Noboru Kiritachi

1939 national policy film set in Manchuria.

Quote:
Song of the White Orchid was a co-production of Toho and Mantetsu, the railway that served the colonial region of Manchuria, and the first film in the Kazuo Hasegawa/Shirley Yamaguchi (Ri Koran) “Continental Trilogy.” Handsome Hasegawa (representing Japan) runs up against an impertinent Yamaguchi (representing the continent); not surprisingly, in the course of the film the woman comes around and realizes the benevolent intentions of the Japanese. In Song of the White Orchid Yamaguchi leaves Hasegawa, who plays an expatriate working for the railway, because of a misunderstanding. She joins a communist guerilla group plotting to blow up the Manchurian railway. Learning of the subterfuge that led to the misunderstanding, she renews her faith in Hasegawa—and by extension Japan—and tries to undermine the plot.Read More »

Not much info on this film out there, but here is a nice little rundown by Keiko McDonald from her book, From Book to Screen: Modern Japanese Literature in Films:

“Uguisu (The Nightingale) drew on a story of the same title published that year by Einosuke Ito. Here the frame of reference is a subgenre that called itself agrarian literature. Ito’s tale is an episodic account of peasants responding to poverty and depravation with cunning, simplicity, and often woeful ignorance.Read More »