Irresponsible Era of Japan

The Crazy Cats comic jazz band and their featured singer Hitoshi Ueki did not invent the local genre of the "salaryman" comedy but they were its ubiquitous face in the 1960s. Some of the first big stars of the new medium of television, they brought standing-room-only audiences to a cinema in decline. This film established Ueki’s comic persona as a salaryman who would goof off at work and yet somehow always come out ahead, every so often bursting into one of his well-known Japanese folk-inflected songs while dancing something like the twist. The first in a series of "Irresponsible" films whose comic songs formed the soundtrack of Japan’s high economic growth.

1962, 86 min., 35mm, color. In Japanese with live English subtitles. Directed by Kengo Furusawa. With Hitoshi Ueki, Noriko Shigeyama, Hajime Hana, Asami Kuji, Toru Yuri.

Print courtesy of National Film Center, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.

Tickets: $12/$9 Japan Society members, seniors & students


Part of the 2016 Globus Film Series Japan Sings! The Japanese Musical Film.

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