A Fugitive from the Past

A Fugitive from the Past (飢餓海峡), also titled Straits of Hunger or Hunger Straits, is a 1965 Japanese crime drama film directed by Tomu Uchida and starring Rentarō Mikuni, Sachiko Hidari and Ken Takakura. It is based on the 1962 novel Kiga kaikyō by Tsutomu Minakami.

Plot
In 1947, two ex-convicts on parole murder pawnbroker Sasada and his family in Iwanai, Hokkaido island, take his money and set fire to the house to cover the tracks. They escape together with a third man, Inukai, to Shimokita peninsula. The murderers' dead bodies later wash up on the shore after the Tōya Maru ferry accident, but policeman Yumisaka becomes suspicious because they are not listed as passengers. He believes that the missing Inukai killed his two accomplices while crossing the strait between the islands. Meanwhile, Inukai is sheltered by a prostitute, Yae, and gives her a large sum of money in return, which enables her to start a new life. When Yumisaka questions Yae, she pretends that her customer was not Inukai. He follows Yae to Tokyo, where he loses her trace.

10 years later, Yae, who works as a prostitute in a brothel, recognises Inukai in a newspaper article. Inukai now lives as a respectable citizen in Maizuru under the name Tarumi, who received press coverage for donating money to reintegrate former criminals. She visits him to thank him for his help ten years ago, but he pretends not to know her or having heard the name Inukai before. When she identifies him by his crippled thumb, he kills her in panic. He then strangles his servant Takenaka, who had surprised Inukai kneeling over Yae's body, and disposes of the corpses in the sea.

When Yae's and Takenaka's bodies are found, detective Ajimura rejects his colleague's notion of a shinjū, instead suspecting a crime because of Yae's broken neck. Yae's father tells Ajimura that ten years ago a policeman named Yumisaka had questioned him in search of a man whom his daughter had met. Ajimura contacts Yumisaka, who was forced to resign from the police force because of his obsession with the case, for help. In a series of interrogations, Inukai finally admits that he kept Sasada's money as a means to escape his life in poverty, but denies having been involved in the murders themselves. Knowing that the police have no evidence on him, he insists that he will only speak about Yae when the police believe his story up to this point.

In the evening, Yumisaka visits Inukai in his cell and presents him the ashes of the boat which Inukai had burned after his crossing of the Tsugaru strait. Yumisaka, who had kept the ashes through all these years, declares that he despises Inukai for the killing of Yae who herself would never have betrayed him. The agitated Inukai begs Yumisaka and the police officers to take him to his native Hokkaido one more time, to which they agree. When the ferry passes Yae's hometown on Shimokita, Inukai kills himself by jumping off the boat.

Cast

 * Rentarō Mikuni – Takichi Inukai / Kyōichirō Tarumi
 * Sachiko Hidari – Yae Sugito
 * Ken Takakura – Detective Ajimura
 * Junzaburō Ban – Detective Yumisaka
 * Kōji Mitsui – Motojima, the brothel owner
 * Yoshi Katō – Yae's father
 * Sadako Sawamura – Motojima's wife
 * Susumu Fujita – Chief of police
 * Nobuo Yana – Machida
 * Rinichi Yamamoto – Monk
 * Akiko Kazami – Toshiko

Production and release
To achieve a grainy effect of the images, A Fugitive from the Past was shot on 16 mm film, blown up to 35 mm and the film material manipulated (a process titled the "Toei W106 method").

Originally scheduled to start on 27 December 1964, the release had to be postponed to 15 January 1965 due to delays in the production. Production company and distributor Toei released a shortened version of the 183 minutes running film without Uchida's approval. Uchida protested and left Toei, but later returned to the company to direct Jinsei gekijō: Hishakaku to Kiratsune (1968).

Awards
A Fugitive from the Past ranked #5 on Kinema Junpo's list of the ten best Japanese films of the year. It received the Blue Ribbon Award for Best Screenplay and the Mainichi Film Award for Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor (Rentarō Mikuni), Best Actress (Sachiko Hidari) and Best Supporting Actor (Junzaburō Ban).

Legacy
A Fugitive from the Past was screened at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in 2007 and in the Museum of Modern Art in 2016 as part of retrospectives on Tomu Uchida.

The film was included in Kinema Junpo's "critics top 200" list and in the British Film Institute's "The best Japanese film of every year – from 1925 to now" list.