Giants and Toys

Giants and Toys (巨人と玩具, Kyojin to gangu) is a 1958 Japanese comedy film directed by Yasuzo Masumura and starring Hiroshi Kawaguchi.[1] It portrays the increasingly frenzied efforts of the World candy company to compete with the rival Giant and Apollo companies over caramel sales. World (under the leadership of the Machiavellian Mr Goda) "discovers" a tomboy girl with bad teeth to be the center of their promotional campaign, involving colorful space suits and ray guns. It turns out that as she becomes famous that she's less and less inclined to go along with World's plans for her.

Giants and Toys
Film poster
Directed byYasuzo Masumura
Produced byHiroaki Fujii
Hideo Nagata
Written byKen Kaiko
Yoshio Shirasaka
StarringHiroshi Kawaguchi
CinematographyHiroshi Murai
Edited byTatsuji Nakashizu
Release date
  • 22 June 1958 (1958-06-22)
Running time
95 minutes
CountryJapan
LanguageJapanese

The film satirizes the instant manufacture of media stars, the decline of a gentlemanly business ethos (or the tradition of bushido) and rise of a culture of ruthless corporate skulduggery, and the emphasis on work at the expense of personal life and health—Mr Goda's health has been so ruined by his diet of pep pills and tranquilizers by the end of the film that he is regularly coughing up blood.

Cast
  • Hiroshi Kawaguchi as Yousuke Nishi
  • Hitomi Nozoe as Kyoko Shima
  • Yūnosuke Itō as Junji Harukawa
  • Michiko Ono as Masami Kurahashi (as Toshiko Hasegawa)
  • Kyu Sazanka as Takakura Higashi
  • Kinzo Shin as Kohei
  • Hideo Takamatsu as Ryuji Goda

Production

Giants and Toys was a story written by Takeshi Kaikō. After Kaikō won the Akutagawa Prize in 1957 (for his novel The Naked King), Daiei Film bought the rights to Giants and Toys.[2] The book was an entry in the "business novel" (経済小説, keizai shōsetsu) genre, which satirizes Japanese workers' devotion to their corporations.[3]

References
  1. Kehr, Dave. "New York Times: Giants and Toys". NY Times. Archived from the original on 20 May 2011. Retrieved 24 July 2008.
  2. Phillips, Alastair (2007). Japanese cinema: texts and contexts. Taylor & Francis. p. 153. ISBN 978-0-415-32847-0.
  3. Roberts, Mark (2007). Masumura Yasuzo and the cinema of social consciousness. ProQuest. pp. 129–130. ISBN 978-0-549-53175-3.
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