Flunky, Work Hard!

Flunky, Work Hard! (腰弁頑張れ, Koshiben ganbare) is a 1931 Japanese silent comedy drama film directed by Mikio Naruse, and the first surviving film by the director. Naruse biographer Catherine Russell called it a combination "of nansensu comedy,[lower-alpha 1] tendency film, and shoshimin-eiga with a particularly flamboyant method of decoupage".[4]

Flunky, Work Hard!
Japanese腰弁頑張れ
Directed byMikio Naruse
Written byMikio Naruse
Starring
  • Isamu Yamaguchi
  • Tomoko Naniwa
  • Seiichi Kato
CinematographyMitsuo Miura
Production
company
Distributed byShochiku
Release date
  • August 8, 1931 (1931-08-08) (Japan)
[1][2]
Running time
29 minutes[1]
CountryJapan
LanguageJapanese

Plot

Insurance salesman Okabe is scolded by his wife for their shortage of money and always being behind with their rental payments. He promises that the situation will better soon, as he is about to sell an insurance policy to Mrs. Toda, a wealthy neighbour. At Mrs. Toda's house, he gets into an argument with Nakamura, a competing salesman. As a result, Mrs. Toda throws both of them out. Meanwhile, Okabe's son Susumu gets into a fight with the neighbour's kids, including Mrs. Toda's son, for not letting him play with their toy airplane. Okabe, afraid that Mrs. Toda might sue him, scolds Susumu and comforts her son, taking him home. Mrs. Toda, who has heard that a child was hit by a train, is relieved by the sight of Okabe and her son and agrees to buy an insurance from him. Okabe decides to surprise Susumu and buys a toy airplane for him. Back home he learns that it was his own son who was hit by the train, and runs to the hospital. Susumu is in a critical condition, but finally recovers.

Cast
  • Isamu Yamaguchi as Okabe
  • Tomoko Naniwa as Okabe's wife
  • Seiichi Kato as Susumu, Okabe's son
  • Shizue Akiyama as Mrs. Toda
  • Tokio Seki as Nakamura
  • Hideo Sugawara

Notes
  1. "Nansensu", the Japanese variant for "nonsense", can refer to the silly or to the sarcastic and satirical.[3]

References
  1. "Flunky, Work Hard! in the Japanese Movie Database" (in Japanese). Retrieved 28 January 2021.
  2. "腰弁頑張れ (Flunky, Work Hard!)" (in Japanese). Kinema Junpo. Retrieved 28 January 2021.
  3. William J. Tyler, Introduction: Making sense of nansensu Japan Forum 21 no. 1 (2009)
  4. Russell, Catherine (2008). The Cinema of Naruse Mikio: Women and Japanese Modernity. Durham and London: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0-8223-4290-8.
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