As the only one of Ito’s silent films to survive in a more or less complete print, Oatsurae Jirokichi Koshi is our sole opportunity to experience Ito’s early achievement in uncompromised form. A flamboyant and fast-paced yet humanly moving jidai-geki masterpiece, it depicts the triangular relationship between Jirokichi (played with characteristic flair by Ito’s regular star Denjiro Okochi), a wanted criminal, and sisters Osen and Okino, played by real-life sisters Naoe and Nobuko Fushimi, who specialised respectively in hardbitten, harsh characterisations and innocent ingenue roles. Ito’s flair and energy is fully visible, along with such signature scenes as a pursuit in darkness by lantern light. “Kinema Junpo” critic Fuyuhiko Kitagawa claimed that Ito was “working with ease and without strain”, and praised the “mature precision” of his technique and the psychological depth of the story. More recently, Tadao Sato has celebrated “the peculiar effect that arises from the interplay of images and intertitles … – celebrated lines of dialogue in that rhythmic style, which serve as a springboard from which the images take flight. The compelling rhythm of those cadenced phrases, combined with the snap of precisely matched shots appearing at exactly the right moment – shots so apt one wants to cry out ‘We’ve been waiting for this!’ – recalled the technique of a kodan storyteller hammering out a climactic passage in one headlong rush, a storytelling of taut, vibrant tension.” Sato relates this cinematic technique of the film to the literary style of kabuki playwright Mokuami Kawatake, whose so-called shiranami-mono (thieves’ plays) focused on outlaws in similar underworld settings. Ito remade the film with Kazuo Hasegawa in the lead role in 1952; this, however, remains the definitive version.

Alexander Jacoby e Johan Nordström