, or ''Earth'', is a 1939 Japanese film directed by

Tomu Uchida , born Tsunejirō Uchida on 26 April 1898, was a Japanese film director. The stage name "Tomu" translates to “spit out dreams”. Early career Uchida started out at the Taikatsu studio in the early 1920s, but came to prominence at Nikkatsu, ada ...

, based on the classic 1912

Meiji era The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization b ...

novel ''Tsuchi'' by poet

Takashi Nagatsuka was a Japanese poet and novelist. According to prominent historian Ann Waswo, Nagatsuka Takashi was born into a landowning family. Generally, he was born in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. More specifically, his place of birth was 国生村 (Kossh� ...

, translated into English as ''The Soil'' by historian Ann Waswo. The film won the 1940

Kinema Junpo Award , commonly called , is Japan's oldest film magazine and began publication in July 1919. It was first published three times a month, using the Japanese ''Jun'' (旬) system of dividing months into three parts, but the postwar ''Kinema Junpō'' ha ...

for Best Film. A seriously compromised print of ''Earth'' was discovered in Germany in 1968. It suffers from nitrate damage and includes German subtitles. It is missing its first and last reel. The original film was 142 minutes long; this version runs 93 minutes. A 119-minute version of the film, with subtitles in Russian, was discovered in Russia around the turn of the millennium. It, too, is missing the last reel.

Plot

The plot of ''Tsuchi'' focuses on a family of farmers who are down on their luck, but also extensively depicts the rural community's milieu, daily work and way of life. Kanji (Isamu Kosugi) is embittered because he has to pay off the debts of his dead wife's father (Kaichi Yamamoto). He is also overly protective of his daughter, Otsugi (Akiko Kazami), which severely restricts her interaction with the community.

Development

Director Tomu Uchida's original plan to film Nagatsuka's famous novel was turned down by

Nikkatsu is a Japanese entertainment company known for its film and television productions. It is Japan's oldest major movie studio, founded in 1912 during the silent film era. The name ''Nikkatsu'' amalgamates the words Nippon Katsudō Shashin, literally ...

, the studio to which he was under contract. While Uchida was working on other projects for the studio, he began filming ''Tsuchi'' on weekends without authorization. This secret filming included on-location shooting in Japan. Once Nikkatsu caught wind of what was happening it was too late; the production was too far along for the studio to halt it. The management feared losing face with its workers, who had already put in a lot of time making the film, so Nikkatsu decided to complete the film and released it to the public to unexpected commercial success.

Reception

The Japanese filmmaker

Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dyna ...

cited this movie as one of his 100 favorite films.

References

1930s Japanese-language films Films directed by Tomu Uchida Best Film Kinema Junpo Award winners 1939 films Nikkatsu films Japanese drama films 1939 drama films Japanese black-and-white films {{1930s-Japan-film-stub