The Life of Matsu the Untamed

Matsugoro is a poor rickshaw man. His liveliness and his good humour make him a favourite in the town. He helps an injured boy named Toshio and the boy’s parents take him on. From then on he has a place in the boy’s growing up and looks after him as a father would. But his own place is never clear; he is neither counted as family nor entirely outside it. The film does not soften the difference of class; it puts what the man cannot say inside the account as well. His relation with drink and his loneliness are the second thread of the story. The social order of the Meiji period is the ground. Tsumasaburō Bandō takes the lead in Hiroshi Inagaki’s eighty minute Japanese film, completed in 1943.