Synopsis
Japanese comedy film.
1961 ‘次郎長社長と石松社員’ Directed by Masaharu Segawa
Japanese comedy film.
A mediocre opening to New Toei’s salaryman comedy series, which produced six films from 1961 to 1962 and was probably Toei’s attempt to get a piece of Toho’s urban comedy pie. The series is perhaps better known by its Japanese title Jirocho shacho to Ishimatsu shain (“President Jirocho and Employee Ishimatsu”). Katsuo Nakamura stars as a clueless new employee Ishimatsu who enters old man Jirocho’s (Eitaro Shindo) women’s underwear company after passing the entrance screening solely because the president liked his name. Those well versed in Japanese history will immediately get the joke: the names are borrowed from the 19th century yakuza / folk hero Jirocho Shimizu and his henchman Mori no Ishimatsu, with whom these characters probably share not…