Sanzen Tange And The Pot Worth A Million Ryo

Sanzen Tange And The Pot Worth A Million Ryo (1935) is generally considered Sadao Yamanaka's finest film (it was one of Akira Kurosawa's favorites). Yamanaka died in Manchuria the age of 28 after being drafted into the army. Thus is is impressive that Yamanaka was able to make twenty-six films during his brief career, however, only three remain, alongside a handful of fragments from his remaining back catalog. Sazen Tange (played by popular silent actor Denjiro Okochi-whom I first was introduced to by his wonderful villa in Arashiyama district of Kyoto) was a popular character in Japan in the 20s and 30s, the character first appeared in a series of serial novels. He was a once noble samurai who lost his eye and arm due to a betrayal, resulting in being reborn as a nihilistic Ronin. In this somewhat comedic film, he’s more of an uncouth and lazy character than cynical killing machine though. A seemingly worthless pot is discovered to have a map that will lead to a treasure of a million ryo and the wealthy landowner who has given it to his younger brother as wedding gift wants it back. He then learns that it has been sold to a junk collector who has given it to his son to use as a fishbowl. Most of the plot revolves around the recovery of the pot. There is a sort of social message that criticizes the actions of the wealthy ruling class and those who are lazy and play games rather than who hard to achieve success. It was these leftist leaning tendencies that led to Yamanaka being sent to the front rather than getting a sinecure like most other Japanese directors of that time who served in the war(notably his contemporaries Yasujiro Ozu and Mikio Naruse).