make us concerned for her but they also warm our affections towards her, especially her displays of sincerity.
When it comes to generosity and survival, well, as the film takes even more twists and turns (including Ken Takakura turning up as a young police detective who gets involved in the hunt for Inukai), we notice that the poorest and lowest of people are the most generous and that the world can deal out cruel fates to them and this is what the film seems to expound through where the story goes.
I won’t spoil what happens next but ideas of poverty, generosity, sincerity, and fate play a big part in the rest of the film as we watch Yae’s story and view the naïve love that drives her with a measure of admiration and pity. We get more insight into who Inukai was and the grinding poverty he came from that made him become a murderer but also a person who generously handed a lot of money to Yae. Any assumptions and accusations of him being a villain are overturned for a more complex picture of desperation and duplicity. Even Yumisaka, a detective determined to crack the case finds his sincerity becomes his undoing. The fate of each character is a bitter and moving experience to witness.
All subsequent actions made by certain characters are done from the fear of what will happen to whatever wealth has been accumulated and the tragedies that mount up are really heart breaking. The moment these characters are sincere and compassionate, the world collapses on them and that is a bitter message the film has. In a society of survival and struggle in post-war Japan, showing humanity can lead to disaster while the pursuit of money will definitely corrupt. The film ends on a sombre note that is unforgettable.
¹ The sinking of the Toya Maru and the Great Fire of Iwanai.